There are mysterious noises in the sea. NOAA has
six unidentified underwater sounds (and their kinda creepy spectrographs) on their website, recorded by the sonar arrays that used to hunt submarines, but which are now are used for research. The most famous of these is
The Bloop, a sound of
seemingly biological origin, yet many times louder than the loudest biolocial noise. With an origin in an empty stretch of the the Pacific Ocean, it
gives Cthulhu watchers something to think about. Another once-mysterious sound,
The Boing has been identified as
coming from minke whales. Yet the sounds known as
Slow Down,
Julia, Train, and others remain intriguing mysteries.
[prev.]
posted by blahblahblah
on Apr 19, 2010 -
40 comments
Science & technology funding has an enormous long term impact on the economy, a fact that has not escaped China. Yet, Senators Ben Nelson (D-NE) and Susan Collins (R-ME) have
proposed cutting all National Science Foundation and Department of Energy Office of Science funding from the
Senate American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, along with almost all other proposed funding of the sciences and technological development, as a part of a $77.9B reduction effort. Why? Well, you'll notice that Nebraska & Maine don't contribute much to science & technology in the United States, nor win many grants, and hence no bacon for Nelson and Collins.
[more inside]
posted by jeffburdges
on Feb 6, 2009 -
86 comments
"We were forced to evacuate the remotely operated vehicle,
'Jason II,' several times to avoid getting it enveloped in volcanic clouds," said Bill Chadwick, ...one of the authors of the study. "But at other times, we could observe the eruption from only 10 feet away - something you could never do on land. So in some ways, we were able to see processes more clearly at the bottom of the ocean than we ever could on land. That was surprising." From
KGW (
bugmenot).
Podcasts, videos, images, sounds, daily logs, and lots of information can be found on
the project's website.
posted by pwb503
on May 25, 2006 -
5 comments
How Many Fish are in the Sea? During the heady days of the late 19th century, in response to a perceived decline in coastal finfish stocks,
Spencer Baird and his clutch of young naturalists at the Smithsonian set out to find the answer. In 1871, Baird founded the
U.S. Fish Commission. The Comission set up operations in
Woods Hole, MA, where it continues its work today as the
Northeast Fisheries Science Center (a branch of NOAA’s
National Marine Fisheries Service). The Fish Census of 1880 established the fist benchmark on fish populations in coastal waters; crews of Gloucester schooners competed to see who could bring the most
bizarre fish finds up from the platueaus of the Grand Banks, and America’s first research vessel, the
Albatross, was purpose-built for the project. Baird's protege (and later successor)
George Brown Goode compiled the data into
the first comprehensive reference work on American fisheries. Known to students of salt water as “Goode’s Fisheries”, the report (
beautifully illustrated) remains invaluable to researchers today, as today's fish populations dip into
an even more drastic decline.
posted by Miko
on Nov 30, 2005 -
13 comments
National Data Buoy Center (Google cache), "the premiere source of meteorological and oceanographic measurements for the marine environment" in the U.S., is located at the
NASA Stennis Space Center on the Mississippi gulf coast, is a primary source of hurricane observational data, and is currently
offline. At present, the U.S. spends only $50 million annually on ocean observations of vital socio-economic impact. The latest
national commission for ocean policy recommended $4 billion annually, including the construction of a distributed, disaster-proof,
national ocean observing system, as a component of a
global system. The previous ocean commission report in 1969 resulted in the formation of
NOAA and the passage of the
Coastal Zone Management Act. Will Congress act? The E.U.
has.
posted by 3.2.3
on Aug 31, 2005 -
6 comments
It's big, it's bad, and it's coming your way. Beware Bonnie! No, no, wait. Hide from Hanna! Hmm, nope. Run from Rene! Geez, this
naming thing isn't easy. How do you
name a tropical storm? Should the name be masculine or feminine? Should it roll off the tongue with ease or be a mouthful? Are there some names you
can't use? If a tropical storm was closing in on your neighborhood, what would
you call it?
posted by debralee
on Sep 12, 2002 -
10 comments
It really is amazing what kinds of cool, free, raw data you can get from the web (that other folks would charge you good money for), here are a few I've come across.
Weather, from the good folks at the NOAA/NWS
Geographic locations of zipcodes amongst other things from those pesky buggers at the US Census Office
Want reverse phone lookup data ? NANPA has the skinny.
So what other cool data feeds have people found out there ?
posted by zeoslap
on Oct 18, 2001 -
19 comments
3-D imagery from NOAA of the crater at ground zero, engineers are using them to find the location of elevators and support structures located beneath the rubble.
posted by owillis
on Oct 2, 2001 -
6 comments
