Hong Kong Discovers 140 Million Year-Old Supervolcano
Some 140 million years after it erupted and then toppled into the sea, an ancient supervolcano in Hong Kong is making headlines.
The government announced Thursday that it had located the supervolcano—the first discovery of its kind in southeastern China—while surveying in the area in southeastern Hong Kong. The volcano is now extinct and poses no threat to Hong Kong. What makes the volcano super? When it last exploded 140 million years ago, it would have darkened the sky with 312 cubic miles of ash, enough to blanket all of Hong Kong, said Denise Tang of the government’s civil engineering & development department, which discovered the volcano. About 50 other such supervolcanos are known to exist around the world, she said. |  |
Bonobo ape Kanzi creates flint tools to prise open logs
A species of ape has been observed in captivity making and using flint tools. Kanzi, a 30-year-old male bonobo (previously known as pygmy chimpanzees) has already mastered sign language.
After some training in flint knapping, he created and used the tools to break apart logs and dig out concealed food – the first time this level of technological sophistication in tool use has been observed in non-humans.
After some training in flint knapping, he created and used the tools to break apart logs and dig out concealed food – the first time this level of technological sophistication in tool use has been observed in non-humans.
Private Manned Mars Mission Gets First Sponsors
A Dutch company that aims to land humans on Mars in 2023 as the vanguard of a permanent Red Planet colony has received its first funding from sponsors, officials announced this week.
Mars One plans to fund most of its ambitious activities via a global reality-TV media event, which will follow the mission from the selection of astronauts through their first years on the Red Planet. But the sponsorship money is important, helping the company — which had been self-funded for the last 18 months — get to that point, officials said Wednesday (Aug. 29). |  |
Mars Methane - Could It Mean Life? | Video
SPACE.COM
Part of Curiosity's Martian mission is to determine if methane is still being created on Mars. It might be tectonic activity deep underground, but it's also possible that something living beneath the martian surface could be creating the gas.
Scientist backs discovery of Higgs boson 'God particle'
The scientist who heads the world's largest particle physics laboratory said he thinks it is “beyond any doubt” that a Higgs boson particle has been discovered.
Professor Rolf Heuer, director general of Cern, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, said he would "stick his neck out" and say it had been found by scientists.
Professor Rolf Heuer, director general of Cern, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, said he would "stick his neck out" and say it had been found by scientists.
Record radiation found in fish near Fukushima plant
Radioactive cesium measuring 258 times the amount that Japan's government deems safe for consumption has been found in fish near the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, Japan's Kyodo news agency reported Tuesday.
The Tokyo Electric Power Co. found 25,800 becquerels per kilogram of radioactive cesium in two greenlings in the sea within 20 kilometers of the plant on August 1 – a record for the thousands of Fukushima-area fish caught and tested since the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami that led to a nuclear disaster at the plant, Kyodo reported.
The Tokyo Electric Power Co. found 25,800 becquerels per kilogram of radioactive cesium in two greenlings in the sea within 20 kilometers of the plant on August 1 – a record for the thousands of Fukushima-area fish caught and tested since the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami that led to a nuclear disaster at the plant, Kyodo reported.
Earthquake Hazards Map Study Finds Deadly Flaws
Three of the largest and deadliest earthquakes in recent history occurred where earthquake hazard maps didn't predict massive quakes. A University of Missouri scientist and his colleagues recently studied the reasons for the maps' failure to forecast these quakes. They also explored ways to improve the maps. Developing better hazard maps and alerting people to their limitations could potentially save lives and money in areas such as the New Madrid, Missouri fault zone.
Richard III's remains: Leicester car park dug up
A bid to find the remains of England's King Richard III is starting more than 500 years after his death on a Leicestershire battlefield.
A University of Leicester archaeological team is digging in the city's Grey Friars car park where they think he may have been buried. King Richard III was killed at Bosworth in 1485 and his body taken to a Franciscan Friary in the city. Over time, the exact location of the grave has been lost. |  |
Stomach Contents Preserve Sinocalliopteryx Snacks
Earlier this week, I got into a snit over the blinkered assertion that feathery dinosaurs are lame. I argued the opposite point–as I wrote at the time “Feathered dinosaurs are awesome. Deal with it.” How fortunate that a new paper this week offers proof of fuzzy dinosaur superiority. The evidence comes in the form of gut contents found within predatory dinosaurs that stalked Cretaceous China around 125 million years ago.
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Antarctic Methane Could Escape, Worsen Warming
Swamp gas trapped under miles of Antarctic ice, a chemical souvenir of that continent's warmer days, may someday escape to warm the planet again, an international team of researchers report in Nature this week.
The researchers suggest that microbes isolated from the rest of the world since the ice closed over them, some 35 million years ago, have kept busy digesting organic matter and making methane—a much more effective greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. |  |
Is Geoengineering the Answer to Climate Change?
Climate change used to be thought of as a long-term worry; now, there’s good reason to believe we’re already encountering its effects. As the problem grows more urgent, some say we ought to take a radical approach: Instead of struggling in vain to limit greenhouse gas emissions, we should try to engineer systemsto directly stop the warming of the planet.
This approach is known as geoengineering, and it might be the most controversial area in climate science. The term encompasses a wide variety of techniques. One company tried to fertilize the ocean with iron, to encourage the growth of algae to absorb excess carbon dioxide. |  |
Roman candles: Hadrian's Wall lights up
When William Hutton of Birmingham walked along Hadrian's Wall in 1801, he wrote: "I am the first man that ever travelled the whole length of the Wall, and probably the last that ever will attempt it".
Nothing about his experience of the 73-mile Roman frontier, running through the wild landscape of Cumbria and Northumberland, hinted to him at what it would become: one of Britain's most famous ancient monuments, a hugely popular pilgrimage for walkers, and, on Friday and Saturday night, the site of a hi-tech art installation by the New York digital arts collective YesYesNo. |  |
The science behind our weirdest behaviours
YOU might not have noticed, but the face a person makes when they sneeze or yawn is remarkably similar to the one they pull at orgasm. Similarly, being prevented from completing any of these three actions once they are under way is extremely frustrating. Are they linked in their function?
In Curious Behavior, neuroscientist Robert Provine discusses common yet seemingly strange actions, such as crying, tickling and yawning - subjects often overlooked by science. Beyond explaining how each of these actions work anatomically, Provine explores their functions, similarities and whether they might be linked by some higher, social purpose. |  |
Rosacea may be caused by mite faeces in your pores
There are tiny bugs closely related to spiders living in the pores of your face. They have long been considered mere passengers, doing no harm beyond upsetting the squeamish. But they may be causing an ancient skin disease that is estimated to affect between 5 and 20 per cent of people worldwide, and 16 million in the US alone.
People aged between 30 and 60, especially women, sometimes develop rosacea: red inflamed skin, with swelling, roughness and fine, visible blood vessels, usually in the central zone of the face. Severe cases can resemble acne, irritate the eyes and lead to the bulbous red nose seen in caricatures of the elderly. |  |
Research group finds fungi spores contribute to cloud formation and rain in Amazon
An international team of researchers looking to understand the way nature originally caused cloud formation and subsequent rain to fall, have undertaken a study in the Amazon River basin, where scientists say, the air is much closer to its natural state than in other areas due to the constant influx of fresh air from over the ocean and nearly constant rainfall. There they have found, as they describe in their paper published in the journal Science, that fungi spores covered with organic gel, attract moisture leading to cloud formation and rain, which results in a form of feedback loop as the water evaporates.
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'Mysterious' Baltic Sea Object Is a Glacial Deposit
A feature on the floor of the Baltic Sea that was discovered last summer by Swedish treasure hunters is making headlines once again. The latest media coverage draws upon an hour-long radio interview with Peter Lindberg, head of the Ocean X Team (which made the "discovery"), in which Lindberg delivers a string of cryptic and titillating statements about the "strange" and "mysterious" seafloor object his team has been exploring for a year.
Lindberg discusses various possibilities for what the object might be: "It has these very strange stair formations, and if it is constructed, it must be constructed tens of thousands of years ago before the Ice Age," he said in the radio interview. (The peak of the most recent Ice Age occurred some 20,000 years ago.). |  |
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