A fascinating study with tremendous value if the author's conclusion proves true through successive studies. This study analyzes life in American river valleys over time and the author develops a mathematical formula to explain that ebb and flow. Why is this important? Since his formula only uses the physical size and shape of the valley, if it works for both warm and cold climates, it may be extendable to other planets to predict whether similar type valleys on those planets once harbored life. This would save time and money in further planetary exploration or even further exploration into remote regions of our own planet. A more detailed review is below.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20090722/sc_livescience/formulafoundtoexplainearthsevenlyspacedvalleys
Friday, December 25, 2009
Saturday, December 12, 2009
LHC Belches to Life Once Again
After a year of repairs (original damage estimates were way off the mark), le machine grande de collision aka the greatest atom smasher of them all, finally belched to life once again. It is now through its initial tests and is building up a head of steam to find that elusive Higgs. Here’s hoping the search is both short and fruitful.
http://press.web.cern.ch/press/PressReleases/Releases2009/PR16.09E.html
http://press.web.cern.ch/press/PressReleases/Releases2009/PR16.09E.html
Art Bell Got One Right
Earth could plunge into sudden ice age
Experts: ‘Big Freeze’ about 12,800 years ago happened within months
 20th Century Fox The film "The Day After Tomorrow" was all good fiction when it came out in 2004, but now scientists are finding eerie truths to the possibilities of sudden temperature swings. |
By Charles Q. Choi
Special to LiveScience
updated 12:03 p.m. PT, Wed., Dec . 2, 2009
In the film, "The Day After Tomorrow," the world gets gripped in ice within the span of just a few weeks. Now research now suggests an eerily similar event might indeed have occurred in the past.
Looking ahead to the future, there is no reason why such a freeze shouldn't happen again — and in ironic fashion it could be precipitated ifongoing changes in climate force the Greenland ice sheet to suddenly melt, scientists say.
Starting roughly 12,800 years ago, the Northern Hemisphere was gripped by a chill that lasted some 1,300 years. Known by scientists as the Younger Dryas and nicknamed the"Big Freeze," geological evidence suggests it was brought on when a vast pulse of fresh water — a greater volume than all of North America's Great Lakes combined — poured into the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans.
This abrupt influx, caused when the glacial Lake Agassiz in North America burst its banks, diluted the circulation of warmer water in the North Atlantic, bringing this "conveyer belt" to a halt. Without this warming influence, evidence shows that temperatures across the Northern Hemisphere plummeted.
No time to react
Previous evidence from Greenland ice samples had suggested thisabrupt shift in climate happened over the span of a decade or so. Now researchers say it surprisingly may have taken place over the course of a few months, or a year or two at most.
Previous evidence from Greenland ice samples had suggested thisabrupt shift in climate happened over the span of a decade or so. Now researchers say it surprisingly may have taken place over the course of a few months, or a year or two at most.
"That the climate system can turn on and off that quickly is extremely important," said earth system scientist Henry Mullins at Syracuse University, who did not take part in this research. "Once the tipping point is reached, there would be essentially no opportunity for humans to react."
For two years, isotope biogeochemist William Patterson at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada and his colleagues investigated a mud core — a tube of mud — taken from the ancient lake Lough Monreach in Ireland. Because this sediment was deposited slowly over time, each layer from this core effectively represents a snapshot of history, with slices just a half-millimeter thick presenting one to three months.
"Basically, I drive around in western Ireland looking for the right conditions — bedrock, vegetation and lake — to obtain the most complete record of climate," Patterson explained.
The details
|
At the start of the Younger Dryas, Patterson and his colleagues discovered temperatures and lake productivity dropped over the course of just a few years.
"It would be like taking Ireland today and moving it up to above the Arctic Circle, creating icy conditions in a very short period of time," Patterson said.
Their findings also suggest that it may have taken 100 to 200 years before the lake and climate recovered, rather than the decade or so that Greenland ice cores had indicated.
"This makes sense because it would take time for the ocean and atmospheric circulation to turn on again," Patterson said.
The discrepancies between the evidence from the mud core and the ice cores might be due to disturbances in how material flowed within the ice. "Sometimes there's melting, and you have percolation of material between layers, which can blur the records," Patterson explained. "We found a core that had not been disturbed even on a millimeter by millimeter basis, so the sediment had been layered in order since it was deposited."
Chilly future
Looking ahead to the future, Patterson said there was no reason why a big freeze shouldn't happen again.
Looking ahead to the future, Patterson said there was no reason why a big freeze shouldn't happen again.
"If the Greenland ice sheet melted suddenly it would becatastrophic," he said.
This kind of scenario would not discount evidence pointing toward global warming — after all, it leans on the Greenland ice sheet melting.
"We could say that global warming could lead to a dramatic cooling," Patterson told LiveScience. "This should serve as a further warning rather than a pass."
"People assume that we're political, that we're either pro-global-warming or anti-global-warming, when it's really neither," Patterson added. "Our goal is just to understand climate."
Patterson and his colleagues detailed their findings at the European Science Foundation BOREAS conference on humans in the Arctic, in Rovaniemi, Finland.
© 2009 LiveScience.com. All rights reserved.
Monday, November 2, 2009
Kepler Mission
NASA's Kepler Telescope asks a question: Can we identify Earth-like planets with atmospheres suitable for life?
Kepler cost $500M financec by one government (US-NASA);
On August 6 of this year, 2 months after launch, NASA's Kepler telescope proved itself to be the best scientific experiment since the Hubble Space Telescope was launched. It was conceived in the late 80s as a wild shot in the dark. Could we design an instrument so sensitive that it could detect the atmosphere of an Earth-sized exoplanet light years away. The head honchos at NASA immediately laughed it off as so impossible that it wasnt worthy of their ridicule. Within one month of being turned on, Kepler detected the atmosphere of a large exoplanet 1000 light years away. Will we see this planet in our lifetimes? Don't hold your breath. But even that detection was never even imagined. Suddenly, the impossible became intriguing. Equally important was that it proved that not only was it the most light-sensitive instrument ever designed and built, but also that BIG science can be done on a relatively tiny budget (500M compared to the Bs spent on the LHC by multiple countries or the Space Station), and still produce high value results. All without putting anyone at risk.
Beyond all this, when one reads the background of the mission founder, this little experiment shows that the moral of never quitting when you know you're right is as true today as it ever was. Read the entire story at http://kepler.nasa.gov/about/ and updates on the project at http://kepler.nasa.gov/about/manager.html.
Kepler cost $500M financec by one government (US-NASA);
On August 6 of this year, 2 months after launch, NASA's Kepler telescope proved itself to be the best scientific experiment since the Hubble Space Telescope was launched. It was conceived in the late 80s as a wild shot in the dark. Could we design an instrument so sensitive that it could detect the atmosphere of an Earth-sized exoplanet light years away. The head honchos at NASA immediately laughed it off as so impossible that it wasnt worthy of their ridicule. Within one month of being turned on, Kepler detected the atmosphere of a large exoplanet 1000 light years away. Will we see this planet in our lifetimes? Don't hold your breath. But even that detection was never even imagined. Suddenly, the impossible became intriguing. Equally important was that it proved that not only was it the most light-sensitive instrument ever designed and built, but also that BIG science can be done on a relatively tiny budget (500M compared to the Bs spent on the LHC by multiple countries or the Space Station), and still produce high value results. All without putting anyone at risk.
Beyond all this, when one reads the background of the mission founder, this little experiment shows that the moral of never quitting when you know you're right is as true today as it ever was. Read the entire story at http://kepler.nasa.gov/about/ and updates on the project at http://kepler.nasa.gov/about/manager.html.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
