Regina Barber
Appearances
NPR News Now
NPR News: 01-21-2025 8PM EST
That sound isn't from Star Trek. It's an audio clip created from radiation coming 100,000 miles above Earth's surface. These waves are thought to be created from bunched up, charged electrons trapped in Earth's magnetic field. These rising and lowering waves of radiation have been studied for the past 70 years.
NPR News Now
NPR News: 01-21-2025 8PM EST
And a new study from Beijing, China, published in the journal Nature, was the first to find these waves at this location, where Earth's magnetic field is weak and less uniform. This information could help protect satellites and other spacecraft from damage, since chorus waves can accelerate particles to close to the speed of light. Regina Barber, NPR News.
NPR News Now
NPR News: 02-23-2025 8PM EST
Alto Espicio lies in the Atacama Desert, and it's perfectly situated to collect fog. At about 2,000 feet in Chile, Alto Espicio is the only city which is inside of the cloud. That's geographer Virginia Carter. She led a study that gathered data at various fog collection sites around the city for a year. In the past, fog collection has only been studied and used in small villages.
NPR News Now
NPR News: 02-23-2025 8PM EST
But for the first time, Carter and her team used computer modeling to map how much water could be collected from fog all over the region. They found that fog could supply hundreds of thousands of liters of drinking water per week, enough to supplement the water demands of under-resourced parts of the city. Regina Barber, NPR News.