The discovery, by an international team of scientists led by University College London (UCL), the Open University (OU), and the Free University of Berlin, of a frozen sea close to the equator of Mars has brought the possibility of finding life on Mars one step closer. This is the first evidence of there having been recent liquid water on Mars. Higher levels of methane over the same area mean that primitive micro-organisms might survive on Mars today. The 3D images of pack ice near the Martian e
The retreat of Antarctic ice shelves is not new according to research published this week (24 Feb) in the journal Geology by scientists from Universities of Durham, Edinburgh and British Antarctic Survey (BAS).
A study of George VI Ice Shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula is the first to show that this currently ‘healthy’ ice shelf experienced an extensive retreat about 9500 years ago, more than anything seen in recent years. The retreat coincided with a shift in ocean currents t
A reconstruction of land movements and changes in sea levels for three massive historic earthquakes in Alaska gives clues that may help scientists forecast future earthquakes and earthquake-triggered tsunami. To be published in this week’s Journal of Quaternary Science¹ the findings should help reduce losses from future catastrophic events.
Investigators Sarah Hamilton and Ian Shennan from the University of Durham, England, studied three earthquakes that occurred around 1400-15
It will be possible to forecast any natural or social cataclysm by attentively observing the speed of the Earth’s rotation and shift of its poles.
The Earth rotates non-uniformly, its poles move, and the rotation axis fluctuates in space. According to the opinion of N.S. Sidorenkov, Doctor of Science (Physics&Mathematics), knowledge of reasons and regularities of our planet’s movement gives the opportunity to forecast with high precision the weather, earthquakes, convulsion of
Surrounded by winter snow and ice, melting seems like a good thing, but, on a global scale, the melting of ice sheets and glaciers is a sign of global warming, according to a Penn State glaciologist.
“The really big picture shows change in the ice and those changes look like what we get is a world that is a little warmer,” says Dr. Richard B. Alley, the Evan Pugh Professor of Geosciences. “We currently do not include all these processes in the models that predict the global future.
Harvard researcher to report at AAAS meeting on projected decline in cleansing summer winds
While science’s conventional wisdom holds that pollution feeds global warming, new research suggests that the reverse could also occur: A warming globe could stifle summer’s cleansing winds over the Northeast and Midwest over the next 50 years, significantly worsening air pollution in these regions.
Loretta J. Mickley, a research associate at Harvard University’s Divi
Scientists find undersea mountains, discover new species, and spy on fish
Scientists can now visualize the ocean floor in remote areas of the Arctic, observe rockfish hideouts, and see live images of coral cities thousands of meters under the sea’s surface. Soon their robots will be able to “live” on the bottom of the ocean – monitoring everything from signs of tsunamis to the effects of deep sea drilling. “We have very complex problems in the ocean, but we’ve been looking at
A Canadian seismologist is arguing that our understanding of the structure of the Earth’s interior is based on the equivalent of fuzzy ultrasound images that leave room for improvement.
Once seismic images are fine-tuned to remove background noise, they may tell a very different story of the world below, says Dr. Felix Herrmann, a seismologist at the University of British Columbia. And oil companies are already lining up to cash in on his clearer view of the Earth’s un
Volcanic eruptions in Siberia 251 million years ago may have started a cascade of events leading to high hydrogen sulfide levels in the oceans and atmosphere and precipitating the largest mass extinction in Earth’s history, according to a Penn State geoscientist.
“The recent dating of the Siberian trap volcanoes to be contemporaneous with the end-Permian extinction suggests that they were the trigger for the environmental events that caused the extinctions,” says Dr. Lee R.
Around 60 nations and more than 40 international organisations joined ESA and host the European Community at the Third Earth Observation summit on Wednesday. History was made at the Palais d’Egmont in Brussels as assembled delegates formally agreed a ten-year plan to implement a Global Earth Observation System of Systems.
The plan summarises the steps that need to be taken to put a Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) in place. GEOSS will build on existing Earth
Although most people think of California when they think of earthquakes, the Feb. 10 quake in Arkansas was not unusual, said UAB geologist Scott Brande, Ph.D. “There are fault zones throughout the Eastern United States, and many are associated with the Appalachian Mountains.
The one causing the earthquake in Arkansas was the New Madrid seismic zone, which has a long history of earthquake activity. Hundreds of earthquakes occur there each year along the borders of Missouri, Kentucky, T
Several large earthquakes with magnitude higher than 8 on the Richter scale have already occurred along the margins between the Nazca and South American tectonic plates, under the ocean off Ecuador and Colombia. This region is vulnerable, all the more so because since the 1980s, Ecuador’s oil export terminal is sited within it. More information is needed on this zone of extremely high seismic risk. For this reason, two scientific campaigns, “Amadeus” and “Esmeraldas” were launched on 3 Februa
Fossils push human emergence back to 195,000 years ago
When the bones of two early humans were found in 1967 near Kibish, Ethiopia, they were thought to be 130,000 years old. A few years ago, researchers found 154,000- to 160,000-year-old human bones at Herto, Ethiopia. Now, a new study of the 1967 fossil site indicates the earliest known members of our species, Homo sapiens, roamed Africa about 195,000 years ago. “It pushes back the beginning of anatomically modern humans,” says
A key first step has been taken in the construction of IceCube, a giant neutrino telescope spanning a volume of one cubic kilometer of ice at the South Pole: Working under harsh Antarctic conditions, an international team of scientists, engineers and technicians – among them scientists from the DESY research center – has successfully deployed a first critical part of the telescope, a string of 60 optical detectors, in a 2.4-kilometer-deep hole drilled into the Antarctic ice. Comprising a total of
Working under harsh Antarctic conditions, an international team of scientists, engineers and technicians has set in place the first critical elements of a massive neutrino telescope at the South Pole.
The successful deployment – in a 1.5 mile-deep hole drilled into the Antarctic ice – of a string of 60 optical detectors designed to sample phantom-like high-energy particles from deep space represents a key first step in the construction of the $272 million telescope known as IceCu
A surprising link may exist between ocean fertility and air pollution over land, according to Georgia Institute of Technology research reported in the Feb. 16 issue of the Journal of Geophysical Research — Atmospheres. The work provides new insight into the role that ocean fertility plays in the complex cycle involving carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in global warming.
When dust storms pass over industrialized areas, they can pick up sulfur dioxide, an acidic trace gas e
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