But what about creatures that are blind?

If you haven’t already, meet the eastern or common mole, Scalopus aquaticus. In addition to being cute in a kind of creepy way, these mammals are blind and have teeny ears. But they are remarkably good at finding their prey.

Ken Catania, a neurobiologist at Vanderbilt who studies animal sensory systems (he’s one of the researchers responsible for the sensitive alligator study we covered in Science in Action) decided to investigate the mole’s sense of smell.

He didn’t think the moles smelled in stereo—in fact, just the opposite. “I came at this as a skeptic. I thought the moles’ nostrils were too close together to effectively detect odor gradients.” But he’s a scientist—he needed evidence to support his assumption.

To test the theory of stereo smell, he created a radial arena with food wells spaced around the 180-degree circle with the entrance for the mole located at the center. He then ran a number of trials with pieces of earthworm placed randomly in different food wells.

When the mole first entered the arena, it moved its nose back and forth as it sniffed. Then, it seemed to zero in on the food source, moving in a direct path. This was pretty remarkable, and made Catania reconsider the idea of stereo sniffing.

“It was amazing. They found the food in less than five seconds and went directly to the right food well almost every time,” Catania said. “They have a hyper-sensitive sense of smell.”

Catania then blocked one of the moles’ nostrils with a small plastic tube. When their left nostrils were blocked, the moles’ paths consistently veered off to the right, and when their right nostrils were blocked, they consistently veered to the left. They still found the food but it took them significantly longer to do so.

Voilà! Stereo-smelling! (A video of the trials demonstrates this very clearly.)

Catania proved himself wrong and published his findings this week in Nature Communications.

What about the rest of us mammals? Do we smell in stereo?

“The fact that moles use stereo odor cues to locate food suggests other mammals that rely heavily on their sense of smell, like dogs and pigs might also have this ability,” Catania says. But as for humans, he remains skeptical. I guess stereo- vision and hearing is enough…

Image: Ken Catania

An international panel, speaking about solar storms at the recent AAAS Meeting, began their presentation by saying, “Don’t panic.”

Despite the fact that the sun is increasing its activity and will enter the solar maximum in 2013, space weather technology and satellites are improving so that solar storms will be easier to predict and prepare for.

Sunspots appear leading to and during the solar maximum and can erupt into solar flares or coronal mass ejections that can cause geomagnetic storms here on Earth– affecting radio communications, GPS signals, and radar systems. They can even knock out power grids and destroy satellites.

There are eleven space weather centers around the world that track these storms. These centers originated in the 1940s, during World War II. They provide an early warning system of coming storms to governments, airlines, power companies, cellphone providers and other clients. Similar to hurricanes and other Earth-originated storms, they have a measuring system to track the severity of solar storms. You can see the categories here.

With the STEREO satellites and SDO now constantly watching the sun, storms can be tracked across its entire globe, giving the space weather centers a head start. Depending on the type of storm, it can take hours or days for the effects to reach Earth.

Two weeks ago, a large solar flare captured by SDO allowed scientists to warn airlines to re-route flights away from the poles, where the effects are felt most. SDO also captured an amazing flare last Thursday. Since the flare occurred away from Earth, no storms will reach us currently. However as sunspot 1163 (the origination of the flare) turns towards Earth, we could get hit, according to SpaceWeather.com.

NOAA, working with FEMA and other government agencies, is getting better at modeling possible severe solar storm scenarios and trying to, through conferences like these, raise awareness, not incite panic.

Image: SDO/NASA

One researcher has looked for clues to solar weather in the meridional flow, which moves from the solar equator toward the poles, and which seems to change speed during the shifting solar cycle. Another looked at the solar “jet stream,” a slow current that originates at solar midlatitudes and pushes in a bifurcated stream toward both the equator and the poles. Another scientist examined the inner workings of the sun through the oscillation of sound waves propagating through the solar interior; yet another looked at magnetic maps to chart the shifting flux across the sun.

(This quote is thanks to Scientific American.)

In other words, we still have a lot to learn about our very own star.

In fact, in 1997, NASA’S Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) imaged the eruption of an active region on the surface of the Sun that resulted in a coronal mass ejection (CME).

Such an eruption is a gigantic belch of charged particles and radiation that, when they reach Earth, can cause disruptions in radio transmission, power outages, and luminous atmospheric displays known as the auroras.

At the same time, SOHO also captured what looked like a shock wave that radiated out from the eruption along the Sun’s surface, like a tsunami.  Solar scientists weren’t quite sure what this apparent “solar tsunami” was – were they witnessing actual wave propagation or just seeing the shadow of the ejected material?

None of SOHO’s subsequent images shed enough light on the phenomenon to answer the question, but last fall, the twin spacecraft of NASA’s Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) imaged a solar eruption from two different angles simultaneously, establishing that what was observed in 1997 was indeed a shock wave that interacted with other features on the Sun – in one instance causing a solar prominence to wave like a flag in the wind.

Studies of this “fast-mode magnetohydrodynamical waves,” as they’re now known, indicate that they tower above the surrounding surface to a height more than a half-dozen times Earth’s diameter, rippling outward at half a million miles per hour.  Analysis of the behavior of these waves can help determine the structure of the Sun’s lower atmosphere and pinpoint the exact location of the solar flares that emit CMEs.  Knowing that, scientists are better able to tell whether or not CMEs may be aimed toward Earth and anticipate any effects from them.

Image: A solar tsunami seen by the STEREO spacecraft