Lakes Beneath Antarctic Ice: Deep, Dark and Mysterious

Where is one of the last places on earth you would expect to find a never-before known lake? Certainly, any of earth’s best-known deserts…the Sahara, Gobi, or Kalahari right?

Technically fitting the definition of a desert by standards of precipitation, Antarctica could also be on that well-known list of dry places.

But Antarctica has been imaged constantly for years across the entire visible and invisible spectrum and alas an unknown lake never popped up in any pictures until….who would think it…

In 2006, Helen Amanda Fricker was sitting at her desk studying new satellite data when she made a starting discovery – a set of active lakes that exist underneath the ice in Antarctica. Join Helen, a 25-year veteran of Antarctic ice sheet research, and learn about the discovery, exploration and drilling of these mysterious phenomena at the southern reaches of our planet.

Watch Lakes Beneath Antarctic Ice: Deep, Dark and Mysterious

From Stone Bowls to Unsuspected Superheroes

If rocks could talk – what could they tell us about the earth, history and maybe ourselves? Find out as collections manager Alex Hangsterfer and curator Richard Norris reveal the treasure trove of samples housed at Scripps. Hear some of the fascinating stories behind how these samples were collected and learn about the incredible variety of investigations that they enable – from plate tectonics to earthquakes to archaeology.

Watch Archives of the Scripps Geologic Collections: From Stone Bowls to Unsuspected Superheroes

Evolution and Creationism as Science and Myth

Myths symbolize ideas, values, history and other issues that are important to a people. They may be true or false, mundane or fantastic; their significance is their meaning, not their narrative content.

Science is a way of knowing about the natural world. Its conclusions tentatively may be true or false, but its significance is its explanatory power: one has confidence in the process of science, even though some explanations change over time.

Myth and science thus seem very different, but each has been utilized by proponents of both sides of the Christian creationism and evolution controversy. Understanding this role is essential in comprehending (much less mediating) this persistent conflict.

Eugenie C. Scott served as the executive director of the National Center for Science Education, an organization that works to keep publicly (though not scientifically) controversial topics like evolution and climate change in the public schools. Her work has involved a mixture of science, communication, religion, education, law, and community activism.

Watch Evolution and Creationism as Science and Myth