The research, which appears in the journal Nature Geoscience, was conducted by geoscientists Achim Brauer, Peter Dulski and Jörg Negendank (emeritus Professor) from the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences, Gerald Haug from the DFG-Leibniz Center for Surface Processes and Climate Studies at the University of Potsdam and the ETH in Zurich, and Daniel Sigman from Princeton University.

The proof of an extreme cooling within a short number of years 12,700 years ago was attained in sediments of the volcanic lake Meerfelder Maar in the Eifel region of Germany. The seasonally layered deposits allow to precisely determine the rate of climate change. With a novel combination of microscopic research studies and modern geochemical scanner procedures, the scientists were able to successfully reconstruct the climatic conditions even for individual seasons. In particular, the changes in the wind force and direction during the winter half-year caused the climate to topple over into a completely different mode within one year after a short instable phase of a few decades.

 Source : Science Daily

Jones is the prime mover behind November's Great Southern California ShakeOut, described as the nation's biggest ever earthquake drill. If all goes to plan, millions of southern Californians will declaim the mantra of "Drop, cover and hold on" as they simulate their response to a 7.8-magnitude earthquake on the San Andreas fault, south-east of Los Angeles.

The earthquake model devised for the ShakeOut is, to put it mildly, alarming. Every 150 years, the southern San Andreas fault experiences an earthquake of the magnitude envisaged by the study. The last one was 151 years ago. As one seismologist noted last year, the fault "is 10 months pregnant".

"It's absolutely inevitable," said Jones. "The only question is whether it is in our lifetime." One recent study by the US Geological Survey put the likelihood of such an event happening in the next 30 years at 46%. The probability of a 6.7 magnitude quake was estimated at 99%.

 Source :  Guardian UK

Understanding how such monstrous waves form could lead to ways to predict when they might emerge or, potentially, even drive them at enemy vessels, scientists added.

For centuries these killer waves had been dismissed as myths — towering walls of water blamed for mysterious disappearances of ships. But on New Year's Day on 1995, a wave that reached more than 80 feet high was detected with scientific instruments at an oil platform in the North Sea, confirming the existence of these legends. Since then, the European Union initiated Project MaxWave, which relied on imagery from European Space Agency radar satellites to spot what appeared to be rogue waves around the world. Now scientists are trying to uncover what causes these monsters.

 Source : Live Science

One computer model indicated the weather system could reach hurricane strength before making landfall, but the Miami-based hurricane center's official prediction called for it to top out as a tropical storm with maximum winds of 55 knots, or 63 miles per hour (102 km per hour).

It would be called Tropical Storm Edouard once its top winds reach 39 mph (63 kph). Tropical storms become hurricanes when their top sustained winds reach 74 mph (119 kph).

 Source :  Reuters AP

Thousands of panicked pilgrims stampeded Sunday at a remote mountaintop temple in northern India during celebrations to honor a Hindu goddess, sending dozens of people plummeting to their deaths and trampling scores more. Police said 145 people were killed.

Rumors of a landslide apparently started the panic at the shrine in the foothills of the Himalayas, said C.P. Verma, a senior government official in the Bilaspur district.

Pilgrims already at the Naina Devi Temple began running down the narrow path leading from the peak. There, they collided with devotees winding their way up.

With a concrete wall on one side and a precipice on the other, there was nowhere to escape and they were crushed. At one point a guard rail broke and dozens of people fell to their deaths.

 Source : AP / Myway News

"Tornado alley" states from TX to NE, IA, SD, and CO began to pick up their tornado pace in late May, and may have also pushed KS and IA above their annual average, though most of these preliminary tornado reports were not confirmed as of this writing. Record tornado pace Tornadoes caused 111 deaths through the end of May, the second highest death toll for any year in the Doppler radar era, eclipsed only by the 130 deaths for the year in 1998 (120 of them by May 31). While tornado counts are still preliminary, it seems almost certain that the number of tornadoes has set a new five-month record, possibly 900 or more, while the previous record for the period was 778 in 1999. Unusually deadlyThe death toll is no doubt high, in part, because of the number of strong and violent, wide and long-track tornadoes. These pack the combination of destructive winds that demolish mobile homes and frame homes alike and a massive area placed at risk by virtue of their size and longevity. Numerous tornadoes have been rated EF3 or stronger and have had paths exceeding 30 miles. 51% of the deaths have been in mobile homes, 43% in other "permanent" buildings, 14% in vehicles, and 2% outdoors. 96% of the tornado deaths were from tornadoes rated EF2 or stronger; 38 of the deaths from EF4 or EF5 tornadoes.

 Source : Yahoo News

Some Southern Californians are said to have stampeded yesterday as they tried to evacuate a high-rise during the 5.4-magnitude quake outside Los Angeles. That is exactly what Margaret Vinci didn't want them to do, yesterday or during future earthquakes, especially "The Big One" that scientists predict will come any time in the next 30 years. "People really didn't know what to do. A lot of people evacuated buildings," said the manager of the Office of Earthquake Programs at Caltech.

And so it's time to rehearse.

Vinci's office along with dozens, possibly hundreds, of other organizations and millions of Californians will be part of a mega-earthquake drill — the largest in U.S. history — set for Nov. 13 and aimed at preventing this and other potentially catastrophic behaviors and results during the disastrous quake predicted along the San Andreas Fault. The fault has snapped in big and cyclical ways historically, but it's been relatively quiet in modern times and scientists know the respite simply can't last forever.

"Earthquakes don't kill anybody. It's buildings that fall down and things that are unsecured that hurt people," Vinci said. Overpasses and bridges are risky, "but it's usually not the earthquake itself. They don't open up and swallow people up. It's man-made objects that kill." People need not fear buildings, she said. "What happens is they all run out of buildings instead of ducking, covering and holding on. When the shaking has stopped, then people can evacuate and follow other instructions."

 Source : Live Science

 Source : CBS News

It was the Los Angeles area's biggest earthquake in nearly 15 years, but for many the tremor felt like business as usual.

A 5.4-magnitude temblor at lunchtime on Tuesday sent office workers streaming from their downtown Los Angeles high-rises and led many to reach for their phones to check on friends and relatives. But after it was all over, with only minor injuries and damage reported, many Southern California residents simply shrugged it off.

 Source : Reuters / Alertnet

 Source : Russia Today

Ice cores suggest that such a blast of solar particles happens only once every 500 years, but even the storms every 50 years could fry satellites, jam radios and cause coast-to-coast blackouts.

The cost of such an event justifies more systematic solar monitoring and beefier protection for satellites and the power grid.

The impact of the 1859 storm was muted only by the infancy of our technological civilization at that time. Were it to happen today, it could severely damage satellites, disable radio communications and cause continent-wide electrical blackouts that would require weeks or longer to recover from. Although a storm of that magnitude is a comfortably rare once-in-500-years event, those with half its intensity hit every 50 years or so. The last one, which occurred on November 13, 1960, led to worldwide geomagnetic disturbances and radio outages. If we make no preparations, by some calculations the direct and indirect costs of another superstorm could equal that of a major hurricane or earthquake .

 Source : Scientific American

The debate about what killed the dinosaurs has been equally fearsome. Depending on who you believe, it was an asteroid impact , a supervolcano , or a gamma ray . They were starved, poisoned, frozen, boiled, drowned, dried, asphyxiated, irradiated or all of the above. "A colleague of mine said, 'Paleontologists are responsible for the third law of mass extinctions: for every extinction, there's an equal and opposite mechanism,'" says Shanan Peters, a professor of geology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Peters has come up with a new theory to explain the demise of the dinosaurs, and all the other extinctions that have written their fragile, fossil messages within the bones of the earth. "One of the remarkable things about this work is that it is a statistical smoking gun. It's in the background for all extinctions, but it's predictive about which species are more likely to survive and which will go extinct," Peters says. His study was published in the journal Nature.

 Source : Independent UK

The list of those who subscribe to the theory that alien life forms and UFOs have visited Earth amid a massive government cover-up is long and varied. It includes cranks, paranoid delusionals and editors of the Daily Star (and sometimes all three).

But a Nasa astronaut who has walked on the moon? The profile of Edgar Mitchell does not conform to that of your common or garden UFO aficionado. He holds two Bachelor of Science degrees and a doctorate in aeronautics from the prestigious and not exactly tree-huggy Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Along with Alan Shepard, he holds the record for the longest moon walk - for nine hours on February 9 1971 as part of the Apollo 14 mission, making him the sixth man to walk on the moon. Put all that together and it is no wonder that an interviewer with a UK radio station almost fell off his seat this week when he lobbed Mitchell what he thought was a throwaway question: Did he believe in life on other planets? "Oh yes," came the reply. "There's not much question at all that there is life throughout the universe. I'm totally sure we are not alone."

 Source : Guardian UK

June 30, 1908, 7:14 a.m., central Siberia—Semen Semenov, a local farmer, saw “the sky split in two. Fire appeared high and wide over the forest.... From ... where the fire was, came strong heat.... Then the sky shut closed, and a strong thump sounded, and I was thrown a few yards.... After that such noise came, as if . . . cannons were firing, the earth shook ...”

Such is the harrowing testimony of one of the closest eyewitnesses to what scientists call the Tunguska event , the largest impact of a cosmic body to occur on the earth during modern human history . Semenov experienced a raging conflagration some 65 kilometers (40 miles) from ground zero, but the effects of the blast rippled out far into northern Europe and Central Asia as well. Some people saw massive, silvery clouds and brilliant, colored sunsets on the horizon, whereas others witnessed luminescent skies at night—Londoners, for instance, could plainly read newsprint at midnight without artificial lights. Geophysical observatories placed the source of the anomalous seismic and pressure waves they had recorded in a remote section of Siberia. The epicenter lay close to the river Podkamennaya Tunguska, an uninhabited area of swampy taiga forest that stays frozen for eight or nine months of the year. Ever since the Tunguska event, scientists and lay enthusiasts alike have wondered what caused it. Although most observers generally accept that some kind of cosmic body, either an asteroid or a comet, exploded in the sky above Siberia , no one has yet found fragments of the object or any impact craters in the affected region. The mystery remains unsolved, but our research team, only the latest of a steady stream of investigators who have scoured the area, may be closing in on a discovery that will change our understanding of what happened that fateful morning.

 Source : Scientific American (SCIAM)

If you still live with your parents, wear a zip-up cardigan over your collar and tie, have enamel badges in your lapel and don't get out much because you're too busy curating your collection of Star Trek memorabilia, it has been quite a week. While the rest of the country has been fussing over such trivia as Zim-babwe, you've been tabulating the latest activities of forces beyond our galaxy.

On Wednesday you awoke to a Sun exclusive from Shropshire: "A shaken soldier told last night how he saw 13 UFOs spinning in the skies above his military barracks." Not to be outdone, the Hastings Observer reported a woman's sighting of strange orange lights above the resort, and asked: "Are aliens the latest visitors to Hastings?" The following day, it was "orange orbs" over Liverpool, and The Sun's further report from Salop: "A mum who insists she was abducted by aliens on the A5 said yesterday, 'I knew they'd be back'."

Only the week before, according to the ever-vigilant Sun, a "flying saucer-shaped" object "attacked" a police helicopter over Cardiff. The story got so much coverage that, within days, hundreds of sightings were coming into the newspaper.

 Source : Independent UK

The impact crater, which is buried under 400 to 1,200 feet (120 to 365 meters) of sand, silt and clay, spans twice the length of Manhattan. The sprawling depression helped create what would eventually become Chesapeake Bay. About 10,000 years ago, ice sheets began to melt and once-dry river valleys filled with water. The rivers of the Chesapeake region converged directly over the buried crater, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). Gregory Gohn of the USGS and his colleagues analyzed samples from two deep holes drilled into the crater near its center.

Within seconds of the object's touchdown, rocks were flung high into the air. The force of the impact carved a colossal cavity and caused temperatures to skyrocket, turning brittle rocks into taffy. Then, material along the cavity's rim surged downhill into the bowl-shaped depression like an avalanche. The extreme heat, the researchers say, killed off most life . However, they found abundant microbes living today in the deepest parts of the crater. Some of the ancient bacteria would have survived the impact, the researchers say, because their little hideouts didn't feel the brunt of the heat. The rest of the abundant and newly discovered microbial life is thought to have recolonized the zapped area possibly tens of thousands of years following the impact when temperatures dropped to habitable levels.

 Source : Live Science

As fuel prices soar, Alaskan officials announced the exploration of the state's volcanoes, saying they could be exploited to provide energy for thousands of homes.

	'High prices and climate change are definitely creating a renaissance in geothermal interest'

Companies are being invited to lease the rights to explore geothermal resources beneath Mount Spurr, a snowcapped 11,070-foot volcano that most recently erupted in 1992 showering much of Anchorage with volcanic ash.

The state Division of Oil and Gas hopes the lease sale, due to go ahead in August, will be the first of many. It is also considering allowing exploration of the 4,134-foot Augustine Volcano, 171 miles southwest of Anchorage.

The move echoes a trend underway across much of the US as fuel prices, worries about dependence on foreign oil and climate change trigger a surge in geothermal projects, particularly in the West and along the Gulf Coast.

According to experts, America is only just waking up to the ancient power source lying beneath dozens of states that has the potential to supply as much as 25 percent of the nation's energy needs.

"High prices and climate change are definitely creating a renaissance in geothermal interest, particularly on a state and local level," said Karl Gawell, executive director of the Geothermal Energy Association.

"There really is a tremendous amount going on right now."

 Source : Telegraph UK

A typical Trident nuclear missile contains three to six warheads, and some submarines carry up to 24 missiles, meaning the potential for disaster could be huge.  Defence companies try to prevent accidental explosions of warheads by designing them to be "singlepoint safe" which means that a sudden knock at a single point should not  detonate the plutonium core.

The typical scenario would see the weapon being dropped from a crane while being loaded on or off a submarine.

 Source : Telegraph UK

The puzzle of why the northern and southern hemispheres of Mars look so different may now have been solved.

Mars' crust is thicker in the southern hemisphere, and magnetic anomalies are found in the south but not the north.

New studies in Nature magazine suggest that a massive space rock smashing into the planet could have created an abrupt disparity between the two halves.

This asteroid would have been close to the size of Earth's moon and hit Mars' northern regions, scientists say.

According to one group of researchers, the rock struck with an energy equivalent to one million billion atomic bombs like the one dropped on Nagasaki in 1945.

Mars' northern hemisphere is an enormous lowland basin which might once have held a mighty ocean.

 Source : BBC UK