Earth & Space
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Why Brown Dwarfs May Explain the Main Differences Between Stars and Planets
The atmospheres of brown dwarfs can be surprisingly similar to those of gas giant planets, too, complete with multi-layered clouds and powerful wind-driven storms. That makes them great windows into the atmospheric processes that shape our own solar system’s giant planets, as well as the super-Jupiter exoplanets discovered outside our stellar neighborhood, according to a…
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Which fault line do you live on? An earthquake guide for California.
While both the northern and southern sections of the San Andreas fault are locked, storing up energy that needs to be released, the central part is creeping and less charged.”The true nightmare scenario is that the southern San Andreas has so much extra energy in it because it’s so overdue that it blows through the…
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Watch orcas and dolphins team up to hunt—a possible scientific first
“In nature, mutualism—where both parties benefit—is the most likely reason that you would have two disparate groups coming together,” says Ari Friedlaender, professor of ocean sciences at UC Santa Cruz, who wasn’t involved in the study. Additional coverage in Smithsonian magazine.
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Researchers played elephant seals the calls of their nemeses. This is what happened next
“Male elephant seals come back to the exact same breeding location year after year and engage in competitive interactions with a number of familiar individuals,” says Caroline Casey, research scientist and adjunct professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, in a statement. “It would make sense, then, that they would retain some memory of…
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Mars Has Lightning, Scientists Prove
This is the first time there has been convincing evidence that electrical activity on Mars is actually occurring, says Francis Nimmo, a planetary scientist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who wasn’t involved in the study.
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What California’s big, gross elephant seals can teach us about life
“I mean, everything they do is extreme,” says Daniel Costa, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UC Santa Cruz. “They’re the deepest-diving pinniped and they dive for longer than any other seal or sea lion. They also fast for longer. Everything they do is just pushing the limits.”
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Why California is seeing an earthquake cluster right now
Emily Brodsky, an earthquake physicist at UC Santa Cruz, said it’s difficult to draw any conclusions from the activity in San Ramon. “Although it’s the kind of thing you might expect to happen before a big earthquake, we can’t distinguish that from the many, many times that has happened without a big earthquake,” she told…
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New Research Shows How AI Could Transform Math, Physics, Cancer Research and More
“I had not seen anything that impressive [in math] from an LLM before,” says Ryan Foley, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who was not involved in the study. “I suspect LLMs are going to upend how theories are created, vetted and improved.”
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Cosmic Paradox Reveals the Awful Consequence of an Observer-Free Universe
This conclusion struck physicists as paradoxical, given that we too could conceivably live in a closed universe. And we clearly see far more than a single state around us. “On my desk there are an infinite number of states,” said Edgar Shaghoulian, a physicist at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
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If another country tested nuclear weapons, here’s how we’d know
Seismologist Thorne Lay of the University of California, Santa Cruz has been involved with nuclear monitoring research for decades. Science News spoke with Lay to clarify what we know about nuclear testing around the globe.
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UCSC astronomy Ph.D. survived war and helped build Kosovo’s first observatory. Now she’s bringing the cosmos to Bay Area classrooms
After surviving the Kosovo War and witnessing her first solar eclipse as a child, UC Santa Cruz astronomy Ph.D. student Pranvera Hyseni turned a moment of wonder into a lifelong mission to bring astronomy education to her homeland.
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Alien worlds may be able to make their own water
“They can basically be their own water engines,” says Quentin Williams, an experimental geochemist at the University of California Santa Cruz who was not involved with the new work.