FAVORITE SCIENCE PICS - 2

NOAA/NASA

A Puzzling Mega-Storm

Here's what Invest 99L looked over the Leeward Islands on the afternoon of August 24, 2016, from the point-of-view of a weather satellite. Some weather models initially showed the disturbance developing into a major hurricane or tropical storm. And while the latest forecasts are tamer, it could still causing major flooding in South Florida and the Bahamas

Nature Conservancy

Migration in Motion

As climate change warps the preferred habitats of mammals, birds and amphibians, these animals will be forced to flee. A beautiful but troubling new map predicts what this massive migration might look like for North and South America. Ecologist Dan Majka and other researchers from the Nature Conservancy and the University of Washington plotted the likely routes of 2,954 species as they travel from their current habitats to areas that will better suit their needs.

Kevin Gill via Flickr

Saturn's Trippy Rings

Saturn’s moon Daphnis is only five miles in diameter, but its orbit can still make some waves. The tiny moon travels within the Keeler Gap, a space about 26 miles wide in Saturn’s A ring, keeping it clear. It also causes the edges of the gap to ripple as it swings past. Two new visualizations by NASA software engineer Kevin Gill illustrate how this interaction might look

Dave DeMar/Burke Museum

Tyrannosaurus rex Skull

Paleontologists work to remove the massive skull of a T. rex from a fossil site in Montana. The skull is encased in plaster to ensure its safety. The recently-discovered skull of the teenage Tyrannosaurus rex was 4 feet long when it died, around 66 million years ago.

Nick Hobgood (Nhobgood on Wikimedia Commons)

Really Big Nest Egg

A fisherman from the Philippines discovered a giant pearl a decade ago, and kept it under his bed as a good luck charm until this year. Now some estimates put its value at as much as $100 million. The giant pearl supposedly formed inside a giant clam — like this Tridacna giant clam in Komodo National Park, Indonesia — which in and of itself is unusual, as clams rarely make pearls.

SASTIND/Xinhua

China's Mars Rover

This week, China unveiled illustrations of its Mars probe and rover, following earlier announcements of its plan to land on the trendiest planet for bots. The craft will include an orbiter, a landing capsule, and a rover. China is aiming for a summer of 2020 launch on a Long March 5 carrier rocket from the Wenchang space launch center in south China’s Hainan province, according to state media.