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How Beavers Save a Drying Rainforest

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What does it take to keep water in a landscape that’s slowly forgetting how to hold it? Heliox investigates the drought that stunned a Canadian rainforest — and the ancient, low-tech, furry solution that gray infrastructure couldn’t match. A deep dive into watershed science, ecological restoration, and the surprising return of North America’s original hydraulic engineers.

This Supervolcano Is Refilling With Magma After 7,300 Years

A supervolcano that once shook the Earth is quietly recharging—and scientists are finally seeing how it happens.

Scientists have found that the magma reservoir linked to the largest volcanic eruption of the Holocene is filling again. The discovery, led by Kobe University researchers studying Japan’s Kikai caldera, offers new insight into how massive caldera systems such as Yellowstone and Toba behave and may improve our ability to anticipate future activity.

What Makes Supervolcanoes So Powerful

X-ray lasers enable the discovery of a critical point in water

Using X-ray lasers, researchers at Stockholm University have been able to determine the existence of a critical point in supercooled water at around −63 °C and 1,000 atmospheres. Ordinary water at higher temperatures and lower pressures is strongly affected by the presence of this critical point, causing the origin of its strange properties. The findings are published in the journal Science.

Water, both omnipresent and essential for life on Earth, behaves very strangely in comparison with other substances. How water’s density, specific heat, viscosity and compressibility respond to changes in pressure and temperature is the complete opposite of other liquids that we know.

All matter shrinks when it is cooled, resulting in an increase in its density. One would therefore expect that water would have a high density at the freezing point. However, looking at a glass of ice water, everything is upside down, since—as we all know—ice cubes float. Strangely enough for the liquid state, water is the densest at 4 degrees C, and therefore it stays on the bottom whether it’s in a glass or in an ocean.

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