Sid Perkins

Sid Perkins is a freelance science writer based in Crossville, Tenn.

All Stories by Sid Perkins

  1. A United States maps focused on the average summer temperatures in 2021. The west coast is covered in a darker red color while the rest of the country is a light red/orange color.
    Climate

    The summer of 2021 was the Pacific Northwest’s hottest in a millennium

    Tree ring data from the Pacific Northwest reveal that the region’s average summer temperature in 2021 was the highest since at least the year 950.

  2. A photo of a fossilized bat skeleton
    Paleontology

    Newfound bat skeletons are the oldest on record

    The newly identified species Icaronycteris gunnelli lived about 52.5 million years ago in what is now Wyoming and looked a lot like modern bats.

  3. An illustration of an orange planet with dark orange and red spots scattered across its surface.
    Astronomy

    The biggest planet orbiting TRAPPIST-1 doesn’t appear to have an atmosphere

    TRAPPIST-1b is hotter than astronomers expected, suggesting there’s no atmosphere to transport heat around the planet.

  4. A photo of a fossil with two dark brown pieces attached to the shell.
    Paleontology

    520-million-year-old animal fossils might not be animals after all

    Newly described fossils of Protomelission gatehousei suggest that the species, once thought to be the oldest example of bryozoans, is actually a type of colony-forming algae.

  5. An illustration of a Tillyardembia sitting on a plant.
    Paleontology

    The oldest known pollen-carrying insects lived about 280 million years ago

    Pollen stuck to fossils of earwig-like Tillyardembia pushes back the earliest record of potential insect pollinators by about 120 million years.

  6. A photo of NASA’s Perseverance rover (whose wheel is seen at left) exploring Mars’ dusty Jezero crater on November 5.
    Planetary Science

    NASA’s Perseverance rover captured the sound of a dust devil on Mars

    A whirlwind swept over Perseverance while its microphone was on, capturing the sound of dust grains hitting the mic or the NASA rover’s chassis.

  7. A close up of orange bacteria on a yellow background
    Microbes

    Ancient bacteria could persist beneath Mars’ surface

    Radiation-tolerant microbes might be able to survive beneath Mars’ surface for hundreds of millions of years, a new study suggests.

  8. image of a tree canopy taken from below looking up
    Plants

    The worldwide water-lifting power of plants is enormous

    The energy used per year by the world’s plants to lift sap rivals the amount of energy generated by all hydroelectric dams, a new study suggests.

  9. A view from space of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano eruption
    Earth

    The Tonga eruption may have spawned a tsunami as tall as the Statue of Liberty

    A massive undersea volcanic eruption in the South Pacific in January created a tsunami that was initially 90 meters tall, computer simulations suggest.

  10. image of 430-million-year-old fossil of the fungus Prototaxites
    Environment

    Earth’s oldest known wildfires raged 430 million years ago

    430-million-year-old fossilized charcoal suggests atmospheric oxygen levels of at least 16 percent, the amount needed for fire to take hold and spread.

  11. Small mammal crawling on a dinosaur's skeleton
    Life

    ‘The Last Days of the Dinosaurs’ tells a tale of destruction and recovery

    A new book takes readers back in time to see how an asteroid strike and the dinosaur extinction shaped life on Earth.

  12. Europa image
    Planetary Science

    Europa may have much more shallow liquid water than scientists thought

    Mysterious pairs of ridges scar Jupiter’s moon Europa. Analyzing a similar set in Greenland suggests shallow water is behind the features’ formation.