Science at Bangor & in the News
If you like to ski or snowboard, you've probably heard of the mountains using artificial snow when there is a lack of fresh powder. One key ingredient in the artificial snow is a purified protein from the bacterium Pseudomonas syringae. The protein provides a seed for water to crystallize around so that the snow makers make snow instead of spewing out cold water. Scientists discovered the protein about 40 years ago when studying how P. syringae causes disease in plants. They developed a method to purify & sterilize the protein to make artificial snow.
Scientists have also found this bacterium, and numerous others, in the center of hail stones, and in snow. Scientists think that the bacteria, fungi, & other microorganisms (microbes) get sucked up into the clouds during thunderstorms & then the bacteria can act to make an ice seed in the clouds. Since all rain starts as ice in clouds, scientists hypothesize that the more microbes that get sucked up into the clouds, the more intense future precipitation from the clouds will be. This is a pretty new hypothesis and scientists are just beginning to really study the idea. I think with all of the new DNA sequencing technologies that let us look at the make up of microbial populations, we could begin to see if (or how) microbes influence weather patterns. It should be interesting to see what comes of this hypothesis! Interested? Read the article from the New York Times.
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Ms. Lyons
Science is amazing, check it out! Archives
May 2016
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