Nikk Ogasa

Nikk Ogasa

Staff Writer

Nikk Ogasa is a staff writer who focuses on the physical sciences for Science News, based in Brooklyn, New York. He has a master's degree in geology from McGill University, where he studied how ancient earthquakes helped form large gold deposits. He earned another master's degree in science communication from the University of California, Santa Cruz. His stories have been published in Science, Scientific American, Mongabay and the Mercury News, and he was the summer 2021 science writing intern at Science News.

All Stories by Nikk Ogasa

  1. image of pink dots representing Gamma Rays passing through Earth's atmosphere
    Physics

    Rare ‘dark lightning’ might briefly touch passengers when flying

    Gamma-ray blasts from thunderstorms might occasionally zap passing airplanes, briefly exposing passengers to unsafe levels of radiation.

  2. A volcano erupts (blue) on Jupiter’s innermost moon, Io, in this picture from NASA’s Galileo spacecraft.
    Space

    Io may have an underworld magma ocean or a hot metal heart

    New calculations support dueling ideas for what powers the ubiquitous volcanoes on the hellish surface of Jupiter’s innermost moon.

  3. Enceladus, the moon of Saturn, shown partly illuminated against the backdrop of space
    Planetary Science

    The last vital ingredient for life has been discovered on Enceladus

    The underground ocean on Saturn’s icy moon may contain phosphorus in concentrations thousands of times greater than those found in Earth’s ocean.

  4. A photo of President Joe Biden signing the Inflation Reduction Act into law with a group of four men and one women standing around him.
    Climate

    2022’s biggest climate change bill pushes clean energy

    Experts weigh in on the pros and cons of the United States’ first major climate change legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act, signed this year.

  5. Physics

    50 years ago, physicists found the speed of light

    In the 1970s, scientists set a new maximum speed limit for light. Fifty years later, they continue putting light through its paces.

  6. A photo of a variety of zinc snowflake shapes crystallized in liquid gallium.
    Chemistry

    How to make tiny metal snowflakes

    In a pool of molten gallium, researchers grew symmetrical, hexagonal zinc nanostructures that resemble natural snowflakes.

  7. An illustration of a Natovenator polydontus sitting on top of a body of water with its feet visible below the water line
    Paleontology

    This dinosaur may have had a body like a duck’s

    Natovenator polydontus may have been adapted for life in the water, challenging the popular idea that all dinos were landlubbers.

  8. An underwater photo of a tiger shark with an orange camera on its side
    Ecosystems

    Tiger sharks helped discover the world’s largest seagrass prairie

    Instrument-equipped sharks went where divers couldn’t to survey the Bahama Banks seagrass ecosystem.

  9. An aerial photo of the Nioghalvfjerdsfjord glacier
    Climate

    Greenland’s frozen hinterlands are bleeding worse than we thought

    An inland swath of the Northeast Greenland Ice Stream is accelerating and thinning. It could contribute much more to sea level rise than estimated.

  10. a tree trunk showing many rings and cracks
    Earth

    Catastrophic solar storms may not explain shadows of radiation in trees

    Tree rings record six known Miyake events — spikes in global radiation levels in the past. The sun, as long presumed, might not be the sole culprit.

  11. Two people sample whiskey from a wood cask
    Chemistry

    Mixing gold ions into whiskey can reveal its flavor

    By changing the spirit’s color, the formation of gold nanoparticles can reveal how much flavor a whiskey has absorbed from its wood cask.

  12. black and white image of Louis Armstrong holding a trumpet surround by other jazz musicians
    Humans

    Here’s where jazz gets its swing

    Swing, the feeling of a rhythm in jazz music that compels feet to tap, may arise from near-imperceptible delays in musicians’ timing, a study shows.