March 2010 Archives

In a surprising discovery about where higher life can thrive, scientists found a shrimplike creature and a jellyfish frolicking beneath an Antarctic ice sheet.

Six hundred feet below the ice where no light shines, they had figured nothing much more than a few microbes could exist. That's why a NASA team was surprised when it lowered a video camera to get the first long look at the underbelly of the ice sheet in Antarctica, and a 3-inch shrimp-like creature went swimming by and then parked itself on the camera's cable. Scientists also pulled up a tentacle they believe came from a foot-long jellyfish.

"We were operating on the presumption that nothing's there,'' said NASA scientist Robert Bindschadler, who will present the initial findings and a video at an American Geophysical Union meeting tomorrow.

Adolf Hitler? In most western countries he is viewed as history's most evil man, and almost all are aware of the horrific genocide he was responsible for, with many having had family fight and/or die in the war against Nazi Germany.

However, in Asia, Hitler is a far more distant figure. This distance might be an explanation for the bizarre case of Hitler restaurants and bars that can be found throughout Asia.

Here are some photos of these strange Hitler-themed establishments:

You can view more here.

An unusual man-made disaster on November 20, 1980 changed the structure of the lake and surrounding land.

In 1980, when the disaster took place, the Diamond Crystal Salt Company operated the Jefferson Island salt mine under the lake, while a Texaco oil rig drilled down from the surface of the lake searching for petroleum. Due to a miscalculation, the 14-inch (36 cm) drill bit entered the mine, starting a remarkable chain of events which at the time turned an almost 10-foot (3.0 m) deep freshwater lake into a salt water lake with a deep hole.

It is difficult to determine exactly what occurred, as all of the evidence was destroyed or washed away in the ensuing maelstrom. The now generally accepted explanation is that a miscalculation by Texaco regarding their location resulted in the drill puncturing the roof of the third level of the mine. This created an opening in the bottom of the lake, similar to removing the drain plug from a bathtub. The lake then drained into the hole, expanding the size of that hole as the soil and salt were washed into the mine by the rushing water, filling the enormous caverns left by the removal of salt over the years. The resultant whirlpool sucked in the drilling platform, eleven barges, many trees and 65 acres (260,000 m²) of the surrounding terrain. So much water drained into those caverns that the flow of the Delcambre Canal that usually empties the lake into Vermilion Bay was reversed, making the canal a temporary inlet. This backflow created, for a few days, the tallest waterfall ever in the state of Louisiana, at 164 feet (50 m), as the lake refilled with salt water from the Delcambre Canal and Vermilion Bay. The water downflowing into the mine caverns displaced air which erupted as compressed air and then later as 400-foot (120 m) geysers up through the mineshafts.

Fortunately, all the miners and bystanders escaped this harrowing incident unscathed. Even this description, though, doesn't do the event justice. Watch this brief clip from the History Channel:

An orange dwarf star called Gliese 710 is heading our way and will arrive sometime within the next 1.5 million years.

Of course, trajectories are difficult to calculate when the data is poor so nobody has really been sure about what's going to happen.

What the new data has allowed Bobylev to do is calculate the probability of Gliese 710 smashing into the Solar System. What he's found is a shock.

He says there is 86 percent chance that Gliese 710 will plough through the Oort Cloud of frozen stuff that extends some 0.5 parsecs into space.

That may sound like a graze but it is likely to have serious consequences. Such an approach would send an almighty shower of comets into the Solar System which will force us to keep our heads down for a while. And a probability of 86 percent is about as close to certainty as this kind of data can get.

The article is a bit sparse on details, but you can read the rest here.

Ruth Flowers is certainly not your typical grandmother. At 69, Flowers is a real phenomenon and the latest sensation on the European nightclub scene.

69-year-old Ruth Flowers is a big deal on the European nightclub scene.

Wearing large black sunglasses (a fashion statement, there is nothing wrong with her eyesight), flashy clothes, bling jewelry, fake diamond-incrusted DJ headphones on her white hair, the British granny makes crowds go wild, spinning records behind the decks of the most prestigious nightclubs in Paris, Cannes and other European cities.

DJ Ruth Flowers, a.k.a Mamy Rock, began her new career when, four years ago, she attended her grandson's birthday party. "Kids don't play games anymore. They have discos after they eat," she told ABC News.

Image via Wikipedia

has a special position in the culture of many human societies which share its range. The coconut crab is admired for its strength, and it is said that villagers use this animal to guard their coconut plantations. The coconut crab, especially if it is not yet fully grown, is also sold as a pet, for example, in Tokyo.^[35] The cage must be strong enough that the animal cannot use its powerful claws to escape.

Recent news of mammoth icebergs the size of small U.S. states breaking off Antarctica may sound dire. But those events mostly represent business as usual at the world's southernmost continent, scientists say.

A massive iceberg the size of the state of Rhode Island collided with Antarctica's Mertz Glacier in mid-February, and caused a huge new iceberg with an estimated mass of 860 billion metric tons to break off the glacial tongue. Scientists note that such dramatic examples have not been uncommon over the past decade.

"I need to stress that the event in the Mertz area, and indeed most of the iceberg calving in Antarctica is a completely normal, expected activity for a stable ice sheet," said Ted Scambos, a glaciologist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo.

So perhaps not. Icebergs do break off all the time, although this one is of an unusually large size. LiveScience goes on to note, however, that "a new report by the U.S. Geological Survey suggests that every ice front in the southern part of the Antarctic Peninsula -- the coolest part of the peninsula -- has been retreating overall from 1947 to 2009. The most dramatic changes have taken place since 1990." You can read the whole article here.

Image via Wikipedia

There is a glacier in Antarctica that seems to be weeping a river of blood. It's one of the continent's strangest features, and it's located in one of the continent's strangest places -- the McMurdo Dry Valleys, a huge, ice-free zone and one of the world's harshest deserts.

Discovered in 1911 by a member of Robert Scott's ill-fated expedition team, its rusty color was at first theorized to be caused by some sort of algae growth. Later, however, it was proven to be due to iron oxidation. Every so often, the glacier spews forth a clear, iron-rich liquid that quickly oxidizes and turns a deep shade of red. Even weirder: scientists think that the bacteria responsible for Blood Falls might be an Earth-bound approximation of the kind of alien life that might exist elsewhere in the solar system, like beneath the polar ice caps of Mars and Europa.

Ocean currents have collected massive amounts of garbage into a sort of plastic "soup" where countless bits of discarded plastic float intertwined just beneath the surface. Indeed, the human race has really made its mark. One enormous plastic patch is estimated to weigh over 3 million tons altogether and cover an area roughly twice the size of Texas.
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The trash collects in this remote area, known as the North Pacific Gyre, due to a clockwise trade wind that encircles the Pacific Rim. According to Moore the trash accumulates the same way bubbles clump at the center of hot tub.

Ian Kiernan, the Australian founder of Clean Up the World, started his environmental campaign two decades ago after being shocked by the incredible amount of rubbish he saw on an around-the-world solo yacht race. He'll says he'll never be able the wipe the atrocious site from his memory.

"It was just filled with things like furniture, fridges, plastic containers, cigarette lighters, plastic bottles, light globes, televisions and fishing nets," Kiernan says. "It's all so durable it floats. It's just a major problem."

• What's left behind when glaciers melt?
• Along those lines, apparently the equator was once covered with ice.
• Cell phone data shows that human behavior is predictable. Apparently, most people generally stay within a six-mile radius of their home. 
• The art of Gustave Doré
• 100 Russian tanks were found abandoned in the Ural Mountains. This creeps me out, to be honest - does it have anything to do with the Dyatlov Pass incident?
  

Image by orvaratli via Flickr

They say the iceberg, which is 78km long and up to 39km wide, could have consequences for the area's colonies of emperor penguins.
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The calving of the iceberg, which has an estimated mass of 700-800bn tonnes, has changed the shape of the local geography, Dr Young explained.
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He added that the new iceberg had shortened the length of the Mertz Glacier Tongue, which could result in pack ice entering the area and disrupting the polynia.

"That means that the bottom water production rate... will decrease.

"The bottom water spills over the continental shelf, flows down the continental slope into the deep ocean."

This process helps drive the "conveyor belt" of currents in the Southern, Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.

Any disruption to the net flow of bottom water could result in a weakening in the deep ocean circulation system, which plays a key role in the global climate system.

They may have the same parent. Most seismologists agree that the Haitian quake didn't cause Saturday's event in Chile. Earthquakes occur when the stress on a tectonic plate overcomes the friction holding it in place. The last stress-relieving earthquake at this location in Chile occurred in 1835. Since then, friction has held the edge of the Nazca plate in place while the rest of it slid 10 to 12 meters underneath the neighboring South American plate. As a practical matter, that displacement was the sole cause of Saturday's earthquake. But displacement isn't the only thing stressing a tectonic plate. Tides, dammed-up rivers, and pressure from other shifting plates can play a supporting role. Major earthquakes may shift plates slightly and thus increase the stress along fault lines. If another earthquake was poised to happen at some point soon, the added stress from a first quake could serve as a catalyst. While the Haitian earthquake really wasn't big enough to have that effect in Chile, some seismologists believe the much stronger Sumatran quake of 2004--and maybe even the 1960 Chilean quake, the most powerful ever recorded--may have set the stage for both of them.