Kelp forests are one of the most productive ecosystems
You see it when you gaze out over the ocean from one of our sublime coastal bluffs. It looks like an oil slick in...
Coastal Cosmos
Local beaches to get sand
Over the past two months, a 315-foot boat named Liberty Island has been stalking close to our coastline. This vessel is the dredge doing...
Journey of the Torrey pine
It is the rarest pine tree in North America and it only grows on a small stretch of San Diego coastline....
San Diego’s surf scientist, Carl Ekstrom
“It’s best to go radical and pull back than to never go there in the first place.”...
What do clouds mean?
Looking east on a balmy August afternoon, we are struck by the towering clouds rising into the atmosphere. We are all familiar with the persistent...
Readying for shooting stars and meteor showers
It’s good that shooting stars are not actually stars. The Earth wouldn’t exist if stars constantly whizzed through the atmosphere....
San Diego isn’t flat
We are coastal inhabitants. We live between three and about 400 feet above sea level. But San Diego County is not a flat, static landscape....
Summertime stargazing
When asked, “What is your favorite view in the night sky?” many astronomers will not cite some far off view of a nebula or planet....
The evolution of sand
It is omnipresent in our community. It cannot be escaped. On the streets, on your feets and in your sheets. In your car and your...
More spectacular sights to follow May’s solar eclipse
I just returned home from the summit of Black Mountain Open Space Park in Rancho Peñasquitos....
Solar system geometry on display with spectacular eclipse
The geometry of the solar system reveals itself in the coming weeks. On May 20, the Earth, sun and moon will align during the day,...
The Sobia’s and The Dumbo’s
By Alexander J. Balikian...
The Monster in the Hero
The following story is the 5th/6th grade winner of the Solana Santa Fe Elementary School Science Fiction Writing Contest.The judging criteria included creativity, originality, scientific...
Putting San Diego on the map
No matter how deep you dig that hole on the beach, you will not reach China.If you were to astonishingly succeed in digging through the...
Our sun is created from materials of first-generation stars
Every atom in our bodies was created inside a star. We are all star stuff! Stars form when gargantuan clouds of hydrogen, called nebula, collapse...