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Evento de Geoingeniería & Alerta Volcánica

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Evento de Geoingeniería & Alerta Volcánica

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Geo-engineering Event, Volcano Alerts | S0 News Jun.4.2018

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Meteors, Solar, Temperature Discrepancies | S0 News Jun.3.2018

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Grand Erg Oriental, Algeria : Image of the Day

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A vast field of star dunes in this desert stands astride wind-carved hills in one of the driest landscapes on Earth.

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La abundancia de Galaxias Satélites en la región interior de  la Vía Láctea

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La abundancia de Galaxias Satélites en la región interior de  la Vía Láctea

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Sol, Luna, Estrellas, Meteoro identificado antes de ingresar

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Sol, Luna, Estrellas, Meteoro identificado antes de ingresar

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Sun, Moon, Stars, Meteor Spotted Before Entry | S0 News Jun.5.2018

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La Gravedad Colectiva, no el Planeta Nueve, podría explicar las orbitas de objetos distantes

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La Gravedad Colectiva, no el Planeta Nueve, podría explicar las orbitas de objetos distantes

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Bumper car-like interactions at the edges of our solar system-and not a mysterious ninth planet-may explain the the dynamics of strange bodies called "detached objects," according to a new study.

CU Boulder Assistant Professor Ann-Marie Madigan and a team of researchers have offered up a new theory for the existence of planetary oddities like Sedna-an icy minor planet that circles the sun at a distance of nearly 8 billion miles. Scientists have struggled to explain why Sedna and a handful of other bodies at that distance look separated from the rest of the solar system.

One theory suggests that an as-of-yet-unseen ninth planet lurking beyond Neptune may have kicked up the orbits of these detached objects.

But Madigan and her colleagues calculated that the orbits of Sedna and its ilk may result from these bodies jostling against each other and space debris in the outer solar system.

"There are so many of these bodies out there. What does their collective gravity do?" said Madigan of the Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences (APS) and JILA. "We can solve a lot of these problems by just taking into account that question."

The researchers presented their findings today at a press briefing at the 232nd meeting of the American Astronomical Society, which runs from June 3-7 in Denver, Colorado.

The project takes a deep dive into the outer solar system, a busy place filled with minor planets, such as Pluto, icy moons and other space debris.

It's also an unusual place, gravitationally speaking. "Once you get further away from Neptune, things don't make any sense, which is really exciting," Madigan said.

Among the things that don't make sense: Sedna. This minor planet takes more than 11,000 years to circumnavigate Earth's sun and is a little smaller than Pluto. Unlike that original ninth planet, Sedna and other detached objects complete humongous, circle-shaped orbits that bring them nowhere close to big planets like Jupiter or Neptune. How they got out there on their own remains an ongoing mystery.

Enter the hypothetical Planet Nine. Astronomers have been searching for such a planet, which would be about 10 times the size of Earth, for about two years but have yet to spot it with telescopes.

Madigan's team didn't originally intend to look for another explanation for those orbits. Instead, Jacob Fleisig, an undergraduate studying astrophysics at CU Boulder, was developing computer simulations to explore the dynamics of the detached objects.

"He came into my office one day and says, 'I'm seeing some really cool stuff here,'" Madigan said.

Fleisig had calculated that the orbits of icy objects beyond Neptune circle the sun like the hands of a clock. Some of those orbits, such as those belonging to asteroids, move like the minute hand, or relatively fast and in tandem. Others, the orbits of bigger objects like Sedna, move more slowly. They're the hour hand. Eventually, those hands meet.

"You see a pileup of the orbits of smaller objects to one side of the sun," said Fleisig, who is the lead author of the new research. "These orbits crash into the bigger body, and what happens is those interactions will change its orbit from an oval shape to a more circular shape."

In other words, Sedna's orbit goes from normal to detached, entirely because of those small-scale interactions. The team's findings also fall in line with recent observations. Research from 2012 noted that the bigger a detached object gets, the farther away its orbit becomes from the sun-exactly what Fleisig's calculations showed. Alexander Zderic, a graduate student in APS at CU Boulder, also co-authored the new research.

The findings may provide clues around another phenomenon: the extinction of the dinosaurs. As space debris interacts in the outer solar system, the orbits of these objects tighten and widen in a repeating cycle. This cycle could wind up shooting comets toward the inner solar system-including in the direction of Earth-on a predictable timescale.

"While we're not able to say that this pattern killed the dinosaurs," Fleisig said, "it's tantalizing."

Madigan added that the orbit of Sedna is one more example of just how interesting the outer solar system has become.

"The picture we draw of the outer solar system in textbooks may have to change," she said. "There's a lot more stuff out there than we once thought, which is really cool."

This research was supported by NASA Solar System Workings and the Rocky Mountain Advanced Computing Consortium Summit Supercomputer.

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Collective gravity, not Planet Nine, may explain the orbits of 'detached objects'

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Bumper car-like interactions at the edges of our solar system-and not a mysterious ninth planet-may explain the the dynamics of strange bodies called "detached objects," according to a new study. CU Boulder Assistant Professor Ann-Marie Madigan and a team of researchers have offered up a new theory for the existence of planetary oddities like Sedna-an icy minor planet that circles the sun at a distance of nearly 8 billion miles.

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Cluster Globular  4 billones de años más joven de lo que se  estimaba

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Cluster Globular  4 billones de años más joven de lo que se  estimaba

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Globular clusters 4 billion years younger than previously thought

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The evolutionary process sees two stars interacting in a binary system, where one star expands into a giant whilst the gravitational force of the smaller star strips away the atmosphere, comprising hydrogen and helium amongst other elements, of the giant. These stars are thought to be formed as the same time as the globular cluster itself.

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Gracias a la Luna los días en la Tierra se alargan

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Gracias a la Luna los días en la Tierra se alargan

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For anyone who has ever wished there were more hours in the day, geoscientists have some good news: Days on Earth are getting longer.

A new study that reconstructs the deep history of our planet's relationship to the moon shows that 1.4 billion years ago, a day on Earth lasted just over 18 hours. This is at least in part because the moon was closer and changed the way the Earth spun around its axis.

"As the moon moves away, the Earth is like a spinning figure skater who slows down as they stretch their arms out," explains Stephen Meyers, professor of geoscience at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and co-author of the study published June 4 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

It describes a tool, a statistical method, that links astronomical theory with geological observation (called astrochronology) to look back on Earth's geologic past, reconstruct the history of the solar system and understand ancient climate change as captured in the rock record.

"One of our ambitions was to use astrochronology to tell time in the most distant past, to develop very ancient geological time scales," Meyers says. "We want to be able to study rocks that are billions of years old in a way that is comparable to how we study modern geologic processes."

Earth's movement in space is influenced by the other astronomical bodies that exert force on it, like other planets and the moon. This helps determine variations in the Earth's rotation around and wobble on its axis, and in the orbit the Earth traces around the sun.

These variations are collectively known as Milankovitch cycles and they determine where sunlight is distributed on Earth, which also means they determine Earth's climate rhythms. Scientists like Meyers have observed this climate rhythm in the rock record, spanning hundreds of millions of years.

But going back further, on the scale of billions of years, has proved challenging because typical geologic means, like radioisotope dating, do not provide the precision needed to identify the cycles. It's also complicated by lack of knowledge of the history of the moon, and by what is known as solar system chaos, a theory posed by Parisian astronomer Jacques Laskar in 1989.

The solar system has many moving parts, including the other planets orbiting the sun. Small, initial variations in these moving parts can propagate into big changes millions of years later; this is solar system chaos, and trying to account for it can be like trying to trace the butterfly effect in reverse.

"As the moon moves away, the Earth is like a spinning figure skater who slows down as they stretch their arms out."

Stephen Meyers

Last year, Meyers and colleagues cracked the code on the chaotic solar system in a study of sediments from a 90 million-year-old rock formation that captured Earth's climate cycles. Still, the further back in the rock record he and others have tried to go, the less reliable their conclusions.

For instance, the moon is currently moving away from the Earth at a rate of 3.82 centimeters per year. Using this present-day rate, scientists extrapolating back through time calculated that "beyond about 1.5 billion years ago, the moon would have been close enough that its gravitational interactions with the Earth would have ripped the moon apart," Meyers explains. Yet, we know the moon is 4.5 billion years old.

So, Meyers sought a way to better account for just what our planetary neighbors were doing billions of years ago in order to understand the effect they had on Earth and its Milankovitch cycles. This was the problem he brought with him to a talk he gave at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory while on sabbatical in 2016.

In the audience that day was Alberto Malinverno, Lamont Research Professor at Columbia. "I was sitting there when I said to myself, 'I think I know how to do it! Let's get together!'" says Malinverno, the other study co-author. "It was exciting because, in a way, you dream of this all the time; I was a solution looking for a problem."

The two teamed up to combine a statistical method that Meyers developed in 2015 to deal with uncertainty across time - called TimeOpt - with astronomical theory, geologic data and a sophisticated statistical approach called Bayesian inversion that allows the researchers to get a better handle on the uncertainty of a study system.

They then tested the approach, which they call TimeOptMCMC, on two stratigraphic rock layers: the 1.4 billion-year-old Xiamaling Formation from Northern China and a 55 million-year-old record from Walvis Ridge, in the southern Atlantic Ocean.

With the approach, they could reliably assess from layers of rock in the geologic record variations in the direction of the axis of rotation of Earth and the shape of its orbit both in more recent time and in deep time, while also addressing uncertainty. They were also able to determine the length of day and the distance between the Earth and the moon.

"In the future, we want to expand the work into different intervals of geologic time," says Malinverno.

"It was exciting because, in a way, you dream of this all the time; I was a solution looking for a problem."

Alberto Malinverno

The study complements two other recent studies that rely on the rock record and Milankovitch cycles to better understand Earth's history and behavior.

A research team at Lamont-Doherty used a rock formation in Arizona to confirm the remarkable regularity of Earth's orbital fluctuations from nearly circular to more elliptical on a 405,000 year cycle. And another team in New Zealand, in collaboration with Meyers, looked at how changes in Earth's orbit and rotation on its axis have affected cycles of evolution and extinction of marine organisms called graptoloids, going back 450 million years.

"The geologic record is an astronomical observatory for the early solar system," says Meyers. "We are looking at its pulsing rhythm, preserved in the rock and the history of life."

The study was funded by the National Science Foundation (EAR-1151438).

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Thank the moon for Earth's lengthening day

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For anyone who has ever wished there were more hours in the day, geoscientists have some good news: Days on Earth are getting longer. A new study that reconstructs the deep history of our planet's relationship to the moon shows that 1.4 billion years ago, a day on Earth lasted just over 18 hours.

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ALMA y VLT encuentran muchas Estrellas Masivas en las Galaxias con Brote Estelar

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ALMA y VLT encuentran muchas Estrellas Masivas en las Galaxias con Brote Estelar

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ALMA and VLT Find Too Many Massive Stars in Starburst Galaxies, Near and Far

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Astronomers using ALMA and the VLT have discovered that both starburst galaxies in the early Universe and a star-forming region in a nearby galaxy contain a much higher proportion of massive stars than is found in more peaceful galaxies.

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The European Space Agency portal features the latest news in space exploration, human spaceflight, launchers, telecommunications, navigation, monitoring and space science.

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Geo-Engineering & Volcano News | Evening Update

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Nueva investigación del Ciclo del Radiocarbono podría altear la historia

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Nueva investigación del Ciclo del Radiocarbono podría altear la historia

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Sturt Manning cores a multi-century old Juniperus phoenicea tree near Petra in southern Jordan.

Scientific research often depends on a degree of certainty in the data while allowing for the likelihood of change - new findings overriding old theories and creating new ones. Change is a given, especially true when taking weather and climate into account.

Archaeologist Sturt Manning and colleagues have revealed variations in the radiocarbon cycle at certain periods of time, affecting frequently cited standards used in archaeological and historical research relevant to the southern Levant region (Israel, southern Jordan and Egypt). These variations, or offsets, of up to 20 years in the calibration of precise radiocarbon dating could be related to climatic conditions.

Manning, the Goldwin Smith Professor of Classical Archaeology in the Department of Classics and director of the Cornell Tree-Ring Laboratory, is the lead author of " Fluctuating Radiocarbon Offsets Observed in the Southern Levant and Implications for Archaeological Chronology Debates," published May 29 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Pre-modern radiocarbon chronologies rely on standardized Northern and Southern Hemisphere calibration curves to obtain calendar dates from organic material. (The current Northern Hemisphere standard is IntCal13, published in 2013.) These standard calibration curves assume that at any given time radiocarbon levels are similar and stable everywhere across each hemisphere.

Juniperus phoenicea sample from Taybet Zaman, Jordan

The Cornell-led team had questions and suspicions.

"We went looking to test the assumption behind the whole field of radiocarbon dating," Manning said. "We know from atmospheric measurements over the last 50 years that radiocarbon levels vary through the year, and we also know that plants typically grow at different times in different parts of the Northern Hemisphere. So we wondered whether the radiocarbon levels relevant to dating organic material might also vary for different areas and whether this might affect archaeological dating."

Some research has "suggested there might be regional differences in radiocarbon levels, and hence problems for the standard model," he said. "We set out to ... see if we could observe such differences over time, and whether [they] were relevant to archaeological dating. If the existing assumed dates were to change, then you might discover a more complicated story, which is what we found - an unrecognized but visible complication that affects the radiocarbon standard used up to now for the southern Levant region. This finding changes dates at certain periods in the past, which affects the history we write."

The authors measured a series of carbon-14 ages in southern Jordan tree rings, with established calendar dates between 1610 and 1940 A.D. They found that contemporary plant material growing in the southern Levant shows an average offset in radiocarbon age of about 19 years compared with IntCal13.

Manning noted that "scholars working on the early Iron Age and Biblical chronology in Jordan and Israel are doing sophisticated projects with radiocarbon age analysis, which argue for very precise findings. This then becomes the timeline of history. But our work indicates that it's arguable their fundamental basis is faulty - they are using a calibration curve that is not accurate for this region."

The standard IntCal13 curve is constructed from measurements of radiocarbon levels in trees from Central and Northern Europe and North America. Comparing his team's results against IntCal13, "trees growing in southern Jordan are showing a different amount of radiocarbon compared with trees in central and northern Europe, and in North America," Manning said.

"IntCal13 offers a pretty good guide to mid-latitude areas of the Northern Hemisphere but not, we discover, for other regions like the southern Levant. This affects the timeline of the past in these areas."

Apparent fluctuations in the offset through time may be a consequence of climatic changes, periods of warming and cooling modulating the local growing seasons, the researchers say.

Juniperus phoenicea doors and pivot at Taybet Zaman, Jordan

"These variations seem to relate to changes in regional climate, which likely see growing seasons move a little earlier or later," Manning said. "For example, we see larger offsets [in the periods] 1685-1762 A.D. and 1818-1912 A.D., and these seem to link with generally warming conditions in the southern Levant."

Applying their results to previously published chronologies, the researchers also show how even the relatively small offsets they observe can shift calendar dates by enough to alter ongoing archaeological, historical and paleoclimate debates.

"We have only investigated tree-rings from A.D. 1610-1940 so far, but we can reasonably assume that a similar pattern of radiocarbon fluctuations occurred in the centuries before for this region," said Manning, who has published extensive research on radiocarbon and tree-ring chronologies, and has written about and taught courses on climate change through history. "There has been much debate for several decades among scholars arguing for different chronologies sometimes only decades to a century apart - each with major historical implications. And yet these studies ... may all be inaccurate since they are using the wrong radiocarbon information."

"Our work," he added, "should prompt a round of revisions and rethinking for the timeline of the archaeology and early history of the southern Levant through the early Biblical period."

His co-authors on the PNAS paper are Cornell Tree-Ring Laboratory senior researcher Carol Griggs '77, Ph.D. '06, and postdoctoral researcher Brita Lorentzen '06, Ph.D. '15; Christopher Bronk Ramsey and David Chivall of the Oxford University School of Archaeology; and A.J. Timothy Jull and Todd E. Lange of the University of Arizona's Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Laboratory.

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New radiocarbon cycle research may alter history

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Scientific research often depends on a degree of certainty in the data while allowing for the likelihood of change - new findings overriding old theories and creating new ones. Change is a given, especially true when taking weather and climate into account.

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Discrepancias en los Datos podría afectar el entendimiento del Universo

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Discrepancias en los Datos podría afectar el entendimiento del Universo

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Text size: research

Astrophysics Team Develops Tool That Could Lead to Answers Behind the Expansion of the Cosmos

One of the unsolved mysteries in modern science is why the expansion of the universe appears to be accelerating. Some scientists argue it is due to a theoretical dark energy that counteracts the pull of gravity, while others think Albert Einstein's long-accepted theory of gravity itself may need to be modified.

As astrophysicists look for answers in the mountains of data gathered from astronomical observations, they are finding that inconsistencies in that data might ultimately lead to the truth.

"This is like a detective story, where inconsistent evidence or testimony could lead to solving the puzzle," said Dr. Mustapha Ishak-Boushaki, professor of astrophysics in the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics at The University of Texas at Dallas.

Ishak-Boushaki and his doctoral student Weikang Lin have developed a new mathematical tool that identifies and quantifies inconsistencies in cosmological data gathered by various scientific missions and experiments. Their findings could shed light on the cosmic acceleration conundrum and have a significant impact on our understanding of the universe.

Their most recent research, published last October in the journal Physical Review D, was presented June 4 at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Denver.

"The inconsistencies we have found need to be resolved as we move toward more precise and accurate cosmology," Ishak-Boushaki said. "The implications of these discrepancies are that either some of our current data sets have systematic errors that need to be identified and removed, or that the underlying cosmological model we are using is incomplete or has problems."

Astrophysicists use a standard model of cosmology to describe the history, evolution and structure of the universe. From this model, they can calculate the age of the universe or how fast it is expanding. The model includes equations that describe the ultimate fate of the universe - whether it will continue expanding, or eventually slow down its expansion due to gravity and collapse on itself in a big crunch.

There are several variables - called cosmological parameters - embedded in the model's equations. Numerical values for the parameters are determined from observations and include factors such as how fast galaxies move away from each other and the densities of matter, energy and radiation in the universe.

But there is a problem with those parameters. Their values are calculated using data sets from many different experiments, and sometimes the values do not agree. The result: systematic errors in data sets or uncertainty in the standard model.

"Our research is looking at the value of these parameters, how they are determined from various experiments, and whether there is agreement on the values," Ishak-Boushaki said.

New Tool Finds Inconsistencies

The UT Dallas team developed a new measure, called the index of inconsistency, or IOI, that gives a numerical value to the degree of discordance between two or more data sets. Comparisons with an IOI greater than 1 are considered inconsistent. Those with an IOI over 5 are ranked as strongly inconsistent.

For example, the researchers used their IOI to compare five different techniques for determining the Hubble parameter, which is related to the rate at which the universe is expanding. One of those techniques - referred to as the local measurement - relies on measuring the distances to relatively nearby exploding stars called supernovae. The other techniques rely on observations of different phenomena at much greater distances.

"We found that there is an agreement between four out of five of these methods, but the Hubble parameter from local measurement of supernovae is not in agreement. It's like an outlier," Ishak-Boushaki said. "In particular, there is a clear tension between the local measurement and that from the Planck science mission, which characterized the cosmic microwave background radiation."

To complicate matters, multiple methods have been used to determine that local measurement, and they all produced a similar Hubble value, still in disagreement with Planck and other results.

"Why does this local measurement of the Hubble parameter stand out in significant disagreement with Planck?" Ishak-Boushaki asked.

"These inconsistencies are starting to show up more now because our observations have progressed to a level of precision where we can see them. We need the right values for these cosmological parameters because it has important implications for our understanding of the universe."

He and Lin also applied their IOI tool to five sets of observational data related to the large-scale structure of the universe. The cosmological parameters calculated using those five data sets were in strong disagreement, both individually and collectively, with parameters determined by observations from Planck.

"This is very intriguing. This is telling us that the universe at the largest observable scales may behave differently from the universe at intermediate or local scales," Ishak-Boushaki said. "This leads us to question whether Albert Einstein's theory of gravity is valid all the way from small scales to very large scales in the universe."

The UT Dallas researchers have made their IOI tool available for other scientists to use. Ishak-Boushaki said the Dark Energy Science Collaboration, part of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope project, will use the tool to look for inconsistencies among data sets.

"These inconsistencies are starting to show up more now because our observations have progressed to a level of precision where we can see them," said Ishak-Boushaki, who published his first paper about the inconsistencies in 2005. "We need the right values for these cosmological parameters because it has important implications for our understanding of the universe."

The research is supported in part by the National Science Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation.

Media Contact: Amanda Siegfried, UT Dallas, (972) 883-4335, [email protected]
or the Office of Media Relations, UT Dallas, (972) 883-2155, [email protected]

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Data Discrepancies May Affect Understanding of the Universe

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Text size: research One of the unsolved mysteries in modern science is why the expansion of the universe appears to be accelerating. Some scientists argue it is due to a theoretical dark energy that counteracts the pull of gravity, while others think Albert Einstein's long-accepted theory of gravity itself may need to be modified.

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NASA to Host Live Discussion

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NASA to Host Live Discussion on New Mars Science Results

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The media and public are invited to ask questions during a live discussion at 2 p.m. EDT Thursday, June 7, on new science results from NASA's Mars Curiosity rover.

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The Great June 3, 2018 Albuquerque Lightning Bolt

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Geomagnetic Storm, Weird Space Image | S0 News Jun.2.2018

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Hawaii Volcano Eruptions Getting Stronger

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Solar Eruption, CME, Big Hail, Bow Energy Transfer | S0 News June.1.2018

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Pequeña Edad de Hielo, Enojado, Terremotos por Fracking

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Pequeña Edad de Hielo, Enojado, Terremotos por Fracking

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Little Ice Age, Angry Ben, Frack-Quakes | S0 News Jun.7.2018

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Problemas en la Ciencia,  la Situación Volcánica se empeora

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Problemas en la Ciencia,  la Situación Volcánica se empeora

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Problems in Science, Volcano Situations Worsen | S0 News Jun.6.2018

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Temperatura & Precipitaciones

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national temperature and precipitation maps

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National Temperature and Precipitation Maps | Temperature, Precipitation, and Drought | National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI)

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1-Month, 3-Month, 6-Month, 12-Month, and Year-to-Date National, Divisional, Statewide, and Regional Temperature and Precipitation Maps

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Chandra explora el Sistema Estelar más cercano para evaluar posibles amenazas

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Chandra explora el Sistema Estelar más cercano para evaluar posibles amenazas

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Chandra :: Photo Album :: Alpha Centauri :: June 6, 2018

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This movie shows Chandra observations of Alpha Centauri A and B taken about every 6 months between 2005 and 2018. Alpha Cen A is the star to the upper left. The motion of the pair from left to right is their "proper motion", showing the movement of the pair in our galaxy with respect to the solar system.

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Más objetos misteriosos detectados cerca del agujero negro supermasivo de la Vía Láctea

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Más objetos misteriosos detectados cerca del agujero negro supermasivo de la Vía Láctea

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More Mystery Objects Detected Near Milky Way's Supermassive Black Hole W. M. Keck Observatory

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Huracanes lentos circulan alrededor del Mundo

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Huracanes lentos circulan alrededor del Mundo

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Sluggish hurricanes have become increasingly common over the past 70 years, according to a new study. Storms that linger over a given area for longer periods, such as Hurricane Harvey, which stalled over eastern Texas for almost a week in August 2017, bring more rain and have greater potential to cause damage than ones that pass quickly. Scientists aren't sure why this is happening, but if the trend continues, future hurricanes could be even more disastrous.

The study, published on 6 June in Nature, is the first to analyse hurricane speeds globally. It finds that the speed at which tropical cyclones moved across the planet slowed by about 10% between 1949 and 2016. The storms travelled at more than 19 kilometres an hour on average in 1949, compared with an average speed of about 17 kilometres an hour in 2016. The effect was significant over land, with cyclones affecting regions along the western North Pacific slowing by 30% and by about 20% over Australia and landmasses in or near the North Atlantic.

"That's a big signal," says study author James Kossin, a climate scientist at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies in Madison, Wisconsin. After studies suggested that atmospheric circulation patterns in the tropics might be slowing as a result of global warming, Kossin set out to see whether hurricanes, which are carried along by these wind currents, also put on the brakes. "I'm not sure that I was quite prepared for the amount of slowing that I did find," he says.

Because storms are growing more sluggish, there's more time for rain to fall. Kossin notes that a 10% reduction in hurricane speed corresponds to a 10% increase in the amount of rainfall over a given area. The effect could be magnified by a warming climate, because recent global simulations estimate up to a 10% increase in rain rate per degree Celsius of warming.

Slower, more rain-heavy hurricanes would lead to more flooding events, says David Nolan, a hurricane scientist at the University of Miami in Florida. And sustained winds could also pose a risk: buildings that are battered by strong winds for longer periods are more likely to be damaged, he says.
An open question
These sluggish tropical cyclones are "an interesting finding that could have important implications", says Tom Knutson, a research meteorologist at NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, New Jersey. But researchers aren't sure what has caused the slowdown. Knutson says it's an open question whether human-driven climate change or natural variability is to blame. It's also not clear if the slowdown in atmospheric tropical circulation patterns influences the speed at which hurricanes move across the globe, he adds. Knutson notes that his team's climate models, which simulate future Atlantic hurricanes, don't project that storms will slow down, even if researchers tweak the model to slow those circulation patterns.

It's possible that the observed decrease in hurricane speed is a result of unreliable data, says Kevin Trenberth, a climate scientist at the US National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. He notes that satellites have tracked storms across the globe only since the late 1960s, so data acquired before then might not be reliable and should be discounted.

But Kossin disagrees, saying that data on the speed of these storms are less sensitive to technological advances than data about their frequency and intensity. "The differences in the way we tracked [storms] 50 years ago are not as great as the differences in the way we estimated their intensities." Moreover, Kossin says, a study this year found that several past hurricanes would have been slower had they happened in a warmer climate. "That gives us more confidence that the slowing is there and is related to warming."
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Hurricanes slow their roll around the world

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Sluggish hurricanes have become increasingly common over the past 70 years, according to a new study. Storms that linger over a given area for longer periods, such as Hurricane Harvey, which stalled over eastern Texas for almost a week in August 2017, bring more rain and have greater potential to cause damage than ones that pass quickly.

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Cuando los Vientos Solares soplan, nuestra Heliosfera se agranda

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Cuando los Vientos Solares soplan, nuestra Heliosfera se agranda

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As Solar Wind Blows, Our Heliosphere Balloons

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What happens when the solar wind suddenly starts to blow significantly harder? According to two recent studies, the boundaries of our entire solar system balloon outward - and an analysis of particles rebounding off of its edges will reveal its new shape.

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¿ Deberían de estar preocupados los ingenieros por la vulnerabilidad de los puentes colgantes ante el peligro de los sismos potencialmente inducidos ?

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¿ Deberían de estar preocupados los ingenieros por la vulnerabilidad de los puentes colgantes ante el peligro de los sismos potencialmente inducidos ?

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Una Pequeña Edad de Hielo fue 1.0-1.5°C más frío que el actual período de calentamiento de acuerdo a  la LOAD y la NAO.

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Una Pequeña Edad de Hielo fue 1.0-1.5°C más frío que el actual período de calentamiento de acuerdo a  la LOAD y la NAO.

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Galactic Field, Volcano Update, Hurricane | S0 News Jun.8.2018

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Investigadores descubrieron un sistema con 3 planetas del tamaño de la Tierra

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Investigadores descubrieron un sistema con 3 planetas del tamaño de la Tierra

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Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias - IAC - Educational Outreach

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The information about these new exoplanets has been obtained from the data collected by the K2 mission of NASA's Kepler satellite, which started in November 2013. The work, which will be published in the Monthly Notices of the magazine Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS), reveals the existence of two new planetary systems detected from the eclipses they produce in the stellar light of their respective stars.

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Juno soluciona el misterio de 39 años sobre los rayos en Júpiter

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Juno soluciona el misterio de 39 años sobre los rayos en Júpiter

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Juno Solves 39-Year Old Mystery of Jupiter Lightning

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NASA's Juno spacecraft finds lightning on Jupiter is same as in Earth in some ways, opposite in others.

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Chorros Cósmicos & Polvo, Volcán, Lunas Habitables

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Chorros Cósmicos & Polvo, Volcán, Lunas Habitables

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Cosmic Jets & Dust, Volcano, Habitable Moons | S0 News Jun.15.2018

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Astrónomos ven una erupción distante de como un hoyo negro destruye una estrella

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Astrónomos ven una erupción distante de como un hoyo negro destruye una estrella

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For the first time, astronomers have directly imaged the formation and expansion of a fast-moving jet of material ejected when the powerful gravity of a supermassive black hole ripped apart a star that wandered too close to the cosmic monster.

The scientists tracked the event with radio and infrared telescopes, including the National Science Foundation's Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), in a pair of colliding galaxies called Arp 299, nearly 150 million light-years from Earth. At the core of one of the galaxies, a black hole 20 million times more massive than the Sun shredded a star more than twice the Sun's mass, setting off a chain of events that revealed important details of the violent encounter.

Only a small number of such stellar deaths, called tidal disruption events, or TDEs, have been detected, although scientists have hypothesized that they may be a more common occurrence. Theorists suggested that material pulled from the doomed star forms a rotating disk around the black hole, emitting intense X-rays and visible light, and also launches jets of material outward from the poles of the disk at nearly the speed of light.

"Never before have we been able to directly observe the formation and evolution of a jet from one of these events," said Miguel Perez-Torres, of the Astrophysical Institute of Andalusia in Granada, Spain.

The first indication came on January 30, 2005, when astronomers using the William Herschel Telescope in the Canary Islands discovered a bright burst of infrared emission coming from the nucleus of one of the colliding galaxies in Arp 299. On July 17, 2005, the VLBA revealed a new, distinct source of radio emission from the same location.

"As time passed, the new object stayed bright at infrared and radio wavelengths, but not in visible light and X-rays," said Seppo Mattila, of the University of Turku in Finland. "The most likely explanation is that thick interstellar gas and dust near the galaxy's center absorbed the X-rays and visible light, then re-radiated it as infrared," he added. The researchers used the Nordic Optical Telescope on the Canary Islands and NASA's Spitzer space telescope to follow the object's infrared emission.

Continued observations with the VLBA, the European VLBI Network (EVN), and other radio telescopes, carried out over nearly a decade, showed the source of radio emission expanding in one direction, just as expected for a jet. The measured expansion indicated that the material in the jet moved at an average of one-fourth the speed of light. Fortunately, the radio waves are not absorbed in the core of the galaxy, but find their way through it to reach the Earth.

These observations used multiple radio-telescope antennas, separated by thousands of miles, to gain the resolving power, or ability to see fine detail, required to detect the expansion of an object so distant. The patient, years-long data collection rewarded the scientists with the evidence of a jet.

Most galaxies have supermassive black holes, containing millions to billions of times the mass of the Sun, at their cores. In a black hole, the mass is so concentrated that its gravitational pull is so strong that not even light can escape. When those supermassive black holes are actively drawing in material from their surroundings, that material forms a rotating disk around the black hole, and superfast jets of particles are launched outward. This is the phenomenon seen in radio galaxies and quasars.

"Much of the time, however, supermassive black holes are not actively devouring anything, so they are in a quiet state," Perez-Torres explained. "Tidal disruption events can provide us with a unique opportunity to advance our understanding of the formation and evolution of jets in the vicinities of these powerful objects," he added.

"Because of the dust that absorbed any visible light, this particular tidal disruption event may be just the tip of the iceberg of what until now has been a hidden population," Mattila said. "By looking for these events with infrared and radio telescopes, we may be able to discover many more, and learn from them," he said.

Such events may have been more common in the distant Universe, so studying them may help scientists understand the environment in which galaxies developed billions of years ago.

The discovery, the scientists said, came as a surprise. The initial infrared burst was discovered as part of a project that sought to detect supernova explosions in such colliding pairs of galaxies. Arp 299 has seen numerous stellar explosions, and has been dubbed a "supernova factory." This new object originally was considered to be a supernova explosion. Only in 2011, six years after discovery, the radio-emitting portion began to show an elongation. Subsequent monitoring showed the expansion growing, confirming that what the scientists are seeing is a jet, not a supernova.

Mattila and Perez-Torres led a team of 36 scientists from 26 institutions around the world in the observations of Arp 299. They published their findings in the 14 June online issue of the journal Science.

The Long Baseline Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation, operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc.

###

Media Contact:

Dave Finley, Public Information Officer
(575) 835-7302
dfinley@nrao.edu

Science Contacts:

Seppo Mattila - Co-lead author
University of Turku
Email: seppo.mattila@utu.fi
Phone: + 358 29 450 4518

Miguel Pérez-Torres - Co-lead author
Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia - CSIC
Email: torres@iaa.csic.es
Phone: +34 876 55 32 84

###

Science Paper:

http://science.sciencemag.org/lookup/doi/10.1126/science.aao4669

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Astronomers See Distant Eruption as Black Hole Destroys Star - National Radio Astronomy Observatory

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For the first time, astronomers have directly imaged the formation and expansion of a fast-moving jet of material ejected when the powerful gravity of a supermassive black hole ripped apart a star that wandered too close to the cosmic monster.

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Las Nubes de Polvo pueden explicar las características desconcertantes de un núcleo galáctico activo

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Las Nubes de Polvo pueden explicar las características desconcertantes de un núcleo galáctico activo

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Many large galaxies have a bright central region called an active galactic nucleus (AGN), powered by matter spiraling into a supermassive black hole. Gas clouds in an area around the AGN known as the "broad-line region" emit light at characteristic wavelengths, but the complexity and variability of these emissions has been a longstanding puzzle for astrophysicists.

A new analysis by researchers at UC Santa Cruz, published June 14 in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, explains these and other puzzling features of active galactic nuclei as the result of small clouds of dust that can partially obscure the innermost regions of AGNs.

"We've shown that a lot of mysterious properties of active galactic nuclei can be explained by these small dusty clouds causing changes in what we see," said first author Martin Gaskell, a research associate in astronomy and astrophysics at UC Santa Cruz.

The findings have important implications because researchers use the optical emissions from the broad-line region to make inferences about the behavior of the gases in the inner regions around a supermassive black hole.

"The emission from this gas is one of the best sources of information about the mass of a black hole and how it is growing. However, the nature of this gas is poorly understood," Gaskell said.

Coauthor Peter Harrington, a UCSC graduate student who began work on the project as an undergraduate, explained that gas spiraling toward a galaxy's central black hole forms a flat accretion disk, and the superheated gas in the accretion disk emits intense thermal radiation. Some of that light is "reprocessed" (absorbed and re-emitted) by hydrogen and other gases swirling above and below the accretion disk in the broad-line region. Above and beyond this is a region of dust.

"Once the dust crosses a certain threshold it is subjected to the strong radiation from the accretion disk," said Harrington. "This radiation is so intense that it blows the dust away from the disk, resulting in a clumpy outflow of dust clouds starting at the outer edge of the broad-line region."

The effect of the dust clouds on the light emitted is to make the light coming from behind them look fainter and redder, just as Earth's atmosphere makes the sun look fainter and redder at sunset. In their paper, Gaskell and Harrington present several lines of observational evidence supporting the existence of such dust clouds in the inner regions of active galactic nuclei. They developed a computer code to model the effects of dust clouds on observations of the broad-line region.

"We've written the code so we can adjust parameters like the distribution of gas in the broad-line region, how fast it's moving, and the orientation of the system, and then we can introduce dust clouds and see how they affect the emission-line profiles," Harrington said.

The results show that by including dust clouds in their model, it can replicate many features of emission from the broad-line region that have long puzzled astrophysicists. Rather than the gas having a changing, asymmetrical distribution that is hard to explain, the gas is simply in a uniform, symmetric, turbulent disk around the black hole. The apparent asymmetries and changes are due to dust clouds passing in front of the broad-line region and making the regions behind them look fainter and redder.

"We think it is a much more natural explanation of the asymmetries and changes than other more exotic theories, such as binary black holes, that have been invoked to explain them," Gaskell said. "Our explanation lets us retain the simplicity of the standard AGN model of matter spiraling onto a single black hole."

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Dust clouds can explain puzzling features of active galactic nuclei

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Many large galaxies have a bright central region called an active galactic nucleus (AGN), powered by matter spiraling into a supermassive black hole. Gas clouds in an area around the AGN known as the "broad-line region" emit light at characteristic wavelengths, but the complexity and variability of these emissions has been a longstanding puzzle for astrophysicists.

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Propiedades Ópticas del Polvo: los Efectos de la Composición, Tamaño y Estructura

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Propiedades Ópticas del Polvo: los Efectos de la Composición, Tamaño y Estructura

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Fallas Ocultas, Erupción, Gran Peligro Solar

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Fallas Ocultas, Erupción, Gran Peligro Solar

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Hidden Faults, Eruption, Big Solar Risk | S0 News Jun.14.2018

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Tormentas, Manchas Solares, Tornado Fractal

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Tormentas, Manchas Solares, Tornado Fractal

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Storms, Sunspots, Fractal Tornado | S0 News Jun.13.2018

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Incremento en Rayos Cósmicos, Información de Volcanes, Próximas Grandes Noticias

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Incremento en Rayos Cósmicos, Información de Volcanes, Próximas Grandes Noticias

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Cosmic Rays Rising, Volcano Data, Big News Coming | S0 News Jun.12.2018

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Nueva Mancha Solar, Tormenta Severas, Polvo

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Nueva Mancha Solar, Tormenta Severas, Polvo

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New Sunspots, Severe Storms, Dust | S0 News Jun.11.2018

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Sol, Tormentas, Radiación, el Adueñándose del Océano

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Sol, Tormentas, Radiación, el Adueñándose del Océano

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Sun, Storms, Radiation, Owning the Ocean | S0 News Jun.10.2018

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Clima Espacial, Hawái, ¿Centauri habitable?

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Clima Espacial, Hawái, ¿Centauri habitable?

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Space Weather, Hawaii, Habitable Centauri? | S0 News Jun.9.2018

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Cosmic Ray Psyche | More-Direct Effect/Mitigation Protocol

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ALMA descubre 3 planetas infantes alrededor de una nueva estrella

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ALMA descubre 3 planetas infantes alrededor de una nueva estrella

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ALMA Discovers Trio of Infant Planets around Newborn Star - Novel technique to find youngest planets in our galaxy

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Two independent teams of astronomers have used ALMA to uncover convincing evidence that three young planets are in orbit around the infant star HD 163296. Using a novel planet-finding technique, the astronomers identified three disturbances in the gas-filled disc around the young star: the strongest evidence yet that newly formed planets are in orbit there.

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Rocks Under I-95 Present Odd, and Scary, Threat to Power Grid

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A solar storm is now viewed as enough of a risk in fact that grid operators across North America are working on plans to respond to just such a disturbance. And a draft of a soon-to-be-published U.S. Geological Survey report pinpoints the Eastern Seaboard as one of the areas most in danger.

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Magnetic measurements made during low-altitude airplane flights conducted for the U.S. Geological Survey and the Oklahoma Geological Survey reveal possible deep faults that may contribute to increased seismic activity in response to wastewater injection in certain portions of Oklahoma.

The data and results from the August through October, 2017, deep-imaging magnetic survey were recently published in Geophysical Research Letters.

Oklahoma has been the site of thousands of earthquakes associated with wastewater injection activity, or induced seismicity, but few of the earthquake sequences have occurred on mapped faults, making seismic hazards difficult to estimate.

The USGS and the OGS used the newly acquired airborne magnetic data to image rocks where the earthquakes are occurring miles beneath the surface. The magnetic field maps reveal boundaries or contacts between different rock types, some of which are linear, similar to faults. A number of these types of contacts, (referred to as "lineaments" in the magnetic field map), are aligned with sequences of earthquakes. This suggests that some of them represent ancient faults that have been reactivated due to wastewater injection, which generates, or "induces" earthquakes.

"We are hoping the results will be used to guide more detailed studies at local scales to assess potential earthquake hazards," said USGS scientist Anji Shah, lead author for the study.

Additionally, the data show that there is a dominant "grain" direction to the magnetic contacts (like wood grain) in the deep rocks where the earthquakes are occurring. This "grain" was formed hundreds of millions of years ago and may be composed in part by faults that are oriented favorably to move in response to natural background stresses within the earth. This alignment of deep features may contribute to the high levels of seismicity occurring in response to wastewater injection.

"There is nothing like a new data set to excite geoscientists looking for answers to some of the mysteries of induced seismicity in Oklahoma," said Dr. Jeremy Boak, OGS Director. "We look forward to discussing these results among ourselves and with the interested technical community. We also hope to bring these data to bear on addressing the persistent seismic activity and sharing our interpretations with Oklahomans and other stakeholders regarding this challenging issue."

Survey areas included parts of Alfalfa, Beckham, Comanche, Greer, Harmon, Kiowa, Jackson, Lincoln, Logan, Major, Noble, Pawnee, Payne, Pottawatomie, Stephens, Tillman, Woods and Woodward counties.

Other relevant findings of the USGS/OGS study:

Many of the possible deep faults highlighted by the magnetic data are different from those on previous fault maps. This discrepancy is probably because the previous maps reflect relatively young faults in the shallow rocks, whereas the magnetic data image the deeper, older rocks. The differences in the fault directions between these rock types are probably due to the different histories of ancient tectonic and magmatic events that shaped the rocks.

USGS provides science for a changing world. Visit USGS.gov, and follow us on Twitter @USGS and our other social media channels.

Subscribe to our news releases via e-mail, RSS or Twitter.

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Oklahoma Study Reveals Possible, Previously Unknown Sources of Earthquakes

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The data and results from the August through October, 2017, deep-imaging magnetic survey were recently published in Geophysical Research Letters.Oklahoma has been the site of thousands of earthquakes associated with wastewater injection activity, or induced seismicity, but few of the earthquake sequences have occurred on mapped faults, making seismic hazards difficult to estimate.

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A new analysis of data from NASA's Dawn mission suggests that organic matter may exist in surprisingly high concentrations on the dwarf planet's surface.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] - Last year, scientists with NASA's Dawn mission announced the detection of organic material - carbon-based compounds that are necessary components for life - exposed in patches on the surface of the dwarf planet Ceres. Now, a new analysis of the Dawn data by Brown University researchers suggests those patches may contain a much higher abundance of organics than originally thought.

The findings, published recently in Geophysical Research Letters, raise intriguing questions about how those organics got to the surface of Ceres, and the methods used in the new study could also provide a template for interpreting data for future missions, the researchers say.

"What this paper shows is that you can get really different results depending upon the type of organic material you use to compare with and interpret the Ceres data," said Hannah Kaplan, a postdoctoral researcher at the Southwest Research Institute who led the research while completing her Ph.D. at Brown. "That's important not only for Ceres, but also for missions that will soon explore asteroids that may also contain organic material."

Organic molecules are the chemical building blocks for life. Their detection on Ceres doesn't mean life exists there or ever existed there; non-biological processes can give rise to organic molecules as well. But because life as we know it can't exist without organic material, scientists are interested in how it's distributed through the solar system. The presence of organic material on Ceres raises intriguing possibilities, particularly because the dwarf planet is also rich in water ice, and water is another necessary component for life.

The original discovery of organics on Ceres was made using the Visible and Infrared (VIR) Spectrometer on the Dawn spacecraft, which went into orbit around the dwarf planet in 2015. By analyzing the patterns in which sunlight interacts with the surface - looking carefully at which wavelengths are reflected and which are absorbed - scientists can get an idea of what compounds are present on Ceres. The VIR instrument picked up a signal consistent with organic molecules in the region of Ernutet Crater on Ceres' northern hemisphere.

To get an initial idea of how abundant those compounds might be, the original research team compared the VIR data from Ceres with laboratory reflectance spectra of organic material formed on Earth. Based on that standard, the researchers concluded that between six and 10 percent of the spectral signature they detected on Ceres could be explained by organic matter.

But for this new research, Kaplan and her colleagues wanted to re-examine those data using a different standard. Instead of relying on Earth rocks to interpret the data, the team turned to an extraterrestrial source: meteorites. Some meteorites - chunks of carbonaceous chondrite that have fallen to Earth after being ejected from primitive asteroids - have been shown to contain organic material that's slightly different from what's commonly found on our own planet. And Kaplan's work shows that the spectral reflectance of the extraterrestrial organics is distinct from that of terrestrial counterparts.

"What we find is that if we model the Ceres data using extraterrestrial organics, which may be a more appropriate analog than those found on Earth, then we need a lot more organic matter on Ceres to explain the strength of the spectral absorption that we see there," Kaplan said. "We estimate that as much as 40 to 50 percent of the spectral signal we see on Ceres is explained by organics. That's a huge difference compared to the six to 10 percent previously reported based on terrestrial organic compounds."

If the concentration of organics on Ceres is indeed that high, it raises a host of new questions about the source of that material. There are two competing possibilities for where Ceres' organics may have come from. They could have been produced internally on Ceres and then exposed on the surface, or they could have been delivered to the surface by an impact from an organic-rich comet or asteroid.

This new study suggests that if the organics were delivered, then the potential high concentrations of the organics would be more consistent with impact by a comet rather than an asteroid. Comets are known to have significantly higher internal abundances of organics compared with primitive asteroids, potentially similar to the 40 to 50 percent figure this study suggests for these locations on Ceres. However, the heat of an impact would likely destroy a substantial amount of a comet's organics, so whether or not such high abundances could even be explained by a cometary impact remains unclear, the researchers say.

The alternative explanation, that the organics formed directly on Ceres, raises questions too. The detection of organics has so far been limited to small patches on Ceres' northern hemisphere. Such high concentrations in such small areas require an explanation.

"If the organics are made on Ceres, then you likely still need a mechanism to concentrate it in these specific locations or at least to preserve it in these spots," said Ralph Milliken, an associate professor in Brown's Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences and a study co-author. "It's not clear what that mechanism might be. Ceres is clearly a fascinating object, and understanding the story and origin of organics in these spots and elsewhere on Ceres will likely require future missions that can analyze or return samples."

For now the researchers hope this study will be helpful in informing upcoming sample return missions to near-Earth asteroids that are also thought to host water-bearing minerals and organic compounds. The Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa2 is expected to arrive at the asteroid Ryugu in several weeks, and NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission is due to reach the asteroid Bennu in August. Kaplan is currently a science team member with the OSIRIS-REx mission.

"I think the work that went into this study, which included new laboratory measurements of important components of primitive meteorites, can provide a framework of how to better interpret data of asteroids and make links between spacecraft observations and samples in our meteorite collection," Kaplan said. "As a new member to the OSIRIS-REx team, I'm particularly interested in how this might apply to our mission."

The research was funded by the NASA Astrobiology Institute and the NASA Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute at Brown.

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Organics on Ceres may be more abundant than originally thought

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A new analysis of data from NASA's Dawn mission suggests that organic matter may exist in surprisingly high concentrations on the dwarf planet's surface. PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] - Last year, scientists with NASA's Dawn mission announced the detection of organic material - carbon-based compounds that are necessary components for life - exposed in patches on the surface of the dwarf planet Ceres.

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New GAIA data reveals mergers in Milky Way

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University of Groningen astronomers have discovered relics of merger events in the Milky Way halo. Five small groups of stars appear to represent mergers with smaller galaxies, while a big 'blob' comprising hundreds of stars appears to be the remnant of a large merger event.

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SVS: Visualizations of Hunga Tonga Hunga Ha'apai and the Martian Landscape

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In early 2015, a volcanic eruption in the Kingdom of Tonga created a new island informally known as Hunga Tonga Hunga Ha'apai (HTHH). The subsequent evolution of the new island was previously described in "The Birth of a New Island" available here .

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Eufemia Garcia watched in horror as Guatemala's Fuego volcano sent scalding ash and gas surging over her home a week ago, burying her children and grandson among 50 of her extended family. She has been searching for their remains ever since.

At least 110 people died after Fuego erupted last Sunday, pushing fast-moving currents of dust, lava and gas down the volcano's slopes in its greatest eruption in four decades, and close to 200 more are believed buried beneath the waste.

Among them, Garcia believes, her nine siblings and their families as well as her mother, her own grown-up children and a grandson, making her family one of the hardest hit in a disaster that officials admit was made worse by delays in official warnings.

The hamlet of San Miguel Los Lotes on the lush southern flank of the volcano was almost completely swallowed by several metres of ash, and formal search efforts have been suspended until the still-erupting volcano stabilises.

Defying the suspension order, Garcia, 48, leaves the shelter she now sleeps in each morning, grabs a pickaxe or a shovel and heads into the danger zone, where groups of volunteers and other families dig down through ash hardened by rain and sun to try and reach their homes below.

Another desperate survivor, Bryan Rivera, is searching for 13 missing relatives. All he has found so far in the dust and desolation is a guitar his 12-year-old sister had loved to play.

"I'm not going to give up until I have a part of my family and am able to give them a Christian burial," Garcia said.

A fruit seller who lived for more than three decades with her extended family in Los Lotes, Garcia said she was out purchasing eggs when she saw the volcanic flow racing toward her village.

She sprinted back to her family's homes, where uncles and a brother, children and cousins were preparing for a lunch to celebrate a sister visiting from a nearby town.

She shouted at them to flee but few heeded the warnings. Her 75-year-old mother decided she could not outrun the danger. "Let God's will be done," she said.

Garcia ran to safety and looked back to see the burning flow rise to the roof of her house, submerging it completely with her son Jaime, 21, inside. She watched as the ash rushed toward her daughter Vilma Liliana, 23, who sprinted for safety barefoot but was unable to outpace its terrible path.

Her other daughter Sheiny Rosmery, 28, stayed at home, her son in her arms. The visiting sister and her husband have not been found.

With almost no family left, she does not know where she will live next, or what she will do to survive. But for now, she says, all that matters is the search.

She ticks off a list of her missing, including her three children, her mother, her grandson, brothers, sisters, nephews, children of nephews and brothers-in-law, generations of a relatives among the clutch of families that settled in Los Lotes in the 1970s.

The only survivors are Garcia and a brother who long ago moved away.
"I've looked here in the morgue and in another morgue, but there is no sign of them," she said, standing in front of a row of coffins at a makeshift mortuary.
"My family is buried. All 50 of them."
Topics

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Guatemala volcano: woman searches for 50 buried relatives

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Eufemia Garcia watched in horror as Guatemala's Fuego volcano sent scalding ash and gas surging over her home a week ago, burying her children and grandson among 50 of her extended family. She has been searching for their remains ever since.

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Press Release - Diamond Dust Shimmering around Distant Stars

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In astronomy, nanodiamonds are special in that their structure produces what is known as a "dipole moment" - an arrangement of atoms that allows them to emit electromagnetic radiation when they spin.

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This turbulent celestial palette of purple and yellow shows a bubble of gas named NGC 3199, blown by a star known as WR18 (Wolf-Rayet 18).Wolf-Rayet stars are massive, powerful, and energetic stars that are just about reaching the end of their lives. They flood their surroundings with thi...

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TLE over Austria and Hungary 8.-9.6.2018

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AAAS - The World's Largest General Scientific Society

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Organisms from deep sea hydrothermal vents are among the ocean dwellers with patented genetic material. | NOAA Ocean Exploration & Research

One corporation has registered nearly half of all patents on marine genetic sequences and virtually all marine genetic resource patents are registered to entities from only ten countries, according to a study published in the June 6 issue of Science Advances.

The analysis also revealed that a single corporation - BASF, the world's largest chemical producer, headquartered in Germany - registered 47% of all patented marine sequences. Furthermore, entities located or headquartered in ten countries registered 98% of all patented sequences, suggesting that 165 countries are underrepresented, said the study authors.

The findings highlight the need for inclusive global participation in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea treaty negotiations starting in September 2018 that will address the use of marine biodiversity in international waters.

According to Robert Blasiak, an author of the study from Stockholm University, the entities that own the majority of patents related to marine biodiversity "could play a very important and valuable role in supporting efforts to ensure that areas beyond national jurisdiction can be accessed by all and benefit all."

Many marine organisms have evolved unique adaptations to succeed in some of the ocean's most extreme conditions, such as extreme pressure, heat and cold. Their unique genes could be useful for a number of applications, ranging from pharmaceuticals to enzymes that can be used to synthesize biofuels. Companies, organizations and universities register patents that are associated with these marine genetic resources (MGRs) to have exclusive access to their potential economic benefits.

Blasiak and colleagues said little is known about MGR patents. Studies so far have only focused on countries where patents have been registered, rather than on the individual entities registering them.

"I was often surprised to hear people talking about countries owning patents, or about countries patenting MGRs. This always confused me because I always associated patents with commercial endeavors and companies - not countries. Yet, I couldn't find any research showing what companies were actually registering these patents." said Blasiak.

To shed light on who holds MGR patents and what types of marine species are being included in such claims, Blasiak and colleagues accessed 38 million records of patented genetic sequences and identified patents for 12,998 genetic sequences extracted from 862 marine species, including the sperm whale, manta ray and plankton.

"Everything [we found] was a surprise, to be honest," said Blasiak.

A wide range of species have been the focus of patents. The majority (about 73%) are associated with microbial species. Fish represent 16% of the registered patents and 11% of patented sequences are from species associated with deep sea hydrothermal vent systems.

The analysis also revealed that 221 companies had registered 84% of all patents. Public and private universities, on the other hand, only accounted for 12% of all patents.

Blasiak said the fact that specific companies and countries are patenting large amounts of MGRs is not a concern by itself, noting that "many of these actors are industry leaders and dedicate tremendous resources to research and development, paving the way for new innovations."

The concerning issue, Blasiak said, is that more entities - especially ones from the global south - are not involved in marine patenting. This creates an uneven playing field for developing countries who sign on to the UNCLOS treaty, and may continue to stall treaty negotiations until participating developed countries with more resources commit to supporting equitable development and transfer of marine technology. This support, Blasiak and colleagues said, will ensure that the process moves forward in an inclusive manner.

The countries and companies that own the majority of MGR patents have a unique opportunity to play an important role in the future of high seas biodiversity and its governance, said Blasiak. "So much remains to be discovered that will benefit human society ... [These countries and companies] can be leaders in promoting a more equitable roadmap for ensuring sustainable use of ocean resources."

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One Corporation Holds Most of Ocean's Genetic Patents

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Organisms from deep sea hydrothermal vents are among the ocean dwellers with patented genetic material. | NOAA Ocean Exploration & Research One corporation has registered nearly half of all patents on marine genetic sequences and virtually all marine genetic resource patents are registered to entities from only ten countries, according to a study published in the June 6 issue of Science Advances.

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Low dose or low dose rate ionizing radiation-induced health effect in the human

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The extensive literature review on human epidemiological studies suggests that low dose ionizing radiation (LDIR) (≤100 mSv) or low dose rate ionizing...

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What am I looking at?

Meteor showers on Earth are caused by streams of meteoroids hitting our atmosphere. These meteoroids are sand- and pebble-sized bits of rock that were once released from their parent comet. Some comets are no longer active and are now called asteroids.

This visualization shows these meteoroid streams orbiting the Sun, some stretching to the outer regions of the solar system. Select the meteor shower in the menu to see the corresponding meteoroid stream in space. Their meteoroid orbits are based on those measured by NASA's CAMS video camera surveillance network, and were calculated by meteor astronomer Peter Jenniskens of the SETI Institute and NASA Ames Research Center.

This visualization is developed and hosted by Ian Webster.

How can I see a meteor shower?

Meteor showers are best seen on certain dark and clear nights. To see how many meteors per hour are visible from your location, go to this website and select the date, the shower, and your location.

Where should I go next?

If you like these sorts of interactive visualizations, take a look at Ian Webster's other tools, including Pluto, ancient Earth, or asteroids!

Can I use this on my site?

Sure! Use the following code to load the interactive visualization in an iframe. You must know the IAU number of your meteor shower, which you can look up here.

<iframe src="https://www.meteorshowers.org/view/iau-7" width="500" height="500" frameBorder="0"></iframe>

Please remember to attribute this site!

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3D visualization of NASA meteor shower data. Scientifically accurate and fully interactive.

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Space Weather Health Alerts | What To Do

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Solar Storm Psyche | From Stress to Suicide

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SVS: Parker Solar Probe and Solar Orbiter Trajectories

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The next missions scheduled for detailed studies of the Sun and solar atmosphere are Parker Solar Probe and Solar Orbiter . Parker Solar Probe moves in a highly-elliptical orbit, using gravity-assists from Venus to move the orbit perihelion closer to the Sun with each pass.

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Hubble Images a Galaxy with Threads of Blue

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A ripple of bright blue gas threads through this galaxy like a misshapen lake system.

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Plot of locations (from log at https://t.co/Fl9aKcLmem) of #AA1897 flight, which encountered hail and severe turbulence https://t.co/OAHI5qSmD6 last night, on radar imagery and a 3-D view of the hail core

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Plot of locations (from log at https://t.co/Fl9aKcLmem) of #AA1897 flight, which encountered hail and severe turbulence https://t.co/OAHI5qSmD6 last night, on radar imagery and a 3-D view of the hail core https://t.co/3E3Dg9Z8Wv

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Plot of locations (from log at https://t.co/Fl9aKcLmem) of #AA1897 flight, which encountered hail and severe turbulence https://t.co/OAHI5qSmD6 last night, on radar imagery and a 3-D view of the hail core pic.twitter.com/3E3Dg9Z8Wv
— Stu Ostro (@StuOstro) June 4, 2018

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Plot of locations (from log at https://t.co/Fl9aKcLmem) of #AA1897 flight, which encountered hail and severe turbulence https://t.co/OAHI5qSmD6 last night, on radar imagery and a 3-D view of the hail core https://t.co/3E3Dg9Z8Wv

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.original_text
Plot of locations (from log at https://t.co/Fl9aKcLmem) of #AA1897 flight, which encountered hail and severe turbulence https://t.co/OAHI5qSmD6 last night, on radar imagery and a 3-D view of the hail core https://t.co/3E3Dg9Z8Wv

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.text
Plot of locations (from log at https://t.co/Fl9aKcLmem) of #AA1897 flight, which encountered hail and severe turbulence https://t.co/OAHI5qSmD6 last night, on radar imagery and a 3-D view of the hail core

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Large parts of the massive East Antarctic Ice Sheet did not retreat significantly during a time when atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations were similar to today's levels, according to a team of researchers funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The finding could have significant implications for global sea level rise.

The East Antarctic Ice Sheet is one of three major ice sheets closely watched by scientists as global temperatures and carbon dioxide levels increase, glaciers melt and sea levels rise. Of the three, the East Antarctic Ice Sheet is the largest potential contributor to sea level rise.

To gauge the ice sheet's stability, researchers took ultra-sensitive analytical measurements of chemical signatures in sediment samples taken from the ice sheet's sea bed. They concluded that some ice on the southernmost part of the continent could be stable in a warming climate, as was the case during the Pliocene Epoch.

But they also caution that ongoing, rising carbon emissions mean that carbon dioxide levels will soon surpass the benchmark set during the Pliocene -- approximately 5.3 to 2.6 million years ago -- the last time Earth experienced carbon dioxide levels higher than 400 parts per million.

The findings were published today in the journal Nature.

The researchers relied on samples taken as part of the international ANtarctic geological DRILLing (ANDRILL) project. NSF funded the U.S. participation in ANDRILL.

Examining sediment samples delivered from land-based sections of the ice sheet, the researchers found those areas that drain into Antarctica's Ross Sea have been stable for the past 8 million years.

The geological history of the massive ice sheet -- frozen both above and, in many places, below the ocean's surface -- has been difficult to pinpoint. The absence of data about the East Antarctic Ice Sheet's response to warming in the past have hindered efforts to predict its role in future sea level rise.

This study focused on the portion of the ice sheet that sits above the ocean. It holds enough water to cause as much as 34 meters of sea level rise if the ice sheet were to melt completely.

Another component of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, marine-based ice, sits below sea level and is thus directly affected by the ocean.

"Based on this evidence from the Pliocene, today's current carbon dioxide levels are not enough to destabilize the land-based ice on the Antarctic continent," said Jeremy Shakun, an assistant professor of Earth and Environmental Science at Boston College and a lead author on the paper.

"This does not mean that at current atmospheric carbon dioxide levels Antarctica won't contribute to sea level rise. Marine-based ice is already starting to add to sea level rise and alone could contribute as much as 20 meters. We're saying that the terrestrial segment of the ice sheet is more resilient at current carbon-dioxide levels."

Shakun's co-authors on the paper include Carling C. Hay, also of Boston College; researchers Lee B. Corbett, Paul R. Bierman, Kristen Underwood and Donna M. Rizzo of the University of Vermont; Susan R. Zimmerman of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; Marc W. Caffee of Purdue University; and Tim Naish and Nicholas R. Golledge of Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.

Estimates on global sea level rise due to melt from the East Antarctic Ice Sheet during the Pliocene vary from 5 meters to more than 40 meters higher than today. The upper end of this range would imply that most of the ice on the planet melted, enough to raise sea levels by 63 meters.

If the land-based East Antarctic Ice Sheet was stable during the Pliocene, as Shakun and colleagues suggest, the Pliocene total could have been at most 30 meters.

The researchers analyzed sediment contained in drill cores taken from the sea floor. These cores contain geological records, but also chemical signatures -- in particular, the rare isotopes beryllium-10 and aluminum-26, which were extracted at the NSF-funded Community Cosmogenic Facility at the University of Vermont and measured using particle accelerators at Purdue University and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Both isotopes are found in rock surfaces that have been exposed to cosmic radiation bombarding the Earth from outer space. Researchers usually examine rock samples from hillsides, mountain tops and rivers to determine where and when ice retreated during prior geological eras.

Shakun and some of the co-authors of the latest report used a different approach two years ago to offer one of the most comprehensive climatological accounts ever compiled of the Greenland Ice Sheet, dating back 7.5 million years.

In the Greenland study, levels of beryllium-10 found in sandy deposits brought out to sea in icebergs suggested the ice sheet has been a "persistent and dynamic" presence that melted and re-formed periodically in response to temperature fluctuations. The findings helped confirm that the Greenland Ice Sheet is a sensitive responder to global climate change.

Earlier studies of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet indicated that some marine-based portions of the ice sheet and its neighboring West Antarctic Ice Sheet retreated during the Pliocene. But it was unclear whether terrestrial ice also retreated.

Their analysis found "extremely low" concentrations of beryllium and aluminum isotopes in quartz sand in the marine sediment samples taken in the region, which leads to the conclusion that the ice sheet has been stable for millions of years.

While the sediment was the product of erosion from the continent, the low levels of tell-tale chemical signatures reveal that the sediment experienced only minimal exposure to cosmic radiation, leading the team to conclude East Antarctica must have remained covered in ice.

According to the paper's authors, "the findings indicate that atmospheric warming during the past eight million years was insufficient to cause widespread and/or long-lasting meltback of the EAIS margin onto land."

The findings not only clarify the past impact of rising temperatures on East Antarctic ice, said Shakun, but confirm the accuracy of models scientists are using to assess past and future consequences of a warming planet.

-NSF-

Media Contacts
Peter West, NSF, (703) 292-7530, email: pwest@nsf.gov

Principal Investigators
Jeremy D. Shakun, Boston College, (617) 552-1625, email: jeremy.shakun@bc.edu

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent federal agency that supports fundamental research and education across all fields of science and engineering. In fiscal year (FY) 2018, its budget is $7.8 billion. NSF funds reach all 50 states through grants to nearly 2,000 colleges, universities and other institutions. Each year, NSF receives more than 50,000 competitive proposals for funding and makes about 12,000 new funding awards.
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Land-based portion of massive East Antarctic Ice Sheet retreated little during past 8 million years | NSF - National Science Foundation

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Large parts of the massive East Antarctic Ice Sheet did not retreat significantly during a time when atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations were similar to today's levels, according to a team of researchers funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The finding could have significant implications for global sea level rise.

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Weather Outlook, Antarctic Imagination | S0 News Jun.16.2018

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SVS: Visualizations of Hunga Tonga Hunga Ha'apai and the Martian Landscape

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In early 2015, a volcanic eruption in the Kingdom of Tonga created a new island informally known as Hunga Tonga Hunga Ha'apai (HTHH). The subsequent evolution of the new island was previously described in "The Birth of a New Island" available here .

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El Polvo modifica la conductividad del Plasma en la mesosfera terrestre

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El Polvo modifica la conductividad del Plasma en la mesosfera terrestre

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Boats and boating--Equipment and supplies

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Relative transverse drift (with respect to the ambient magnetic field) between the weakly magnetized electrons and the unmagnetized ions at the lower ...

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La Firma del Viento Solar a través de la atmósfera en altas latitudes

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Solar Wind Impact, Volcano Bursts, Major Storms | S0 News Jun.18.2018

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Sondeo de la Línea de Absorción del 21-Sponge Hi: La Temperatura Galáctica Hi.

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USGS: Volcano Hazards Program - Hawaiian Volcano Observatory USGS Volcano Science Center Kilauea monitoring: Tilt and GPS Deformation Data.