Tag Archives: conceptual model

The Connected Consequences of River Dams

In a case study of dams on the upper Missouri River, USGS researchers have demonstrated that an upstream dam is still a major control of river dynamics where the backwater effects of a downstream reservoir begin. In light of this finding, the conventional understanding of how a dam can influence a river may have to be adjusted to account for the fact that effects of river dams can interact with one another.

“We have known for a long time that dams have dramatic effects on river form and function,” said Jerad Bales, acting USGS Associate Director for Water. “In the past, however, the effects of dams generally have been studied individually, with relatively little attention paid to how the effects could interact along a river corridor.” (more…)

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Testing Einstein’s E=mc2 in Outer Space

UA physicist Andrei Lebed has stirred the physics community with an intriguing idea yet to be tested experimentally: The world’s most iconic equation, Albert Einstein’s E=mc2, may be correct or not depending on where you are in space.

With the first explosions of atomic bombs, the world became witness to one of the most important and consequential principles in physics: Energy and mass, fundamentally speaking, are the same thing and can, in fact, be converted into each other.

This was first demonstrated by Albert Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity and famously expressed in his iconic equation, E=mc2, where E stands for energy, m for mass and c for the speed of light (squared). (more…)

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