Earth and Science News- Earth and Science Videos and News // Current

^#3

On Thinner Ice: New photography project provides stark proof of melting glaciers on the roof of ...

Hover your mouse into the picture to see the difference. Excerpt: "Global warming is melting 18,000 Himalayan glaciers... more

lookatmypix
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House of straw passes fire test

A house built from straw-bales and panels of hemp has passed an industry standard fire safety test which exposed it to... more

JackHerer
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Monsanto steps back on two GMOs. Why?

I don't think it has anything to do with commercial reasons and everything to do with what tests have shown. That GMOS are... more

JanforGore
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Giant crack in Africa will create a new ocean

"A 35-mile rift in the desert of Ethiopia will likely become a new ocean eventually, researchers now confirm.

The crack, 20 feet wide in spots, opened in 2005 and some geologists believed then that it would spawn a new ocean. But that view was controversial, and the rift had not been well studied.

A new study involving an international team of scientists and reported in the journal Geophysical Research Letters finds the processes creating the rift are nearly identical to what goes on at the bottom of oceans, further indication a sea is in the region's future.

The same rift activity is slowly parting the Red Sea, too.

Using newly gathered seismic data from 2005, researchers reconstructed the event to show the rift tore open along its entire 35-mile length in just days. Dabbahu, a volcano at the northern end of the rift, erupted first, then magma pushed up through the middle of the rift area and began "unzipping" the rift in both directions, the researchers explained in a statement today.

"We know that seafloor ridges are created by a similar intrusion of magma into a rift, but we never knew that a huge length of the ridge could break open at once like this," said Cindy Ebinger, professor of earth and environmental sciences at the University of Rochester and co-author of the study.

The result shows that highly active volcanic boundaries along the edges of tectonic ocean plates may suddenly break apart in large sections, instead of in bits, as the leading theory held. And such sudden large-scale events on land pose a much more serious hazard to populations living near the rift than would several smaller events, Ebinger said.

"The whole point of this study is to learn whether what is happening in Ethiopia is like what is happening at the bottom of the ocean where it's almost impossible for us to go," says Ebinger. "We knew that if we could establish that, then Ethiopia would essentially be a unique and superb ocean-ridge laboratory for us. Because of the unprecedented cross-border collaboration behind this research, we now know that the answer is yes, it is analogous."

http://www.livescience.com/environment/091102-africa-rift-ocean.html"A 35-mile rift in the desert of Ethiopia will likely become a new ocean eventually, researchers now confirm. The crack,... more

DeliaTheArtist
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75 comments

18 days ago

^#7

Huge $10 billion collider resumes hunt for 'God particle'

"Now, excitement and mysticism are building again around the $10 billion machine as the European Organization for Nuclear... more

lookatmypix
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43 comments

9 days ago

^#8

Why Doesn't Exercise Lead To Weight Loss?

The New York Times' Well blog reports that 'for some time, researchers have been finding that people who exercise... more

Tyrannous
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43 comments

12 days ago

^#9

The problem with most atheists' arguments

This article takes a look at why most of the arguments that are made by atheists have little to no effect on the mind of a theist.... more

retro_Syl
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200 comments

5 days ago

^#10

A fresh way to take the salt out of seawater

"THERE is a lot of water on Earth, but more than 97% of it is salty and over half of the remainder is frozen at the poles or... more

lookatmypix
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33 comments

17 days ago

^#11

The stats are in: no global cooling

The idea that the world is now cooling has been repeated in opinion columns, talk radio, pundit television and more. After a poll was released last week indicating that only 57 percent of Americans now believe there is strong scientific evidence for global warming, which is down from 77 percent in 2006, Seth Borenstein from the Associated Press decided to check out what the statistics are really saying about global warming or cooling. In a blind test, Borenstein sent accumulated ground temperature data from the past 130 years to four independent statisticians. He disguised the sources (NASA, NOAA and British meteorological data) and didn't tell the statisticians what the numbers represented; he asked them to just look for trends in the data. The experts found no true temperature declines over time; additionally, the last ten years comprise not only the highest data set in the record, but they also have a continued, positive trend.

It seems recent weather trends have been cool — 2008 was cooler than previous years, especially the really hot years of 1998 and 2005.

Borenstein wanted to know if this was a longer climate trend or just weather's normal ups and downs. All four of the statisticians agreed independently the statistics overall clearly show an upward trend of warming. Also included was a data set of satellite temperature data that is often favored by skeptics of global warming. Same story there: global temps are on the rise.

The ups and downs during the last decade, which some skeptics say show a cooling rather than warming, are variations that are repeated randomly in data as far back as 1880.
One statistician said that "cherry-picking" a micro-trend within a bigger trend is not the way to look at data.

This "blind" review of the data isn't the only review that has shown obvious warming. Borenstein said that NOAA recently re-examined its data because of the recent "chatter" about cooling, and no cooling trend was found, and earlier this year, climate scientists in two peer-reviewed publications statistically analyzed recent years' temperatures against claims of cooling and found them not valid.

For the full story, read Borenstein's article here:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091026/ap_on_sc/us_sci_global_coolingThe idea that the world is now cooling has been repeated in opinion columns, talk radio, pundit television and more. After a poll... more

pjacobs51
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74 comments

25 days ago

^#12

Signature of consciousness captured in brain scans

A telltale signature of consciousness has been detected that takes us a step closer to disentangling the brain activity underlying... more

retro_Syl
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5 comments

8 days ago

^#13

End the hunger scandal

For the first time in human history, the number of people across the world suffering from hunger exceeds 1 billion -- one sixth of... more

JanforGore
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31 comments

6 days ago

^#14

Toyota Develops New Flower Species To Reduce Pollution

Toyota has created two flower species that absorb nitrogen oxides and take heat out of the atmosphere. The flowers, derivatives of... more

Tyrannous
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18 comments

19 days ago

^#15

Government to ban organic farming?

This bill is sitting in committee and I am not sure when it is going to hit the floor. One thing I do know is that very few of... more

Supertramp_
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20 comments

19 days ago

^#16

Frigid Antarctica loaded with viruses

Antarctica's icy lakes are home to a surprisingly diverse community of viruses, including some that were previously unidentified, a new study finds.

At first glance, Antarctica's freshwater lakes don't seem very hospitable to life. They remain frozen for a good nine months out of the year, and they contain very few nutrients. Some of these lakes have little animal life and are dominated by microorganisms, including algae, bacteria, protozoans and viruses.

With few animal and microbial predators around, viruses likely play an important role in controlling the abundance of other microorganisms, the researcher say. However, these viruses have been historically hard to study since many cannot be grown in a laboratory. But thanks to new genome sequencing technology, scientists can identify viruses without needing to grow them.

"We are just starting to uncover the world of viruses, and this is changing the way we think about viruses and the role they play in microbial ecosystems," said Antonio Alcami, a researcher from the Spanish Research Council.

A virus is little more than a package of DNA surrounded by a capsule structure. To survive, viruses must hijack, or infect, living cells and use the host's equipment to replicate.

Alcami and his colleagues analyzed DNA from viruses found in water samples collected from Antarctica's Lake Limnopolar, a surface lake on Livingston Island. They found nearly 10,000 species, including some small DNA viruses that had never before been identified. In total, the viruses were from 12 different families, some of which may be completely new to science, the researchers suggest.

The results reveal this Antarctic lake supports a virus community that's more diverse than most aquatic environments studied in the world so far — a surprising find considering that the polar region is generally thought to have low biological diversity due to the extreme environmental conditions. The scientists speculate the newly discovered viruses may have adapted specifically to thrive in such harsh conditions.

The team also found the community of viruses changed dramatically depending on the season. When the lake was ice-covered in the spring, the liquid water under the ice was inhabited by mostly small viruses, but in the summer months when the ice melted, the lake was home to mostly larger viruses.

"It looks like a completely different lake in summer," Alcami said. The scientists think the shift might be due to an increase in algae in the summertime, which the larger viruses infect.
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Good reason to not dig too deep.Antarctica's icy lakes are home to a surprisingly diverse community of viruses, including some that were previously... more