Arctic May Boost Oil and Gas Reserves
Posted: May 31, 2009 Filed under: Natural Resources Leave a comment »
Trans-Alaska Pipeline (background). It could be in business for years to come carrying the oil predicted to exist off Alaska's coast.
The first-ever comprehensive assessment of Arctic oil and gas deposits reveals that 13% of the world’s undiscovered oil and 30% of its undiscovered natural gas could be trapped beneath the far north’s barren land and icy waters. The potential resources are unlikely to alter world trends in oil and gas trade, however, and will probably keep Russia the king of natural gas for years to come.
Ancient Volcanic Eruptions Caused Global Mass Extinction
Posted: May 31, 2009 Filed under: inventions, Volcanoes Leave a comment »
A previously unknown giant volcanic eruption that led to global mass extinction 260 million years ago has been uncovered by scientists at the University of Leeds.A previously unknown giant volcanic eruption that led to global mass extinction 260 million years ago has been uncovered by scientists at the University of Leeds.
The eruption in the Emeishan province of south-west China unleashed around half a million cubic kilometres of lava, covering an area 5 times the size of Wales, and wiping out marine life around the world.
Unusually, scientists were able to pinpoint the exact timing of the eruption and directly link it to a mass extinction event in the study published in Science. This is because the eruptions occurred in a shallow sea – meaning that the lava appears today as a distinctive layer of igneous rock sandwiched between layers of sedimentary rock containing easily datable fossilised marine life.The layer of fossilised rock directly after the eruption shows mass extinction of different life forms, clearly linking the onset of the eruptions with a major environmental catastrophe.The global effect of the eruption is also due to the proximity of the volcano to a shallow sea. The collision of fast flowing lava with shallow sea water caused a violent explosion at the start of the eruptions – throwing huge quantities of sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere.
Jupiter-like Planet Found Orbiting One Of Smallest Stars
Posted: May 30, 2009 Filed under: inventions, Solar System, Space Leave a comment »
A long-proposed tool for hunting planets has netted its first catch — a Jupiter-like planet orbiting one of the smallest stars known.
The technique, called astrometry, was first attempted 50 years ago to search for planets outside our solar system, called exoplanets. It involves measuring the precise motions of a star on the sky as an unseen planet tugs the star back and forth. But the method requires very precise measurements over long periods of time, and until now, has failed to turn up any exoplanets.
A team of two astronomers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., has, for the past 12 years, been mounting an astrometry instrument to a telescope at the Palomar Observatory near San Diego. After careful, intermittent observations of 30 stars, the team has identified a new exoplanet around one of them — the first ever to be discovered around a star using astrometry.
Astronomers Take Close Look into Black Hole’s Edge
Posted: May 29, 2009 Filed under: Space Leave a comment »
Using new data from ESA’s XMM-Newton spaceborne observatory, astronomers have probed closer than ever to a supermassive black hole lying deep at the core of a distant active galaxy.
The galaxy – known as 1H0707-495 – was observed during four 48-hr-long orbits of XMM-Newton around Earth, starting in January 2008. The black hole at its centre was thought to be partially obscured from view by intervening clouds of gas and dust, but these current observations have revealed the innermost depths of the galaxy.
Stem Cells Transplanted From Marrow Into Heart May Improve Heart’s Performance
Posted: May 29, 2009 Filed under: Uncategorized 1 Comment »
The Cardiology department and the Area of Cell Therapy of Cordoba hospital Reina Sofia are carrying out clinical tests with patients who have suffered from a severe heart attack. With the implantation of the patient’s stem cells, the heart regenerates thus improving its wall motion, that is, its cardiac performance.
Yale Study Finds Evidence that Damaged Ecosystems Can Recover Rapidly
Posted: May 29, 2009 Filed under: Ecosystem, opinions Leave a comment »A recent study by Yale University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies reports that if humans commit to the restoration effort, most ecosystems can recover from very major disruption within decades to half-centuries.
Ring of Fire
Posted: May 29, 2009 Filed under: seismic activities, Volcanoes 1 Comment »
The Pacific Ring of Fire is an area where large numbers of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions occur in the basin of the Pacific Ocean. In a 40,000 km horseshoe shape, it is associated with a nearly continuous series of oceanic trenches, volcanic arcs, and volcanic belts and plate movements. The Ring of Fire has 452 volcanoes and is home to over 75% of the world’s active and dormant volcanoes. It is sometimes called the circum-Pacific belt or the circum-Pacific seismic belt.
In the ring of fire only a few of its parts are curved in the ring’s direction. The most of its parts are curved in the opposite direction. According with the theory of a group of Australian scientists the curve of each part depends on its length. Usually the parts with less than 3000km length are curved in the opposite direction.To understand this theory is important to know that all the subducted plate is recycled inside the Earth. So this plate is ended in the border of the plate on the Earth’s surface. In this process once the plate goes in the mantle the materials which wrap it can flow around the plate.As the plate is subducted into the inside of the Earth it is also bended because of the mantle materials that are flowing around it. This deformation is showed in the surface as de curved subduction zone. That’s why the arch usually goes back related with the tectonic plate movement.
Japan: Ten percent of the world’s active volcanoes are found in Japan, which lies in a zone of extreme crustal instability. They are formed by subduction of the Pacific and Philippine plates. As many as 1,500 earthquakes are recorded yearly, and magnitudes of four to six on the Richter scale are not uncommon. Minor tremors occur almost daily in one part of the country or another, causing slight shaking of buildings. Major earthquakes occur infrequently; the most famous in the twentieth century were: the great Kantō earthquake of 1923, in which 130,000 people died; and the Great Hanshin Earthquake of 17th January 1995, in which 6,434 people died.
Mexico: Volcanoes of Mexico are related to subduction of the Cocos and Rivera plates to the east, which has produced large explosive eruptions. Most active volcanoes in Mexico occur in the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt, which extends 900 kilometres (559 mi) from west to east across central-southern Mexico
Canada: Although little-known to the general public, British Columbia and Yukon Territory are home to a vast region of volcanoes and volcanic activity in the Pacific Ring of Fire. Several mountains that many British Columbians look at every day are dormant volcanoes. Most of them have erupted during the Pleistocene and Holocene.
Kamchatka Peninsula: The Kamchatka Peninsula in the Russian Far East, is one of the most various and active volcanic areas in the world, with an area of 472,300 km². This is where rapid subduction of the Pacific Plate fuels the intense volcanism
The volcanoes in Indonesia are among the most active of the Pacific Ring of Fire. They are formed due to subduction zones between the Eurasian Plate and the Indo-Australian Plate. Some of the volcanoes are notable for their eruptions, for instance, Krakatau for its global effects in 1883, Lake Toba for its super volcanic eruption which was responsible for six years of volcanic winter, and Mount Tambora for the most violent eruption in recorded history in 1815.
Indian Institute of Technology Bombay develops low-cost GIS software
Posted: May 28, 2009 Filed under: GIS Leave a comment »Indian Institute of Technology here has developed a low-cost Geographic Information System (GIS) software which can be used for resource management by community development programmes, government sectors, NGOs and industries. “The software is now made commercially available so that developing countries could make optimal use of their resources,” Dr Parvatham Venkatachalam of IIT said. The software will be distributed in the market by Bhugol GIS Pvt Ltd under the Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship of IIT. The software is a highly capable GIS planning tool and is tailor-made for users with wide range of operations such as map database creation, query and retrieval, analysis, and visualization.
Is Antarctica Cooling After All?
Posted: May 27, 2009 Filed under: Global Warming 1 Comment »
While most of the planet has been warming for decades, part of Antartica, the East Antarctic Ice Sheet — has actually been getting colder. At least that was the general consensus. A major study by Pennsylvania State University; NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.; and NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City shows this may not be the case at all. The work was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation.
The West Antarctic Ice Sheet, with an average elevation of about 6,000 feet above sea level, is substantially lower than East Antarctica, which has an average elevation of more than 10,000 feet. While the entire continent is essentially a desert, West Antarctica is subject to relatively warm, moist storms and receives much greater snowfall than East Antarctica.The researchers devised a statistical technique that uses data from satellites and from Antarctic weather stations to make a new estimate of temperature trends.
“People were calculating with their heads instead of actually doing the math,” Steig said. “What we did is interpolate carefully instead of just using the back of an envelope. While other interpolations had been done previously, no one had really taken advantage of the satellite data, which provide crucial information about spatial patterns of temperature change.”
The study found that warming in West Antarctica exceeded one-tenth of a degree Celsius per decade for the last 50 years and more than offset the cooling in East Antarctica.The illustration depicts the warming that scientists have determined has occurred in West Antarctica during the last 50 years, with the dark red showing the area that has warmed the most.
Now Trees Will Produce Power for You
Posted: May 26, 2009 Filed under: Alternative Energy 1 Comment »
With all the potential good wind power could do for the carbon economy, one of the objections hindering its implementation is aesthetic; people simply don’t want massive turbines dotting the landscape and marring their views. The Dutch founder of London’s Solar Botanic Ltd. was wrestling with that very issue in 2002 when the idea began to blossom: why not redesign the technology to blend into the natural world?
Solar Botanic’s ambitious goal involves layering existing technologies three-fold into the natural form of a leaf and producing fake power-producinSolar Botanic estimates that a single tree with a canopy 20 feet in diameter could power an average home, producing about 120,000 kilowatt-hours over two decades. Forests, on the other hand, could power entire population centers. But a more reasonable deployment scenario involves greening up parking lots while providing power to charge electric vehicles or planting the “trees” along highways to capture the turbulence of passing traffic.g trees that individually could power an entire home. Each “nanoleaf” would incorporate photovoltaics for collecting solar power, thermoelectrics for converting the sun’s heat to electricity, and piezoelectric nanogenerators in the leaves’ petioles (the stalk connecting the leaf to the branch) that capture the kinetic energy from the wind rustling the leaves.
Solar Botanic estimates that a single tree with a canopy 20 feet in diameter could power an average home, producing about 120,000 kilowatt-hours over two decades. Forests, on the other hand, could power entire population centers. But a more reasonable deployment scenario involves greening up parking lots while providing power to charge electric vehicles or planting the “trees” along highways to capture the turbulence of passing traffic.
