Massive solar flare could have caused eighth century radiation burst
A mysterious spike in atmospheric carbon-14 levels 12 centuries ago might be a sign the Sun is capable of producing solar storms dozens of times worse than anything we’ve ever seen, a team of physicists calculates in a paper published in Nature.
Carbon-14 (14C) is created when high-energy radiation strikes the Earth’s upper atmosphere, converting nitrogen-14 into carbon-14, which eventually makes its way into plants via photosynthesis.
Earlier this year, a team of Japanese physicists discovered a spike in 14C in tree rings of Japanese cedars dating from the 774-775 growing season. But they were unable to explain where that 14C might have come from because all possible explanations appeared unlikely.
Carbon-14 (14C) is created when high-energy radiation strikes the Earth’s upper atmosphere, converting nitrogen-14 into carbon-14, which eventually makes its way into plants via photosynthesis.
Earlier this year, a team of Japanese physicists discovered a spike in 14C in tree rings of Japanese cedars dating from the 774-775 growing season. But they were unable to explain where that 14C might have come from because all possible explanations appeared unlikely.
Countering the new horsemen of the apocalypse
Nuclear war, climate change, lab-created viruses and out-of-control machines need to be understood, but there are risks to lumping threats together
CALL them the modern horsemen of the apocalypse: nuclear war, climate change, doomsday viruses and out-of-control machines. These are the subjects of the proposed Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER), which this week attracted much media attention. "We're talking about threats to our very existence stemming from human activity," says Martin Rees, a cosmologist at the University of Cambridge who wants to found the centre with philosopher Huw Price and Skype inventor Jaan Tallinn.
CALL them the modern horsemen of the apocalypse: nuclear war, climate change, doomsday viruses and out-of-control machines. These are the subjects of the proposed Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER), which this week attracted much media attention. "We're talking about threats to our very existence stemming from human activity," says Martin Rees, a cosmologist at the University of Cambridge who wants to found the centre with philosopher Huw Price and Skype inventor Jaan Tallinn.
Rethinking Earth's Most Massive Eruption
The origins of the lavas pouring out of Earth's largest ongoing volcanic eruptions are being challenged in this week's Nature. The eruptions are along the mid-ocean ridges that run for tens of thousands of miles though the deep sea. These are spreading centers where the Earth's crust is being pulled apart and partially melted rock wells up to continuously fill the voids – building vast amounts of new oceanic crust. But no one is arguing that part of the story.
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Cave clue to 13,000 winters
Over 13,000 years ago a stalagmite began to grow in a cave in Oregon.
Each winter rainwater from the land above made its way through the cave's ceiling and dripped onto the floor. As each layer of the stalagmite formed, oxygen and carbon isotopes within these raindrops were captured and preserved inside the rock.
Now, thousands of years later, a team led by Oxford University scientists is using the data locked inside this stalagmite to get a glimpse of the ancient winter climate of Western North America.
Each winter rainwater from the land above made its way through the cave's ceiling and dripped onto the floor. As each layer of the stalagmite formed, oxygen and carbon isotopes within these raindrops were captured and preserved inside the rock.
Now, thousands of years later, a team led by Oxford University scientists is using the data locked inside this stalagmite to get a glimpse of the ancient winter climate of Western North America.
Ancient Antarctic community of bacteria discovered
A study by polar researchers has revealed an ancient community of bacteria able to thrive in the lightless, oxygen-depleted, salty environment beneath nearly 20 metres of ice in an Antarctic lake.
The research, funded by the National Science Foundation and Nasa, provides clues about biochemical processes not linked to sunlight, carbon dioxide and oxygen — or photosynthesis.
The authors of the study say it may explain the potential for life in salty, cryogenic environments beyond Earth, where energy in ecosystems is typically fuelled by the sun.
The research, funded by the National Science Foundation and Nasa, provides clues about biochemical processes not linked to sunlight, carbon dioxide and oxygen — or photosynthesis.
The authors of the study say it may explain the potential for life in salty, cryogenic environments beyond Earth, where energy in ecosystems is typically fuelled by the sun.
Britain is Testing an Amphibious House that Rises Along with Floodwaters
When floodwaters rise there aren't a lot of places to hide, and in the oft-rainy UK that can spell big problems and major property damage. So in an attempt to mitigate the problem, British authorities have just built the country's first amphibious house on the banks of the River Thames. When the river rises, the house rises with it. Bring on the Biblical deluge.
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Submerged Prehistoric Archaeology and Landscapes of the Continental Shelf
For most of human history on this planet—about 90 per cent of the time—sea levels have been substantially lower than at present, exposing large tracts of territory for human settlement. Europe alone would have had a land area increased by 40 per cent at the maximum sea level regression (Figure 1). Although this has been recognised for many decades, archaeologists have resisted embracing its full implications, barely accepting that most evidence of Palaeolithic marine exploitation must by definition be invisible, believing that nothing has survived or can be found on the seabed, and preferring instead to emphasise the opportunities afforded by lower sea level for improved terrestrial dispersal across land bridges and narrowed sea channels.
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The Inuit sitting on billions of barrels of oil
After a decade of legal wrangling and spending $4.5bn (£2.8bn), this year Shell Oil was given permission to begin exploratory drilling off the coast of Alaska. But many in the local Inuit community are concerned it could have a devastating impact on one of their main sources of food - the bowhead whale.
Marie Casados shows me the contents on her freezer. Inside there's whale meat, muktuk - frozen whale skin and blubber - a selection of fish and a polar bear foot, which looks like a human hand. She describes it as a real delicacy. But it's more than that - this is her food supply for the winter. See Related: BP suspended from new US federal contracts over Deepwater disaster |  |
LHC Creates New Form of Matter
Collisions between particles inside the Large Hadron Collider atom smasher have created what looks like a new form of matter.
The new kind of matter is called color-glass condensate, and is a liquidlike wave of gluons, which are elementary particles related to the strong force that sticks quarks together inside protons and neutrons (hence they are like "glue"). Scientists didn't expect this kind of matter would result from the type of particle collisions going on at the Large Hadron Collider at the time. However, it may explain some odd behavior seen inside the machine, which is a giant loop where particles race around underneath Switzerland and France. |  |
Supersymmetry Fails Test, Forcing Physics to Seek New Ideas
As a young theorist in Moscow in 1982, Mikhail Shifman became enthralled with an elegant new theory called supersymmetry that attempted to incorporate the known elementary particles into a more complete inventory of the universe.
"My papers from that time really radiate enthusiasm," said Shifman, now a 63-year-old professor at the University of Minnesota. Over the decades, he and thousands of other physicists developed the supersymmetry hypothesis, confident that experiments would confirm it. "But nature apparently doesn't want it, he said. "At least not in its original simple form." |  |
The Bloop mystery has been solved: it was never a giant sea monster
In 1997, the Bloop was heard on hydrophones across the Pacific. It was a loud, ultra-low frequency sound that was heard at listening stations underwater over 5,000km apart, and one of many mysterious noises picked up by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Several articles in the years that followed popularised a hunch of marine geophysicist Christopher Fox that the Bloop might have been the sound of an unknown animal, a theory that elevated the Bloop to the level of a great unsolved mystery.
However, the NOAA is pretty sure that it wasn't an animal, but the sound of a relatively common event -- the cracking of an ice shelf as it breaks up from Antarctica.
However, the NOAA is pretty sure that it wasn't an animal, but the sound of a relatively common event -- the cracking of an ice shelf as it breaks up from Antarctica.
Alaskan Glacier to Halt Retreat in 2020
The retreat of Alaska’s Columbia Glacier may halt by 2020 after climate change has melted 15 miles of the glacier, relative to its size in 1794. A computer model predicted that the glacier will reach a stable position when it is approximately 26 miles long, down from 41 miles.
"Presently, the Columbia Glacier is calving about 2 cubic miles of icebergs into the ocean each year -- that is over five times more freshwater than the entire state of Alaska uses annually," said William Colgan of the University of Colorado lead author of the modeling study in a press release. |  |
Antarctic icecap is melting more slowly than previously estimated
The Antarctic icecap is melting more slowly than previously estimated, according to new estimates based on satellite measurements and GPS sensors on the ground.
The authors of the study, published in Nature, estimate an annual total ice loss of 69 billion tonnes, plus or minus 18 billion – between half and a third of previous estimates, and equivalent to only around 0.19mm of sea-level rise a year. |  |
Yellowstone Park Research Wolves Killed by Hunters
An estimated 10 wolves from Yellowstone National Park have been killed by hunters this month, adversely affecting the park's wolf research program, one of the longest studies of its kind.
"Losing the wolves has been a big hit to us scientifically," says wildlife biologist Douglas Smith, leader of Yellowstone's wolf project, which has tracked the wolves since their reintroduction in 1995. The killings came just as researchers, who are partly funded by a 5-year U.S. National Science Foundation grant, were set to begin the wolf project's annual winter survey of the canids' predatory habits. |  |
Past 5,000 years prolific for changes to human genome
The human genome has been busy over the past 5,000 years. Human populations have grown exponentially, and new genetic mutations arise with each generation. Humans now have a vast abundance of rare genetic variants in the protein-encoding sections of the genome
A study published today in Nature3 now helps to clarify when many of those rare variants arose. Researchers used deep sequencing to locate and date more than one million single-nucleotide variants — locations where a single letter of the DNA sequence is different from other individuals — in the genomes of 6,500 African and European Americans. The findings confirm their earlier work suggesting that the majority of variants, including potentially harmful ones, were picked up during the past 5,000–10,000 years. Researchers also saw the genetic stamp of the diverging migratory history of the two groups. |  |
Can a Jellyfish Unlock the Secret of Immortality?
After more than 4,000 years - almost since the dawn of recorded time, when Utnapishtim told Gilgamesh that the secret to immortality lay in a coral found on the ocean floor - man finally discovered eternal life in 1988. He found it, in fact, on the ocean floor. The discovery was made unwittingly by Christian Sommer, a German marine-biology student in his early 20s. He was spending the summer in Rapallo, a small city on the Italian Riviera, where exactly one century earlier Friedrich Nietzsche conceived "Thus Spoke Zarathustra": "Everything goes, everything comes back; eternally rolls the wheel of being. Everything dies, everything blossoms again. . . ."
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Man who needed heart transplant, called a 'Miracle' after his heart healed itself
A young man in dire need of a heart transplant shocked doctors and loved ones alike when his failing heart mended itself, the Omaha World-Herald reports.
Michael Crowe, 23, was admitted to a Nebraska hospital last month with a life-threatening heart problem. Suffering from acute myocarditis (an inflammation of the heart muscle), Crowe's heart was functioning at only 10 percent efficiency, and his other organs were starting to fail.
Crowe needed a heart transplant. But when doctors found a match, Crowe was diagnosed with blood poisoning, and the transplant was deemed too risky, the World-Herald reports.
But it was then, doctors say, that a "miracle" occurred.
Michael Crowe, 23, was admitted to a Nebraska hospital last month with a life-threatening heart problem. Suffering from acute myocarditis (an inflammation of the heart muscle), Crowe's heart was functioning at only 10 percent efficiency, and his other organs were starting to fail.
Crowe needed a heart transplant. But when doctors found a match, Crowe was diagnosed with blood poisoning, and the transplant was deemed too risky, the World-Herald reports.
But it was then, doctors say, that a "miracle" occurred.
Girl, 8, to get vaccination shots after court overrules mum
A GIRL, 8, will be given vaccinations against the objections of her mother after a Family Court ruling.
News of the judgment comes after a group of Australia's top scientists warned this week that the anti-immunisation lobby was endangering children's lives.
The Victorian mother, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, was resorting to homeopathic methods to try to protect her child against disease.
News of the judgment comes after a group of Australia's top scientists warned this week that the anti-immunisation lobby was endangering children's lives.
The Victorian mother, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, was resorting to homeopathic methods to try to protect her child against disease.
CIA sued over 1950s 'murder' of government scientist plied with LSD
The family of a US government scientist who fell to his death from a New York hotel window six decades ago have launched a lawsuit for damages against the CIA, alleging the agency was involved in his murder and a subsequent cover-up.
In one of the most notorious cases in the organisation's history, bioweapons expert Frank Olson died in 1953, nine days after he was given LSD by agency officials without his knowledge. In the lawsuit, filed in the US district court in Washington on Wednesday, Olson's sons Eric and Nils claim their father was murdered after he witnessed extreme interrogations in which the CIA killed suspects using the biological agents he had developed. |  |
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