THIS IS NOT “NORMAL”: THERE HAVE BEEN MORE THAN 500 TORNADOES IN THE U.S. DURING THE LAST 30 DAYS

Since 1998, there has been an average of 279 tornadoes during the month of May.  So the fact that we have had more than 500 over the last 30 days means that we are running way, way above normal…

29-05-2019 om 20:40 geschreven door peter  

Evolution: What is it? How does it work?

BY ZOE GORDON

This is an odd start, but before we get into complicated things I want to talk about something near and dear to my heart—corn. Once upon a time, the corn we know and love (at least I do), used to be something called teosinte, a small green plant that doesn’t look anywhere near as appetizing. It is hard to believe, I know, but something very interesting happened. In the area that is now Mexico, this plant was identified as having potential as a food crop, so farmers began intentionally growing it. Being good farmers, they thought that maybe if they kept the seeds of the biggest ones and kept planting those they would get more food out of it. As it turns out, they were right. After ten thousand years of only planting the ones that produced the biggest kernels, we ended up with maize as we know it today. It’s bizarre but entirely true and it happened through a process we call artificial selection.

In nature similar, very strange changes can happen to species over time given enough pressure by the environment around them. Evolutionary biology is essentially the study of how organisms have changed over time to develop into new species. The topic is a bit contentious, as we all know, but there are also many common misconceptions about exactly how this process works. Thinking about it as a whole is difficult, with many points where it is easy to get hung up and confused. So, instead of looking at the big strange picture, we should start with a closer look at the little parts that make up the concept. As we move into this article, remember that, ultimately, every species needs to survive and reproduce because that’s how species continue to exist. With that said, let us take a look!

Credit: Pixabay.

Getting Fit

Let us consider two individuals, Tom and Jack. Tom is long-limbed, athletic, lightweight, and doesn’t have much body hair. Jack is shorter, has a fair amount of hair, and a larger, higher-fat build. If you put both of these men in a forest, it is likely that Tom will have a bit of an advantage with traversing, climbing, et cetera. However, take the same pair and put them in a windy tundra and Jack will likely do a lot better in the harsh weather.

Every environment poses its own unique challenges. If you live in an area that has a lot of water, you will do a lot better if you can swim. If you live in an area that has a lot of plants and cover, predators are less likely to see you if you’re small and green. These factors contribute to something we call fitness which is a measure of how well you are built to survive and how likely you are to reproduce. In some ways, it’s a bit like physical fitness in humans. And, similarly, this fitness affects more than just your looks.

Genetics plays a huge role in this, and your genes (genotype) are expressed through your outward characteristics, called your phenotype. Small brown lizards living in a forest are displaying (‘expressing’) genes that give them the small and brown phenotype, and maybe even more that tell them to like staying on surfaces that match their color. Which brings us to the next main idea, a process called natural selection.

Selection Bias

Natural selection looks at the differences in the likelihood of survival and reproduction based on a species’ phenotype. Ultimately, in nature, creatures that have genes that result in fit phenotypes will survive and reproduce. This concept is where the term “survival of the fittest” comes from. The survivors live to have offspring and so genes in that population will, therefore, start leaning towards that fitter survivor genotype. Let us use an example.

Imagine that in a grassland there is a population of mostly large, green grasshoppers. They are doing well here because nature provides a lot of cover. This season, though, there isn’t much rain and the grassland starts turning brown and sparse. This means that the larger, brighter grasshoppers become much easier to see by predators and many of them get eaten. So, the next generation of grasshoppers ends up being mostly smaller and perhaps a bit less green, because the ones that best survived the change in the grasslands were the ones that were harder to see.

This is natural selection. Those built to survive in an environment will live long enough to have offspring, changing the gene variety in the next generation. The same process happens with plants, fungi, and microorganisms. An important thing to note here, though, is that this is only possible because a healthy population has a wide range of genes to choose from. Not all organisms of a species will be the same size or the same color or have the same features.

Charles Darwin is considered the father of modern evolutionary biology. He developed his theory of natural selection by observing the variations among the species of the Galapagos Islands. He was best known for his study of birds, which all occupied different niches on these far islands but bore obvious resemblances to mainland species.

Image credits: John Gould. 

Over a long period of time and given a lot of pressure, a population of organisms can change in significant ways. The reason we are now having an antibiotic crisis is that, after many years of exposing bacteria to chemicals designed to kill them, the ones that had the gene quirks allowing them to survive are the ones which were able to multiply. So now we have a large number of antibiotic-resistant bacteria to contend with which have whole sections of DNA that exist only to counteract these drugs—but that, of course, raises a question. If they didn’t have these genes before, why do they have them now?

Mutant Power

Credit: Pixabay.

Mutation is a major factor influencing the process of evolution. Every so often, when cells are dividing, the mechanisms that copy bits of genetic data make a mistake. While it can often result in problems, it sometimes creates just what an organism needs to survive. One reason why HIV has been so hard to cure is that its reproduction process is unstable and prone to genetic errors. What this means is that the medication will work on most viral particles, but not all of them. The virus is, therefore, constantly evolving and the ‘error’, mutant forms that help it survive persist due to natural selection.

Some mutations are overtly harmful, like mutations in hemoglobin genes that cause sickle cell disease, where red blood cells curve into a “sickle” shape. The mutation makes the cells less efficient oxygen carriers and more fragile, and sometimes they cause painful blockages and organ damage. However, these mutations continue to persist because if a person is only a carrier, having received the variant gene from only one parent, it has a protective effect against malaria—a common disease in the parts of Africa where sickle cell is most prevalent. The fragility of the cell due to the hemoglobin structure means the cell will often rupture before the parasite can reproduce. But, since the remainder of their hemoglobin is normal, they don’t experience most of the severe effects seen in persons with the full form of the disease. The carrier phenotype is, therefore, fit. Natural selection is a strange process indeed.

So we have looked at mutation, natural selection, and fitness. We have looked at bacteria and viruses and how these factors have made them survive and evolve on a smaller faster scale. Now, how does that translate to bigger more complex things?

Making Sense of it All

Imagine that there is a ground-dwelling species of mammal that lives in a forest. Many of them are competing for the same food sources. A few of them, have started climbing in the hopes of finding another food source. A mutation comes which makes one offspring’s claws curve a bit more, causing that individual to be better at climbing. It survives to reproduce. A few generations down the line, all its descendants may have these curved claws. Somewhere along the line, a descendant is born with unusually long limbs which makes it better at both climbing and jumping, this individual’s offspring may well, do better than others—and so on. These minor changes can add up over time, just like the biggest teosinte kernels being intentionally planted. In nature, however, it takes far longer than a neat ten thousand years to produce something as different as maize.

Let this mammal group adapt for many thousands of years with natural selection favoring climbing habits and hunting in trees. At the end of that time if you were to take one of these climbing adapted creatures and put them alongside the ground dwellers they would look very different. They may have a different body form, make different sounds, have eyes that are adapted to seeing at a distance, and so on. And, because of the amount of mutation and genetic changes that brought them to this point, any offspring born of a mix of these two creatures would be sterile like a liger or mule. Just like that, you now have two different species. This also speaks to a common misconception, the idea that if one organism advanced from another, the first one should be gone. That simply isn’t how the process works.

In nature, creatures will exist side by side as one group remains the same and others experience changes due to environmental pressure. It is strange, and hard to fully appreciate, but we have a bit of evidence that can follow the trail. Think even of the liger I just mentioned, the mere fact that a lion and tiger—two distinct species from two different regions—can produce offspring means that their genotypes must be similar enough to make an embryo viable. We interpret this to mean that these big cats must have some ancestry in common.

What Do We Know?

Though it happens over a very long period of time in creatures that take longer to reproduce than bacteria or viruses, there are a few ways we can observe that evolution is an acting process. If an organism has advanced from one form to another, it stands to reason that there had to be some forms in between. Well, though we don’t always have all the bits of the puzzle, the fossils we find often help us fill these gaps. For example, between dinosaurs and birds we have found species of feathered, winged dinosaurs like Archaeopteryx.

There are also several odd cases in nature of organisms growing parts they have no need for. Some snake species and legless lizards retain a pelvic girdle with no real function, dolphin embryos in development still start to grow hind limb buds that retract after a time, and many cave dwelling or burrowing species retain non-functioning eyes. The fact that the genetic machinery required to make these structures happen exists, presents as evidence that these genes had a purpose at some point in the organism’s history.

There are other factors to consider as well. Genetic evidence frequently shows fairly small differences between one species and another of a similar type that cannot reproduce with each other. In fact, genetic evidence shows that a large variety of organisms have a surprising number of genes in common—whales, humans, bats, and cats all have the same bones making up their forelimbs. But, this gets into very complex discussion and murky waters. This article really just serves to give a background of a concept. Take the information here, interpret and think about it as you will and, of course, there are many other great sources of information on the topic out there. Whether evolution on a larger scale makes sense to you or not, hopefully we can at least agree that these smaller processes of change are things we can observe. By now, I hope, the idea of what evolution is and how it works is at least a little bit clearer.

{ https://www.zmescience.com/ }

27-05-2019 om 20:20 geschreven door peter  

{ https://www.inverse.com/ }

27-05-2019 om 01:35 geschreven door peter  

© Copyright New Dawn Magazine, www.newdawnmagazine.com. Permission granted to freely distribute this article for non-commercial purposes if unedited and copied in full, including this notice.

© Copyright New Dawn Magazine, www.newdawnmagazine.com. Permission to re-send, post and place on web sites for non-commercial purposes, and if shown only in its entirety with no changes or additions. This notice must accompany all re-posting.

{ https://www.newdawnmagazine.com/ }

27-05-2019 om 01:11 geschreven door peter  

In the early 2000s, several Spanish scientists became interested in relatively unknown and mysterious meteorological phenomena known as megacryometeors after huge chunks of ice, some weighing up to 6 pounds (2.7 kg), fell repeatedly from cloudless skies over Spain. While a few peer-reviewed studies were published following these incidents (see here and here), little remains known about these anomalous ice conglomerations.

Ice falling from passing aircraft is often cited as the most likely explanation for megacryometeors, as ice can form on aircraft at high altitudes and melt as aircraft descend. However, numerous incidences of megacryometeors have been cited far from flight paths, not to mention the fact that accounts of the phenomena pre-date the invention of aviation.

A Spanish megacryometeor from 2007.

The latest report of an anomalous ball of ice falling from the sky occurred in Arizona on April 27 as a 10-pound chunk of ice crashed through a woman’s house in Havasu, Arizona. Unlucky homeowner Sandy Ford said the megacryometeor crashed through her roof and destroyed her garage ceiling before exploding on the ground. The ice was clear, as opposed to the blue ice that is typically used in airline septic systems. According to Ford, the noise of the ice exploding in garage was so loud that neighbors called emergency services:

It sounded like a sonic boom in my garage. My neighbor heard the sound and came over, then someone from the fire department showed up. When I went out, I was expecting to see that my hot water heater exploded … it was a chunk of ice that fell through the tile roof, through the ceiling and all the way to the ground.

In 2018, a megacryometeor was caught on camera as it exploded on a London street just feet away from a street cleaner. Just last month, a huge chunk of ice shattered a Colorado woman’s windshield as she drive along a busy highway. When will one of these incidents turn deadly?

For now, megacryometeors remain an enigma. Could these phenomena merely be signs that aviation and human population growth are contributing to increased incidents of ice falling from aircraft onto populated areas? Then what to make of similar reports that are nowhere near flight paths? Aircraft could be to blame, but that would mean that – gasp! – there are undisclosed aircraft buzzing around places they shouldn’t be. That couldn’t be, could it?

But that leaves out what to make of reports that pre-date aircraft. Could these megacryometeors simply be some kind of super-sized hailstone created under a very specific set of atmospheric conditions? That begs the question: could they become more common as climate patterns change? That’s a scary thought.

Figure 1.

A chunk of ice that fell in Chilches (Castellón de la Plana, Spain) having a diameter of around 10 cm.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

25-05-2019 om 20:48 geschreven door peter  

Huge underwater eruption created giant volcano off the coast of Africa

BY MIHAI ANDREI

The beautiful island of Mayotte was shaken by numerous volcanic temblors.

Image credits: Yane Mainard.

Volcanic shake

About half a year ago, seismologists noticed something unusual off the coast of Mayotte, an overseas French territory between Africa’s eastern coast and Madagascar. Sensors all around the world picked up seismic waves coming from around the island, but the source was largely unknown.

The locals felt it too. Almost every day, they felt small rumbles, stressing out about what the source might be, and authorities had little answers. French researchers had a hunch what the source might be, but without an on-site expedition, it was impossible to confirm. In February, such an expedition was launched. Nathalie Feuillet of the Institute of Geophysics in Paris (IPGP) and colleagues installed six seismometers on the seafloor, 3.5 kilometers beneath the surface, to monitor the seismic activity.

They pinpointed the seismic area, triangulating a region some 20-50 km deep — but this was only the first step. After the area was identified, researchers mapped it using sonar, finding evidence of a tall volcanic mountain formed underwater, and a huge quantity of solidified lava around it.

The outline of the volcano (in red) was excellently outlined by the sonar beams. The 800-meter (half a mile) volcano was built from nothing in just six months. The eruption was so dramatic that the island of Mayotte sank by about 13 centimeters (5 inches) and moved eastwards about 10 centimeters (4 inches). The sonar also revealed 5 cubic km (1.2 cubic miles) of magma on the seafloor

Image credits: MAYOBS TEAM (CNRS/IPGP-UNIVERSITÉ DE PARIS/IFREMER/BRGM).

Competing theories

Mayotte is part of the Comoros archipelago, an archipelago formed through volcanic eruptions. However, although some areas of the Comoros are still very active, the last eruption around Mayotte took place about 7,000 years ago. It’s not just the location of this new volcano that’s a bit puzzling, its nature is also a mystery.

There are several competing theories regarding the nature of this volcanic range. Most volcanoes are found along mid-ocean ridges — underwater mountain ranges formed where the Earth’s tectonic plates are pulling apart, and where convection currents from the mantle are bringing magma closer to the surface. However, this isn’t really the case in the Comoros.

Another possibility is that of a hotspot. A volcanic hotspot is an area where a rising mantle plume comes really close to the surface, producing volcanic activity. The classic example is Hawaii, although the nearby island of Reunion was also formed this way. Hot spots aren’t affected by plate tectonics, and they stay in place while tectonic plates move about, typically leaving a “trail” of volcanoes on the surface. This is consistent with the fairly deep earthquakes observed around Mayotte, which would also suggest that the volcanic magma chamber is also very deep. But the evidence isn’t convincing enough to definitively say that there’s a hotspot there.

Depiction of a rift breaking down into multiple rigid blocks.

Image credits: Italian Institute for Geosciences.

Another likely culprit is the geological process of rifting. East Africa is one of the world’s most active rift zones, with the African tectonic plate splitting into two separate plates. The rifting area isn’t exactly close to Mayotte, but rifting tends to break large areas into rigid blocks, and this might be responsible for the volcanic events.

Most intriguingly, it could be a combination of some (or all) of the above, making Mayotte one of the most exciting volcanic areas to study.

As for the island’s inhabitants, they still have reason to worry. The volcano is probably too deep to threaten the island in any way — the eruptions are too deep to affect the surface and even a potential collapse of one of its flanks would likely be too deep to generate a tsunami. However, the earthquakes seem to be slowly migrating towards the island, which could po}entially lead to a collapse of the island’s flank itself — which would, of course, be much more dangerous. Given this turn of events, Feuillet wants to extend the mission for a few months and get a much better view of what’s happening with this volcanic activity in order to assess the potential risk to the locals. After this is done, results will also be published in a journal, Feuillet says.

{ https://www.zmescience.com/ }

25-05-2019 om 00:47 geschreven door peter  

First UK Crop Circle of 2019 Found

By Tim Binnall

The 2019 crop circle season is officially underway in England as the first formation of the year has been found. The design was reportedly discovered in the town of Warminster on Wednesday. The appearance of the formation may have elicited sighs of relief from the UK crop circle research community who have not had to wait this long for the season to begin since 2013, when it took until June for the first design to be discovered.

Suggesting that perhaps the crop circle makers are working off a bit of rust accumulated over the winter months, this first formation of the year is a fairly basic design. It consists of a circle surrounded by a thick ring and then a thinner ring which features a pair of larger spheres opposite of each other. Suggestions as to what the formation may be meant to convey include a rudimentary electrical generator or possibly some kind of celestial alignment.

Per usual, fastidious crop circle investigators in England have already flocked to the site to document the formation by way of two different drone videos as well as close-up photographs from the inside the design. What may be most noteworthy about the scene is that the crops appear to be fairly high, making the shape of the formation noticeably crisp, which somewhat makes up for its lackluster design.

As to who or what may have created the formation, it's a safe bet that the debate over the cause of the crop circle phenomenon will undoubtedly continue in 2019 as skeptics contend that the formation came courtesy of human hands. However, based on his examination of the drone videos, researcher Dr. Horace R. Drew argued that "there is no indication at present of any heavy mechanical or other man-made actions in its formation." One thing that seems certain is that we'll be seeing many more formations in the weeks and months to come now that crop circle season has begun.

{ https://www.coasttocoastam.com/ }

24-05-2019 om 23:10 geschreven door peter  

Chimpanzees can use sticks to dig up food buried in the soil even if they have never been shown how

• Zoo-based chimps spontaneously used the makeshift tools to dig and shovel dirt 
• The chimpanzees were also seen fashioning their own tools from nearby plants
• This is the first time that this spontaneous behaviour has been caught on camera
• Tool adoption by chimpanzees may mirror similar behaviour by early hominins

By IAN RANDALL FOR MAILONLINE

Chimpanzees can figure out on their own how to use sticks as tools to dig up buried items of food — without needing a demonstration first.  

An international research team led by the University of Oslo filmed chimps in a Norway Zoo after presenting the primates with buried fruit and various sticks.

The chimpanzees not only used various digging techniques but they also picked different shaped-sticks for different tasks and made their own tools from plants.   

The findings may help researchers to understand how early hominins, our distant ancestors, began adopting tools for digging.

Scroll down for video

Chimpanzees can figure out on their own how to use sticks as tools to dig up buried items of food such as fruit, roots and tubers — without a demonstration to learn from

University of Tübingen researcher Alba Motes-Rodrigo and colleagues presented a troop of chimpanzees living in Norway's Kristiansand Zoo with buried fruit and a selection of sticks that they could potentially use as tools.

Researchers found that, despite having had no training or previous exposure to other animals digging for food, they spontaneously used the sticks to dig.

The primates were seen performing a number of different behaviours with the makeshift tools — including digging, shovelling and perforating.

Chimpanzees also discriminated between different tool choices, preferring, for example, to use longer sticks as excavation tools.

The chimpanzees were also seen using naturally-occurring vegetation to make their own tools, which they then brought to the digging site.

This is the first time that this digging-with-tools behaviour has been filmed. 

The primates were seen performing a number of different behaviours with the makeshift tools — including digging, shovelling and perforating

University of Tübingen researcher Alba Motes-Rodrigo and colleagues presented a troop of chimpanzees living in Norway's Kristiansand Zoo with buried food and a selection of sticks that they could potentially use as tools

A second experiment similarly presented chimpanzees with buried fruit, but no tools with which to dig them up.

In this case, researchers found that the great apes preferred to preferentially use their hands to excavate the food, over that of making use of tools fashioned from nearby vegetation.

Researchers propose that developing the use of tools to dug up roots and tubers would have been a key behaviour learnt during human evolution.

'These underground foods likely made up a significant part of the diet of early hominins during the transition from forested to dry habitats,' said Ms Motes-Rodrigo.

However, we know little about the exact tools and techniques that our earliest ancestors would have employed.  

'This study provides novel data to help us understand early hominin behaviour using chimpanzees as behavioural models,' Ms Motes-Rodrigo added.

The full findings of the study were published in the journal PLOS ONE.

Read more:

• Chimpanzee extractive foraging with excavating tools: Experimental modeling of the origins of human technology

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

23-05-2019 om 23:35 geschreven door peter  

Something has changed. For some reason, reports of mysterious or otherwise unexplained booms seem to be far less frequent than they have been in recent memory. Over the past two years, I’ve had plenty of weeks where I’ve had four or five mystery boom reports to share. Throughout the end of April and May, however, reports of these anomalous acoustic disturbances seemed to have slowed a bit. What’s with the sudden slowdown in mystery booms?

On Thursday, April 24, residents of two villages in county Suffolk in eastern England reported being shocked a “mystery bang” some initially feared was an automobile crash or industrial explosion. While the case remains unsolved, aircraft scrambled from nearby Royal Air Force bases have been known to cause similar booms in the past over the same area.

A Royal Air Force Typhoon at RAF Honington.

On the evening of Monday, April 29, residents of Hampton Roads, Virginia felt and heard a powerful boom. The National Weather Service in nearby Wakefield issued a statement shortly after claiming that with no meteorological explanations, the boom was likely caused by a supersonic aircraft breaking the sound barrier. Shortly after, the U.S. Navy issued a statementclaiming one of its F/A-18 Super Hornets had indeed caused the boom:

Based on analysis of data by fleet area control, surveillance facility and strike fighter wing Atlantic, we can conclusively state the loud noise heard across Hampton Roads around 6:30 p.m. Monday was a sonic boom generated by a U.S. F18 super hornet from Oceana.

Naval Air Station Oceana is located just east of where the boom was reported. The base is the east coast home of seventeen Navy strike fighter squadrons and Strike Fighter Weapons School Atlantic.

An F/A-18E Super Hornet.

That same night on April 29, houses in suburban Queensland, Australia were rattled by an “unexplained big boom” which witnesses say caused the earth to shudder. “My wife and I were inside when we experienced the house shuddering – it was so loud I could not image any handheld device could possibly create that amount of noise,” said Cornubia resident Shaun Pask. “It was not a small object hitting a small part of the roof – it was like something fell from the sky and it landed on our whole roof at the one time. It was like a sonic boom hammered down on the entire roof and neighbours said they had the same experience.”

A week later, people in Kingman, Arizona were terrified by a “loud boom” that echoed throughout the town on the evening of Wednesday, May 8. Some residents even reported finding debris strewn throughout city roads. Nevertheless, Mohave County Sheriff’s Office Public Information Specialist Anita Mortensen told local news reporters that there is nothing to worry about. “We found nothing that would point to any specific type of occurrence,” Mortensen said. “Nothing is confirmed at this time, and the investigation is ongoing.”

On Monday, May 13, shocked residents of Sidney, Nebraska reported a “mysterious loud ‘boom’ sound” which several residents described as similar to a cannon being discharged. Sidney Police Chief Joe Aikens said that while police received several calls about the noise, they have no idea where it came from or what caused it. The Sidney police have asked residents to share any information they have pertaining to the noise.

On May 16, hundreds of people throughout the Otago coastline in southeast New Zealand reported hearing a massive boom. The New Zealand Herald reports that most witnesses thought the noise could have been a meteorite or an earthquake, but shortly thereafter local meteorological services reported that a single powerful lightning strike was detected 50km (31 miles) out at sea which could have caused the boom. Apparently, the strike was caused by a particularly low-altitude type of thunderstorm called a squat thunderstorm which can cause thunder much louder than typical storms. Do you buy that explanation?

While there may have been fewer incidents to report on this month, six reports in four weeks still isn’t anything to shake a stick at. Interestingly, sonic booms seem to be increasingly cited or suspected as a cause of these booms now that winter is over and “frostquakes” are no longer a standby scapegoat. Could more of these reports be explained by sonic booms? I’ve suspected sonic booms from the start but with little to no evidence left in the wake of these unexplained sonic phenomena, there’s no telling what could be splitting the skies with such regularity.

Keep your eyes and ears upward.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

23-05-2019 om 22:56 geschreven door peter  

Imagine sitting on the edge of your seat engrossed in a scary horror movie when suddenly … a paranormal conference breaks out. That’s the feeling I got while watching “Terror in the Skies,” the latest documentary from Small Town Monsters. Fortunately, in the capable and experienced hands of director/writer/producer Seth Breedlove, this combination is a good thing, with seamless transitions between movie and expert commentaries that maintain the tension while adding meat to already meaty stories about a number of mysterious flying creature events in the history of Illinois that continue to occur right up to the present.

“Terror in the Skies” opens with an eerie twilight recreation of a 1948 small town sighting of what appeared to be an abnormally huge bird … a sighting we quickly learn was just one of many at the time in southern Illinois’ heavily wooded corner of the Ozark Mountains as they fade into the Mississippi River. The sightings are recounted by Illinois native Loren Coleman, founder of the International Cryptozoological Museum and one of the world’s leading authorities on mysterious and mythical beasts.

Wearing his producer hat well, Seth Breedlove recruits an impressive array of senior and up-and-coming cryptid investigators and writers to fill in the details of a surprisingly large yet little known number of flying creature sightings in Illinois dating back to Native American legends and centered around the Mississippi River town of Alton. From giant birds to dinosaur-like creatures to flying humanoids, director Breedlove weaves the narration of longtime collaborator Lyle Blackburn through animated recreations, newspaper clippings and eyewitness accounts of sightings of the Piasa Bird, Thunderbirds and lesser-known aerial apparitions.

“Terror in the Skies” closes in the skies over Chicago, where sightings of various forms of bird-, bat- and Mothman-like creatures have been reportedly steadily since 2017. Bringing together the analyses of a number of cryptozoologists and paranormal investigators who have looked into these sightings, Breedlove creates a form of that paranormal conference staple – the round-table discussion – to form a pseudo-debate of what it might be and whether this apparition deserves its “Mothman” description.

Conclusions? You’ll have to see “Terror in the Skies” to find out. Rest assured it exceeds the high bar Seth Breedlove sets for himself and the rest of his excellent Small Town Monsters team. The long list of Kickstarter contributors in the credits attests to the high quality of their previous documentaries and series and the newest offering will please these folks and the ever-growing number of fans of this soon-to-be-big-town production company. The release date is June 7, 2019, but you can pre-order “Terror in the Skies” by clicking here.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

22-05-2019 om 20:10 geschreven door peter  

Geologist: A Yellowstone Eruption “Would DESTROY MOST of the U.S.”

A geologist has said that if the Yellowstone supervolcano erupts, it would destroy most of the United States, all but wiping the country off of the map. Dr. Jerzy Zaba is importantly not predicting that the volcano is going to erupt soon, but simply stating that it does have the power to destroy humanity and life as we know it.

According to Tech WP, Dr. Zaba says that Yellowstone, if it erupted in a similar manner as it did 640,000 years ago, it would destroy much of the United States. Dr. Zaba, who is a geologist at the University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland, said the mass explosion is completely unavoidable although it’s impossible to say when that explosion will occur. In addition to the annihilation of the United States, the geologist also says about 5 billion other people will starve to death in the volcanoes aftermath: a volcanic winter.

It is forecasted that if there was an explosion similar to the one from 640,000. for years, it would destroy most of the United States. Discarded materials would cover everything with a meter layer within a radius of 500 km. And due to the emission of a huge amount of dust, gases or sulfur oxide to the atmosphere, there would be a temporary cooling of the climate. Sulfur oxide would create a thin veil of sulfuric acid around the planet reflecting sunlight. [This] would persist for many years. It is estimated that due to climate change about five billion people would starve to death. The scenario of such an explosion can be seen in the documentary film “Superwulkan – disaster scenario”. This is, of course, a catastrophic film, but a lot of scientific truth in it.

–Dr. Jerzy Zaba, via Tech WP

An eruption at Yellowstone would cause the Earth’s temperature to plummet as the sulfuric acid would reflect the sunlight, making growing food difficult across the globe.

As more talk is made by geologists that suggest that the supervolcanoes are “waking up” around the world, the fears will simultaneously spike. That doesn’t mean an eruption will happen anytime soon, only that Earth will experience another supervolcano eruption in the future.

Recently, there was even talk that the Laacher See volcano 650 kilometers from the Polish border has “come to life“. When that volcano last erupted nearly 13 thousand years ago, the population living in its vicinity died out. Europe also then suffered from several colder years of “volcanic winter”.

Experts still say there is no reason to fear a supervolcano eruption just yet, but understanding the devastation that we will all face sooner or later is important in the advancement of science and human survival.

 This article has been contributed by SHTF Plan. Visit www.SHTFplan.com for alternative news, commentary and preparedness info.

Source: 

• https://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/geologist-a-yellowstone-eruption-would-destroy-most-of-the-u-s_05202019

{  https://beforeitsnews.com/v3/ }

21-05-2019 om 23:26 geschreven door peter  

Did you know that there are hidden underwater forests of large brown seaweeds (kelps) in the Arctic? As temperatures warm, the forests are expanding.

An array of leaves showing the diversity of kelp in underwater Arctic forests. Image via Karen Filbee-Dexter.

By Karen Filbee-Dexter, Université Laval

Did you know that there are forests in the Arctic?

Lush underwater forests of large brown seaweeds (kelps) are particularly striking in the Arctic, especially in contrast to the land where ice scour (scraping of sea ice against the sea floor) and harsh climates leave the ground barren with little vegetation.

Kelp forests have been observed throughout the Arctic by Inuit, researchers and polar explorers. The Canadian Arctic alone represents 10 percent of the world’s coastlines, but we know little of the hidden kelp forests there.

Today, climate change is altering marine habitats such as kelp forests on a global scale. In western Australia, eastern Canada, southern Europe, northern California and eastern United States, kelps are disappearing due to warming temperatures. In other areas, kelps are being heavily over-grazed by sea urchins. Coastal conditions in the Arctic are changing dramatically and the region is warming faster than the rest of the world, but these changes could actually be good for kelp.

Yet we know little about kelp forests in remote Arctic regions. Our latest research, published in Global Change Biology, uncovers the distribution of Arctic kelp forests and explores how these important ecosystems are changing with the climate.

Proliferation of kelps in the Arctic

Kelps currently occur on rocky coasts throughout the Arctic. The longest kelp recorded in the Arctic in Canada was 15 meters, and the deepest was found at 60-meter depth (Disko Bay, Greenland). Many find it surprising that marine plants can grow so well in harsh Arctic environments.

Photographs show examples of Arctic kelp forests: (A) Alaria esculenta in Greenland, (B) Laminaria solidungula in the Beaufort Sea, Alaska (Ken Dunton), (C) Laminaria hyperborea in Malangen fjord, Norway (Karen Filbee-Dexter), (D) Saccharina latissima on sediment in Russia, (E) Agarum clathratum and (F) mixed Saccharina latissima, S. longicruris, Alaria esculenta, Laminaria solidungula in Baffin Island, Canada (Frithjof Küpper), (G) Eularia fistulosa in Aleutian Islands, Alaska (Pike Spector), (H) Laminaria hyperborea in Murmansk, Russia (Dalnie Zelentsy), (I) Laminaria digitata in Svalbard, Norway (Max Schwanitz).

Image via Karen Filbee-Dexter.

Kelps have adapted to the severe conditions. These cool water species have special strategies to survive freezing temperatures and long periods of darkness, and even grow under sea ice. In regions with cold, nutrient-rich water, they can attain some of the highest rates of primary production of any natural ecosystem on Earth.

Kelps function underwater in the same way trees do on land. They create habitat and modify the physical environment by shading light and softening waves. The underwater forests that kelps create are used by many animals for shelter and food. More than 350 different species — up to 100,000 small invertebrates — can live on a single kelp plant, and many fish, birds and mammals depend on the whole forest. Kelp forests also help protect coastlines by decreasing the power of waves during storms and reducing coastal erosion. A lot of kelp break off or are dislodged from the rock they attach to and end up in nearby habitats where they fuel deep food webs.

Changing climates, forests

As waters warm and sea ice retreats, more light will reach the seafloor, which will benefit marine plants. Researchers predict a northern shift of kelp forests as ice retreats.

Genetic evidence reveals that most kelps reinvaded the Arctic from the Atlantic Ocean quite recently (approximately 8,000 years ago, following the last Ice Age). As a result, most kelps in the Arctic are living in waters colder than their optimal temperature. Ocean warming will also move conditions closer to temperatures of maximum growth, and could increase the productivity of these habitats.

However, other changes are happening in the Arctic that complicate this picture. In Canada, Alaska, Greenland, Norway and Siberia, permafrost soils that have been frozen for thousands of years are receding by half a meter per year. Thawing permafrost and crumbling Arctic coasts are dumping sediments into coastal waters at alarming rates, which blocks light and could limit plant growth. The run-off from melting glaciers will also lower salinity and increase turbidity, which impacts young kelp.

Understanding kelp forests

The Canadian Arctic is the longest Arctic coastline in the world. The earliest scientific records of kelp in the Arctic are from Canada during expeditions in search of the Northwest Passage. In Hudson Bay and eastern Canada, kelp forests have been scientifically documented between Ellesmere Island and Labrador, and along coasts in Lancaster Sound, Ungava Bay, Hudson Bay, Baffin Bay and Resolute Bay.

In the northwestern Canadian Arctic, lack of rock substrate and a harsher climate support smaller, fragmented kelp forests. However, baseline measures of the extent of kelp communities are missing in many areas. Unfortunately, lack of information has already made it difficult to tell how kelp forests are changing.

Locations of kelp forests in the Arctic. Based on 1,179 scientific records.

Image via Karen Filbee-Dexter.

Today, a number of researchers in Canada have partnered with northern communities and organizations to study kelp in the Arctic. The five-year ArcticKelp Project, for example, explores future changes and opportunities these ecosystems could provide. At the same time new technology (underwater lasers) is being developed in collaboration with Inuit fishers to map kelp forests in the Arctic. This is important, because knowledge of Arctic kelp forests could help northern communities and societies anticipate and benefit from these valuable changing ecosystems.

Forest potential

Kelp forests throughout the world play an important role in coastal economies, supporting a broad range of tourism, recreational and commercial activities. Kelp is making its way onto the plates of North Americans, and the kelp aquaculture industry is growing at a rate of seven percent per year for the last 20 years globally (kelp is a coveted food source in many countries, full of potassium, iron, calcium, fibre and iodine). In the Arctic, Inuit traditionally use kelp as food and wild harvest numerous species.

Arctic kelp forests provide a key example of the diverse responses to climate change. Predictive models and experiments suggest that Arctic coasts are in line to become one of the most impacted environments in the world under changing climate. Yet the possible expansion of kelp forests should provide new habitats for fish and other marine organisms, and enhance a suite of valuable ecosystem services along Arctic coastlines.

This expanding resource may provide needed income to northern communities whose livelihoods are threatened by climate change and other impacts. Anticipating these changes and understanding these new ecosystems will be a key priority for Arctic nations. Just because you cannot see the forests growing in the Arctic does not mean we should not appreciate them and recognize the crucial role they play in the ocean.

Karen Filbee-Dexter, Research Fellow in Marine Ecology, Université Laval

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

• Bottom line: Underwater kelp forests in the Arctic are expanding as the climate warms.

{ https://earthsky.org/ }

21-05-2019 om 00:23 geschreven door peter  

When does a disaster go from ‘natural’ to ‘the mother of all’ disasters’? When it’s the next eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano. That’s according to a leading volcano expert from Poland who wants the United States to start thinking ‘when’ not ‘if’ and developing an evacuation plan for an eruption that he predicts could kill five billion people.

“The only thing you can do is evacuate people to another continent.”

In a recent interview with Poland’s WP Media, Dr. Jerzy Żaba,professor of geological sciences and head of the Department of General Geology at the University of Silesia in Katowice, explains why a Yellowstone “Superwulk” eruption would be far more destructive and deadly to life on Earth than most other experts are willing to consider. He starts by comparing it to a recent supervolcano event — the Toba supereruption about 75,000 years ago in Sumatra, Indonesia, which was one of the largest known eruptions.

“As a result of the Toby eruption in Sumatra, according to various estimates, 70 to 90 percent died. the then human population on our planet. More optimistic researchers believe that the outbreak was survived by tens of thousands of people, moderately optimistic that they survived 15,000, and the least – from three to five thousand. The population of a small village survived all over the world!” (Google translation)

Up to 90 percent of the Earth’s albeit small population at that time may have died. If you’re into odds, Żaba points out that there have been 42 similar supervolcano eruptions — on average once in less than a million years. So, as far as Yellowstone is concerned, we’re good for at least a few hundred-thousand years, right?

“Yellowstone is a powerful superwulkan whose explosions took place, to our knowledge, three times. The first took place over two million years ago, the second million 300,000. years ago, and the third, about which we know the most, took place 640 thousand. years ago.”

Żaba says volcanoes are erupting in different locations than in the past (Poland has one that was active 800,000 years ago) and geologists have learned that nearby volcanoes are often linked and can cascade into multiple eruption events. However, none have the destructive potential – both on the ground and in the air – of Yellowstone.

“It would destroy most of the United States. Discarded materials would cover everything with a meter layer within a radius of 500 km. And due to the emission of a huge amount of dust, gases or sulfur oxide to the atmosphere, there would be a temporary cooling of the climate. Sulfur oxide would create a thin veil of sulfuric acid around the planet reflecting sunlight. He would persist for many years. It is estimated that due to climate change about five billion people would starve to death.”

Żaba doesn’t think programs like NASA’s plan to drill a hole and cool Yellowstone’s magma will work due to the sheer size and volume of the magma tank. Besides, it’s not the lava that will kill us – it’s the dust and debris that will be thrown into the atmosphere. Żaba says the only way to escape falling chunks of rock and debris is to evacuate, but the space for holding the millions of people who need to move in a short period of time will require another continent and a monumental effort. And, once they get to their new home, they’ll have to deal with the death of all flora and fauna that will result in Żaba’s prediction that five billion people would starve to death.

Is there any good news, Dr. Żaba?

“There are forces over which people have no influence and have to observe with incredible humility.”

Humility? We’re doomed!

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

19-05-2019 om 18:09 geschreven door peter  

“I experienced a series of ‘eureka’ moments whilst deciphering the code, followed by a sense of disbelief and excitement when I realised the magnitude of the achievement, both in terms of its linguistic importance and the revelations about the origin and content of the manuscript.”

That was Dr. Gerard Cheshire announcing this week that it took him just two weeks to crack the code of the mysterious Voynich manuscript – a Medieval illustrated codex written in an indecipherable language that has baffled cryptographers (the legendary Alan Turing tried unsuccessfully to decode it) since its discovery, including Wilfrid Voynich, who obtained the codex in 1912 and popularized it enough to have it tagged with his name. in “The Language and Writing System of MS408 (Voynich) Explained,” Cheshire claims it is written in proto-Romance, an extinct ancestor of the Romance languages (Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian, Romanian, etc.) and he was able to translate enough of the document to determine that it was “compiled by Dominican nuns as a source of reference for Maria of Castile, Queen of Aragon.”

“Sorry, folks, “proto-Romance language” is not a thing. This is just more aspirational, circular, self-fulfilling nonsense.”

“Ooooh, tough crowd” as comedians like to say when the audience boos rather than laughs. In Cheshire’s case, that crowd includes Lisa Fagin Davis, executive director of the Medieval Academy of America (an organization promoting excellence in the field of medieval studies), who immediatelytweeted her analysis of the announcement. Davis comes by her expertship legitimately – she received her PhD in Medieval Studies from Yale University where the Voynich manuscript is held, and has handily debunked previous announcements of Voynich code-breaking.

“As with most would-be Voynich interpreters, the logic of this proposal is circular and aspirational: he starts with a theory about what a particular series of glyphs might mean, usually because of the word’s proximity to an image that he believes he can interpret. He then investigates any number of medieval Romance-language dictionaries until he finds a word that seems to suit his theory. Then he argues that because he has found a Romance-language word that fits his hypothesis, his hypothesis must be right. His “translations” from what is essentially gibberish, an amalgam of multiple languages, are themselves aspirational rather than being actual translations.”

Davis explains her doubts to Ars Technica and pointed out that the idea of a proto-Romance language “is completely unsubstantiated,” as are Cheshire links between certain glyphs and certain Latin letters.

“One of the reasons the Voynich manuscript is so appealing is because of languages like hieroglyphics and linear B, which were deciphered. But they didn’t come out of nowhere, they were decades in the making and drew on lots of different scholarly expertise. You can’t just have one person saying: ‘I’ve cracked it.’ You have got to have the field, on the whole, agreeing.”

Dr. Kate Wiles, a medievalist and linguist and senior editor at History Today, told The Guardian that such a discovery, if it were true, would need verification by a number of experts before being accepted.

“Regarding the decipherment of the individual symbols, a number of people have come up with a mapping to Latin letters, but those mappings rarely agree with each other, or with this proposal.”

Greg Kondrak, a computer science professor at the University of Alberta who as also tried to crack the Voynich code, also points out that the Romance origins of some of the words in the manuscript has been well known for some time.

Finally, J.K. Petersen, keeper of The Voynich Portal, summarizes his problems with the alleged code-cracking:

But I have trouble accepting the translation in its current form because:

there are a lot of nonsensical word combinations,there’s almost no grammar,
the letter distribution is quite different from Romance languages (it would take a whole blog to discuss this aspect of the text, but take 4 as an example, which almost exclusively is at the beginnings of tokens—Cheshire relates it to “d”, and “9” which is usually at the end and sometimes at the beginning, but almost never in the middle, which he designates as “a”),
the words still match the drawings if the drawings are interpreted differently (which means the relationship isn’t proven yet),
some of the transliterated “words” don’t show any relationship to Romance word-structures (and the author neglected to explain how specific non-Romance words were derived), and the same words (e.g., “na”) are sometimes interpreted differently.

A few things are certain at this point: there are a LOT of people interested in breaking the Voynich code, a large number working to verify the code-breakers and the attempts and debunkings are destined to continue.

It beats arguing about politics, doesn’t it?

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

18-05-2019 om 19:16 geschreven door peter  

Bermuda might hold the key to a whole new type of volcano

BY MIHAI ANDREI 

Researchers studying a volcano in Bermuda report that it is unlike anything else we’ve seen on Earth — it formed through a mechanism we knew nothing about until now.

About 30 million years ago, a disturbance in the mantle’s transition zone supplied the magma to form the now-dormant volcanic foundation on which Bermuda sits.

Image credits: Wendy Kenigsberg/Clive Howard.

With its turquoise seas and pink beaches, Bermuda draws almost 1 million tourists every year. But far beneath the crystalline water, something draws a completely different crowd: scientists.

Cornell researchers had a hunch that there was something off about Bermuda’s volcanoes, so they analyzed a 2,600-foot (800-meter) core sample taken back in 1972. They were looking for isotopes, trace elements, evidence of water content, volatile materials — anything that would give some indication as to how the volcanoes were formed.

“I first suspected that Bermuda’s volcanic past was special as I sampled the core and noticed the diverse textures and mineralogy preserved in the different lava flows,” Mazza said. “We quickly confirmed extreme enrichments in trace element compositions. It was exciting going over our first results … the mysteries of Bermuda started to unfold.”

When the team analyzed the materials from the core, they found a clear signature of the “transition zone” — a layer rich in water, crystals and melted rock that lies beneath the outer and inner mantle. Before now, researchers didn’t know that volcanoes can form from the transition zone.

“We found a new way to make volcanoes. This is the first time we found a clear indication from the transition zone deep in the Earth’s mantle that volcanoes can form this way,” said senior author Esteban Gazel, associate professor in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Cornell University.

Cross-polarized microscopic slice of a core sample. Blue-yellow mineral is augite.

Credits: Gazel lab.

Volcanoes were thought to form through one of two mechanisms: either when two tectonic plates subduct (one moves beneath the other), or when there is a deep mantle upwelling, as is the case in Hawaii. Surprisingly this wasn’t the case in Bermuda.

“We were expecting our data to show the volcano was a mantle plume formation — an upwelling from the deeper mantle — just like it is in Hawaii,” Gazel said. However, 30 million years ago, a disturbance in the transition zone caused the magma to flow towards the surface of what is now Bermuda.

Although geochemical studies of this type have been carried out in most volcanic parts of the world, Bermuda had escaped trialing until now. Now that they know what to look for, researchers say that there’s a good chance they might find these chemical signatures in other volcanic areas as well.

This suggests that the transition zone, which is located at a depth of 410-660 km (250 to 400 mi), is an important chemical reservoir for the Earth, bringing material from that depth and onto the surface.

• The study has been published in Nature. DOI:10.1038/s41586-019-1183-6.

{ https://www.zmescience.com/ }

17-05-2019 om 21:14 geschreven door peter  

Greenland's biggest glacier suddenly slows down and thickens, baffling scientists

Jakobshavn Isbrae glacier gaining thickness of 20 metres a year

Harry Cockburn

Greenland’s largest glacier has not only slowed its retreat, but has also thickened in recent years, surprising scientists studying the impacts of global warming on ice in the northern hemisphere. 

The island is home to the second-largest ice sheet in the world after Antarctica and rapid warming in the northern hemisphere has major implications for continuing global sea-level rise.

The Jakobshavn Isbrae glacier on Greenland’s west coast used to lose more ice from this than anywhere else in the country. 

 

It is known for the huge blocks of ice it calves into Disko Bay, which then drift south into the Atlantic Ocean. It is believed to have calved the iceberg which sank the Titanic.

Between 2000 and 2010, Jakobshavn Isbrae contributed the largest solid ice discharge in all of Greenland’s ice sheet and is estimated to have contributed to nearly 1mm of global sea rise.

Glacier collapse shows climate impact

But despite the trend of rising temperatures, it is no longer the place where the territory loses most of its ice.

Since 2013, when the glacier’s ice loss was at its fastest, the ice at the terminus of the glacier has stopped decreasing in height and started to thicken.

The overall effect is that it is now flowing more slowly, thickening and advancing towards the ocean instead of retreating further inland.

Measurements of the glacier’s elevation changes on its narrow trunk show that instead of losing 20 metres in height a year as it had previously, the glacier is now thickening by 20 metres a year.

New data processing techniques applied to the information gathered by satellites have given a clearer picture of the extent to which the ice is returning to the glacier, the European Space Agency (ESA) said.

“The dynamic speedup of Jakobshavn Isbrae observed from the late 2000’s to 2013 was triggered by warm ocean waters in Disko Bay, entering Jakobshavn Fjord and melting ice at the glacier terminus," said Anna Hogg, a researcher in the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling at the University of Leeds. 

“In recent years, however, temperature measurements show that ocean water in Disko Bay has experienced a series of cooler years – more than one degree lower than mean temperature previously observed. This has reduced the rate of ice melt on Jakobshavn Isbrae.”

However, the glacier does not indicate greater stability in the ice sheet overall. It drains just 7 per cent of all ice on Greenland.

Scientists at the Living Planet Symposium in Milan heard the glacier’s drainage basin as a whole is still losing more ice to the ocean than it gains as snowfall.

It is therefore still contributing to global sea-level rise, albeit at a slower rate.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1128232243401560065

ESA EarthObservation

✔@ESA_EO

We are all used to hearing about the world’s ice being the first casualty of #climatechange. Recent findings show that one glacier is not conforming to the norm – it’s actually been flowing more slowly and getting thicker. 

Read on

https://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Observing_the_Earth/Space_for_our_

climate/Jakobshavn_Isbrae_Glacier_bucks_the_trend … … #LPS19 #LivingPlanet

• 182

11:35 AM - May 14, 2019

• 62 people are talking about this

Dr Hogg said: “The key question we need to answer now is whether the slowdown of Jakobshavn Isbrae just a pause, or is it more permanent? We will use ESA satellite observations combined with models to monitor change and predict this colossal glacier’s future evolution.”

The ESA’s Mark Drinkwater said further research was required and noted that “large seasonal and year-to-year variability in the dynamics of the Jakobshavn Isbrae Glacier … can easily hide the longer-term climate trend in ice loss.”

The research appears to fit with a study published earlier this year, indicating Greenland’s ice sheet was melting four times faster now than it was in 2003. However, it found the largest amount of ice loss was sustained away from the country's glaciers.

“Whatever this was, it couldn’t be explained by glaciers, because there aren’t many there,” Michael Bevis, the study’s lead author said in January. 

He added: “It had to be the surface mass – the ice was melting inland from the coastline. It’s because the atmosphere is, at its baseline, warmer."

• Another study of Jakobshavn Isbrae’s unexpected thickening indicated the cooling period will pass as ocean temperatures rise, which will then see the glacier retreat even faster than it was before.

{ https://www.independent.co.uk/ }

16-05-2019 om 22:53 geschreven door peter  

Secret Space Force: The Treaty to Prevent War in Outer Space: P.A.R.O.S.

Ted Cruz announced today that the Space Force is needed to fight space pirates. Are our governments finally going to have to come clean via Disclosure? Their actions speak volumes.

 

The United States of America will soon have a separate Space Command, that will better organise and advance the military’s vast operations in space. The Space Command is expected to improve the US military’s technological advances in space. Today in IN DEPTH we go into the details of what is the US Space Command … what was the need to create it.

 

President Donald Trump announced Monday that he is directing the Pentagon to create the “Space Force” as an independent service branch.

 

Description Definition of MILITARISM:

 

A: predominance of the military class or its ideals

 

B: exaltation of military virtues and ideals Definition of IMPERIALISM:

 

a: the policy, practice, or advocacy of extending the power and dominion of a nation especially by direct territorial acquisitions or by gaining indirect control over the political or economic life of other areas

 

b: This word has its origin in the Latin imperilcrn (empire). In its general meaning it is the expression employed for the aspiration to form a single, powerful empire encompassing the entire world

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/v3/  }

16-05-2019 om 21:09 geschreven door peter  

Get ready to rumble, conspiracy theorists … this story has something for everyone to worry about, no matter which side of Reddit you reside on. Scientists at Cambridge University are studying various forms of geoengineering and weather control for ways to stop climate change, and one involves placing highly-reflective clouds over the North and South poles in an effort to force them to freeze over again. What could possibly go wrong?

“What we do over the next 10 years will determine the future of humanity for the next 10,000 years. There is no major centre in the world that would be focused on this one big issue.”

Sir David King, then UK’s long-serving and now retired chief science adviser to prime ministers Blair, Brown, Cameron and May, told the BBC this week that he wants the new Centre for Climate Repair at Cambridge to be that center. It’s part of the Carbon Neutral Futures Initiative, whose mission, according to Dr. Emily Shuckburgh, is to “solve the climate problem.” Nothing like starting at the top, right?

Actually, for Sir King, it means starting at the bottom too. His most radical plan involves sending specially-modified unmanned ships with tall, hollow masts to the poles to suck in seawater and blast it into the atmosphere through extremely fine nozzles. Those nozzles will isolate the salt from the tiny water droplets, creating clouds of salt crystals that will supposedly reflect sunlight back into space, leaving the area underneath them to chill and eventually reform the ice that’s been melting for years —  calving monstrous icebergs, sending cracks through the Antarctic surface ice, melting glaciers and keeping the Arctic Ocean from freezing in the winter. Sounds like a good idea … as long as those clouds stay over the poles.

Sir King wants to sprinkle salt in other places as well. Another proposal involves fertilizing the ocean with more salt – iron or ferrous salts like ferrous fumarate, ferrous gluconate, ferrous succinate, and ferrous sulfate – to promote the growth of plankton, which will then absorb more CO2 – the main cause of climate change (unless you don’t believe it exists). Sounds like a good idea … as long as the plankton doesn’t get out of control and take over the oceans, or create monster whales and other sea creature that feed on it.

King is not ruling out more conventional solutions. He supports carbon capture systems to collect and store greenhouse gases, developing viable nuclear fusion technology and improving renewable energy sources. But he obviously wants to think outside the box and ignore the consequences. Dr. Shuckburgh is open to considering everything Sir King proposes – no matter how wild or unconventional the ideas might be.

“In assessing such ideas we need to explore all aspects, including the technological advances required, the potential unintended consequences and side effects, the costs, the rules and regulations that would be needed, as well as the public acceptability.”

“Unintended consequences.” Isn’t that what got us climate change in the first place?

What could possibly go wrong … again?

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

16-05-2019 om 20:38 geschreven door peter  

Triangle-weaver spider uses its web like a slingshot to ensnare prey faster than a rocket

 BY TIBI PUIU 

The triangle-weaver spider.

Credit: Sarah Han.

A resourceful type of spider uses its own web like a slingshot to catapult forward and trap prey. Before the discovery of these creatures, only humans were known to use tools in order to amplify the energy of their movements.

Most spiders build a familiar-looking spiral web, waiting for unsuspecting prey to become entangled. But while these webs are static, the triangle-weaver spider (Hyptiotes cavatus) crafts a stretchy triangle-shaped web that acts as a slingshot or bow and arrow.

This is how it works: the spider makes a single thread connecting a wall to the triangle web. The arachnid moves backwards along this thread to tighten the web, storing energy across its entire length. When the time is right, such as when prey is close to the triangle web, the spider lets go of its grip. The spider can remain in tension for hours at a time if needed. The released tension recoils the spider and its triangle web at high velocity, in the same way a rubber band would fly off once you pull it back. 

Using sophisticated motion tracking software, the researchers recorded position data that allowed them to decode the spider’s precise and ultra-fast movements. In fact, the spider slingshots so fast, it travels with the equivalent velocity of 400 body lengths per second, according to the researchers. The maximum recorded acceleration was 773 meters per second squared, which is equivalent to a dizzying 79 g’s. Fighter pilots can’t pull more than 9 g’s without passing out.

Many animals use elastic-energy storage and recoil to produce extremely rapid motions. Examples include the jumping motion of fleas and frogs or the deadly punch of the mantis shrimp. However, the triangle-weaver’s impressive web shooting is the only known case of a nonhuman utilizing an external device for power amplification. In the future, researchers want to investigate how the spider manages to accelerate to fast without squashing itself.

“This finding reveals an underappreciated function of spider silk and expands our understanding of how power amplification is used in natural systems, showing remarkable convergence with human-made power-amplifying tools,” the authors wrote in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

{ https://www.zmescience.com/ }

15-05-2019 om 23:44 geschreven door peter  

'Bomb Carbon' from Cold War Nuclear Tests Found in the Ocean's Deepest Trenches

15-05-2019 om 00:12 geschreven door peter