Santorini Bulges as Magma Balloons Underneath
Santorini locals began to suspect last year that something was afoot with the volcano under their Greek island group. Wine glasses occasionally vibrated and clinked in cafes, suggesting tiny tremors, and tour guides smelled strange gasses.
Part of the municipality of Santorini, Nea Kameni ("new burnt island") is a small uninhabited (and geologically active) island within the flooded Santorini caldera. That caldera, which forms the Santorini island group today, was formed during the volcano's last major eruption, some 3,600 years ago. That was the second-largest blast in human history and may have destroyed the Minoan civilization on nearby Crete (and possibly inspired the myth of Atlantis).
Part of the municipality of Santorini, Nea Kameni ("new burnt island") is a small uninhabited (and geologically active) island within the flooded Santorini caldera. That caldera, which forms the Santorini island group today, was formed during the volcano's last major eruption, some 3,600 years ago. That was the second-largest blast in human history and may have destroyed the Minoan civilization on nearby Crete (and possibly inspired the myth of Atlantis).
Unusual Dallas Earthquakes Linked to Fracking, Expert Says
Three unusual earthquakes that shook a suburb west of Dallas over the weekend appear to be connected to the past disposal of wastewater from local hydraulic fracturing operations, a geophysicist who has studied earthquakes in the region says.
Preliminary data from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) show the first quake, a magnitude 3.4, hit at 11:05 p.m. CDT on Saturday a few miles southeast of the Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) International Airport. It was followed 4 minutes later by a 3.1-magnitude aftershock that originated nearby. A third, magnitude-2.1 quake trailed Saturday's rumbles by just under 24 hours, touching off at 10:41 p.m. CDT on Sunday from an epicenter a couple miles east of the first, according to the USGS. The tremors set off a volley of 911 calls, according to Reuters, but no injuries have been reported. |  |
Energy Company Plans to Frack a Volcano
With reports only recently confirming that fracking is not, as long as its properly regulated, the earthquake-generating terror we thought it was, a U.S. geothermal company has decided it’s a great idea to extract clean energy from a dormant volcano by hydrofracking its hot underbelly to generate steam.
AltaRock Energy and Davenport Newberry, the companies behind the $43 million plan, have been granted a permit to hydrofrack the hot rocks flanking the Newberry volcano in Oregon, where Davenport Newberry has secured federal leases on 62 square miles of land. This will involve injecting water into a series of cracks in the rocks at a high enough pressure that it reaches three kilometres beneath the surface, fracturing connected veins of rock to access the heat beneath and creating a series of connected geothermal reservoirs in the process. Water will be introduced to these reservoirs, where heat from the rocks will turn it to steam, which then turns turbines at surface-level to generate electricity. |  |
Bee brains help to make robots smarter
Honey bee brains could soon be helping robots act more independently.
The way that bees smell and see is being studied in a £1m project to produce a simulation of the insect's sensory systems. The simulated bee brain will then be used by a flying robot to help it make decisions about how to navigate safely. Robots that emerge from the research project could help in search and rescue missions or work on farms mechanically pollinating crops. |  |
Call to freeze fishing in Europe to replenish stocks
A think tank has made a controversial case for freezing fishing in Europe, saying most fish stocks would return to sustainable levels within five years.
The London-based New Economics Foundation (Nef) argues in its report that the suspension would generate billions of pounds in profits by 2023. Private investment would compensate fishermen and maintain boats. |  |
Saving the world’s fisheries
THE WORLD’S WATERS are dangerously overfished, threatening the health and livelihood of millions across the planet.
A new study from consulting firm California Environmental Associates, part of which appeared in the journal Science last week, estimates that “over 40 percent of fisheries have crashed or are overfished, producing economic losses in excess of $50 billion per year.” If you’ve heard more encouraging numbers before now, that’s because these new figures include estimates of what’s happening to unmonitored stocks, from which fishermen draw 80 percent of the world’s harvest, not just those stocks that authorities closely assess.
A new study from consulting firm California Environmental Associates, part of which appeared in the journal Science last week, estimates that “over 40 percent of fisheries have crashed or are overfished, producing economic losses in excess of $50 billion per year.” If you’ve heard more encouraging numbers before now, that’s because these new figures include estimates of what’s happening to unmonitored stocks, from which fishermen draw 80 percent of the world’s harvest, not just those stocks that authorities closely assess.
Heroin use among young in sharp decline
A generation that became hooked on heroin in the 1980s and 90s is ageing, while young people are now too "savvy" to experiment with the drug, experts have said.
Some 4,268 adults aged 18 to 24 started treatment for heroin addiction in 2011/12 for the first time, a fall of nearly two-thirds from 11,309 in 2005/06, figures from the National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse (NTA) showed. It is the lowest recorded level of young heroin addicts. The over-40s now make up almost a third of the whole treatment population, with more than 16,000 starting a new course of treatment last year. |  |
A Marijuana Revolution in the Making on Election Day
As we approach November, the leading Democrat and Republican presidential candidates remain conspicuously, though predictably, silent regarding the question of marijuana law reform. By contrast, much of the public and the mainstream media can’t stop talking about pot politics. That’s because voters in six states this November 6 will have their say on the subject. If present polls hold, federal officials on November 7 will have little choice but to acknowledge that they have a full fledged reefer rebellion on their hands.
Voters’ impending rejection of the drug war status quo shouldn’t come as a surprise, at least not to anyone who has been paying attention. Opinion polls over the past 12 months indicate record levels of public support for ending America’s multi-decade failed experiment with cannabis criminalization. Are a majority of Americans finally ready to voice their drug war dissent at the ballot box? In mere weeks, voters in six states will have the opportunity. Note: Related petition to Include a question on Marijuana in the Presidential debates |  |
Pollution-busting laundry additive gets set to clean up
Plans are in place to commercialise the revolutionary liquid laundry additive called ‘CatClo’, which contains microscopic pollution-eating particles.
The new additive is the result of collaboration between the University of Sheffield and London College of Fashion, with initial support from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). The items of clothing only need to be washed in the additive once, as the nanoparticles of titanium dioxide grip onto fabrics very tightly. When the particles then come into contact with nitrogen oxides in the air, they react with these pollutants and oxidise them in the fabric. |  |
Warp drive looks more promising than ever in recent NASA studies
The first steps towards interstellar travel have been taken, but the stars are very far away. Voyager 1 is about 17 light-hours distant from Earth and is traveling with a velocity of 0.006 percent of light speed, meaning it will take about 17,000 years to travel one light-year. Fortunately, the elusive "warp drive" now appears to be evolving past difficulties with new theoretical advances and a NASA test rig under development to measure artificially generated warping of space-time.
The warp drive broke away from being a wholly fictional concept in 1994, when physicist Miguel Alcubierre suggested that faster-than-light (FTL) travel was possible... |  |
Welcome to Glenelg: twinned with Mars
A remote Scots village is set to twin with its namesake – a desolate community which has no residents.
A multi-billion-dollar project is currently exploring whether there has ever been life on the home of Glenelg’s “twin” – 35 million miles away. Nasa’s robotic space rover Curiosity is probing Mars, sending back images which are causing worldwide fascination. The remote-controlled device will later this month arrive at a rocky valley which scientists have called Glenelg, causing excitement in the Highland village of the same name. |  |
Photon reaches from beyond the grave in quantum trick
EINSTEIN mockingly called it "spooky action at a distance": the finding that quantum particles can influence each other regardless of how far apart they are. We can only imagine his horror at a new experiment that extends the idea to time by entangling a pair of photons that never coexisted. As well as expanding the reach of quantum theory's baffling implications, the experiment could improve long-distance cryptography.
At the heart of the phenomena is entanglement, in which the quantum states of two entities become linked. The implications of this for spatially distant particles stumped even Einstein, but things got still stranger last year. |  |
Boy discovers almost complete woolly mammoth carcass
An 11-year-old Russian boy stumbled across the 30,000-year-old remains of a woolly mammoth, an experience that was surely either incredibly exciting or permanently traumatising.
According to the Moscow News, Yevgeny Salinder found the 500-kilogram beast in the tundra of the Taymyr peninsula in northern Russia. Scientists laboured for a week with axes and steam to dig it out of the permafrost it's been encased in for centuries. Woolly mammoths have been found in the permafrost in Siberia since at least 1929, but this is one of the best preserved. Its tusks, mouth and rib cage are clearly visible. |  |
Reality is a computer projection: physicists
Whatever kind of reality you think you’re living in, you’re probably wrong. The universe is a computer, and everything that goes on in it can be explained in terms of information processing, speculates New Scientist in a special issue on What is reality?
“Quantum physics is almost phrased in terms of information processing,” says Vlatko Vedral of the University of Oxford. “It’s suggestive that you will find information processing at the root of everything.” In fact, every process in the universe can be reduced to interactions between particles that produce binary answers: yes or no, here or there, up or down. |  |
Archaeology: Crete, 3500-year-old Minoan building found
(ANSAmed) - ATHENS, OCTOBER 4 - An accidental meeting in 1982 between a well-known Greek archaeologist, Yannis Sakellarakis, and a shepherd from Crete has led to an archaeological discovery of great importance: Zominthos, a settlement from the Minoan era on the plain by the same name, 1.187 metres above the sea. The settlement is at the feet of the highest mountain in Crete, Mount Psiloritis, eight kilometres from the village of Anogia along the road which led from Knossos to Ideon Andron, the cave where Zeus was born according to Greek mythology.
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Comet crystals found in a nearby planetary system
Pristine material that matches comets in our solar system have been found in a dust belt around the young star Beta Pictoris by the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Herschel Space Observatory.
Twelve-million-year-old Beta Pictoris resides just 63 light-years from Earth and hosts a gas giant planet along with a dusty debris disk that could, in time, evolve into a torus of icy bodies much like the Kuiper Belt found outside the orbit of Neptune in our solar system. Thanks to the unique observing capabilities of Herschel, the composition of the dust in the cold outskirts of the Beta Pictoris system has been determined for the first time. |  |
The Psychology of Sputnik
Fifty-five years ago today, the Soviet Union launched history's first artificial satellite.
Sputnik was an innocuous satellite; Soviet scientists behind the launch were just happy to successfully put the probe into orbit. But in the United States the reaction was different. The engineering feat very quickly gave way to hysteria and paranoia. President Eisenhower initially downplayed the role of the satellite as a threat to find that he'd grossly underestimated its psychological impact. The 17 months between July 1957 to December 1958 saw a peak in solar activity. |
Ancient Romans, Chinese Helped Warm Planet
(Newser) – Human activity contributed to climate change long before the Industrial Revolution, according to new research. Scientists analyzing ice core samples from Greenland found a spike in emissions of the greenhouse gas methane during a 200-year period around 2,000 years ago, when the ancient Roman and Chinese empires were at their peak, reports the Los Angeles Times. Researchers believe the rise was caused by the widespread use of charcoal as fuel and the burning of large areas of forest to clear farmland.
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Bizarre Species of Miniature Dinosaur Identified
Not every dinosaur grew up to be a mighty predator like Tyrannosaurus rex or a hulking vegan like Apatosaurus. A few stayed small, and some of the smallest dinosaurs that ever lived — tiny enough to nip at your heels — were among the first to spread across the planet more than 200 million years ago.
Fossils of these miniature, fanged plant-eaters known as heterodontosaurs, or “different toothed reptiles,” have turned up as far apart as England and China. Now, in a discovery that has been at least 50 years in the making, a new and especially bizarre species of these dwarf herbivores has been identified in a slab of red rock that was collected in the early 1960s by scientists working in South Africa. |  |
Tomb of Mayan Queen Found
Archaeologists in Guatemala say they have discovered the 7th-century tomb of Lady K'abel, one of the greatest queens of classic Maya civilization.
Unearthed during excavations of the royal Maya city of El Perú-Waka' in northwestern Petén, Guatemala, the grave contained the skeletal remains of a mature individual buried with rich offerings such as dozens of ceramic vessels, numerous carved jade, shell artifacts and a small, carved alabaster jar. According to the archaeologists, the white vessel strongly suggest the tomb belonged to the warrior Queen Lady K'abel. |
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