PINE ISLAND Glacier

Changes in Pine Island Glacier over the last 2 weeks

Over the last 2 weeks, Pine Island Glacier, a major ice mass in Antartic, has been revelling an increasing crack which has been followed by NASA scientists.

A large iceberg, with approximately 35Km by 20km, roughly the size of Singapore, is forming and detaching from the main Pine Glacier heading to the Amundsen Sea, freely drifting away from the coast into the Antartic Ocean.

NASA published images, comparing the glacier last October 28th and November 13th, where changes on the ice crack are visible with an increasing open-water between the glacier and the detaching ice mass.

Named B-31, the iceberg will be followed by a team scientists from Sheffield and Southampton universities which will track the 700 square-kilometer chunk of ice and try to predict its path using satellite data.

The shelf of Pine Island Glacier has been moving forward at roughly 4 kilometers per year, so the calving of this iceberg is not necessarily a surprise, noted Tom Wagner, NASA’s cryosphere program manager.
Such events happen about every five or six years, though Iceberg B-31 is about 50 percent larger than previous ones in this area. Scientists have been studying Pine Island Glacier closely because there is evidence that warmer seawater below the shelf will cause the ice grounding line to retreat and the glacier to thin and speed up.

More here

October 28th, 2013

November 13th 2013

NASA Earth Observatory images by Holli Riebeek, using Landsat 8 data from the USGS Earth Explorer. Caption by Michael Carlowicz.

CASSINI Mission: EARTH seen from SATURN

The cameras on NASA's Cassini spacecraft captured this rare look at Earth and its moon from Saturn orbit on July 19, 2013. Taken while performing a large wide-angle mosaic of the entire Saturn ring system, narrow-angle camera images were deliberately inserted into the sequence in order to image Earth and its moon. This is the second time that Cassini has imaged Earth from within Saturn's shadow, and only the third time ever that our planet has been imaged from the outer solar system.

Earth is the blue point of light on the left; the moon is fainter, white, and on the right. Both are seen here through the faint, diffuse E ring of Saturn. Earth was brighter than the estimated brightness used to calculate the narrow-angle camera exposure times. Hence, information derived from the wide-angle camera images was used to process this color composite.

Credits: NASA

EARTH - A DYNAMIC PLANET 1941 - 2004

Alaska's Muir Glacier, like many Alaskan glaciers, has retreated and thinned dramatically since the 19th century. 

This particular pair of images shows the glacier's continued retreat and thinning in the second half of the 20th century. From 1941 to 2004, the front of the glacier moved back about seven miles while its thickness decreased by more than 2,625 feet, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center. 

While historical photos like these show change over many decades, satellites are giving us a better understanding of how Earth's ice cover has changed in the more recent past. The satellite era, beginning in the 1970s, has given us a picture of accelerating ice changes in places like Alaska, Greenland and Antarctica, where the loss of land-based ice is contributing to global sea level rise. 

Forty-six gigatons of ice from Alaskan glaciers was lost on average each year from 2003 to 2010. That's according to data from NASA's GRACE satellite, as analyzed by a team of scientists from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Their paper on global ice changes, as measured by GRACE, was published in Nature in February 2012.  from here

A BALANCED World

Mexico - Life UNDER SEA

Jason de Cairos Taylor sculptures

Life is exploding on the reefs of Cancun, Mexico. By the hand of Jason de Cairos Taylor, an undersea museum is being shaped with the help of the Cancun community where many of its citizens have served as models for Taylor's sculptures. 

 Named, 'Man on Fire' (based on a local fisherman), the 'Collector of Lost Dreams' and 'Gardener of Hope', the first parts of this submarine museum was submerged in 2009. Later, the main group - which consists of 400 figures weighing over 120 tonnes - was submerged during the following years, off the coast of Mexico. When this occurs, the artist loses the 'aesthetic control' over his work, which will be in further on in charge of nature. 

"Ring of Children"

The idea is connected with prevention measures given the environmental decline of coral reefs, originated by natural disasters as well as for drastic climate changes which caused the disappearance of some significant coral reef areas. 

The sculptures made of a chemical composition of cement promote the colonization of marine life, which in time will cover the carvings in different colors. 

Taylor's sculptures have been listed, by National Geographic, as one of the top 25 Wonders of the World.

"Silent Evolution"

Earth Day - 22d April 2012

Forty-two years ago this photography was released to celebrate the first Earth Day. Forty-two years ago the organization's purpose was to lay the first stones to create a global awareness for the urgent need of preserving our environment and biodiversity. Since then, in spite of the numerous attempts to find reasonable solutions, the inertia and the economic and political interests have always overlap the welfare of world citizens and the hope of a cleaner and healthier Earth.

With the slogan "Earth Can't Wait", this year the 42nd Anniversary of Earth's Day has created another awareness: frustration and the governments' failure to take any steps towards protecting and preserving the environment. The Earth Day 2012 campaign was designed to turn each one of us on a vivid voice claiming for the right of a sustainable future and direct them towards quantifiable outcomes.

Today I read about an urgent measure which scientist say it would help on Earth's balance. The project, absolutely magnanimous proposes to plant about a billion trees in a very short time.

With the name of "A Billion Acts of Green" this day was the world's largest environmental service campaign. With over 800 million environmental actions registered on the Earth Day Network website the global support behind the movement has been tremendous. But the work is really, only now, starting. here

The Most Astonishing Fact on Universe

Domenican Republic - A Fly with 20 million Years Old

This is the only known fossil of a bat fly, a specimen at least 20 million years old that carried malaria and fed on the blood of bats. (Photo by George Poinar, Jr., courtesy of Oregon State University)

It was found on an amber piece, dated 20-30 million years.

It's a bat fly. An aggressive blood parasite which consumes blood from their victims. They inhabit from sheeps to humans where they suck their bodies living like parasites from their daily blood collecting.

Researchers, from Oregon State University, discovered this well preserved specimen on the Dominican Republic, on an amber stone, in what was then an oozing tree sap.

This is the only fossil ever found of a bat fly, and scientists say it’s an extraordinary discovery. It was also carrying malaria, further evidence of the long time that malaria has been prevalent in the New World. The genus of bat fly discovered in this research is now extinct. from here

February 20th 1962 - 50th anniversary of John Glenn's orbital space flight -

50th anniversary of John Glenn's historic space fligh.

Cricket Sounds from the Jurassic with 165 Million Years

 

Behaviors are always challenging to get reconstructed, specially if we are talking about a Jurassic sound with about 165 million years. But that was exactly the challenged that scientists faced when they decided to inraveal the song that the Archaboilus musicus stridulating katydid, on a dinnassours era.

It was upon discovery of a bushcricket fossil, from the Jurassic period, with well preserved wings and well visible stridulating organ, that researchers could compare the exctinct cricket to 59 living species.

Based on physiology and the comparisons, they estimated the pitch and length of each note that the ancient species sang. Here’s the call: [Cricket sound] coming from a Jurassic era.

After all, it's not so different from any nowadays little country cricket.

 from here

Amasia - The Future Super Continent

Tectonic movements on the next 50 to 300 million years

On an article, published last week on Nature magazine, scientists say that on the next 50 to 200 million years all continents will be pushed against each other, forming a compact mass which will be in the origin of a new supercontinent.

300 million years ago, the last compact supercontinent Pangea was centered where West Africa is now.

After looking at the geology of mountain ranges around the world, geologists had assumed that the next supercontinent would form either in the same place as Pangaea, closing the Atlantic Ocean like an accordion, or on the other side of the world, in the middle of the current Pacific Ocean more here

Steve De Neef - 2011 Under Sea

Highlights of 2011 from Steve De Neef on Vimeo.

Ethiopia - The Erta Ale Volcano

Ancien lava and salt deposits surround Erta Ale Volcano and the inhospitable Afar Depression  - Photo George Steinmetz

In 2005, the ground suddenly opened and swallowed goats, camels and all sort of living animals which were on the surrounding area of the Erta Ale Volcano.

The scene looked like came out of a movie. For 3 days clouds of ashes dimmed the sun and flew through the air coming out from the subterranean caverns like huge black birds thrown away through the sky, landing all over the surrounding areas of the Erta Ale crater.

Although we may be talking about one of the most inhospitable regions on Earth and when seen from above it may look like an Artic frozen desert, geologically the Afar Depression is one of the most active regions on Earth.

Erta Ale boiling magma lake at the crater

In fact, underneath Afar' s timeless visage there's a much different nature well hidden below surface. Earth's rocky rind is ripping apart, 12 active volcanoes underground, chambers of magma, steaming geysers, boiling cauldrons and a fiery lake of lava which boils constantly making the region a clock bomb ready to explode at any moment. Nature's fury is well covered under a desert which few would dare to cross.

Not much is known about Erta Ale and the fact that the native Afar people have a legendary reputation for viciousness towards outsiders also doesn't help. Travel guides always recommend hiring "one or maybe two armed guards or police" to visit Erta Ale otherwise the adventure can cost your life.

However, they welcomed and helped recently a team from BBC, but that was an exception.

On January 16, 2012 a group of German, Austrian and Hungarian scientists was attacked on their way to Erta Ale. Five scientists/tourists were executed on site, some taken as hostages others were injured while trying to escape. Afar people still fight, in some sort of middle age form, for their desert lands where they extract salt, with 30.000 years, from a time where the Red Sea floods reached the region.

Geologically, scientists predict that, in some million years, there will be dramatic changes in Africa 's geography: The Afar depression, and the entire Great Rift Valley, will cradle a new sea which will connect the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean and cleaves the Horn of Africa from the continent. more here

Scanning Earth's Energy Balance in Blue and Green

Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System

The doors are open on NASA's Suomi NPP satellite and the newest version of the Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) instrument is scanning Earth for the first time, helping to assure continued availability of measurements of the energy leaving the Earth-atmosphere system.

The CERES results help scientists to determine the Earth's energy balance, providing a long-term record of this crucial environmental parameter that will be consistent with those of its predecessors.

Looks like there's a tranquility and a smooth balance between both colors.

Credit: NASA

Are We Getting Back to a Little Ice Age?

Hendrick Avercamp - Winter Landscape - 1605

In the late 13th century, massive volcanic explosions in the tropics destroyed mountain villages in northern Europe—not by burying them in lava and mudflows, mind you, but by triggering a cold spell that engulfed the towns in ice.

By that time, Europe was plagued by waves of cold that turned out the major rivers in Europe in thick layers of ice. Painters like Hendrick Avercamp (who I've mentioned on my blog Manifesto Surrealista regarding an exhibition about the "Little Ice Age", which I've visited in Amsterdam) was one of the artists that came to outdoors depicting the white scenarios given by those frozen years.

Scientists have always debated about the causes that have lead to this ice age. Many were the theories advanced but, according to a group of geologists, led by Gifford Miller of the University of Colorado, Boulder, has identified an abrupt start for the cool spell, sometime between 1275 and 1300 A.D and causes, related with the volcanic activity has been considered a sustainable explanation for the cause.

Explosive volcanism cooled the climate and set off a self-perpetuating feedback cycle involving sea ice in the North Atlantic Ocean that sustained the cool spell into the 19th century, they reported this week in the "Journal Geophysical Research Letters". Miller said in a press release:

“This is the first time anyone has clearly identified the specific onset of the cold times marking the start of the Little Ice Age. We also have provided an understandable climate feedback system that explains how this cold period could be sustained for a long period of time.”

In the first part of the study, Miller and his colleagues collected roughly 150 dead plants from the receding ice margins of Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic. Radiocarbon dating back in the lab reveled a large cluster of “kill dates” between 1275 and 1300 A.D., indicating the plants had been frozen and engulfed by ice during a relatively sudden event. 

Miller and his team admitted that only sudden volcanic eruptions may be the explanation for major climate changes. Particles spread in the air make a thick layer around Earth atmosphere that blocks some of the sun's incoming energy. The timing jibed with a period of intense volcanic activity already known from the rock record.

Looking at this analysis it's interesting to point out if we aren't facing, once again, the prelude of another Little Ice Age with the major Earth volcanoes splitting lava and emerging earth on thick sun blocks.  more here

The Female Orb Web Spider - A Mate or a Quick Meal?

Orb Web Spiders - Male and Female

Judging by the enormous disproportion of sizes I guess it's understandable that the Female Orb Web Spider would look at her mate and would take him by a "Quick Snack".

In fact, male orb web spider, have only a suitable purpose: To breed.

After that, the dating game is over and the deadly dance begins selecting those who are destine to continue their race and those fragile which exalt themselves in those tiny moments of glory but tend to be overwhelmed by the selection of spiceies.

Female spiders are well aware of the right moment where they can choose when to cut off intimate relations by eating her partner, or kicking him out. 

The Deadly Dance - Female eating the Male

This dynamic has led males to an unlikely strategy to make sure they have some say in the matter: self-castration. Males are able to leave part or all of their organ inside of a female, which decreases the odds the female will be able to mate again. But new research shows that when a male leaves his whole kit-and-caboodle behind, his likelihood of fathering the next batch of eggs is much higher. Why? His parting gift keeps on giving, even after he is gone.

This remote-copulation technique actually boosts the amount and speed of sperm transferred to the female. The behavior is described in the journal Biology Letters. [Daiqin Li et al, Remote Copulation: male adaptation to cannibalism, link to come]

So for these unlucky fellas, it is better to have loved—and lost, that is the wise solution regarding Orb Web Spiders.  from here

Orb Web Spiders - Male and Female on a dark dating game

Free Among the Sea

A nice week to everyone!

Chile - The Puyehue Volcano

Credits: Claudio Santana/AFP/Getty Images

June 5th, 2011 - Chile, 870 Km south of Santiago.

The Puyehue volcano, started expelling lava and a dense cloud of ashes circled the globe. The sky became red and grey, like if an intense fire had spread out above till far the horizon.

Evacuations were settled among the population.

Beauty

Beautiful Nature, the way it is

https://www.facebook.com/thesaganseries The Feynman Series is a companion project of The Sagan Series working in the hopes of promoting scientific literacy in the general population.
Created by @ReidGower

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