By ZAC CAMPBELL

This is the hilarious moment that an octopus smacked a fish in the face while both animals were hunting together underwater. 

Video footage shows the tentacled creature appearing to be solely focused on finding food at the seabed with a nearby fish doing the same. 

With the pair appearing to forage in relative tranquility, the octopus comes out with a hugely unexpected move, swiping the fish away in anger as it got too close. 

The octopus then continues to moodily look for sustenance while the shocked fish is seen hurriedly swimming away to avoid further punishment from the irate mollusc. 

Stating its claim as an animal not to be crossed at the depths of the ocean, the octopus can then be seen prowling around for more food - but without challenging any further fish to a fight. 

Video footage shows the tentacled creature appearing to be solely focused on finding food at the seabed with a nearby fish doing the same

With the pair appearing to forage in peace next to one another, the octopus comes out with a hugely unexpected move, swiping the fish away in anger as it got too close

New research shows that there may be an explanation for the octopuses' behaviour, as it suggests that octopuses - previously thought to be solitary creatures - might sometimes socialise with fish in order to share the responsibility of hunting.

The findings broaden our understanding of the shared social life of octopuses and fish, scientists say.

In the past, the animals have been seen to hunt together for shared prey such as molluscs and crustaceans.

The new study sheds more light on this, revealing that when hunting prey together, some octopus and fish species appear to share leadership.

However, it is not always a harmonious group hunt, with the scientists observing aggression among group members, including fish displacing others by darting towards them, and octopuses punching some fish to the outer areas of the group.

After analysing data from 120 hours of dives, scientists found that leadership is shared for different types of decisions.

For example, goatfish specialised in deciding where the hunting pack moves - while the octopus decided whether and when the move would be made.

The authors note that although other types of mixed-species hunting is known - such as badger-coyote, mixed birds, and moray eel-grouper groups - they appear to be less flexible in using social information to change strategy compared to octopus-fish hunting groups.

Octopuses and fish hunt together, taking it in turns to lead according to a new study

Writing in the Nature Ecology and Evolution journal, the authors say: 'These findings expand our current understanding of what leadership is and what sociality is.'

Eduardo Sampaio, from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behaviour in Germany, and colleagues tracked octopus–fish hunting packs during scuba diving expeditions in the Red Sea.

They saw 13 hunting groups consisting of one day octopus and different species of fish, including gold-saddle goatfish and blacktip groupers.

The researchers suggest that this joint effort leads to better success compared to the octopus or fish acting alone.

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

18-11-2024 om 21:00 geschreven door peter  

When the wind is forced to move up and over an obstacle, it creates a lower-pressure zone on the leeward side. As the wind moves, it creates standing waves. If conditions are right, these waves become visible when the moisture condenses.

The Taieri Pet forms over New Zealand’s Rock and Pillar Range in the Strath-Taieri region of Otago on New Zealand’s South Island.

The Otago region on New Zealand’s South Island is home to the Taieri Pet.

Image Credit: Peetel, (Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International.)

The cloud is a common feature near the town of Middlemarch. It’s mentioned in newspapers as far back as the 1890s. Locals sometimes took Taieri Pet’s appearance as a signal that a storm was coming.

The Operational Land Image (OLI) on Landsat 8 captured this stunning image of the Taieri Pet in September. Landsat 8 follows a polar orbit that allows it to observe the entire surface of the Earth every 16 days.

The Landsat satellites have been monitoring Earth for over 50 years from their orbit 705 km above us. The images and data are widely used by scientists, but they’re also beautiful portraits of our extraordinary, once-in-a-solar-system planet.

Anybody can enjoy the Landsat galleries, found here.

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

14-11-2024 om 14:35 geschreven door peter  

The egg or the chicken? An ancient unicellular says egg!

The first life forms to appear on Earth were unicellular, i.e. composed of a single cell, such as yeast or bacteria. Later, animals - multicellular organisms - evolved, developing from a single cell, the egg cell, to form complex beings. This embryonic development follows precise stages that are remarkably similar between animal species and could date back to a period well before the appearance of animals. However, the transition from unicellular species to multicellular organisms is still very poorly understood.

These cells divide without growing any further, forming multicellular colonies resembling the early stages of animal embryonic development.

Recently appointed as an assistant professor at the Department of Biochemistry in the UNIGE Faculty of Science, and formerly an SNSF Ambizione researcher at EPFL, Omaya Dudin and his team have focused on Chromosphaera perkinsii, or C. perkinsii, an ancestral species of protist. This unicellular organism separated from the animal evolutionary line more than a billion years ago, offering valuable insight into the mechanisms that may have led to the transition to multicellularity.

By observing C. perkinsii, the scientists discovered that these cells, once they have reached their maximum size, divide without growing any further, forming multicellular colonies resembling the early stages of animal embryonic development. Unprecedentedly, these colonies persist for around a third of their life cycle and comprise at least two distinct cell types, a surprising phenomenon for this type of organism.

Images of the multicellular development of the ichthyosporean Chromosphaera perkinsii, a close cousin of animals. In red we can see the membranes and in blue the nuclei with their DNA. The image was obtained using expansion microscopy.

© O. Dudin, UNIGE

‘‘Although C. perkinsii is a unicellular species, this behaviour shows that multicellular coordination and differentiation processes are already present in the species, well before the first animals appeared on Earth’’, explains Omaya Dudin, who led this research.

Even more surprisingly, the way these cells divide and the three-dimensional structure they adopt are strikingly reminiscent of the early stages of embryonic development in animals. In collaboration with Dr John Burns (Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences), analysis of the genetic activity within these colonies revealed intriguing similarities with that observed in animal embryos, suggesting that the genetic programmes governing complex multicellular development were already present over a billion years ago.

Marine Olivetta, laboratory technician at the Department of Biochemistry in the UNIGE Faculty of Science and first author of the study, explains: “It’s fascinating, a species discovered very recently allows us to go back in time more than a billion years”. In fact, the study shows that either the principle of embryonic development existed before animals, or multicellular development mechanisms evolved separately in C. perkinsii.

This discovery could also shed new light on a long-standing scientific debate concerning 600 million-year-old fossils that resemble embryos, and could challenge certain traditional conceptions of multicellularity.

VIDEOS

{ https://www.unige.ch/ }

08-11-2024 om 22:20 geschreven door peter  

Wat kwam er eerst, de kip of het ei? Onderzoekers zeggen nu: het ei!

In een prehistorisch eencellig organisme is een celdeling ontdekt die lijkt op die van een dierlijk embryo. En dat is interessant, want dit geeft aan dat embryonale ontwikkeling mogelijk al bestond voordat dieren zich ontwikkelden.

Al eeuwenlang vragen wetenschappers zich af wat er eerst was: de kip of het ei? Vorig jaar stelden onderzoekers nog dat het de kip was. Maar een nieuwe studie komt nu tot een andere conclusie. Volgens deze onderzoekers zijn er nu namelijk overtuigende aanwijzingen dat het ei toch echt het eerste was.

Eerste levensvormen
De eerste levensvormen op aarde waren eencellig, zoals gist of bacteriën. Later evolueerden dieren, meercellige organismen, die zich vanaf één cel, de eicel, ontwikkelden tot complexe wezens. Deze embryonale ontwikkeling verloopt in verschillende stadia die opvallende overeenkomsten vertonen tussen dierlijke soorten en mogelijk al stammen uit een tijd vóór de eerste dieren. De overgang van eencellige naar meercellige organismen wordt echter nog steeds niet volledig begrepen.

Chromosphaera perkinsii
In een nieuwe studie hebben onderzoekers de eencellige soort Chromosphaera perkinsii bestudeerd. C. perkinsii werd in 2017 gevonden in zeesedimenten rondom Hawaï en is een voorouderlijke soort van protisten. De eerste aanwijzingen voor het bestaan van deze soort op aarde gaan meer dan een miljard jaar terug, lang vóór de opkomst van de eerste dieren. Omdat dit eencellige organisme zich meer dan een miljard jaar geleden afsplitste van de dierlijke evolutielijn, verschaft het belangrijke inzichten in de processen die mogelijk geleid hebben tot de overgang naar meercelligheid. “Het is fascinerend dat een soort die pas recent is ontdekt, ons in staat stelt om meer dan een miljard jaar terug in de tijd te kijken”, zegt onderzoeksleider Marine Olivetta.

Multicellulaire structuren
Het onderzoek naar C. perkinsii leidt tot een opmerkelijke ontdekking. Zo ontdekten de wetenschappers dat de cellen, zodra ze hun maximale grootte hebben bereikt, zich delen zonder verder te groeien. Vervolgens vormen ze multicellulaire structuren. Opmerkelijk is dat deze structuren ongeveer een derde van hun levenscyclus intact blijven en minstens twee verschillende celtypen bevatten, wat een verrassend fenomeen is voor dit soort organisme. “Hoewel C. perkinsii een eencellige soort is, laat dit gedrag zien dat processen van multicellulaire coördinatie en differentiatie al aanwezig waren in deze soort, lang voordat de eerste dieren op aarde verschenen”, aldus onderzoeker Omaya Dudin.

Dierlijke embryo’s
Nog verrassender is de manier waarop deze cellen zich delen en de driedimensionale structuur die ze aannemen. Dit lijkt namelijk sterk op de vroege stadia van de embryonale ontwikkeling bij dieren. De analyse van de genetische activiteit in deze structuren vertonen dus opvallende overeenkomsten met die in dierlijke embryo’s.

Het ei
Deze waarnemingen wijzen op twee mogelijke verklaringen: ofwel de genetische programma’s voor embryonale ontwikkeling bestonden al vóór de opkomst van dieren, of C. perkinsii ontwikkelde zich onafhankelijk om vergelijkbare processen te vertonen. Dit zou betekenen dat de natuur al de genetische middelen had om ‘eieren te maken’ lang voordat het ‘kippen uitvond’.

Inzicht
Vergeet dus de kip, want mogelijk was toch het ei er het eerste. Deze ontdekking zou overigens ook nieuwe inzichten kunnen bieden in een ander langlopend wetenschappelijk debat over fossielen van 600 miljoen jaar oud die op embryo’s lijken. Bovendien zou het sommige traditionele ideeën over meercelligheid kunnen uitdagen.

Al met al werpt de studie, gepubliceerd in Nature, nieuwe perspectieven op de overgang van eencellige naar meercellige organismen en kan de manier waarop we de evolutie van multicellulaire levensvormen begrijpen, fundamenteel veranderen. De studie daagt ook traditionele opvattingen uit over de oorsprong van embryonale ontwikkeling en biedt stof tot nadenken over de evolutie van multicellulaire organismen als geheel.

Bronmateriaal

• "The egg or the chicken? An ancient unicellular says egg!" - Université de Genève
• Afbeelding bovenaan dit artikel:

{ https://scientias.nl/ }

08-11-2024 om 22:06 geschreven door peter  

The Gulf Stream is on the verge of COLLAPSING, leading climate change scientists warn - plunging the UK into a new ice age

• READ MORE: What will happen to the UK if the Gulf Stream collapses in 2025? 

By WILIAM HUNTER

The network of ocean currents which keep the Earth's climate stable could be about to collapse, scientists have warned.

In an open letter, 44 of the world's leading climate scientists say that key Atlantic Ocean currents - including the Gulf Stream - are on the brink of failure.

The scientists caution that the collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) could lead to 'devastating and irreversible impacts' which will affect 'the entire world for centuries to come'.

The 2004 movie 'The Day After Tomorrow' (pictured) predicted that the world would enter a new ice age after climate change triggers the collapse of the Gulf Stream. This may have been science fiction 20 years ago, but leading scientists have now warned that the film's terrifying plot could be coming true 

As warm water travels northwards from the tropics, it hits the sea ice around Greenland and the Nordic countries, cooling and becoming much saltier.

As the water cools it becomes denser, sinking rapidly towards the bottom of the ocean where it flows back southwards before once again warming and rising to the surface.

This process of 'deep water formation' is the engine for a vast global conveyor belt which pumps heat and water all around the Atlantic Ocean. 

However, studies suggest that AMOC's deep water engine has started to slow and is now showing worrying signs of breaking down altogether.

As global temperatures rise, melting ice pours fresh water back into oceans, diluting the denser salty water and preventing it from sinking.

If this process were to break down entirely, it would have catastrophic knock-on effects including the weakening of the Gulf Stream and the disruption of global weather patterns.

Encouragingly, the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report states: 'There is medium confidence that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation will not collapse abruptly before 2100.'

However, the authors of the open letter argue that this risk has been massively underestimated.

44 leading climate scientists have written an open letter to Nordic policymakers calling for action on the risk of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) ocean currents collapsing. These currents (pictured) are a vital engine for moving warm water around the planet 

In their letter, the scientists write: 'The passing of this tipping point is a serious possibility already in the next few decades.'

Research from the University of Copenhagen published earlier this year found that a collapse could occur any time from 2025 onwards.

By looking at ocean temperature data over the last 150 years, the researchers argued that such a scenario is '95 per cent certain' by the end of this century if current greenhouse gas emissions persist.

The open letter also argues that the severity of the risk warrants more concern even if there were only 'medium confidence' in a potential collapse.

'The purpose of this letter is to draw attention to the fact that only “medium confidence” in the AMOC not collapsing is not reassuring, and clearly leaves open the possibility of an AMOC collapse during this century,' say the authors.

'Even with a medium likelihood of occurrence, given that the outcome would be catastrophic and impacting the entire world for centuries to come, we believe more needs to be done to minimize this risk.'

Should the AMOC collapse, the effects would be widespread, devastating, and extremely long-lasting.

Scientists believe that the last time AMOC completely collapsed was during the end of the last Ice Age around 12,000 years ago, when temperatures in western Europe plummeted by up to 10°C (18°F).

If AMOC were to collapse, the scientists predict that the Northwestern Atlantic region,  including the UK, could be frozen inside a growing 'cold bubble' which may drop temperatures by as much as 2.4°C (4.32°F)

The collapse would lead to major cooling and 'unprecedented extreme weather', especially in Nordic countries.

This would enlarge and deepen the 'cold blob' of anomalously cold waters which has already developed over the eastern North Atlantic due to the slowdown of heat-carrying currents.

This would be particularly bad news for the UK which is kept warm by currents of warm water carried by AMOC northwards from the Gulf of Mexico.

Previous studies have suggested that this could lead to winter temperatures in Britain becoming 10°C to 15°C (18°F to 27°F) lower on average.

While the expert say more research is needed, they note that this could 'potentially threaten the viability of agriculture in northwestern Europe'.

Around the world, the collapse of the AMOC currents would also have devastating consequences.

The tropical rainfall belt and monsoon regions could shift southwards, precipitating enormous disruptions to agriculture and water supplies in the region.

Such a shift could cause widespread drought and famine, and could lead to massive increases in the number of climate refugees and escalating geopolitical tensions.

Without the AMOC ocean currents (pictured) the Nordic regions would experience rapid cooling and extreme weather while the Atlantic coast of the US would be hit by 'major' sea-level rises

In the US, the scientists say that a collapse of AMOC would create a 'major additional sea-level rise', potentially threatening vulnerable low-lying areas on the Atlantic coast such as New York and Miami.

Additionally, the authors argue that the resulting changes to weather patterns would cause an 'upheaval of marine ecosystems and fisheries'.

In the face of these threats, the authors of the open letter are calling on the leaders of Nordic countries to seriously consider the risk of an AMOC collapse and put pressure on their global partners to stick to the aims of the Paris Agreement.

However, not every scientist is in agreement that AMOC will collapse within this century.

Since AMOC was first measured in 2004, scientists have expressed concerns that the current system could be weakening.

Yet a number of leading experts argue that these conclusions are far from being definitively established.

The main issue is that researchers have had to make some basic assumptions about how AMOC works in order to predict how it might change over time. 

This climate system is massively complex and some have expressed concern that we don't have all the evidence needed to make precise predictions.

A collapse of the AMOC would cause a shift in the tropical rainfall belt - an area of rainfall that is positioned around the tropics. This could lead to widespread drought and famine as agriculture and water distribution are disrupted 

Read More

• The Gulf Stream could COLLAPSE as early as 2025 - plunging Europe into a deep freeze, scientists warn 

When the original AMOC 'tipping point' paper was published in 2023, these concerns led a number of leading scientists to express scepticism that a total collapse was really coming.

Dr Ben Booth, senior climate scientist at the Met Office Hadley Centre, said at the time: 'Whilst there is definitely a role for papers like this, the conclusions are far from settled science.'

Dr Booth added: 'A lot of caution needs to be taken in interpreting the findings as a definitive inference of the future overturning change.'

The Gulf Stream Explained

Likewise, Dr John Robson, of the National Centre for Atmospheric Science and the University of Reading, said: 'There are large uncertainties involved in predicting if and when an abrupt weakening of AMOC could occur.'

However, Dr Robson still maintained that the 'warning lights are flashing on' for the AMOC system and that further research and monitoring are crucial.  

What will happen if the AMOC global ocean current collapses?

UK 

Studies suggest that the collapse of AMOC would lead to plummeting temperatures in the UK.

Britain is currently kept toasty by the Gulf Stream which carries warm water from the Gulf of Mexico to the seas around the UK.

If this were to fail, Britain could be plunged into extreme cold with winter temperatures falling by up to 15°C (27°F).

Average summer temperatures would be 3°C to 5°C (5.4°F to 9°F) lower than they are now, while winters could be 10°C to 15°C (18°F to 27°F) colder.

The brunt of this change would be felt by northern areas such as Scotland which will become much colder than the South.

Europe

The effects of an AMOC collapse would be particularly strong in Northwestern Europe and the Nordic regions.

Scientists warn that the 'cold blob', an anomalous region of cold, could expand and deepen over the region.

The area would be gripped by freezing temperatures so cold that sea ice could creep South from the Arctic.

Extreme weather will become more common, with violent storms and intense rainfall becoming more frequent.

The effects could be so strong that scientists warn it could threaten the viability of agriculture in Northern Europe.

US 

The US will avoid most of the freezing consequences of AMOC collapse but will not escape unscathed.

Scientists predict that the failure of the ocean currents would lead to major additional sea-level rises on the Atlantic coastline.

Research has suggested major cities such as New York, New Orleans, and Miami could be threatened by flooding.

Estimates already suggest that up to 448,000 people could be displaced.

Additionally, changing weather patterns could lead to 'upheaval' for coastal ecosystems and fisheries.

Worldwide

If AMOC collapses the tropical rainfall belt, an area of high rainfall positioned around the tropics will shift southwards.

This shift could lead to widespread enormous disruptions to agriculture and water supplies in the region.

That change could trigger widespread famine and drought in some regions with devastating floods in others.

In turn, experts suggest that this will lead to a massive increase in the number of climate refugees fleeing their home countries and escalating geopolitical tensions in the region.

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

04-11-2024 om 22:51 geschreven door peter  

According to current estimates, humans dump well over 10 million metric tons (11 million U.S. tons) of plastic waste into our oceans annually. Since plastic production continues to increase worldwide, these numbers are projected to increase dramatically. What ends up on our beaches can severely impact wildlife and marine habitats, just like the impact it has in open waters. If these plastics are not removed, they will inevitably fragment into micro and nano plastics, another major environmental hazard. Said Dr. Guffogg in a recent RMIT University press release:

“Plastics can be mistaken for food; larger animals become entangled, and smaller ones, like hermit crabs, become trapped inside items such as plastic containers. Remote island beaches have some of the highest recorded densities of plastics in the world, and we’re also seeing increasing volumes of plastics and derelict fishing gear on the remote shorelines of northern Australia.

“While the impacts of these ocean plastics on the environment, fishing and, tourism are well documented, methods for measuring the exact scale of the issue or targeting clean-up operations, sometimes most needed in remote locations, have been held back by technological limitations.”

Satellite technology is already used to track plastic garbage floating around the world’s oceans. This includes relatively small drifts containing thousands of plastic bottles, bags, and fishing nets, but also gigantic floating trash islands like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. As of 2018, this garbage patch measured about 1.6 million km² (620,000 mi²) and consisted of 45,000–129,000 metric tons (50,000–142,000 U.S. tons). However, the technology used to locate plastic waste in the ocean is largely ineffective at spotting plastic on beaches.

Much of the problem is that plastic can be mistaken for patches of sand when viewed from space. The Beached Plastic Debris Index (BPDI) developed by Dr. Guffogg and her colleagues circumvents this by employing a spectral index – a mathematical formula that analyzes patterns of reflected light. The BPDI is specially designed to map plastic debris in coastal areas using high-definition data from the WorldView-3 satellite, a commercial Earth observation satellite (owned by Maxar Technologies) that has been in operation since 2014.

Thanks to their efforts, scientists now have an effective way to monitor plastic on beaches, which could assist in clean-up operations. As part of the remote sensing team at RMIT, Dr. Guffogg and her colleagues have developed similar tools for monitoring forests and mapping bushfires from space. To validate the BPDI, the team field-tested it by placing 14 plastic targets on a beach in southern Gippsland, about 200 km (125 mi) southeast of Melbourne. Each target was made of a different type of plastic and measured two square meters (21.5 square feet) – smaller than the satellite’s pixel size of about three square meters.

The resulting images were compared to three other indices, two designed for detecting plastics on land and one for detecting plastics in aquatic settings. The BPDI outperformed all three as the others struggled to differentiate between plastics and sand or misclassified shadows and water as plastic. As study author Dr. Mariela Soto-Berelov explained, this makes the BPDI far more useful for environments where water and plastic-contaminated pixels are likely to coexist.  

“This is incredibly exciting, as up to now we have not had a tool for detecting plastics in coastal environments from space. The beauty of satellite imagery is that it can capture large and remote areas at regular intervals. Detection is a key step needed for understanding where plastic debris is accumulating and planning clean-up operations, which aligns with several Sustainable Development Goals, such as Protecting Seas and Oceans.”  

The next step is to test the BPDI tool in real-life scenarios, which will consist of the team partnering with various organizations dedicated to monitoring and addressing the plastic waste problem.

VIDEOS

Further Reading: 

• RMIT, 
• Marine Pollution Bulletin

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

04-11-2024 om 16:42 geschreven door peter  

Climate catastrophe plunged Scandinavia into years of darkness and killed HALF of Norway and Sweden 1,500 years ago, study finds

• READ MORE: Vikings may have practiced form of plastic surgery 1,000 years ago

By Michael Havis For Mailonline

A real-life Ragnarok plunged Scandinavia into years of darkness and killed up to half of the people in Norway and Sweden, new research reveals.

In Viking belief, Ragnarok is the end of the world, when the Norse gods die battling demons and giants in an apocalyptic final clash.

And the agony of Ragnarok begins with the Fimbulvetr – a winter lasting three years that ends almost all human life.

Now new research has shown that the Nordic world really faced such a long winter, and its impact on human life was devastating.

By analysing tree rings, scientists at the National Museum of Denmark proved a real-life climate catastrophe took place 1,500 years ago.

Morten Fischer Mortensen, a senior researcher at the museum, said it was the result of volcanic eruptions enveloping the world in a veil of ash and sulphur.

He said: 'I imagine it would have been terrifying – the volcanic eruptions happen so far away from Europe that no one would have known the cause.

'Then you realise - perhaps overnight - that the sun is hidden behind a veil, and it is not warm and yellow, but cold and bluish.

A real-life Ragnarok plunged Scandinavia into years of darkness and killed up to half of the people in Norway and Sweden, new research reveals

(artist's impression)

By analysing tree rings, scientists at the National Museum of Denmark proved a real-life climate catastrophe took place 1,500 years ago

'Even in the middle of the day, no shadows were cast and for more than a year no stars could be seen in the sky.'

To complete their research, scientists analysed 650 pieces of oak from between 300 and 800 AD.

They found growth rings became dramatically smaller starting in 536 AD, and even more so between 539 and 541 AD.

Mortensen described the impact on civilisation.

He continued: 'Based on our studies of the tree rings, we can see that for several years there were really poor growing conditions, which must also have been true for the farmers' crops.

'We are in a period where everyone lives off, and on, the land, and is 100% self-sufficient.

'So when the harvest fails for several years in a row, it's really critical.'

For many, it was unsurvivable.

Morten Fischer Mortensen, a senior researcher at the museum, said the event was the result of volcanic eruptions enveloping the world in a veil of ash and sulphur

Photo shows a depiction of the final battle of the gods during Ragnarok by Johannes Gehrts 

Mortensen said: 'Landscape reconstructions based on pollen analyses shows that some areas were abandoned and forest spread over the abandoned fields.

'Power structures shifted and, in Denmark, we have many large deposits of gold that have been interpreted as offerings to the gods to bring back the sun.

'Many settlements ceased to exist, and it is easy to imagine that hunger, famine, and disease took the lives of a large part of the population.'

He added: 'In Norway and Sweden, researchers believe that up to half the population died, and it is not inconceivable that the same happened in Denmark.

'It almost gives me chills to see these small, narrow annual rings because I know how much sorrow, death and misfortune they represent.'

Furthermore, the similarity with the Fimbulvetr of Ragnarok legend may be no coincidence.

Mortensen said: 'It is remarkable that for three summers in a row the oak trees have virtually no summer growth.

'The myth of Ragnarok starts with a three-year-long winter with no summer in between.

'Of course, we can't prove a direct link between the climate event and the myth, but there is a strong correlation.

'It is therefore conceivable that elements of what people have experienced have found their way into the myths and are thus an echo of previous experiences.'

Which volcanoes caused the long winter has not been determined.

But candidates have been proposed in Papua New Guinea, El Salvador, Indonesia, Iceland, and North America.

In any case, the disaster was not limited to the Nordic world – climate modelling shows a global temperature drop of several degrees.

Written sources from as far apart as the Roman empire and China attest to the change in climate.

It's even been suggested that the drop in temperature boosted crop fertility in the Arabian Peninsula, boosting the food supply and contributing to the Islamic conquests.

For the Danes, however, the winter left another – less dramatic – legacy.

Mortensen explained: 'Danes have a great love for rye bread.

'Rye is a cereal that arrives very late to the country and only becomes common in the centuries after the climate crisis.

'At the same time, rye can survive with the fewest hours of sunshine and can grow on relatively poor soil.

'Therefore, it's likely that rye is a crop we adopt as a hedge against bad times – a crop that has the best chance of yielding a return in the bad years.'

Mortensen and his colleagues published their study in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.

DID THE VIKINGS DISCOVER NORTH AMERICA?

Some experts believe the Vikings may have discovered North America nearly 500 years before Christopher Columbus made his famous journey to the New World. 

L'Anse aux Meadows was the first Viking settlement believed to have been found in North America in the 1960s.

In 2016, scientists claimed to have uncovered another Viking settlement in Newfoundland that was built between 800 AD and 1300 AD.

Some experts believe the Vikings may have discovered North America nearly 500 years before Christopher Columbus made his famous journey to the New World

The site, discovered in an area called Point Rosee in southern Newfoundland, is 400 miles (643km) south west of a Viking settlement found in L'Anse aux Meadows during the 1960s.

Now, one expert claims to have found a mysterious location known as 'Hop'.

Based on Viking descriptions, three key things identify this mystical settlement - an abundance of grapes, salmon and canoes made from animal hide. 

An archaeologist claims the only place that matches this description is the Miramichi-Chaleur bay area in northeastern New Brunswick in Canada.

This would be the third Viking settlement claimed to have been found in North America, although it could be hard to ever prove it for once and for all.

It is thought the Vikings first discovered America by accident in the autumn of 986 AD, according to one historical source, the Saga of the Greenlanders.

It tells how Bjarni Herjolfsson stumbled across North America after being blown off course as he attempted to sail from Norway to Greenland, but he did not go ashore.

Inspired by his tales, however, another Viking Leif Ericsson then mounted his own expedition and found North America in 1002.

Finding it a fertile land, rich in grapes and berries, he named it Vinland.

Eriksson also named two further 'lands' on the North American coast - one with flat stones, which he called Helluland, and one that was flat and wooded, named Markland.

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

31-10-2024 om 21:57 geschreven door peter  

New Research Casts More Light on Mechanisms of End-Triassic Mass Extinction

The end-Triassic extinction along with the end-Permian and end-Cretaceous events are the most severe mass extinctions in the past 270 million years. The exact mechanisms of the end-Triassic extinction have long been debated, but most prominent: carbon dioxide surfaced by volcanic eruptions built up over many millennia, raising temperatures to unsustainable levels for many creatures, and acidifying ocean waters. But a new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences says the opposite: cold, not warmth was the main culprit.

Outcrop area of CAMP rocks in Pangea showing paleolatitudes at CAMP time (201 million years ago) of key localities with the terrestrial end-Triassic extinction including the Newark Basin (NB) in northeastern North America, the Fundy Basin (FB) of Atlantic Canada, and the Central High Atlas (CHA) Basin of Morocco.

Image credit: Kent et al., doi: 10.1073/pnas.2415486121.

The end-Triassic mass extinction occurred 201.564 million years ago and resulted in the demise of some 76% of all marine and land species.

This mass extinction coincided with massive volcanic eruptions that split apart the supercontinent Pangea.

Millions of km³ of lava erupted over some 600,000 years, separating what are now the Americas, Europe and North Africa.

The event marked the end of the Triassic period and the beginning of the Jurassic, the period when dinosaurs arose to take the place of Triassic creatures and dominate the planet.

The new study presents evidence that instead of stretching over hundreds of thousands of years, the first pulses of lava that ended the Triassic were stupendous events lasting less than a century each.

In this condensed time frame, sunlight-reflecting sulfate particles were spewed into the atmosphere, cooling the planet and freezing many of its inhabitants.

Gradually rising temperatures in an environment that was hot to begin with — atmospheric carbon dioxide in the Late Triassic was already three times today’s level — may have finished the job later on, but it was volcanic winters that did the most damage.

“Carbon dioxide and sulfates act not just in opposite ways, but opposite time frames,” said Dr. Dennis Kent, a researcher at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

“It takes a long time for carbon dioxide to build up and heat things, but the effect of sulfates is pretty much instant. It brings us into the realm of what humans can grasp. These events happened in the span of a lifetime.”

The Triassic-Jurassic extinction has long been thought tied to the eruption of the so-called Central Atlantic Magmatic Province (CAMP).

In their study, Dr. Kent and colleagues correlated data from CAMP deposits in the mountains of Morocco, along Nova Scotia’s Bay of Fundy, and New Jersey’s Newark Basin.

Their key evidence: the alignments of magnetic particles in the rocks that recorded the past drifting of Earth’s magnetic pole at the time of the eruptions.

Due to a complex set of processes, this pole is offset from the planet’s unchanging axis of rotation — true north — and to boot, changes position by a few tenths of a degree each year.

Because of this phenomenon, magnetic particles in lavas that were emplaced within a few decades of each other will all point in the same direction, while ones emplaced, say, thousands of years later will point 20 or 30 degrees in a different direction.

What the researchers found was five successive initial CAMP lava pulses spread over about 40,000 years — each with the magnetic particles aligned in a single direction, indicating the lava pulse had emerged in less than 100 years, before drift of the magnetic pole could manifest itself.

These huge eruptions released so many sulfates so quickly that the sun was largely blocked out, causing temperatures to plunge.

Unlike carbon dioxide, which hangs around for centuries, volcanic sulfate aerosols tend to rain out of the atmosphere within years, so resulting cold spells don’t last very long.

But due to the rapidity and size of the eruptions, these volcanic winters were devastating.

The scientists compared the CAMP series to sulfates from the 1783 eruption of Iceland’s Laki volcano, which caused widespread crop failures; just the initial CAMP pulses were hundreds of times greater.

In sediments just below the CAMP layers lie Triassic fossils: large terrestrial and semiaquatic relatives of crocodiles, strange tree lizards, giant, flat-headed amphibians, and many tropical plants. Then they disappear with the CAMP eruptions.

Small feathered dinosaurs had been around for tens of millions of years before this, and survived, eventually to thrive and get much larger, along with turtles, true lizards, and mammals, possibly because they were small and could survive in burrows.

“The magnitude of the environmental effects are related to how concentrated the events are,” said Dr. Paul Olsen, also from Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

“Small events spread out over tens of thousands of years produce much less of an effect than the same total volume of volcanism concentrated in less than a century.”

“The overarching implication being that the CAMP lavas represent extraordinarily concentrated events.”

• Dennis V. Kent et al. 2024. Correlation of sub-centennial-scale pulses of initial Central Atlantic Magmatic Province lavas and the end-Triassic extinctions. PNAS 121 (46): e2415486121; doi: 10.1073/pnas.2415486121

{ https://www.sci.news/ }

30-10-2024 om 23:25 geschreven door peter  

De blobvis is de lelijkste vis ter wereld, maar zijn echte aspect in het water is iets anders

door Janine

The Ugly Animal Preservation Society/Facebook

Er bestaat geen twijfel over wat de lelijkste vis ter wereld is: het is de blobvis die al jaren dit vreemde record heeft.

Als we aan “lelijke” dieren denken, denken we meteen aan de blobvis: hoe zouden we anders een zacht uitziende vis met een bijzonder trieste uitdrukking noemen?

De werkelijkheid is echter anders: de blobvis is niet alleen niet de lelijkste vis ter wereld, maar wat we gewend zijn te zien is niet eens zijn echte verschijning in het water.

Hoe is dit mogelijk? Laten we daar samen achter komen!

Is de blobvis echt de lelijkste vis ter wereld?

rfedortsov/X

Als je kijkt naar foto's van de blobvis die we tot onze beschikking hebben, lijkt er geen twijfel mogelijk: het is echt de lelijkste vis ter wereld.

Hij is ongeveer 30 centimeter lang, heeft een trieste uitdrukking, een gelatineachtig uiterlijk en een grote “neus” die zijn gelaatstrekken heel menselijk maken, misschien wel te menselijk.

We moeten namelijk niet vergeten dat wij mensen heel goed zijn in het herkennen van vormen die ons bekend voorkomen, zelfs als ze er niet zijn. En de blobvis, met zijn trieste gezicht, is daar het perfecte voorbeeld van.

Tegelijkertijd zijn de beelden die van de blobvis "de lelijkste vis ter wereld" hebben gemaakt niet echt correct, omdat ze zijn ware verschijning in het water niet weergeven.

De gelatineachtige textuur en droevige uitdrukking die we op de foto's zien, zijn slechts het resultaat van de plotselinge decompressie die de blobvis ondergaat wanneer hij uit de diepten van de oceaan wordt gevist.

Zoals National Geographic aangeeft, leeft de Psychrolutes marcidus op dieptes tussen 600 en 1200 meter tussen Nieuw-Zeeland en Australië en om de enorme druk te weerstaan, heeft hij een lichaam ontwikkeld dat bijna geen spieren heeft.

Dit betekent dat het idee dat we hebben van de Psychrolutes marcidus, blobvis zoals wij hem noemen, niet helemaal juist is.

Hoe ziet de blobvis er onder water uit?

NOAA/MBARI - Public Domain

De blobvis in het water is heel anders dan wij ons voorstellen: hij leeft vredig in de diepten van de oceaan, waar hij moeiteloos drijft.

Op een diepte van 1200 meter heeft deze soort een succesvolle aanpassing gevonden door zijn spieren op te geven en zich mee te laten voeren door de stromingen. Het enige wat hier telt is het weerstaan van de grote druk en alle schaal- en weekdieren eten die voorbij komen.

Bovendien heeft deze soort geen zwemblaas, dus hij kan niet naar ondieper water. Maar dit is geen probleem.

Integendeel, in de diepten van de oceaan brengt de blobvis zijn hele leven door in verschillende stadia. Vrouwtjes kunnen tot tienduizenden eitjes per keer leggen, die vervolgens op de zeebodem worden afgezet.

Eenmaal uitgekomen komen er kleine blobvissen tevoorschijn die qua uiterlijk op volwassen exemplaren lijken: ze hebben een gelatineachtige structuur, weinig spieren en geen zwemblaas.

Onder water zijn deze verschillen echter niet merkbaar, in tegenstelling tot de oppervlakte.

Het behoud van de lelijkste vis ter wereld

clubguffy/Instagram

Hoewel de blobvis een perfect voorbeeld is van aanpassing aan een zeer specifieke ecologische niche, komen de problemen niet van de oceaan. Integendeel, ze komen van de mens.

Trawlvisserij in de diepten tussen Nieuw-Zeeland en Australië dreigt de populatie van deze soort, waarover we nog te weinig weten, te reduceren.

Daarom werd de blobvis in 2013 uitgeroepen tot het lelijkste dier ter wereld, maar het is een record met nobele bedoelingen.

Het was namelijk de Ugly Animal Preservation Society, een organisatie die mensen bewust wil maken van het belang van het beschermen van diersoorten die misschien minder aantrekkelijk zijn, maar net zo belangrijk voor het ecosysteem, waaronder de blobvis, die deze definitie gaf.

Onze lieve blob mag dan wel de lelijkste vis ter wereld zijn, maar wel voor een goed doel

{ https://www.curioctopus.nl/ }

30-10-2024 om 23:02 geschreven door peter  

Antarctica is turning GREEN: Vegetation cover has increased more than tenfold over the last 40 years - with climate change to blame

• READ MORE: Antarctica's 'Doomsday Glacier' is on the verge of collapsing

By Shivali Best For Mailonline 

If you were asked to visualise Antarctica, it's likely a vast white landscape would spring to mind. 

But a concerning new study might have you rethinking that image in your head. 

Experts from the universities of Exeter and Hertfordshire have warned that Antarctica is turning green - with climate change to blame. 

Their analysis shows that vegetation cover across the Antarctic Peninsula has increased more than tenfold over the last four decades. 

'Our findings raise serious concerns about the environmental future of the Antarctic Peninsula, and of the continent as a whole,' said Dr Thomas Roland, who led the study. 

If you were asked to visualise Antarctica, it's likely a vast white landscape would spring to mind. But a concerning new study might have you rethinking that image in your head. Pictured: a WorldView-2 Satellite Image of Robert Island (top) and the same image after the analysis, showing areas of vegetated land in bright green (bottom) 

Previous studies have shown that, like many polar regions, the Antarctic Peninsula is warming faster than the global average. Pictured: Green Island

Read More

• Antarctica's 'Doomsday Glacier' is on verge of COLLAPSING and could cause sea levels to rise by 2ft 

Previous studies have shown that, like many polar regions, the Antarctic Peninsula is warming faster than the global average. 

In their new study, the researchers set out to understand how much of the area has 'greened' in response to this warming. 

The team analysed satellite images taken across the Peninsula over the last 40 years. 

Back in 1986, the images show that just one square kilometre of the Peninsula was covered with vegetation. 

However, by 2021, this area had increased to almost 12 square kilometres. 

Speaking to MailOnline, Dr Roland explained that while simple before-and-after photos would be 'impactful', they were not possible. 

'Sadly we only have "very high resolution" images from 2013 and 2016,' he said. 

'Whilst the increases in vegetation we observe over this short window are in line with our overall greening trend (1986-2021) the visual difference is not that remarkable! 

'In turn, a single image from the coarser resolution satellite we use for the main study (where we have hundreds of images over the full 35 year period), I suspect, would not be perceived as good enough "quality" as to be impactful.'

The team analysed satellite images taken across the Peninsula over the last 40 years, and found that vegetation cover has increased significantly

Back in 1986, just one square kilometre of the Peninsula was covered with vegetaion. However, by 2021, this area had increased to almost 12 square kilometres. Pictured: Norsel Point

Greening accelerated by over 30 per cent in recent years (2016-2021) relative to the full study period (1986-2021) – expanding by over 400,000 square metres per year in this period. Pictured: Barrientos Island

Read More

• See the birth of a new iceberg! Incredible images reveal the moment a berg the size of the Isle of Wight broke away from Antarctica's Brunt Ice Shelf 

The study also found that the greening is happening quicker and quicker. 

Greening accelerated by over 30 per cent in recent years (2016-2021) relative to the full study period (1986-2021) – expanding by over 400,000 square metres per year in this period.

'The plants we find on the Antarctic Peninsula – mostly mosses – grow in perhaps the harshest conditions on Earth,' said Dr Roland.

'The landscape is still almost entirely dominated by snow, ice and rock, with only a tiny fraction colonised by plant life.

'But that tiny fraction has grown dramatically – showing that even this vast and isolated 'wilderness' is being affected by anthropogenic climate change.'

Worryingly, the researchers say that as these ecosystems become more established and temperatures continue to rise, the extent of the greening will increase. 

Experts from the universities of Exeter and Hertfordshire have warned that Antarctica is turning green - with climate change to blame. Pictured: Ardley Island

Dr Olly Bartlett, co-author of the study, said: 'Soil in Antarctica is mostly poor or non-existent, but this increase in plant life will add organic matter, and facilitate soil formation – potentially paving the way for other plants to grow.

'This raises the risk of non-native and invasive species arriving, possibly carried by eco-tourists, scientists or other visitors to the continent.'

Based on the findings, the team is calling for 'urgent' research into the specific mechanisms behind the greening trend.  

'The sensitivity of the Antarctic Peninsula's vegetation to climate change is now clear and, under future anthropogenic warming, we could see fundamental changes to the biology and landscape of this iconic and vulnerable region,' Dr Roland added.

'In order to protect Antarctica, we must understand these changes and identify precisely what is causing them.

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

04-10-2024 om 21:52 geschreven door peter  

The new historical temperature comes from an effort named PhanDA, which stands for Phanerozoic Data Assimilation. PhanDA combined data from climate models with data from geology to determine how the climate has changed over the last nearly 500 million years. The Phanerozoic is Earth’s current geological eon, and it started 538.8 million years ago. It’s known for the proliferation of life, and its beginning is marked by the appearance of the hard shells of animals in the fossil record.

PhanDA is a mix of data and prior simulations by the scientific community. “This approach leverages the strengths of both proxies and models as sources of information, providing an innovative way to explore the temporal and spatial patterns in Earth’s climate across the Phanerozoic,” the researchers write in their paper. It allowed the researchers to reconstruct the climate more thoroughly.

“This method was originally developed for weather forecasting,” said Judd. “Instead of using it to forecast future weather, here we’re using it to hindcast ancient climates.”

We’re blowing by atmospheric carbon benchmarks, and the Earth is warming. We’re now at over 420 ppm of CO₂. The best way to understand what’s coming our way is by looking at the past.

“If you’re studying the past couple of million years, you won’t find anything that looks like what we expect in 2100 or 2500,” said co-author Scott Wing, the curator of paleobotany at the National Museum of Natural History. Wing’s research focuses on the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum, a period of dramatic global warming 55 million years ago. “You need to go back even further to periods when the Earth was really warm, because that’s the only way we’re going to get a better understanding of how the climate might change in the future.”

During the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), a massive amount of carbon was emitted into the atmosphere and the oceans. The Earth’s temperature reacted swiftly, warming by between five and eight degrees Celsius in only a few thousand years. While a few thousand years might seem long compared to a human lifetime, it’s nearly instantaneous for the climate of an entire planet. It likely triggered the massive extinction of between 35% to 50% of benthic life. Fossils show that during this time, sub-tropical planets grew in the polar regions.

Many scientists think the PETM is the best analogue for what we’re facing today. No matter what we do with our emissions in the next several decades, much of the carbon humanity has released into the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution will persist in the atmosphere for thousands of years.

PhanDA illustrates the unbreakable link between carbon and global warming. According to co-author Jessica Tierney, a paleoclimatologist at the University of Arizona, the link between the climate and carbon is undeniable. “This research illustrates clearly that carbon dioxide is the dominant control on global temperatures across geological time,” said Tierney. “When CO₂ is low, the temperature is cold; when CO₂ is high, the temperature is warm.”

While proof of the link between climate and carbon isn’t new, this long timeframe drives it home. “The consistency of this relationship is surprising because, on this timescale, we expect solar luminosity to influence climate,” the authors write. “We hypothesize that changes in planetary albedo and other greenhouse gases (e.g., methane) helped compensate for the increasing solar luminosity through time.”

Overall, Earth’s global mean surface temperature (GMST) ranged from 11° to 36°C during the Phanerozoic, a larger range than previously thought. It also shows that greenhouse climates were hotter than thought. The largest temperature swings were in the high latitudes, but tropical temperatures ranged from 22 C to 42 C. This goes against the idea that the tropics have a fixed upper limit and shows that life must have evolved to survive in those higher temperatures.

The research also shows that our current climate is actually cooler than the climate through most of the Phanerozoic. Technically, Earth is in an ice age right now, though the ice is receding and has been for thousands of years. Earth’s current GMST is 15 Celsius, lower than during most of the Phanerozoic.

But while that may sound comforting, it’s not. It’s the rate of change in the GMST that’s dangerous. Our GHG emissions are warming the planet faster than at any time during the Phanerozoic.

“Humans, and the species we share the planet with, are adapted to a cold climate,” Tierney said. “Rapidly putting us all into a warmer climate is a dangerous thing to do.”

While PhanDA is generally in agreement with previous climate reconstructions, it deviates in some ways. For example, cold climate periods don’t always coincide with glaciation and ice ages. Earth’s surface is ever-changing, and that can make some conclusions difficult to reach. “Many of the traditional glacial indicators can have nonglacial origins, complicating the interpretation of the rock record, and limited outcrop of older rocks and poor age control can make it difficult to discern between isolated alpine glaciers and widespread ice sheets,” the authors explain.

But that doesn’t take much away from PhanDA. It strengthens our understanding of climate and carbon.

Shockingly, the work suggests that Earth’s climate is even more sensitive to CO₂ than some current models show.

“PhanDA GMST exhibits a strong relationship with atmospheric CO2 concentrations, demonstrating that CO₂ has been the dominant force controlling global climate variations across the Phanerozoic,” the authors write in their conclusion.

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

26-09-2024 om 22:58 geschreven door peter  

Scientists Created a ‘5D Memory Crystal’ & Encoded the Entire Human Genome Into It that can Last for Billions of Years

Scientists have encoded the entire human genome into a ‘5D memory crystal.’ In the event of extinction, this could be discovered by some conscious entity and bring our species back to life. The disk is as durable as quartz and can last for billions of years.

Researchers have created a special “5D memory crystal” that holds the encoded human genome. This crystal is meant to ensure that if humanity ever faces extinction, our genetic code will survive. Even if that doesn’t happen, future intelligent beings could still find it, even billions of years from now. Tech billionaire Elon Musk suggested storing “all of the human knowledge”.”We should write all of human knowledge into these crystals,” said Musk in a post on X. (Source)

For more than ten years, the best material for storing data has been crystal. In 2014, a team of researchers led by Professor Peter Kazansky from the University of Southampton created a special kind of glass disc. This disc can store 360 terabytes of data and last for 300 quintillion years at room temperature. Even if heated to 374 degrees Fahrenheit, it will still last as long as the universe has existed—about 13.8 billion years. It can also handle extreme heat, cold, pressure up to 10 tons per square centimeter, and cosmic radiation. This makes it the Guinness World Record holder for the most durable digital storage medium. With concerns about today’s unreliable digital storage, this crystal disc is one of the best options for safely keeping electronic information.

The crystal can survive high temperatures, pressure, and cosmic radiation, and it even holds the Guinness World Record for the most durable storage medium. With concerns about how long today’s digital storage methods will last, this crystal is seen as a perfect way to keep important information safe for the future.

Prof. Kazansky’s team is working on putting the entire human genome, which is 3 billion characters long, onto a crystal the size of a coin. The researchers use lasers to write the DNA code into tiny holes in the glass that are only 20 nanometers wide.
Unlike regular storage methods that only use two dimensions, the crystal combines “two optical dimensions and three spatial coordinates,” which is why they call it “5D.”

Inspired by the Golden Discs sent on the Voyager mission, this crystal also has a guide to explain how it works. It includes drawings of humans, basic elements like hydrogen and oxygen, the structure of DNA, and other key details needed to create a human. Prof. Kazansky and his team admit that current technology can’t use the disk fully yet. But with advances like the creation of a synthetic bacterium in 2010, there’s hope that someday humans, plants, and animals could be made artificially.

“We know from earlier research that we can create genetic material from simple organisms and bring them to life in the lab,” Prof. Kazansky said. “The 5D memory crystal opens new doors for scientists to create a long-lasting store of genomic information, which could help revive complex life forms like plants and animals, if  science advances enough.”

“Their work is super impressive,” said Thomas Heinis, who leads research on DNA storage at Imperial College London and was not involved in the study. However, he says questions remain about how such data could be read in the future. “What Southampton presents probably has a higher durability, however, this begs the question: what for? Future generations? Sure, but how will they know how to read the crystal? How will they know how to build the device to read the crystal? Will the device be available in hundreds of years?” he added. “I can barely connect my 10-year-old iPod and listen to what I listened back then.”

The crystal containing the human genome is stored in the Memory of Mankind archive, which is a time capsule located in the world’s oldest salt mine in Hallstatt, Austria. If all goes well, it will remain there until needed, although we hope that time never comes.

Prof. Kazansky said that while we can’t yet create humans, plants, or animals from just genetic information, the 5D crystal could store this information for the future when such technology might exist.

He referred to Dr. Craig Venter’s team, who created a synthetic bacterium in 2010. “We know from other work that simple organisms’ genetic material can be made and used in a lab to create a living specimen,” said Prof. Kazansky. “The 5D crystal could allow researchers to store genomic information forever. This way, if future science makes it possible, plants and animals might be restored.” (Source)

The crystal is kept in the Memory of Mankind archive, a special time capsule in a salt cave in Hallstatt, Austria.

The university spokesperson added, “When designing the crystal, the team thought about the possibility of it being found by another species or machine far in the future. It could be so far in the future that there’s no context for the data.”

The key shows basic elements (hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen), the four DNA bases (adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine), their structure, how they fit into the DNA double helix, and how genes go into chromosomes that can be inserted into a cell. Prof. Kazansky explained, “The key on the crystal helps anyone who finds it understand what data is inside and how to use it.”

{ https://www.howandwhys.com/ }

22-09-2024 om 23:03 geschreven door peter  

Nederlander bewijst bestaan van mysterieuze monstergolven in diepzee: ze zijn extremer dan extreem

Jeannette Kras

{ https://scientias.nl/ }

22-09-2024 om 00:54 geschreven door peter  

Natuurwonderen die per toeval zijn ontstaan

©Shutterstock

Natuurwonderen die per toeval zijn ontstaan
De trekpleisters die je in deze galerij zult zien, zijn natuurlijke wonderen die puur per toeval zijn ontstaan, hetzij door toedoen van de mens, hetzij door niet vaak voorkomende natuurverschijnselen. Het zijn ware pareltjes waar toeristen van over de hele wereld versteld van staan.

©Shutterstock

Dark Hedges (Noord-Ierland)
Deze prachtige weg met beukenbomen is wereldwijd de enige in zijn soort. Dit sprookjesachtige natuurwonder ligt langs Bregagh Road, een weg tussen de dorpjes Armoy en Stranocum in Noord-Ierland.

©Shutterstock

Dark Hedges (Noord-Ierland)
De bomen werden een paar jaar geleden door een familie geplant, met als doel om de weg naar hun landhuis te versieren. Dat leidde tot dit bijzondere natuurwonder.

©Shutterstock

Fly Geyser (Verenigde Staten)
Deze buitengewone natuurlijke bezienswaardigheid in Nevada (Verenigde Staten) ontstond in 1916 per toeval tijdens het boren van waterputten.

©Shutterstock

Fly Geyser (Verenigde Staten)
Pas in de jaren zestig, toen er werd gezocht naar bronnen van geothermische energie, begon de geiser een hete vloeistof vol met opgeloste mineralen en bacteriën de lucht in te spuiten.

©iStock

Fly Geyser (Verenigde Staten)
Dit rode en groene wonder is vandaag de dag een van de bijzonderste natuurverschijnselen ter wereld. Zijn zeldzame vorm maakt hem buiten gewoon mooi.

©Shutterstock

Blue Pond (Japan)
Deze kunstmatige lagune ligt vlak bij het dorp Biei, gelegen op het eiland Hokkaido. Hij ontstond door werkzaamheden aan de Biei-rivier, die werden uitgevoerd na de uitbarsting van de Tokachi-vulkaan in 1988. Het doel was om de stad te beschermen tegen vulkanische modderstromen.

©Shutterstock

Blue Pond (Japan)
De lagune heeft waarschijnlijk zijn kleur te danken aan de toevallige aanwezigheid van colloïdaal aluminiumhydroxide in het water.

©iStock

Blue Pond (Japan)
De dorre, bewegingloze bomen en de kleur van het water geven de plek zowel in de winter als in de zomer een magische sfeer.

©Shutterstock

Tunnel of Love (Oekraïne)
Deze indrukwekkende, zeven kilometer lange tunnel is door de natuur ontstaan en wordt door de inwoners van het Oekraïense plaatsje Klevan 'de tunnel van de liefde' genoemd.

©iStock

Tunnel of Love (Oekraïne)
De plek is vooral onder koppels een trekpleister geworden. Volgens de legende bewijzen ze dat ze elkaars ware liefde zijn wanneer ze hand in hand door de tunnel lopen.

©Shutterstock

Tunnel of Love (Oekraïne)
De tunnel is eigenlijk een spoorlijn. Hoewel het niet vaak voorkomt, rijdt er af en toe nog steeds een trein doorheen.

©Shutterstock

Ruskeala (Rusland)
Ruskeala is een plattelandsdorpje in de Russische deelrepubliek Karelië, waar zich ook beroemde marmergroeven bevinden

©Shutterstock

Ruskeala (Rusland)
Ongeveer 250 jaar geleden stortte een groot deel van een van de groeven in en het gebied eromheen kwam onder water te staan, wat ze gevormd heeft tot hoe ze nu zijn. Sindsdien kan dit natuurwonder bezocht worden door toeristen van over de hele wereld.

©Shutterstock

Krater van Derweze (Turkmenistan)
Deze mysterieuze krater, die plaatselijk bekend staat als 'de poort naar de hel', werd per ongeluk gecreëerd door Sovjet-geologen. Ze staken hem in brand om de verspreiding van methaangas te voorkomen.

©iStock

Krater van Derweze (Turkmenistan)
De krater is sinds 1971 blijven branden en wordt gevoed door rijke aardgasvoorraden die zich in het gebied bevinden.

©Shutterstock

Krater van Derweze (Turkmenistan)
De oranje vlammen hebben een diameter van ongeveer 70 meter en veroorzaken een sterke zwavelachtige geur. Het verschijnsel maakt indruk op toeristen van over de hele wereld en blijft voor geologen een mysterie.

©Shutterstock

Las Médulas (Spanje)
Dit verbazingwekkende berglandschap is een historische locatie waar goud werd gewonnen. Het was de grootste bovengrondse goudmijn in het hele Romeinse Rijk.

©Shutterstock

Las Médulas (Spain)
Dit fascinerende landschap is tot op de dag van vandaag intact gebleven.

©Shutterstock

Ojos del Salar (Chili)
Deze twee indrukwekkende lagunes in het zoutmeer Salar de Atacama zijn ontstaan door een door mensen uitgevoerd geologisch onderzoek.

©Shutterstock

Ojos del Salar (Chili)
Het resultaat was dit buitengewone natuurwonder, dat toeristen van over de hele wereld boeit.

©Shutterstock

Hamilton Pool (Verenigde Staten)
Bij de Hamilton Pool was er geen sprake menselijk handelen, maar van het werk van de natuur. Hij ontstond duizenden jaren geleden, toen het dak van een grot instortte als gevolg van grootschalige erosie.

©Shutterstock

Hamilton Pool (Verenigde Staten)
Het gevolg was een ware oase van kristalhelder water en prachtige vegetatie, die toeristen van over de hele wereld trekt. De Hamilton Pool ligt in de buurt van Austin (Verenigde Staten).

©Shutterstock

To Sua Ocean Trench (Samoa)
Dit mooie 'zwemgat' is ontstaan ​​als gevolg van watererosie. Het is een magische plek die toeristen uit alle hoeken van de wereld lokt.

©Shutterstock

Great Blue Hole (Belize)
Dit schitterende 'blauwe gat' is een enorme onderwatergrot. De perfect gevormde cirkel is iets meer dan 300 meter breed en 124 meter diep. Hij ontstond tienduizenden jaren geleden, toen de zeespiegel veel lager was dan nu.

©Shutterstock

Zhangye Danxia (China)
Deze bijzondere, kleurrijke rotsformaties, die uit zandsteen en andere mineralen bestaan, ontstonden meer dan 24 miljoen jaar geleden.

©Shutterstock

Zhangye Danxia (China)
Deze kleurrijke bergen behoren tot de mooiste natuurwonderen ter wereld.

©Shutterstock

Bryce Canyon (Verenigde Staten)
Bryce Canyon is een groot 'natuurlijk amfitheater' dat is ontstaan ​​door de schurende werking van wind, water en ijs.

©iStock

Bryce Canyon (Verenigde Staten)
Het is een waar natuurwonder waar toeristen van over de hele wereld versteld van staan.

©Shutterstock

Pamukkale (Turkije)
De kalkterrassen bij Pamukkale zijn het resultaat van warmwaterbronnen die eronder liggen. De bronnen stootten calciumcarbonaat uit dat later hard werd, waardoor uiteindelijk deze terrassen ontstonden.

©Shutterstock

Pamukkale (Turkije)
Deze gigantische bassins met water, dat van een helling afloopt, liggen in de buurt van Denizli en zijn een van de meest bijzondere bezienswaardigheden van Turkije.

{ https://www.msn.com/nl-be/ }

20-09-2024 om 18:16 geschreven door peter  

New Research Reveals How El Niño Caused the Greatest Ever Mass Extinction

Mega ocean warming El Niño events were key in driving the largest extinction of life on planet Earth some 252 million years ago, according to new research.

The study, published in  Science and co-led by the University of Bristol and China University of Geosciences (Wuhan), has shed new light on why the effects of rapid climate change in the Permian-Triassic warming were so devastating for all forms of life in the sea and on land.

Scientists have long linked this mass extinction to vast volcanic eruptions in what is now Siberia. The resulting carbon dioxide emissions rapidly accelerated climate warming, resulting in widespread stagnation and the collapse of marine and terrestrial ecosystems.

But what caused life on land, including plants and usually resilient insects, to suffer just as badly has remained a source of mystery.

• Holocene Extinction, Anthropocene Extinction, or Merely the Dust in the Wind?
• New Study Reveals the Real Impact of Early Humans on Animal Extinction

Co-lead author Dr Alexander Farnsworth, Senior Research Associate at the University of Bristol, said: “Climate warming alone cannot drive such devastating extinctions because, as we are seeing today, when the tropics become too hot, species migrate to the cooler, higher latitudes. Our research has revealed that increased greenhouse gases don’t just make the majority of the planet warmer, they also increase weather and climate variability making it even more ‘wild’ and difficult for life to survive.”

The Permian-Triassic catastrophe shows the problem of global warming is not just a matter of it becoming unbearably hot, but also a case of conditions swinging wildly over decades.

“Most life failed to adapt to these conditions, but thankfully a few things survived, without which we wouldn’t be here today. It was nearly, but not quite, the end of the life on Earth,” said co-lead author Professor Yadong Sun at China University of Geosciences, Wuhan .

• Caribbean Animal Extinctions Began With The Conquistadors, Says Study
• Did Elusive Dark Matter Trigger Global Mass Extinctions and Doom the Dinosaurs?

Surface temperature (°C) of the warmest month during peak-warmth for the Permian-Triassic mass extinction 252 million years ago. (University of Bristol and China University of Geosciences (Wuhan))

The scale of Permian-Triassic warming was revealed by studying oxygen isotopes in the fossilized tooth material of tiny extinct swimming organisms called conodonts. By studying the temperature record of conodonts from around the world, the researchers were able to show a remarkable collapse of temperature gradients in the low and mid latitudes.

Dr Farnsworth, who used pioneering climate modelling to evaluate the findings, said:

“Essentially, it got too hot everywhere. The changes responsible for the climate patterns identified were profound because there were much more intense and prolonged El Niño events than witnessed today. Species were simply not equipped to adapt or evolve quickly enough.”

In recent years El Niño events have caused major changes in rainfall patterns and temperature. For example, the weather extremes that caused the June 2024 North American heatwave when temperatures were around 15°C hotter than normal. 2023-2024 was also one of the hottest years on record globally due to a strong El Niño in the Pacific, which was further exacerbated by increased human-induced CO ₂ driving catastrophic drought and fires around the world.

“Fortunately such events so far have only lasted one to two years at a time. During the Permian-Triassic crisis, El Niño persisted for much longer resulting in a decade of widespread drought, followed by years of flooding. Basically, the climate was all over the place and that makes it very hard for any species to adapt,” co-author Paul Wignall, Professor of Paleoenvironments at the University of Leeds.

The results of the climate modelling also help explain the abundant charcoal found in rock layers of that age.

“Wildfires become very common if you have a drought-prone climate. Earth got stuck in a crisis state where the land was burning and the oceans stagnating. There was nowhere to hide,” added co-author Professor David Bond, a paleontologist at the University of Hull.

The researchers observed that throughout Earth’s history there have been many volcanic events similar to those in Siberia, and many caused extinctions, but none led to a crisis of the scale of the Permian-Triassic event.

They found Permian-Triassic extinction was so different because these Mega-El Niños created positive feedback on the climate which led to incredibly warm conditions starting in the tropics and then beyond, resulting in the dieback of vegetation. Plants are essential for removing CO ₂ from the atmosphere, as well as the foundation of the food web, and if they die so does one of the Earth's mechanisms to stop CO ₂ building up in the atmosphere as a result of continued volcanism.

This also helps explain the conundrum regarding the Permian-Triassic mass extinction whereby the extinction on land occurred tens of thousands of years before extinction in the oceans.

“Whilst the oceans were initially shielded from the temperature rises, the mega-El Nino’s caused temperatures on land to exceed most species thermal tolerances at rates so rapid that they could not adapt in time,” explained Dr Sun.

“Only species that could migrate quickly could survive, and there weren’t many plants or animals that could do that.”

Mass extinctions, although rare, are the heartbeat of the Earth’s natural system resetting life and evolution along different paths.

“The Permo-Triassic mass extinction, although devastating, would ultimately see the rise of Dinosaurs becoming the dominant species thereafter as would the Cretaceous mass extinction lead to the rise of mammals, and humans,” Dr Farnsworth concluded.

Top image: A geological field section reveals a desiccated (extreme dryness) land surface that was common all over the world 252 million years ago - a sign of our future to come.       Source: University of Bristol and China University of Geosciences (Wuhan)

• This article was first published under the title, ‘New Research Reveals How El Nino Caused the Greatest Ever Mass Extinction’ by the University of Bristol.

{ https://www.ancient-origins.net/science }

18-09-2024 om 17:59 geschreven door peter  

Story by Michael Le Page

Illustration of the end-Permian extinction event, when extreme temperatures may have killed off forests

RICHARD JONES/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

The Great Dying at the end of the Permian Period 250 million years ago may have been amplified by El Niño events far stronger and longer lasting than any today.

These mega El Niños caused wild swings in the climate that killed off forests and many land animals, says Alexander Farnsworth at the University of Bristol in the UK.

What would Earth look like in 25 years? I asked the experts

They also triggered feedback processes that helped make this mass extinction as bad as it was, he says. “There are knock-on effects of this sort of El Niño event becoming stronger and lasting longer.”

Around 90 per cent of all species alive at the time may have gone extinct during the end-Permian extinction, making it the worst ever mass extinction. It is widely thought that it was triggered by massive volcanic eruptions in what is now Siberia.

These eruptions released huge quantities of carbon dioxide – possibly by heating rocks full of fossil carbon – that led to extreme global warming. The ocean became stagnant and low in oxygen, killing off marine creatures.

But this doesn’t explain everything. In particular, land species started going extinct tens of thousands of years earlier than those in the sea.

Many ideas have been put forward to explain this, from volcanic winters to the loss of the ozone layer. The idea that extreme El Niños might be involved emerged from studies of past ocean temperatures, based on oxygen isotypes in fossils, led by Yadong Sun at the China University of Geosciences in Wuhan.

Now, Farnsworth and his colleagues have run computer models to explore what might have happened at end of the Permian that could explain Sun’s findings.

Today, El Niño occurs when warm water in the western Pacific spreads eastwards across the surface of the ocean. This creates an area of abnormally warm water that heats the atmosphere and affects weather across the planet. 

Before the Permian extinction began, the researchers found, El Niños were probably of a similar intensity and duration as today. That is, the anomalously warm water was about 0.5°C (0.9°F) hotter than average and the events lasted for a few months.

These events, however, were happening in a massive ocean called Panthalassa, which was 30 per cent wider at the equator than the Pacific Ocean is today. This means the area of anomalously warm water during El Niños was much larger than today, and thus had a bigger planetary impact.

As CO2 levels rose at the end of the Permian, these El Niño events got stronger and lasted longer, the team’s models suggest. They caused extreme swings in the weather on land that killed off forests, which stopped soaking up CO2 and started releasing it, leading to more warming and even more extreme El Niños.

In the sea, the temperature variations would have been less severe, and marine animals can more easily migrate to avoid them. This explains why marine extinctions happened later, when global warming got more intense. “The killer extreme global warming that was the cause of marine extinction was worse because of these El Niños taking away the carbon sink,” says Farnsworth.

By the peak of the extinction, the temperature anomaly during El Niños was up to 4°C (7.2°F), with each event lasting more than a decade, he says.

Something strange is happening in the Pacific and we must find out why

© Provided by New Scientist

Something strange is happening in the Pacific and we must find out why

Unexpectedly, the eastern Pacific Ocean is cooling. If this “cold tongue” continues, it could reduce greenhouse gas warming by 30 per cent – but also bring megadrought to the US

It isn't clear if something similar will happen in the future. Computer models vary in their forecasts of how El Niños will change as the planet warms, says Farnsworth. But they are already having a bigger impact because they are happening in a warmer world.

“The El Niño we just had was helping set record temperatures everywhere and leading to a huge amount of forest fires,” he says. “And the thing that disturbs me most is tentative signs during this El Niño of dieback in the Amazon.”

The study shows that under specific climate conditions, El Niño events can cause extinctions, says Pedro DiNezio at the University of Colorado, Boulder. But these mega El Niños couldn't occur today because the Pacific is smaller than Panthalassa, they say.

“These results are very exciting to understand the past, not so much the near future. To answer what El Niño will do, we need to look at intervals in the past with similar continental configurations as today,” says DiNezio.

“I think it’s a compelling study,” says Phil Jardine at the University of Münster in Germany, who found the first direct evidence for the loss of the ozone layer during the Permian extinction.

“I don’t think that this and other extinction drivers, including ozone degradation, are mutually exclusive,” he says. “The deadly thing about the end-Permian mass extinction seems to be that a lot of things were happening at once, and interacting with each other as they cascaded through the Earth system.”

Journal reference:

• Science DOI: 10.1126/science.ado2030

The Great Dying: The Permian Mass Extinction

{ https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather?ocid=bingnewsserp }

18-09-2024 om 17:48 geschreven door peter  

Mega El Niño Events Caused End-Permian Mass Extinction, Researchers Suggest

Illustration of the end-Permian extinction event, when extreme temperatures may have killed off forests

RICHARD JONES/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

The end-Permian mass extinction, which occurred about 252 million years ago, was the most severe extinction event in the past 540 million years, eliminating more than 90% of marine and 75% of terrestrial species. Scientists have long linked this extinction to vast volcanic eruptions in what is now Siberia. The resulting carbon dioxide emissions rapidly accelerated climate warming, resulting in widespread stagnation and the collapse of marine and terrestrial ecosystems. But what caused life on land, including plants and usually resilient insects, to suffer just as badly has remained a source of mystery.

An illustration depicting the onset of the end-Permian mass extinction.

Image credit: Dawid Adam Iurino / PaleoFactory, Sapienza University of Rome / Jurikova et al, doi: 10.1038/s41561-020-00646-4.

“Climate warming alone cannot drive such devastating extinctions because, as we are seeing today, when the tropics become too hot, species migrate to the cooler, higher latitudes,” said University of Bristol’s Dr. Alexander Farnsworth.

“Our research has revealed that increased greenhouse gases don’t just make the majority of the planet warmer, they also increase weather and climate variability making it even more ‘wild’ and difficult for life to survive.”

“The Permian-Triassic catastrophe shows the problem of global warming is not just a matter of it becoming unbearably hot, but also a case of conditions swinging wildly over decades.”

“Most life failed to adapt to these conditions, but thankfully a few things survived, without which we wouldn’t be here today. It was nearly, but not quite, the end of the life on Earth,” said China University of Geosciences Professor Yadong Sun.

The scale of end-Permian warming was revealed by studying oxygen isotopes in the fossilized tooth material of tiny extinct swimming organisms called conodonts.

By studying the temperature record of conodonts from around the world, the researchers were able to show a remarkable collapse of temperature gradients in the low and mid latitudes.

“Essentially, it got too hot everywhere,” Dr. Farnsworth said.

“The changes responsible for the climate patterns identified were profound because there were much more intense and prolonged El Niño events than witnessed today.”

“Species were simply not equipped to adapt or evolve quickly enough.”

A geological field section reveals a desiccated (extreme dryness) land surface that was common all over the world 252 million years ago. Image credit: University of Bristol / China University of Geosciences.

In recent years, El Niño events have caused major changes in rainfall patterns and temperature.

For example, the weather extremes that caused the June 2024 North American heatwave when temperatures were around 15 degrees Celsius hotter than normal.

2023-2024 was also one of the hottest years on record globally due to a strong El Niño in the Pacific, which was further exacerbated by increased human-induced carbon dioxide driving catastrophic drought and fires around the world.

“Fortunately such events so far have only lasted one to two years at a time,” said University of Leeds Professor Paul Wignall.

“During the Permian-Triassic crisis, El Niño persisted for much longer resulting in a decade of widespread drought, followed by years of flooding.”

“Basically, the climate was all over the place and that makes it very hard for any species to adapt.”

The results of the climate modeling also help explain the abundant charcoal found in rock layers of that age.

“Wildfires become very common if you have a drought-prone climate,” said University of Hull Professor David Bond.

“Earth got stuck in a crisis state where the land was burning and the oceans stagnating. There was nowhere to hide.”

The researchers observed that throughout Earth’s history there have been many volcanic events similar to those in Siberia, and many caused extinctions, but none led to a crisis of the scale of the end-Permian event.

They found the extinction was so different because these mega-El Niños created positive feedback on the climate which led to incredibly warm conditions starting in the tropics and then beyond, resulting in the dieback of vegetation.

Plants are essential for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, as well as the foundation of the food web, and if they die so does one of the Earth’s mechanisms to stop carbon dioxide building up in the atmosphere as a result of continued volcanism.

This also helps explain the conundrum regarding the end-Permian mass extinction whereby the extinction on land occurred tens of thousands of years before extinction in the oceans.

“Whilst the oceans were initially shielded from the temperature rises, the mega-El Nino’s caused temperatures on land to exceed most species thermal tolerances at rates so rapid that they could not adapt in time,” Dr. Sun said.

“Only species that could migrate quickly could survive, and there weren’t many plants or animals that could do that.”

“The Permo-Triassic mass extinction, although devastating, would ultimately see the rise of dinosaurs becoming the dominant species thereafter as would the end-Cretaceous mass extinction lead to the rise of mammals, and humans,” Dr. Farnsworth said.

• The results were published in the journal Science.
• Yadong Sun et al. 2024. Mega El Niño instigated the end-Permian mass extinction. Science 385 (6714): 1189-1195; doi: 10.1126/science.ado2030

{ https://www.sci.news/ }

18-09-2024 om 17:32 geschreven door peter  

Scientists find microplastics in worrying new body part

• READ MORE:  Mothers pass cancer-causing 'forever chemicals' to newborns

By Nikki Main Science Reporter For Dailymail.Com

Two new studies have revealed that that thousands of toxic chemicals are seeping into our bodies through every day food packaging.

Scientist from Switzerland identified 3,601 toxic chemicals in items like Tupperware, water bottles and canned goods, which were found in human blood, urine, hair and breast milk. 

The chemicals included Bisphenol A, or BPA, and heavy metals that have been linked to cancer and reproductive problems.

A separate team from Brazil made another startling discovery after detecting microplastics in a part of the nose connected to the brain, which could be linked to Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.

Thousands of potentially toxic chemicals were found in the human body, new research showed. The chemicals were found to seep into food through their containers

The compounds infiltrate food by simply coming into contact with the product through it's packaging or by heating up food in the plastic to-go containers handed out at restaurants. 

'There are known hazardous chemicals that are known to be linked with adverse human health outcomes, and these chemicals leach out of packaging,' said the study's co-author and the chief scientific officer of the Food Packaging Forum, Jane Muncke.

There are 14,000 chemicals used in packaging and the new study led by the Food Packaging Forum Foundation in Switzerland found that 25 percent of them are 'largely unregulated.'

'This is a staggering number and shows that food contact materials are a significant source of chemicals in humans,' Martin Wagner, a professor of biology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim told CNN.

'The study is the first to systematically link the chemicals we use in materials to package and process foods to human exposure.'

Read More

• Here are three cancer-causing household products YOU should avoid 

The study, published in the Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology, reported that the researchers identified BPA in both food and the human body that had previously been used in baby bottles, sippy cups and infant formula containers.

The chemical remained in the products until parents boycotted it more than a decade ago, however, it is still found in other packaging containers today. 

BPA has been linked to heart disease, erectile dysfunction, diabetes and cancer in adults and has also been found to increase the risk of early death by 49 percent.

Heavy metals were also discovered in the products, which can harm human's DNA by binding proteins and displacing essential metal ions that can alter the way protein functions in the body and can cause cell dysfunction.

They can become toxic as they gradually increase and accumulate in the body and can cause cardiovascular disease, cancer and impair brain development and cause lower IQs in children.

A lesser-known item is tiny containers of sauces that are popular at fast-food restaurants.

The researchers noted that the small cups have a better chance of contaminating food because of the close proximity between the chemicals in the packaging and the products

Food packaging like small sauce containers can contaminate the food, causing dangerous chemicals to enter the body

Muncke told The Washington Post that she was recently on a flight and was giving a small container of salad dressing that raised immediate red flags.

'They served the salad with a 15 milliliter little plastic bottle with olive oil and vinegar that you could pour over it,' she said. 'I thought, 'Well, I'm not doing that.'

'We don't think about how the (mostly) plastic packaging adds chemicals to our food, but it's an important source of human exposures,' R. Thomas Zoeller, an emeritus professor of biology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst who was not involved in the research, told The Post. 

'This is an early indication that harmful chemicals — largely unregulated — are making it into the human population.'

On top of toxic chemicals found throughout the body, a separate study also published this month was the first to identify microplastics from water bottles in the olfactory bulb. 

The olfactory bulb is a small portion of tissue inside the nose that's separated from the nasal canal and researchers found that this bulb is housing between five millimeters and one nanometer of plastic particles.

The study, published in the journal Environmental Health, found that the tissue could create a direct pathway for microplastics to enter the brain, although no published studies have confirmed the presence of PFAS in the brain.

The research team led by the University of São Paulo in Brazil said the microplastics could have reached the olfactory bulb either through systemic circulation, through the respiratory pathway or by crossing the blood-brain barrier.

Microplastics, or fragments of any plastic that measure less than five millimeters in length, lurk in oceans, the air, food, and even drinking water.

Humans constantly inhale and ingest them, raising the odds of experiencing whole-body inflammation, neurological effects, DNA damage, and a weakened immune response.

A total of 16 synthetic particles were found in eight of of the 15 deceased individuals studied.

Polypropylene - a thermoplastic found in food packaging - was the most prevalent polymer found, accounting for 48 percent of the microplastics in the bulb.

These findings could pave the way for future research to understand where microplastics originate.

Philip Landrigan, MD, who wasn't involved with the study told MedPage Today: 'I think there'll be a lot more information in the next few years about how microplastics are getting into the human body -- and what they're doing once they get in there.'

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

18-09-2024 om 16:49 geschreven door peter  

Summiting Greece’s towering Mount Olympus is an impressive feet for the 1-million-plus people who have accomplished the climb. But it would be even more impressive if they could do it underwater.

That’s impossible—for now. But oceanographers led by the Schmidt Ocean Institute exploring the depths of the Pacific Ocean just discovered a massive underwater mountain that at least presents the opportunity.

Regardless of climb-ability, the 3,109-meter seamount is a massive find. It’s one of many made during the oceanographers’ 28-day late-summer exploration in the research vessel Falkor (too), whimsically named for the famous luckdragon from The Neverending Story.

The team discovered the mountain along the Nazca Ridge, which is located about 900 miles west of the Chilean coast—a region that itself contains a chain of underwater mountains. But this particular peak was towering above the rest. The submerged mountain is about 200 meters taller from base to peak than Mount Olympus, and roughly four times the size of the tallest building in the world (Dubai’s Burj Khalifa), according to a press release from the institut

The Falkor (too) crew mapped the mountain and the surrounding area using a sonar system on the bottom of the vessel’s hull. “Sound waves go down and they bounce back off the surface, and we measure the time it takes to come back and get measured. From that we get a really good idea (of the seabed topography),” Jyotika Virmani, the institute’s executive director, told CNN.

The area plotted by the expedition is a drop in the ocean (pun intended), but every drop counts. Just under three-quarters of the Earth’s surface (about 71 percent) is ocean floor, but of that expanse, we’ve only mapped about 26 percent in high resolution—including this recent Nazca Ridge mission. The oceanographers also studied nine other features of the area, including a smaller, neighboring mountain’s sprawling coral garden that stretches the size of three tennis courts.

The rocky slopes on the Nazca Ridge mountains, and other mountains like them across the ocean, are perfect homes for ancient coral and sponge gardens in which some sea life can live largely undisturbed. In addition to mapping the mountains, the researchers used a robot to explore the region and made some pretty major wildlife discoveries. This includes the thePromachoteuthis squid, which is so rare that everything we previously knew about it came from the small handful of specimens that were collected as long ago as the late 1800s.

“The seamounts of the Southeastern Pacific host remarkable biological diversity,” Alex David Rogers, Science Director of Ocean Census, said in a press release from the Schmidt Ocean Institute.

The researchers also spotted a Caspar octopus—the first confirmed appearance of the cephalopod in the southern Pacific Ocean—and Bathyphysa siphonophores, which are more commonly and ridiculously known as “flying spaghetti monsters” (an apt description).

This was the institute’s third expedition of the year to that region of the ocean floor. During the previous two, researchers documented over 150 previously unknown species.

Scientists hope the results of these Nazca Ridge expeditions will help push forward policies to safeguard these areas of the natural world that—despite the fact that we don’t often see them—are no less worth protecting than what we can see.

“We’ve explored around 25 seamounts on the Nazca and Salas y Gómez Ridges,” Co-Chief Scientist and Schmidt Ocean Institute Marine Technician Tomer Ketter said in the press release. “Our findings highlight the remarkable diversity of these ecosystems, while simultaneously revealing the gaps in our understanding of how the seamount ecosystems are interconnected. We hope the data gathered from these expeditions will help inform future policies, safeguarding these pristine environments for future generations.”

VIDEOS

{ https://www.msn.com/en-us/feed? }

13-09-2024 om 18:28 geschreven door peter  

Artikel door Wim De Maeseneer

Het is 16 september 2023 wanneer seismologen van over de hele wereld plots een mysterieus signaal zien op hun uiterst gevoelige meettoestellen. Het signaal lijkt tot hun verbazing helemaal niet op een aardbeving en houdt maar liefst 9 dagen aan.

De trillingen gaan de wereld rond en worden gedetecteerd in Engeland, de Verenigde Staten, Japan, West-Australië en van de Noord- tot de Zuidpool. En dus ook in België.

"We hebben een oproep gedaan aan seismologen over de hele wereld en kregen al snel de reactie dat ook zij allemaal hetzelfde signaal hadden gedetecteerd", zegt seismoloog Koen Van Noten van de Koninklijke Sterrenwacht van België. "We hebben dan kunnen achterhalen dat de trillingen waarschijnlijk uit Oost-Groenland afkomstig waren, maar we hadden geen flauw idee wat de oorzaak kon zijn."

Op hetzelfde moment krijgen onderzoekers van het Vlaams Instituut voor de Zee (VLIZ) bericht dat er een grote tsunami is waargenomen vlak bij een van hun meetstations waar ze onderzoek doen naar de klimaatverandering.

"Onze metingen en berekeningen bevestigden dat er inderdaad een grote tsunami moet zijn geweest", zegt onderzoeker Wieter Boone van het VLIZ. "We zijn dan meteen op satellietbeelden gaan zoeken wat en waar er iets gebeurd zou kunnen zijn."

On 16 September 2023, a massive landslide in Greenland triggered a megatsunami, creating a standing wave that oscillated in Dickson Fjord for over a week, observed worldwide through seismic stations. This unusual long-duration signal from the standing wave offers new insights into megatsunami dynamics, with implications for understanding climate change impacts on glacier retreat and landslide frequency.

(Artist’s concept).

Megatsunami

Op die beelden, en op foto's die enkele dagen later door het Deense leger zijn gemaakt, was duidelijk te zien dat een van de hoge bergtoppen langs de Dicksonfjord volledig was ingestort. "Door die massa rotsen en de grote snelheid waarmee ze naar beneden zijn gekomen, is ook de gletsjer eronder afgebroken en in de fjord terechtgekomen", zegt Boone.

"In totaal moet zo'n 25 miljoen kubieke meter rotsen en ijs in de smalle kloof zijn gevallen. Dat komt overeen met de inhoud van 10.000 Olympische zwembaden of 27 van de grootste containerschepen."

"Dat heeft een tsunami veroorzaakt tot wel 200 meter hoog. En omdat de fjord een bocht van bijna 90 graden heeft, zat de golf gevangen en is het water heen en weer blijven klotsen, zoals in een bad, 9 dagen lang. De trillingen die dat heeft veroorzaakt zijn de wereld rondgegaan."

Foto voor en na het instorten van de bergtop en gletsjer

Foto: Soren Rysgaard

Klimaatverandering

Volgens de onderzoekers gaan er door de klimaatopwarming nog meer grote landverschuivingen voorkomen. "Typisch in Noordoost-Groenland is dat er steile bergen en hoge gletsjer zijn, die aan elkaar zijn gevroren tot een geheel. Maar door de klimaatopwarming smelten ze van elkaar los en worden ze instabiel. Daardoor zien we nu al meer landverschuivingen in die regio", zegt Boone.

Gelukkig waren er die dag geen schepen in de buurt. Anders waren de gevolgen van de enorme tsunami niet te overzien geweest

"Onze instrumenten hebben de tsunami gelukkig overleefd. Maar 72 kilometer verder, op Ella Island, hadden ze minder geluk. Daar is wel een onderzoeksbasis vernield, door de deining van de tsunami die nog steeds 4 meter hoge golven veroorzaakte." 

De Diksonfjord is ook populair bij toeristen die de Groenlandse fjorden per cruiseschip bezoeken. "Gelukkig waren er die dag geen schepen in de buurt. Anders waren de gevolgen van de enorme tsunami niet te overzien geweest", zeggen de onderzoekers. "Het zal belangrijk zijn om deze gebieden goed te monitoren."

Depending on the frequency range filtered out, the rockfall triggering the tsunami can be seen as a single peak (top), the standing wave sloshing back and forth as an undulating pattern in the recordings (middle, with several hours depicted) or the overall signal of the rockfall and the tsunami over the course of a week with strongly decreasing intensity of the oscillations (bottom).

Credit: Angela Carillo Ponce et al.

• Het onderzoek van onder meer de Koninklijke Sterrenwacht van België, het VLIZ en de Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) is gepubliceerd in het wetenschappelijk tijdschrift Science.

{ https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/ }

 

12-09-2024 om 20:35 geschreven door peter