Science & Environment

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Dangerous new hot zones are spreading around the world

LA CORONILLA, Uruguay —The day the yellow clams turned black is seared in Ramón Agüero’s memory.

It was the summer of 1994. A few days earlier, he had collected a generous haul, 20 buckets of the thin-shelled, cold-water clams, which burrow a foot deep into the sand along a 13-mile stretch of beach near Barra del Chuy, just south of the Brazilian border. Agüero had been digging up these clams since childhood, a livelihood passed on for generations along these shores.

But on this day, Agüero returned to find a disastrous sight: the beach covered in dead clams.

“Kilometer after kilometre, as far as our eyes could see. All of them dead, rotten, opened up,” remembered Agüero, now 70. “They were all black, and had a fetid odour.”

He wept at the sight.

FULL STORY

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World 'losing battle against deforestation'

A historic global agreement aimed at halting deforestation has failed, according to a report.

An assessment of the New York Declaration on Forests (NYDF) says it has failed to deliver on key pledges.

Launched at the 2014 UN climate summit, it aimed to half deforestation by 2020, and halt it by 2030.

Yet deforestation continues at an alarming rate and threatens to prevent the world from preventing dangerous climate change, experts have said.

The critique, compiled by the NYDF Assessment Partners (a coalition of 25 organisations), painted a bleak picture of how the world's forests continue to be felled.

Deforestation 'accelerating'

"Since the NYDF was launched five years ago, deforestation has not only continued - it has actually accelerated," observed Charlotte Streck, co-founder and director of Climate Focus, which co-ordinated the publication of the report.

The report says the amount of annual carbon emissions resulting from deforestation around the globe are equivalent to the greenhouse gases produced by the European Union.

On average, an area of tree covers the size of the United Kingdom was lost every year between 2014 and 2018.

Tropical forest loss accounts for more than 90% of global deforestation, with the hotspot being located in Amazon Basin nations of Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia and Peru.

Craig Hanson, vice-president of food, forest, water & the ocean at the World Resources Institute, described the findings as a "mixed report card".

"There are some places in the world where we are suffering a dramatic loss of primary forest, so we are losing the battle on stopping deforestation," he told reporters.

"In other places, we are finding that there are new trees that are enriching rural landscapes, but we are still seeing a net reduction in the number of forests the world has."

Emerging hotspot

Worryingly, say the authors, a new deforestation hotspot in West Africa is emerging. The rate of tree-felling in the Democratic Republic of Congo has doubled in the past five years.

The New York Declaration on Forests (NYDF) is a voluntary and legally non-binding agreement to take action to halt global deforestation.

It was first endorsed at the United Nations Climate Summit in September 2014, and by October 2017 40 governments, 57 multi-national companies and 58 non-government organizations had endorsed the declaration.

Political action

Despite the bleak outlook on a global scale, the report did highlight the positive steps being made in Indonesia, which has long been associated with devastating deforestation.

The authors said political action was a contributing factor. The country's president has banned the development of peatlands and primary forests.

However, researchers highlighted why the overall picture was so gloomy and why halting deforestation was so vital in the battle against climate change.

"Halting deforestation and restoring tropical forests, for example, could provide up to 30% of the mitigation required to help meet the Paris Agreement," explained Eszter Wainwright-Deri, forestry technical advisor at the Zoological Society of London.

"This cannot be achieved while zero-deforestation commitments continue to be dishonoured."

The WRI's Mr Hanson concluded: "We are losing the battle but we should not give up hope. This report, among other things, gives a clarion call that we need to re-energise commitment, action and financing towards the NYDF."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-49679883

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Science & Environment

Giving birth two million years ago was 'relatively easy'

Human childbirth can be a long, painful, drawn-out process, needing assistance and sometimes taking days.

So why do close living relatives like chimps have an easier labour, giving birth in hours and on their own?

In an attempt to answer this evolutionary question, scientists have been looking at how ancient members of the human family tree gave birth.

Human-like relatives two million years ago had it "pretty easy", according to birth reconstruction in a fossil.

For Australopithecus sediba, which lived 1.95 million years ago in South Africa, we see "a relatively easy birth process", says study researcher Dr Natalie Laudicina.

"The foetal head and shoulder breadth have ample space to pass through even the tightest dimensions of the maternal birth canal," she says.

It's a different story today, where the size and shape of the modern pelvis (a trade-off needed for walking upright), and the large size of a baby's head, make for a tight fit.

Human infants have to make several rotations through the birth canal during labour, rather than popping straight out.

By studying the few female pelvises we have of our ancient human-like relatives - only six spanning more than three million years of evolution - researchers can get an idea of what birth might have been like further back in the human family tree.

It's not the case, though, that birth became progressively more difficult during the course of human evolution.

As the University of Boston anthropologist explains, the fossil "Lucy" (Australopithecus afarensis) had a more difficult birth process than A. sediba, in terms of a tighter fit between the foetus and the birth canal, but lived about a million years earlier.

• Caesarean births 'affecting evolution'
• Human origins story takes a new turn
• Advanced ape skull find changes human origin ideas

"There is a tendency to think about the evolution of human birth as a transition from an 'easy', ape-like birth to a 'difficult', modern birth," says Dr Laudicina, who reports the team's findings in the journal, Plos One.

"Instead, what we are seeing is that is not the case. "

Answering the question of when modern childbirth evolved is complicated, she says, because each fossil in the human family tree exhibited their own obstetric challenges.

And even today we see a variation in how women give birth: some women have relatively easy births that take no time at all, while other women have births that last more than 20 hours with extreme pain.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-49733888

 

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Science & Environment

Nasa's IceSat space laser tracks water depths from orbit

Scientists say one of the US space agency's (Nasa) new Earth observers is going to have a transformative impact in an unexpected area.

The IceSat-2 laser mission was launched a year ago to measure the shape of Antarctica and Greenland, and to track the thickness of Arctic sea-ice.

But early results show a remarkable capability also to sense water depths.

IceSat's laser light penetrates up to 40m in the clearest conditions, opening up a raft of new applications.

"As much as people think all areas on Earth have been reasonably well mapped, it's really not true when you start looking at shallow water areas," said Dr Christopher Parrish from Oregon State University.

"We've got huge data voids from the shoreline out to about 5m water depth.

"This hinders our ability to study things like an inundation, the effects of major storms, and the changes to coral reef habitat."

A project has already started to map the seafloor around low-lying Pacific islands and atolls, which will assist tsunami preparedness for example.

The capability should also enable scientists to work out the volumes of inland water bodies to help quantify Earth's global freshwater reserves.

• Greenland's ice faces melting 'death sentence'
• Nasa laser to monitor Earth's ice
• Space laser makes height maps of Earth

FULL REPORT

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Island reveals a rising tide of plastic waste

A remote island in the southern Atlantic Ocean has helped reveal the scale of the problem of plastic waste facing our seas.

Some 75% of bottles washed ashore on Inaccessible Island, in the South Atlantic, were found to be from Asia - with most made in China.

Researchers said most of the bottles had been made recently, suggesting they had been discarded by ships.

An estimated 12.7 million tonnes of plastic end up in our oceans each year.

But this figure just covers land-based sources.

The team from South Africa and Canada, writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), said that it had been assumed that most of the debris found at sea was coming from the land.

However, the scientists said the evidence suggested otherwise.

"When we were [on the island, called Inacessible Island] last year, it was really shocking how much drink bottles had just come to dominate," explained lead author Peter Ryan, director of the FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology at the University of Cape Town.

During litter surveys on the island, which is a World Heritage Site, the scientists examined 3,515 debris items in 2009 and 8,084 debris items in 2018.

Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) drinking bottles were the most common type of debris and had the fastest growth rate among debris, increasing at 14.7% each year since the 1980s.

The oldest container, found in 2018, was a high-density polyethene canister manufactured in 1971.

Yet most bottles were date-stamped within two years of washing ashore.

"Once you get into it you can learn quite a lot even from bottles that don't have labels on," Prof Ryan added.

"They've got dates on, they've got manufacturer's marks and once you know different manufacturers you can work out where they come from," he told BBC News.

"What was really shocking was how the origin had shifted from largely South American, which is what you would expect from somewhere like Inaccessible Island because it's downwind from South America to predominantly Asian.

"In fact, during the three months that we were on the island it was 84% of the bottles that washed up were from Asia."

Ship to shore?

The combination of the fact that the bottles were from Asia, particularly China, and the fact that they were manufactured too soon to have drifted there on the global oceanic currents, suggested that they were being discarded by passing vessels.

"My initial thought was that it was going to be fishing fleets. Fishing boats tend to be a little bit more Wild West than the merchant fleets as a rule, but the fact that it's primarily Chinese doesn't really fit with that because the predominant fishing fleets in the South Atlantic are Taiwanese and Japanese," Prof Ryan observed.

"I think the evidence is pretty strong that it's coming from merchant shipping," he suggested.

"It is where we've seen the really big increase in shipping, particularly from South America to Asia over the last decade or so. It came as a bit of a shock to me because I had assumed that the merchant fleets would be reasonably compliant [to international agreements not to throw waste overboard]."

Prof Ryan said that he would be interested to hear what the international shipping sector made of the findings, adding: "I think we need to look quite carefully at better monitoring and enforcement of regulations."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-49885220

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NASA just joined the electric vehicle revolution

As automakers continue to embrace electric vehicles and more companies pledge to purge their vehicle lineups of gas engines in the coming years, the trend has finally caught on at NASA. NASA doesn’t sell cars, of course, but the space agency does use many fuel-burning machines across its various projects, and its new X-57 Maxwell aircraft is a sign that change is afoot.

The X-57 is an all-electric experimental aircraft that has been in the works for some time. This model was built by ESAero, and as NASA explains in a new blog post, it’s essentially a retrofit on an aircraft design that originally had traditional combustion engines.

The plane started life as a Tecnam P2006T, but instead of being fitted with gas-burning engines that drive its propellers, it dons electric motors that can carry it aloft. This “Mod II” version is a stepping stone for the project, which will eventually produce Mod III and Mod IV versions.

“The X-57 Mod II aircraft delivery to NASA is a significant event, marking the beginning of a new phase in this exciting electric X-plane project,” X-57 Project Manager Tom Rigney said in a statement. “With the aircraft in our possession, the X-57 team will soon conduct extensive ground testing of the integrated electric propulsion system to ensure the aircraft is airworthy. We plan to rapidly share valuable lessons learned along the way as we progress toward flight testing, helping to inform the growing electric aircraft market.”

Now that NASA has the X-57 Mod II on hand it can begin testing the aircraft. The agency says it will first perform ground testing, then taxi trials, and eventually the plane will be taken to the skies to see what it’s capable of.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/techandscience/nasa-just-joined-the-electric-vehicle-revolution/ar-AAIm3QI

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Science & Environment

Planets and Big Bang win Nobel physics prize

Three scientists have been awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics for "ground-breaking" discoveries about the Universe.

James Peebles, Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz were announced as this year's winners at a ceremony in Stockholm.

Peebles was honoured for work on the evolution of the Universe, while Mayor and Queloz won for their discovery of a planet around a Sun-like star.

The winners will share the prize money of nine million kronor (£738,000).

Reacting to the news, Prof Queloz told BBC News: "It's unbelievable," adding: "Since the discovery 25 years ago, everyone kept telling me: 'It's a Nobel Prize discovery'. And I say: 'Oh yeah, yeah, maybe, whatever.'"

But in the intervening years, he more-or-less "forgot" about the discovery: "I don't even think about it," he said. "So frankly, yes, it came as a surprise to me. I understand the impact of the discovery, but there's such great physics being done in the world, I thought, it's not for us, we will never have it.

"I'm a bit shocked right now, I'm still trying to digest what it means."

How our cells sense oxygen wins Nobel prize

FULL REPORT

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'Molar Berg' does a quick Antarctic pirouette

The EU's Sentinel-2 satellite system got a great view of Antarctica's newest giant iceberg on Wednesday.

Cloudless skies over the east of the continent meant the 315-billion-tonne block could be seen in all its glory.

The 1,636 sq km frozen chunk broke off the Amery Ice Shelf two weeks ago and has already spun around by 90 degrees.

The block has been nicknamed "Molar Berg" by scientists because it calved from next to a segment of ice that looks from space like a "Loose Tooth".

This moniker is, however, unofficial. The US National Ice Center runs the recognised nomenclature for icebergs and it has given the hulking mass the designation D28.

Antarctica's nearshore winds and currents tend to push the big bergs in a westerly direction. Often they will play "bumper cars", bashing the coastline and knocking other lumps out of the ice shelf and themselves.

And by the looks of it, Molar Berg is heading straight for a head-on collision with another part of Amery.

With Antarctica's long "polar night" coming to an end and the Sun getting ever higher in the sky, the Sentinel-2 system is once again tracking changes across the continent. As an optical sensor, the two-spacecraft system can only see lit portions of the Earth's surface.

In the dark days of winter, radar satellites like the Sentinel-1 system are the only way to keep abreast of developments.

The Sentinel-2 image at the top of the page was processed by remote sensing specialist Iban Ameztoy.

• 315 billion-tonne iceberg breaks off Antarctica
• Nasa space laser tracks water depths from orbit
• Emperor penguin 'needs greater protection'

Stef Lhermitte at the Technical University of Delft, Netherlands, also has a nice "then" and "now" sequence, which shows how far Molar Berg has moved.

D28/Molar Berg is the biggest slice of ice in more than 50 years to come off Amery.

The ice shelf, the third-largest in Antarctica, is a key drainage channel for the east of the continent.

It is essentially the floating extension of a number of glaciers that flow off the land into the sea.

Losing bergs to the ocean is how these ice streams maintain equilibrium, balancing the input of snow upstream. So, the calving of Molar Berg is regarded as an entirely natural event. There is no data to show climate change has altered the dynamics in this particular region.

The only surprise for scientists is that it wasn't Loose Tooth that "extracted" itself. This section of ice at the edge of Amery has been wobbling for more than a decade. Researchers thought it would have come away by now, but still, it refuses to calve.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-50000744

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Huge Solar Storms 2,700 Years Ago Documented in Ancient Assyrian Cuneiform Tablets

© NASA/SDO The sun releases a X2.0-class solar flare in 2014. Scientists in Japan have identified what they believe to be the earliest record of solar activity.

Evidence of unusual solar activity that potentially represents three huge solar storms has been discovered in ancient Assyrian cuneiform tablets. The magnetic storms documented in astrological reports correspond to tree ring data indicating events took place around 660 BC.

This potentially helps scientists to predict future magnetic storms from our sun—events that have the potential to cause major disruption to the technology systems on Earth we currently rely on.

Astronomers started observing sunspots with telescopes around 1610. These are dark patches that appear on the sun's surface and are associated with solar flares—sudden explosions that send a huge amount of radiation out into space. If solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are directed toward Earth, this radiation can result in geomagnetic storms. This is where the particles from the sun interact with Earth's atmosphere, interfering with communication systems, satellites and power grids.

"These space weather events constitute a significant threat to a modern civilization, because of its increasing dependency on an electronic infrastructure," scientists led by Hisashi Hayakawa, from Osaka University, Japan, said in a study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

In recent years, scientists have been able to identify multiple extreme space weather events prior to 1610 by looking at radiocarbon in tree rings—including events around 775, 993 and 994 AD.

Hayakawa's team focused on three events that appear to have taken place in the decades around 660 BC. "These events occurred far before the onset of instrumental observations, well outside the more modern range of wide observational coverage," they wrote. "Therefore, in order to infer the general trend of solar activity and the occurrence of CMEs, candidate auroral records have been sought in historical documents around these events.

"The Babylonians and Assyrians had started astrological observations, at the latest, in the 8th century BC. Already in the 7th century BC, Assyrian kings had collected and received astrological reports from professional astrologers, to interpret the ominous meaning of observed celestial events." The cuneiform records are rectangular clay tablets with inscriptions on them.

Researchers carried out a survey of auroral records kept by the Assyrians to see if there were events that correspond with scientific data regarding ancient solar activity. They found cuneiform tablets that held records of aurora dating between 680 and 650 BC.

These tablets describe unusual red skies, with one mentioning a "red cloud" and another saying that "red covers the sky." The team believes these descriptions are likely the result of "stable auroral red arcs," where magnetic fields excite electrons in atmospheric oxygen atoms to emit light. The researchers also point out that Earth's magnetic north pole would have been closer to the Middle East than it is today, meaning events associated with solar activity would have been observed further south.

The team say they believe these tablets to be the "earliest datable records of candidate aurorae" that support the idea there was increased solar activity at this time.

Reconstructing activity on the sun thousands of years ago may help scientists predict future events. "These findings allow us to recreate the history of solar activity a century earlier than previously available records. This research can assist in our ability to predict future solar magnetic storms, which may damage satellites and other spacecraft," senior author Yasuyuki Mitsuma said in a statement.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/offbeat/huge-solar-storms-2700-years-ago-documented-in-ancient-assyrian-cuneiform-tablets/ar-AAIVBtu

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The Dinosaur-Killing Asteroid Acidified the Ocean in a Flash

What happened to the dinosaurs when an asteroid about six miles wide struck Earth some 66 million years ago in what is today Mexico is well known: It wiped them out. But the exact fate of our planet’s diverse ocean dwellers at the time — shelly ammonites, giant mosasaurs and other sea creatures — has not been as well understood.

New research now makes the case that the same incident that helped bring an end to the reign of the dinosaurs also acidified the planet’s oceans, disrupted the food chain that sustained life underwater and resulted in a mass extinction. The study, published Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, aims to shore up the hypothesis that the Chicxulub event’s destruction of marine life — the result of sulfur-rich rocks depositing acid rain into the oceans — was just as severe as the fire and fury it brought to land.

FULL REPORT

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'Green gold' tree offers Brazil deforestation hope

Trees that help keep soils fertile could slow or stop deforestation in Brazil's "arc of destruction".

A project using inga trees hopes to show smallholders that they can earn a decent living from the land.

Inga trees, known as ice-cream bean trees, fix nitrogen into the soil, boosting productivity levels.

Scientists hope the scheme will convince smallholders not to sell their land to large agri-businesses and remain farmers in the Amazon.

Growth of the 'miracle tree'

"It's very much a kind of 'miracle tree' or a supertree because some of the species can do some amazing things," said Toby Pennington, professor of tropical plant diversity and biogeography at the University of Exeter, UK.

FULL REPORT

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Origin of modern humans 'traced to Botswana'

Scientists have pinpointed the homeland of all humans alive today to a region south of the Zambezi River.

The area is now dominated by salt pans but was once home to an enormous lake, which may have been our ancestral heartland 200,000 years ago.

Our ancestors settled for 70,000 years until the local climate changed, researchers have proposed.

They began to move on as fertile green corridors opened up, paving the way for future migrations out of Africa.

"It has been clear for some time that anatomically modern humans appeared in Africa roughly 200,000 years ago," said Prof Vanessa Hayes, a geneticist at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Australia.

"What has been long debated is the exact location of this emergence and subsequent dispersal of our earliest ancestors."

Prof Hayes' conclusions have drawn scepticism from other researchers in the field, however.

Lakeland haven

The area in question is south of the Zambezi basin, in northern Botswana.

The researchers think our ancestors settled near Africa's huge lake system, known as Lake Makgadikgadi, which is now an area of sprawling salt flats.

"It's an extremely large area, it would have been very wet, it would have been very lush," said Prof Hayes. "And it would have actually provided a suitable habitat for modern humans and wildlife to have lived."

After staying there for 70,000 years, people began to move on. Shifts in rainfall across the region led to three waves of migration 130,000 and 110,000 years ago, driven by corridors of green fertile land opening up.

The first migrants ventured north-east, followed by a second wave of migrants who travelled south-west and a third population remained in the homeland until today.

This scenario is based on tracing back the human family tree using hundreds of samples of mitochondrial DNA (the scrap of DNA that passes down the maternal line from mother to child) from living Africans.

By combining genetics with geology and climate computer model simulations, researchers were able to paint a picture of what the African continent might have been like 200,000 years ago.

Reconstructing the human story

However, the study, published in the journal Nature, was greeted with caution by one expert, who says you can't reconstruct the story of human origins from mitochondrial DNA alone.

Other analyses have produced different answers with fossil discoveries hinting at an eastern African origin.

Prof Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum, London, who is not connected with the study, said the evolution of Homo sapiens was a complex process.

"You can't use modern mitochondrial distributions on their own to reconstruct a single location for modern human origins," he told BBC News.

"I think it's over-reaching the data because you're only looking at one tiny part of the genome so it cannot give you the whole story of our origins."

Thus, there could have been many homelands, rather than one, which has yet to be pinned down.

Evolutionary milestones in human history

• 400,000 years ago: Neanderthals - our evolutionary cousins - begin to appear and move across Europe and Asia

• 300,000 to 200,000 years ago: Homo sapiens - modern humans - appear in Africa

• 50,000 to 40,000 years ago: Modern humans reach Europe.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-50210701

Edited October 29, 2019 by CaaC (John)

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A third of tropical African plants face extinction

A third of tropical African plants are on the path to extinction, according to a new assessment.

Much of western Africa, Ethiopia, and parts of Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of the Congo are the hardest-hit regions, standing to lose more than 40% of their richness of plants.

Species at risk include trees, shrubs, herbs and woody vines.

Threats include deforestation, population growth and climate change, the scientists said.

"Biodiversity provides countless benefits to humans and losing diversity jeopardises our future," said lead researcher Dr Thomas Couvreur of the French National Institute for Sustainable Development.

Loss of biodiversity will be particularly problematic in tropical Africa, "a region of incredible diversity but with major social and political challenges and expected rapid population growth over the next decades", he added.

The findings of the study, published in Science Advances, are based on a revised method for assessing extinction risk.

• Plant extinction 'bad news for all species'
• Ethiopia 'breaks' tree-planting record
• Seeds of life- The plants suited to climate change.

Official assessments of extinction are recorded in The Red List of Threatened Species, published by the International Union for Conservation of Nature - IUCN.

So far, almost nine in 10 mammals and two-thirds of birds have been assessed, but less than 8% of vascular plants (flowering plants and most other plants, excluding mosses and algae).

The researchers used a similar, but more speedy, method to assess the likely extinction risk of more than 20,000 plant species.

They found that 33% of the species are potentially threatened with extinction, and another third of species are likely rare, potentially becoming threatened in the near future.

This is mainly due to human activities such as deforestation, land-use changes, population growth, economic development, and climate change, they said.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-50477684

 

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Scientists may have discovered the fifth force of nature, laboratory announces

It has long been recognised that there are four “fundamental forces” which govern nature.

The substance of our universe is pulled together or pushed apart by these forces which are determined by the fact they do not appear to be reducible to more basic interactions between particles.

They include the gravitational and electromagnetic forces, which produce significant long-range interactions whose effects can be seen directly in everyday life.

And they also include forces known as the strong interactions and weak interactions, which produce forces at tiny, subatomic distances and govern nuclear physics.

Over the years, there have been many unsubstantiated claims of the existence of a fifth fundamental force, and as the long hunt for dark matter continues to prove fruitless, efforts to find new forces at play to help fill in the gaps the standard model of particle physics can’t explain have increased.

Dark matter is a theoretical substance hypothesised to account for around 85 per cent of all mass in the universe but has not yet been glimpsed.

But now, scientists in Hungary’s Atomki Nuclear Research Institute, believe they may have found more solid evidence of a previously unknown fifth fundamental force of nature.

Attila Krasznahorkay and his colleagues at Atomki first reported some surprising results in 2015 after studying the light emitted during the radioactive decay of beryllium-8, an unstable isotope.

Since beryllium-8’s discovery in the 1930s after the construction of the first particle accelerator in Cambridge, the existence of this unstable atom, and the unique way it decays has been the focus of numerous studies related to stellar nucleosynthesis – how nuclear fusion in stars forms elements.

In 2015, they found, when firing protons at the isotope lithium-7, which creates beryllium-8, the subsequent decay of the particles did not produce exactly the expected light emissions, and that a specific tiny “bump” occurs, which means for an unexplained reason, the electrons and positrons, which burst apart as the atom decays, we're frequently pushing away from each other at exactly 140 degrees.

Various retests at the same lab confirmed the results, and a year later, the same experiment was repeated, with the same results in America.

It is thought that the moment the atom decays, excess energy among its constituent parts briefly creates a new unknown particle, which then almost immediately decays into a recognisable positron and electron pair.

But we are not all about to be turned inside out or flattened into a different dimension. The unknown particle, described as a “protophobic X boson”, is thought would carry a force that acts over macroscopic distances not much greater than that of an atomic nucleus.

A “boson” is a particle which can carry forces.

The particle has been named X17, as its mass is calculated to be 17 megaelectronvolts.

But Dr Krasznahorkay now believes they have measured the same results in stable helium atoms, however, instead of the electrons and positrons in the helium atoms separating at 140 degrees, the angle was closer to 115 degrees.

“This feature is similar to the anomaly observed in 8Be, and seems to be in agreement with the X17 boson decay scenario,” the team writes in arXiv, where the research has been published but has not yet been peer-reviewed.

If the particle’s existence is confirmed, it means physicists will have to finally reassess the interactions of the existing four fundamental forces of particle physics and make space for a fifth.

“We are expecting more, independent experimental results to come for the X17 particle in the coming years,” the research team concludes in its paper.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/scientists-may-have-discovered-fifth-force-of-nature-laboratory-announces/ar-BBX3xk9?li=BBoPWjQ

 

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Antarctica: Metal meteorite quest set to get underway

A team of British scientists has arrived in the Antarctic to try to find the continent's "missing meteorites".

The group, from the University of Manchester, will spend six weeks scouring a remote region for lumps of iron that have fallen from the sky.

These pieces of metal represent the shattered remains of small planet-like objects that were destroyed in the early years of the Solar System.

Iron meteorites are rare, however, especially in Antarctica.

Less than 1% of all the space rocks recovered in searches on the continent are of the metal type, compared with about 5% elsewhere in the world.

But the Manchester researchers believe they know the reason for this statistical deficit.

Their modelling work suggests the iron meteorites are out there; they've simply buried themselves in the ice in the Antarctic sunshine.

"Iron meteorites have a higher thermal conductivity than chondrites or stony meteorites," explained mathematician Dr Geoff Evatt. "That means they can warm and melt the ice around them more efficiently. So we expect them to be there, hanging just below the surface," he told BBC News.

FULL REPORT

 

 

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From multi-coloured mountains to transparent winter cherries, our planet is full of some of the most exceptional and rarest things. Take a look at some of these marvels that may leave you speechless.

SLIDES - 1/21

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Science & Environment

Seafloor scar of Bikini A-bomb test still visible

The date was 25 July 1946. The location - Bikini Atoll. The event - only the fifth A-bomb explosion and the first-ever detonation underwater.

The pictures we've all seen: A giant mushroom cloud climbing out of the Pacific, sweeping up ships that had been deliberately left in harm's way to see what nuclear war was capable of.

Now, 73 years later, scientists have been back to map the seafloor.

A crater is still present; so too the twisted remains of all those vessels.

"Bikini was chosen because of its idyllic remoteness and its large, easily accessible lagoon," explains survey team-leader Art Trembanis from the University of Delaware.

"At the time, [the famous American comedian] Bob Hope quipped, 'as soon as the war ended, we found the one spot on Earth that had been untouched by the war and blew it to hell'."

Two American tests, Able and Baker, were conducted at the atoll in what became known as Operation Crossroads. The Baker device, called Helen of Bikini, was a 21-kiloton bomb and was placed 27m below the surface of the Pacific.

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The explosion hurled two million tonnes of water, sand and pulverised coral high into the sky.

Despite the extraordinary energy release, Dr Trembanis thought much of the scarred seafloor would have been covered over with sediment by now.

Instead, his interdisciplinary team of oceanographers, geologists, marine archaeologists and engineers found a well-defined depression.

Using sonar, they mapped a structure that is 800m across with about 10m of relief.

"It seems as if Captain Marvel herself has punched the planet and put a dent into it," Dr Trembanis told reporters here at the American Geophysical Union meeting where he is presenting the team's investigations.

"We wanted to draw back the curtain and be able to really reveal this scene," he told BBC News.

"It really wasn't until the late '80s, early '90s, when divers could get into the area. And at that time, they could only take a limited look at a few different wrecks.

"We were using advanced sonar technology; we could paint the entire scene. It's a bit like visiting the Grand Canyon with a flashlight versus going in the middle of the day and illuminating the whole area.

"We could start to see the arrangement of the ships; we could see how they were aligned relative to each other, and we could see that this crater still remains - nature is still showing us this wound that it received from the bomb."

Remarkably, the crater has a rippled structure that looks a bit like rose petals. It's evidence of all that material initially thrown into the sky then falling back down through the water column and spreading out across the seafloor.

Part of the motivation for the survey was to understand the continuing environmental impacts better. Although radiation levels are much reduced, there is an ongoing pollution problem coming from the sacrificial ships.

These vessels - old units from the US, Japanese and German navies - were not prepared with the expectation that they would become artificial reefs. If that was the intention, they would have been stripped down.

Instead, the war-game scenario demanded that they should be left in position as if operational. That meant they were fuelled and even had munitions aboard.

"As we were mapping, I could know without looking up when we were near the [US aircraft carrier] Saratoga because we could smell the bunker fuel; it was so heavy and is still streaking out.

"The Nagato - which was the Japanese flagship that [Admiral Isoroku] Yamamoto used to plan the attack on Pearl Harbor - had a streak of fuel coming out from it for many miles."

As the ships continue to disintegrate in the water, this pollution could become a much bigger problem, Dr Trembanis said.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-50724632

[CaaC (John)+]

Lewis stone circle has star-shaped lightning strike

Evidence of a "massive" lightning strike has been found at the centre of a stone circle in the Western Isles.

A single large strike, or many smaller ones on the same spot, left a star-shaped magnetic anomaly at the 4,000-year-old site in Lewis.

Scientists made the discovery at Site XI or Airigh na Beinne Bige, a hillside stone circle now consisting of a single standing stone.

The site is at the famous Calanais Standing Stones.

Scientists said the lightning strike, which was identified in a geophysics survey, could show a potential link between the construction of ancient stone circles and the forces of nature. They said the lightning struck sometime before peat enveloped the stone circle at Site XI 3,000 years ago. The discovery is detailed in new research published online.

Dr Richard Bates, of the University of St Andrews, said: "Such clear evidence for lightning strikes is extremely rare in the UK and the association with this stone circle is unlikely to be coincidental.

"Whether the lightning at Site XI focused on a tree or rock which is no longer there, or the monument itself attracted strikes, is uncertain.

"However, this remarkable evidence suggests that the forces of nature could have been intimately linked with everyday life and beliefs of the early farming communities on the island."

The discovery was made by the Calanais Virtual Reconstruction Project, a joint venture led by the University of St Andrews with standing stones trust Urras nan Tursachan and the University of Bradford and supported by funding from Highlands and Islands Enterprise.

The same project has also produced a 3D virtual model recreating another of the area's "lost" stone circle, Na Dromannan.

Its stones are today either lying flat or buried under the peat.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-50891787

 

 

[CaaC (John)+]

How a mysterious seismic hum led scientists to the birth of an enormous undersea volcano

The atmosphere during the visit of the French President in the French Indian Ocean island of Mayotte on October 22, 2019, (Stephane Lemouton/Pool/Abaca/Sipa USA(Sipa via AP Images)

The volcano came into the world wailing, but for a while, nobody heard it.

It was born in the summer of 2018 just off the coast of the tiny island of Mayotte, a French territory halfway between Madagascar and Mozambique. An earthquake swarm in May of that year precipitated its arrival like a drum roll. Magma rumbled from within a reservoir at the top of the Earth’s mantle. The magma migrated up through the crust, sending tremors across the nearby island as it moved — until finally, sometime in late June or early July, with no precise birth date yet recorded, it popped its head out of the ocean floor.

For months, the underwater volcano announced its own birth with mysterious cries: a low seismic humming too faint to feel. It wasn’t until Nov. 11, 2018, that anyone noticed. Something strange happened that day. The seismic waves travelled all over the world, to Kenya and Chile, Canada and Hawaii, nearly 11,000 miles away. And the humming got louder, longer, lasting up to a half-hour. 

“This is a most odd and unusual seismic signal,” a New Zealand earthquake enthusiast wrote on Twitter while linking to a U.S. Geological Survey seismograph.

The post caught the attention of seismologists worldwide, as they tried to pinpoint the source of the bizarre, droning frequency.

It was coming from the coast of Mayotte, they soon learned — and now a team of German geoscientists has pieced together exactly why.

In a paper published this week in the journal Nature Geoscience, the researchers have deciphered the tumultuous events in the depths of the Indian Ocean that brought the Mayotte volcano into being, tracing the drainage of the “exceptionally deep” magma reservoir up to the ocean floor while discovering the cause of the mysterious humming.

Simone Cesca, a seismologist at the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences and the paper’s lead author, told The Washington Post Thursday that this marks “the first time we’ve really observed the birth of a volcano on the seafloor.” Last year, a team of French seismologists were the first to confirm the existence of the new submarine volcano.

“The whole episode is really, really rare,” Cesca said. “Seeing the deep magma chamber, seeing the magma’s propagation to the surface, seeing the volcano being born — I think this is unique, absolutely.”

Cesca said that what his team tried to do was compile the observations made my numerous geologists over the last 18 months and connect all the dots, starting with the earthquakes.

Mayotte, a volcanic island in the Comoros archipelago home to more than 250,000 people, has not experienced a volcano eruption in approximately 4,000 years, according to the Nature Geoscience paper. Earthquakes with a magnitude over 4.0 have only been recorded several times in history in the region, according to the paper — which is why the series of large earthquakes in May 2018, peaking at a magnitude of 5.9, caught seismologists’ attention. It was the largest earthquake ever recorded on Mayotte.

Eleonora Rivalta, a physicist who studies earthquakes and volcanoes at the German Research Centre for Geosciences, said that her team began its research that May. A volcanologist on the research team had a sister in Mayotte and worried for her safety, she said.

The earthquakes, they soon learned, were a symptom of something much bigger.

Deep in the crust of the Earth, the magma was stirring. “A pocket of magma decided it wanted to erupt,” Rivalta said, and so it started heading for the surface — the seafloor. According to the scientists’ estimate, it is one of the largest magma chambers ever discovered, at approximately 25 to 30 kilometres deep. “Once you create a channel to the surface, then the magma starts to pour out and create the volcano,” Rivalta said. “This is the cause of everything.”

The magma chamber started to drain as the lava moved toward the ocean floor. And as the chamber became increasingly hollow, its roof started to cave, Rivalta said.

Then came phase two: the mysterious humming — the quiet earthquakes you couldn’t feel.

“Every time the rock sags into the chamber, it creates a resonance,” Cesca said, “and this produces this strange signal that you see far away.”

The seismologists recorded 407 unusual signals coming from the site of the magma chamber near Mayotte, and nearly 7,000 earthquakes of varying intensity, most of which could not be felt on land. The seismic humming started in June, according to data collected in the paper, before finally being picked up Nov. 11, 2018.

Stephen P. Hicks, who studies earthquake seismology at the Imperial College of London and who is unrelated to the team of Mayotte researchers, said he does not believe scientists could have made the discovery of the underwater volcano so quickly if the Nov. 11 signal not been detected.

In May, the team of French researchers discovered the enormous newborn volcano, three miles in diameter, rising 800 meters (about half a mile) from the seafloor. “We have never seen anything like this,” the Nathalie Feuillet of the Institute of Geophysics in Paris, one of the French research organizations, told Science magazine.

The discovery led many scientists to suspect that the seismic hums must have originated from the volcano. Cesca says his team is the first to confirm the connection while identifying the more exact cause: the magma chamber’s sagging roof.

Hicks said that a “unique aspect of this study is it shows how quickly the magma can rise and create either a new volcano or an eruption.”

“This paper gives us a framework to interpret these seismic events,” he said. “The amount of magma that moved might have been the greatest amount ever observed.”

Multiple teams of French researchers have papers forthcoming on their findings, and one was already preprinted last year but not yet peer-reviewed. The preliminary report echoes the findings of the German team.

For now, Cesca said he suspects the young volcano is just about done growing, as most of the magma that built the volcano has likely drained to the surface. But the chamber is so deep inside the Earth’s core, he said, that “we never know.”

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/offbeat/how-a-mysterious-seismic-hum-led-scientists-to-the-birth-of-an-enormous-undersea-volcano/ar-BBYMSXy

[Bluewolf]

Immune cell which kills most cancers discovered by accident by British scientists in major breakthrough

A new type of immune cell which kills most cancers has been discovered by accident by British scientists, in a finding which could herald a major breakthrough in treatment.

Researchers at Cardiff University were analysing blood from a bank in Wales, looking for immune cells that could fight bacteria, when they found an entirely new type of T-cell.

That new immune cell carries a never-before-seen receptor which acts like a grappling hook, latching on to most human cancers, while ignoring healthy cells. 

In laboratory studies, immune cells equipped with the new receptor were shown to kill lung, skin, blood, colon, breast, bone, prostate, ovarian, kidney and cervical cancer.

Professor Andrew Sewell, lead author on the study and an expert in T-cells from Cardiff University’s School of Medicine, said it was “highly unusual” to find a cell that had broad cancer-fighting therapies, and raised the prospect of a universal therapy.

“This was a serendipitous finding, nobody knew this cell existed,” Prof Sewell told The Telegraph.

A new type of immune cell which kills most cancers has been discovered by accident by British scientists, in a finding which could herald a major breakthrough in treatment.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/immune-cell-which-kills-most-cancers-discovered-by-accident-by-british-scientists-in-major-breakthrough/ar-BBZ9jk4?ocid=spartanntp

Edited January 21, 2020 by Bluewolf

[nudge]

20 minutes ago, Bluewolf said:

Immune cell which kills most cancers discovered by accident by British scientists in major breakthrough

A new type of immune cell which kills most cancers has been discovered by accident by British scientists, in a finding which could herald a major breakthrough in treatment.

Researchers at Cardiff University were analysing blood from a bank in Wales, looking for immune cells that could fight bacteria, when they found an entirely new type of T-cell.

That new immune cell carries a never-before-seen receptor which acts like a grappling hook, latching on to most human cancers, while ignoring healthy cells. 

In laboratory studies, immune cells equipped with the new receptor were shown to kill lung, skin, blood, colon, breast, bone, prostate, ovarian, kidney and cervical cancer.

Professor Andrew Sewell, lead author on the study and an expert in T-cells from Cardiff University’s School of Medicine, said it was “highly unusual” to find a cell that had broad cancer-fighting therapies, and raised the prospect of a universal therapy.

“This was a serendipitous finding, nobody knew this cell existed,” Prof Sewell told The Telegraph.

A new type of immune cell which kills most cancers has been discovered by accident by British scientists, in a finding which could herald a major breakthrough in treatment.

Researchers at Cardiff University were analysing blood from a bank in Wales, looking for immune cells that could fight bacteria, when they found an entirely new type of T-cell.

That new immune cell carries a never-before-seen receptor which acts like a grappling hook, latching on to most human cancers, while ignoring healthy cells. 

In laboratory studies, immune cells equipped with the new receptor were shown to kill lung, skin, blood, colon, breast, bone, prostate, ovarian, kidney and cervical cancer.

Professor Andrew Sewell, lead author on the study and an expert in T-cells from Cardiff University’s School of Medicine, said it was “highly unusual” to find a cell that had broad cancer-fighting therapies, and raised the prospect of a universal therapy.

“This was a serendipitous finding, nobody knew this cell existed,” Prof Sewell told The Telegraph.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/immune-cell-which-kills-most-cancers-discovered-by-accident-by-british-scientists-in-major-breakthrough/ar-BBZ9jk4?ocid=spartanntp

Read about it earlier today; very fascinating and hopefully it will show even more promise when human trials start.

[CaaC (John)+]

Earth's oldest asteroid impact 'may have ended ice age'

Scientists have identified the world's oldest asteroid crater in Australia, adding it may explain how the planet was lifted from an ice age.

The asteroid hit Yarrabubba in Western Australia about 2.2 billion years ago - making the crater about half the age of Earth, researchers say.

Their conclusion was reached by testing minerals found in rocks at the site.

The scientists say the find is exciting because it could account for a warming event during that era.

The Curtin University research was published in the journal Nature Communications on Wednesday.

How did they date it?

The crater was discovered in the dry outback in 1979, but geologists had not previously tested how old it was.

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Due to billions of years of erosion, the crater is not visible to the eye. Scientists mapped scars in the area's magnetic field to determine its 70km (43 miles) diameter.

"The landscape is actually very flat because it's so old, but the rocks there are distinctive," researcher Prof Chris Kirkland told the BBC.

To determine when the asteroid hit Earth, the team examined tiny zircon and monazite crystals in the rocks. They were "shocked" in the strike and now can be read like "tree rings", Prof Kirkland said.

These crystals hold tiny amounts of uranium. Because uranium decays into lead at a consistent pace, the researchers were able to calculate how much time had passed.

It is at least 200 million years older than the next most ancient impact structure - the Vredefort Dome in South Africa.

"We were interested in the area because the Western Australian landscape is very old but we didn't expect [the crater] to be as old as this," Prof Kirkland said.

"It's absolutely possible that there's an older crater out there just waiting to be discovered, but the difficulty is in finding the crust before it erodes and you lose that early Earth history".

Could it have ended an ice age?

The timing of the impact could also explain why the world warmed around this time, according to the researchers.

Scientists believe the planet was previously in one of its "Snowball Earth" periods when it was largely covered in ice. At some point, the ice sheets melted and the planet began to rapidly warm.

The ancient memories trapped in the world's glaciers

"The age of the [crater] corresponds pretty precisely with the end of a potential global glacial period," Prof Kirkland said.

"So the impact may have had significant changes to our planetary climate."

Using computer modelling, the team calculated that the asteroid struck a kilometres-thick ice sheet covering the Earth. The event would have released huge volumes of water vapour, a greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere.

This could have helped the planet's warming during the Proterozoic era - a stage when oxygen had just appeared in the atmosphere and complex life had not yet formed.

"Obviously we were very excited just with the age itself," Prof Kirkland said. "But placing that right with the context of Earth's other events makes it become really very interesting."

There is not enough modelling from the time to comprehensively test the theory, but "the rocks tell a story about the massive impact into the planet".

Another theory for the warming event is that volcanic eruptions may have pushed carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-51201168

[CaaC (John)+]

Science & Environment

Fireflies face extinction risk - and tourists are partly to blame

 

Firefly tourism is on the rise globally but scientists are warning it may contribute to the risk of the insect's extinction.

"I spotted a hundred flickering lights, illuminating a palm like a Christmas tree."

"Our guide waved his flashlight at the fireflies. They slowly engulfed us - we were surrounded by a shiny galaxy of glowing beetle stomachs."

"I reached out a hand and captured one in my fist."

Reading this travel blogger's enchanting experience in 2019 makes it clear why firefly tours are popular but done badly, it risks killing the insects.

Habitat loss and light pollution from urbanisation and industrialisation are the leading threats to firefly populations, according to research published this week.

But firefly tourism, which attracts thousands of visitors in countries including Mexico, the US, the Philippines and Thailand, is a growing concern for conservationists.

"Getting out into the night and enjoying fireflies in their natural habitat is an awe-inspiring experience," Prof Sara Lewis at Tufts University, who led the research, told the BBC.

But tourists often inadvertently kill fireflies by stepping on them, or disturb their habitat by shining lights and causing soil erosion.

Firefly festivals are organised in countries including Japan, Belgium, and India, and social media is magnifying this tourism, she adds.

How tourism can kill fireflies

The tiny town of Nanacamilpa in Mexico became a celebrated firefly spot in the past decade.

Some visitors post their sparkling photos on Instagram, flouting the ban on photography that many site managers impose, says local photographer Pedro Berruecos.

The Mexican fireflies are especially vulnerable to tourists, Prof Lewis explains.

FULL REPORT

[CaaC (John)+]

Deforested parts of Amazon 'emitting more CO2 than they absorb'

Up to one-fifth of the Amazon rainforest is emitting more CO2 than it absorbs, new research suggests.

Results from a decade-long study of greenhouse gases over the Amazon basin appear to show around 20% of the total area has become a net source of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

One of the main causes is deforestation.

While trees are growing they absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere; dead trees release it again.

Millions of trees have been lost to logging and fires in recent years.

The results of the study, which have not yet been published, have implications for the effort to combat climate change.

They suggest that the Amazon rainforest - a vital carbon store, or "sink", that slows the pace of global warming - may be turning into a carbon source faster than previously thought.

Every two weeks for the past 10 years, a team of scientists led by Prof Luciana Gatti, a researcher at Brazil's National Institute for Space Research (INPE), has been measuring greenhouse gases by flying aircraft fitted with sensors over different parts of the Amazon basin.

What the group found was startling: while most of the rainforest still retains its ability to absorb large quantities of carbon dioxide - especially in wetter years - one portion of the forest, which is especially heavily deforested, appears to have lost that capacity.

FULL REPORT

[CaaC (John)+]

An ancient tsunami may have struck the Falkland Islands

The Falkland Islands may at some point in the future face a major tsunami.

Scientists have found evidence of ancient slope failures on the seafloor to the south of the British Overseas Territory.

Computer models suggest these underwater landslides would have been capable of sending waves crashing on to the Falklands' coastline that were tens of metres high.

Fortunately, such events only appear to happen once every million years or so.

That means islanders shouldn't stay awake at night worrying about them, says Dr Uisdean Nicholson who's been investigating the issue.

FULL REPORT