Space is a violent place. If a star explodes or black holes collide anywhere in our part of the Milky Way, they'd give off colossal blasts of lethal gamma-rays, X-rays and cosmic rays and it's perfectly reasonable to expect Earth to be bathed in them. A new study of such events has yielded some new information about the potential effects of what are called "short-hard" interstellar radiation events.
Several studies in the past have demonstrated how longer high-energy radiation bursts, such as those caused by supernovae, and extreme solar flares can deplete stratospheric ozone, allowing the most powerful and damaging forms of ultraviolet radiation to penetrate to Earth's surface. The probability of an event intense enough to disrupt life on the land or in the oceans becomes large, if considered on geological timescales. So getting a handle on the rates and intensities of such events is important for efforts to connect them to extinctions in the fossil record.
In the event of a global food crisis, it is vital to be prepared. The key to preparedness is storing food that is easy to get a hold of, will last for several years or even decades, and is somewhat nutrient-dense. While it is always important to purchase high quality organic foods, in the event of a food crisis it is often essential to exercise your survival skills, which may mean it is hard to come across optimal food sources.
The perseverance of life on Earth may depend on massive explosions on the other side of the galaxy, according to a new theory that suggests powerful bursts of space radiation could have played a part in some of our planet's major extinction events.
The explosions — gamma-ray bursts thought to occur when two stars collide — can release tons of high-energy gamma-ray radiation into space. The researchers found that such blasts could be contributing to the depletion of the Earth's ozone layer. Disruption of the ozone layer lets ultraviolet light filter down to the surface of the Earth, where it can change organisms by mutating their genes.
Now, researchers are beginning to connect the timing of these gamma-ray bursts to extinctions on Earth that can be dated through the fossil record.
An area of high pressure bringing a much needed dry period to the Northeast through the weekend, will not be so kind to the state of Florida. To the south of this high, we could also see yet another named storm develop in this already active 2011 Atlantic hurricane season.
Below we lay out Florida's immediate concerns, plus an area we will watch for the development of low pressure that could affect a much larger area of the Southeast next week.
Florida's Immediate Concerns : With lower humidity and temperatures not quite as hot, you would think October is usually a nice month to target Florida for a trip. Unfortunately, weather conditions through this second weekend in October will not cooperate for those with vacation plans. A persistent easterly flow will produce gusty winds of 20-40 mph and rain across the Florida Peninsula, particularly along the eastern coast. In addition, there will be increasing surf, dangerous rip currents, and a threat for beach erosion.
There is much news regarding the spread of radiation from the destroyed Fukushima reactors and the intensifying impact on the local and regional population. Clearly this disaster is merely only beginning to unfold.
Astronomers have peeled back layers of time to reveal a dozen of the most ancient star explosions ever seen. These explosions, called supernovas, helped seed the universe with chemical elements, and scientists are able to use them as mile markers to measure the cosmos.
Researchers from Tel Aviv University pointed the huge Japanese Subaru Telescope in Hawaii at a patch of the sky as big as the full moon and let their cameras collect the accumulated light from several nights of observations. This allowed the scientists to image very faint objects from extremely far away, whose light has taken billions of years to reach Earth. Thus we are getting a picture of them as they were eons ago, when the light was first emitted.
In all, the scientists observed 150 supernovas in this bit of sky, 12 of which occurred around 10 billion years ago, meaning they exploded when the universe was only 3.7 billion years old, about one-third its present age of 13.7 billion years.
The AccuWeather.com Long-Range Forecasting Team is predicting another brutally cold and snowy winter for a large part of the country, thanks in large part to La Niña... yet again.
La Niña, a phenomenon that occurs when sea surface temperatures across the equatorial central and eastern Pacific are below normal, is what made last year's winter so awful for the Midwest and Northeast. Monster blizzards virtually shut down the cities of New York and Chicago. Last winter was one of New York City's snowiest on record.
Zombies, à la the walking dead, don't exist in the real world, but they have been a big part of pop culture and show up time and again in history and folklore.
As portrayed in the classic 1968 film "Night of the Living Dead," zombies are lumbering, flesh-eating corpses. Some say this film reinvented zombies, who were shown in earlier films such as 1932's "White Zombie" as "beings whose brains had been zapped by some 'master' who was then able to control their actions," according to the University of Michigan website.
Of course, the CDC was not suggesting we need to worry about zombies. "If you're prepared for the zombie apocalypse, you're also prepared for hurricanes and flooding," said CDC spokesperson Dave Daigle at the time. Another scientific endeavor, by the Oxford Internet Institute, visualized in map form the global distribution of Google Maps references to "zombies." [LS]
The public discussion on climate change has become so polarized that some scientists don't even acknowledge there is a debate. Climate scientist at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Gavin Schmidt, is one of those people.
"There aren't 'two sides' to the science, nor to the policy response," Schmidt said. "This implies that the whole thing is just a matter of an opinion - it is not."
Another group of scientists would disagree with Schmidt. In June, the Sixth International Conference on Climate Change took place in Washington D.C. It was organized by The Heartland Institute, headquartered in Chicago, and its primary objective is to "dispute the claim that global warming is a crisis." In 2008, the organization published a report titled "Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate." Its president, Joseph Bast, talking to the journal Nature recently, discussed public opinion on climate change and the ongoing debate.
According to film producer Raul Julia-Levy, extraterrestrials contacted the Mayan civilization in Mexico thousands of years ago — and he claims he'll prove it in an upcoming film, "Revelations of the Mayans 2012 and Beyond."
Unproven claims of ancient astronauts in the Americas have been made for decades, most prominently by Erich von Daniken, author of the best-selling classic work of pseudoscience "Chariots of the Gods? Unsolved Mysteries of the Past" (Putnam, 1968). Von Daniken wrote that ancient Egyptians had neither the intelligence nor the tools to create the massive pyramids at Giza, and thus they were made by aliens.
Some claim the giant drawings in the Nazca desert of Peru were created by spaceships. In fact, the Nazca Lines were created by the Nazca Indians, probably as part of a ceremonial ritual.
Harold Camping, the Christian broadcaster who boldly announced that the world would end on May 21, only to later say that he was "flabbergasted" when the rapture did not occur, is now telling everyone to get ready for the real rapture, which is set to occur on Oct. 21 – probably.
Some time after being released from a nursing home in June after suffering a stroke, Camping, released an audio message on Family Radio's website saying, "We would have not been able to be used [by God] to bring about the tremendous event that occurred on May 21 of this year, which probably [will] be finished out on Oct. 21 that's coming very shortly. That looks like it will be ... the final end of everything."
Camping, not sounding quite as strong in his voice or as confident about his rapture prediction in his audio message, expressed gratitude for prayers from supporters (read a transcript of Camping's audio message).
The dirty snowballs known as comets might be the sources of Earth's water after all, scientists say.
Water is critical to life on Earth — life is found virtually wherever there is water on our planet. Researchers have spent decades debating where Earth's water and other key ingredients of life came from.
Prior studies had suggested that early Earth was dry, lacking water and other so-called volatile materials.
Now Earth-like water has been discovered in the small oddball comet Hartley 2, which the Deep Impact/EPOXI spacecraft flew by in November 2010. This comet originated in the disk-shaped Kuiper belt, a region of the solar system beyond the orbit of Neptune, suggesting this is ultimately where much of Earth's water came from. [MSNBC]
Last month the extent of sea ice covering the Arctic Ocean declined to the second-lowest extent on record. Satellite data from NASA and the NASA-supported National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) at the University of Colorado in Boulder showed that the summertime sea ice cover narrowly avoided a new record low.
The Arctic ice cap grows each winter as the sun sets for several months and shrinks each summer as the sun rises higher in the northern sky. Each year the Arctic sea ice reaches its annual minimum extent in September. It hit a record low in 2007.
The near-record ice-melt followed higher-than-average summer temperatures, but without the unusual weather conditions that contributed to the extreme melt of 2007. "Atmospheric and oceanic conditions were not as conducive to ice loss this year, but the melt still neared 2007 levels," said NSIDC scientist Walt Meier. "This probably reflects loss of multiyear ice in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas as well as other factors that are making the ice more vulnerable." [sciday]
The biggest obstacle in deflecting a killer asteroid away from Earth may be humanity's inability to get along.
We already have the technological know-how to prevent dangerous space rocks from barreling into our planet, provided we detect them in time. But this vital job would require a great deal of international cooperation, experts say, and history has shown that working together is not our species' strong suit.
"Somebody's got to make the decision to actually mount the deflection, and do it," said former astronaut Rusty Schweickart, chairman of the B612 Foundation, a group dedicated to predicting and preventing catastrophic asteroid impacts on Earth.
"That is not technical, but it's the toughest problem of all," Schweickart said here at the California Institute of Technology on Sept. 28, during a panel discussion called "Moving an Asteroid." [MSNBC]
The Instituto Geografico Nacional (IGN) has reported surface deformations exceeding 35mm on the Spanish island of El Hierro, where residents have been alert for a possible volcanic eruption.
The number of earthquakes recorded since July 17 on the smallest of The Canary Islands exceeded 9250 on Tuesday morning.
IGN confirmed on Monday that 1172 earthquakes were recorded last week, the majority of which were located in the sea to the SW of the 280-sqkm island. 52 of the earthquakes were felt by the local population, estimated to be approximately 10,000. A further 10 earthquakes, exceeding 3.0 magnitude on the Richter Scale, were felt during Monday and early on Tuesday.
Hierro, a shield volcano, has had a single historic eruption from the Volcan de Lomo Negro vent in 1793. The eruption lasted approximately one month and produced lava flows. The recent surge in the number and intensity of earthquakes prompted officials from the IGN and The Canary Islands Government to raise the alert level for the Hierro volcano to ‘Yellow’ late last month.
At a sprawling warehouse here, two investigators from the U. S. Food and Drug Administration watched intently as 50 boxes of preserved bean curd from China were emptied into a grinding machine.
The monstrously loud apparatus worked its way through 1,800 glass bottles, grinding the glass and spewing out a stream of chunky yellow ooze that would be collected, treated and disposed of in the sewer system.
FDA investigators had decided that the bottles of bean curds were improperly heat-sealed and, as a result, were susceptible to harmful bacteria like botulism, which can be fatal.
The case of the destroyed bean curds was relatively straightforward: They had been flagged as suspect as soon as they arrived in port due to a defective heat seal and were sent directly to an FDA warehouse for testing. That’s not always how it happens. [MSNBC]
Hormonal and other irregularities were detected in the thyroid glands of 10 out of 130 children evacuated from Fukushima Prefecture, a Nagano Prefecture-based charity dedicated to aid for the victims of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident said Tuesday.
The Japan Chernobyl Foundation and Shinshu University Hospital did blood and urine tests on youngsters aged up to 16 including babies under the age of one for about a month through the end of August in Chino, Nagano, when the children stayed there temporarily after evacuating from Fukushima.
As a result, one child was found to have a lower-than-normal thyroid hormone level and seven had thyroid stimulation hormone levels higher than the norm. The remaining two were diagnosed with slightly high blood concentrations of a protein called thyroglobulin, possibly caused by damage to their thyroid glands.
A NASA spacecraft orbiting the asteroid Vesta is revealing new details about the huge space rock's surface, including a massive mountain that rises taller than Mt. Everest on Earth.
NASA's Dawn probe has been circling Vesta since mid-July, when it arrived in the asteroid belt that orbits the sun between Mars and Jupiter. So far, Dawn has beamed back surprising views of Vesta that revealed an enormous mountain in the asteroid's southern hemisphere and show that its crater surface is incredibly diverse place.
"We are learning many amazing things about Vesta, which we call the smallest terrestrial planet," Chris Russell, principal investigator of the Dawn mission, said in a statement. "Like Earth, Mars, Venus and Mercury, Vesta has ancient basaltic lava flows on the surface and a large iron core … The south polar mountain is larger than the big island of Hawaii, the largest mountain on Earth, as measured from the ocean floor. It is almost as high as the highest mountain in the solar system, the shield volcano Olympus Mons on Mars." [SPACE]
The devastating magnitude 6.9 earthquake that ripped through Sikkim on September 18, 2011, reportedly killing more than 100, did not catch everyone by surprise.
This is because seismologists have long been predicting large earthquakes in the Himalayas owing to the Indian Plate going underneath the Tibetan Plate at a rate of 2-5 cm per year for hundreds of years. However, the public perception of the earthquake prediction and what seismologists are able to forecast are far apart.
Since earthquakes occur suddenly with devastating consequences, earthquakes prediction is of great interest to the general public. However, the term “earthquake prediction” is often used to mean two different things for the public and the seismologists. [TOPIX]
