Category: Earth

Secrets of Antarctica’s 15-Million Year-Old Lake

Posted by Nexus – 19/03/2010

[via dailygalaxy.com]

Researchers have thawed ice estimated to be perhaps a million years old or more from above Lake Vostok, an ancient lake that lies hidden more than two miles beneath the frozen surface of Antarctica using novel genomic techniques to determine how tiny, living “time capsules” survived the ages in total darkness, in freezing cold, and without food and energy from the sun.

Lake Vostok is located beneath four kilometers of ice in East Antarctica. The lake is approximately 250 km long and 50 km wide. The overlying ice provides a continuous paleo-climatic record of 400,000 years, although the lake water itself may have been isolated for as long as 15 million years.

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US and Russia ‘near’ new nuclear arms treaty

Posted by Nexus – 14/03/2010

[via bbc.co.uk]

The Start treaty led to huge reductions in the Russian and US nuclear arsenals.

Russia and the US have both said it should soon be possible to conclude a new nuclear disarmament treaty.

Officials in Moscow and Washington said US President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev had a “good conversation” reviewing negotiations.

The two countries are trying to replace the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which expired last December.

The US says it has more than 2,000 nuclear weapons, while Russia is believed to have nearly 3,000.

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Strong 6.6 magnitude quake hits northern Japan

Posted by Nexus – 14/03/2010

[via yahoo.com]

A strong, 6.6 magnitude earthquake hit northern Japan Sunday afternoon, said the Japanese government, which did not issue a tsunami warning.

The quake happened at 5:08 pm (0808 GMT) off the Pacific coast of Fukushima prefecture, the Japanese Meteorological Agency said.

“It is possible that the tidal level would change slightly. But there is no worry about damage,” the agency said.

Some train services automatically stopped immediately after the quake, before resuming normal operations.

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Mars Over the Allalinhorn

Posted by Nexus – 09/03/2010

[via APOD]

What’s that bright object in the sky? A common question with answers that vary by time and season, the quick answer just after sunset in middle of last month, from the northern hemisphere, was Mars.

The above picturesque panorama, taken during a ski trip from the Alps in Switzerland, shows not only Mars, but much more. Pine trees line the foreground, while numerous slopes leading up to the snow covered Allalinhorn mountain are visible in the distance.

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Pillar at Sunset

Posted by Nexus – 08/03/2010

[via APOD]

Reddened light from the setting Sun illuminates the cloud banks hugging this snowy, rugged terrain.

Inspiring a moment of quiet contemplation, the sunset scene included a remarkable pillar of light that seemed to connect the clouds in the sky with the mountains below. Known as a Sun pillar, the luminous column was produced by sunlight reflecting from flat, six-sided ice crystals formed high in the cold atmosphere and fluttering toward the ground.

Last Monday, astronomers watched this Sun pillar slowly fade, as the twilight deepened and clearing, dark skies came to Mt. Jelm and the Wyoming Infrared Observatory.

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Precursors of Life-Enabling Organic Molecules in Orion Nebula Unveiled by Herschel Space Observatory

Posted by Nexus – 07/03/2010

[via sciencedaily.com]

ESA’s Herschel Space Observatory has revealed the chemical fingerprints of potential life-enabling organic molecules in the Orion Nebula, a nearby stellar nursery in our Milky Way galaxy. This detailed spectrum — obtained with the Heterodyne Instrument for the Far Infrared (HIFI), one of Herschel’s three innovative instruments — demonstrates the gold mine of information that Herschel-HIFI will provide on how organic molecules form in space.

Several German Institutes contributed essential parts to the HIFI instrument: the Universität zu Kölkn and the Max-Planck-Institute für Radioastronmie, Bonn, und für Sonnensystemforschung, Lindau.

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Animation of Giant Iceberg Collision as Seen From Space

Posted by Nexus – 07/03/2010

[via wired.com]

The collision in early February of the 60-mile-long B-9B iceberg with the protruding tongue of the Mertz Glacier in East Antarctica is captured here in a series of satellite radar images.

The crash created a second massive iceberg nearly 50 miles long and 25 miles wide, named C-28. The name means that it’s the 28th glacier since 1976 that has broken off from the quadrant of Antarctica that faces Australia.

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Business calls for urgent action on “oil crunch” threat to UK economy

Posted by Nexus – 04/03/2010

[via peakoiltaskforce.net]

  • Taskforce warns Britain is unprepared for significant risk to companies and consumers
  • Poorest to be hit hardest by price rises for travel, food, heating and consumer goods
  • New policies must be priority for whoever wins the General Election
  • Recommended packages include legislation, new technologies and behaviour-change incentives
  • Fundamental change in demand patterns triggered by emerging economy countries
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Days Get Shorter Because of Chilean Earthquake

Posted by Nexus – 02/03/2010

[via gizmodo.com]

Apart from a colossal tsunami, here’s another effect of the 66.6 exajoules liberated by this weekend’s earthquake in Chile: NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory says that days will now be shorter because the quake shifted Earth’s axis by three inches.

The change—which can only be measured thanks to computer models—will result in days that are 1.26 microseconds shorter than before. That’s 0.00000126 seconds shorter. There may have been more visible changes, like islands changing its position. One of them, Santa María, may have raised two meters after the shattering land move.

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Chile earthquake: tsunami fears as death toll hits 147

Posted by Nexus – 27/02/2010

[via telegraph.co.uk]

At least 147 have been killed and nearly a quarter of the globe put on urgent tsunami alert after one of the most powerful earthquakes of modern times hit South America.

A tremor with a magnitude of 8.8 devastated large parts of southern Chile and sent huge waves racing at up to 400 miles an hour across the Pacific. Isolated ocean islands were reported to have suffered severe wave damage, and tsunami warnings were issued across a vast area stretching from Russia and Japan through to the Philippines and New Zealand.

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