GIA Analyzes Atypical Color Center in Natural Diamond - Rapaport

WASHINGTON — A new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine provides a comprehensive assessment of the current capabilities of extreme event attribution (EEA) — a scientific field that analyzes whether and to what extent human-caused climate change influenced an individual extreme weather event, such as a specific heat wave or hurricane. The scientific tools, observational datasets, and methods developed and used for EEA have advanced considerably over the past decade and increased the confidence in EEA results for some types of weather events, says the report, which evaluates progress made since a 2016 National Academies report on the subject. However, confidence in EEA study results varies significantly across different types of extremes, the report says. The highest confidence is associated with findings for extreme heat and cold events and others strongly influenced by a warming atmosphere, such as large-scale heavy rainfall events.

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A digital illustration of a ball of electricity. (Vladlen Tian/iStock/Getty Images Plus) When you picture lightning, it tends to be fairly straightforward – a jagged gash of light that splits the sky, disappearing in less time than it takes to blink. But for centuries, a strange picture of a more eerie form has emerged. Thousands of records and eyewitness accounts have told of balls of lightning hovering above the ground before disappearing in a pop like soap bubbles. This fleeting phenomenon is all but impossible to study – and reports vary wildly in descriptions of its size, its hue, and even its behavior, making it one of the most peculiar mysteries in atmospheric science. But if you can't catch ball lightning in a field, physicist Chuliang Zhou and colleagues at the Chinese Academy of Sciences have reasoned, maybe we can learn more by reproducing something like it in a lab. "Here we report the first controlled generation of a macroscopic, long-lived soliton driven by relativistic terahertz electromagnetic fields," the researchers write in a paper published in Nature Photonics.

Mercury ends its prograde motion and prepares to enter retrograde in Libra the Balance — spot it after sunset if you’re quick. Mercury hangs just 1° above the western horizon half an hour after sunset on October 24. Look for the stars of Scorpius in the southwest to help guide you toward the planet’s position. Credit: Stellarium