When we look at the history of science, we mostly see male presence in inventions and discoveries. However, this is not actually a true representation of scientific history. A lot of fundamental aspects/parts of science were discovered by female scientists such as Caroline Herschel, Ada Lovelace, Alice Ball, Marie Curie, Chien-Shiung Wu, Grace Hopper and many others. These names are some of the mo ...[Read More]
In the early days of 2023, nearly 100 researchers gathered in Longyearbyen, Svalbard, one of the last permanently inhabited places before reaching the North Pole (see my previous blogpost about Svalbard). The Svalbard Integrated Arctic Earth Observing System (SIOS) held its fifth Polar Night Week. SIOS is an international partnership of research institutions that study the environment and climate ...[Read More]
It is common to hear that a good illustration is better than a lengthy textual explanation, and we fully agree with that statement. We are used to retrieving information and understanding things through visual illustrations. In the scientific community, any paper comes with a number of plots to show the data, and diagrams to explain concepts, ideas or workflows. For example, a typical plot that hy ...[Read More]
Have you arrived at that moment in your career when you have some potential ideas that you think would be relevant to science? Do you need financial support to advance your science career, and decided to apply for a grant? Today’s blog post brings you a good starting point with advice from three grant winners during the campfire organised by the NH ECS division team: “Writing successful research p ...[Read More]
Contribution about the September 2022 M 6.6 and M 6.8 earthquakes in South-East Taiwan Dr.Yifan Yin , recent graduate at the Swiss Seismological Service (SED) at the Earth Sciences department of ETH Zürich. On 17 September 2022, a magnitude 6.6 quake shook the southern-east Taiwan. The merely 8.6 km deep quake was widely felt across the island. Sixteen hours later, a magnitude 6.8 shallow quake fo ...[Read More]
We are getting used to perceiving glaciers more and more distant and disconnected from our mountains. With each passing year, it is more difficult to observe them, reach them or climb them. They are becoming an exotic element of the Alpine imagination. When our gaze rests on a mountain glacier, with its crevasses and large moraines, we are filled with the fascination of someone observing a new nat ...[Read More]
The upper atmosphere of Earth is constantly being impacted by the flow of charged particles being released from the sun. This flow (the solar wind) carries with it a magnetic field which distorts and reshapes that of Earth, ultimately resulting in a large amount of electromagnetic space weather energy being channelled into the polar regions. One of the most frequently observed outcomes of this pro ...[Read More]
We are running out of time in fighting the effects of climate change. With the greenhouse gasses emissions steady, the planet is reaching warming levels that could cause some large ecosystems to tip in different states. A tipping point in the climate system refers to a threshold beyond which a small change in a particular variable can cause a significant and potentially irreversible change in the ...[Read More]
How can we determine a ‘safe operating space’ for humanity? In this week’s blog, Professor Ilan Kelman from University College London shares his thoughts about Planetary boundaries, and whether this framework will be successful for the next generations to come. The planetary boundaries framework (Rockström et al. 2009ab; Steffen et al. 2015) might be useful for communicating some of humanity’s im ...[Read More]
Ireland is famous for retaining a rich heritage of folk tales, which are thousands of years old. They tell stories about great heroes, wars and loves, fantastic creatures such as leprechauns, fairies, banshees, giants and so on. Among them, there is a Middle Earth time myth, concerning a “small” giant, named Finn McCool, who built a great stone way connecting Northern Ireland with the western Scot ...[Read More]
