Author: Richard

Undersea river discovered

Richard

Scientists recently discovered the sixth largest river in the world. How did the world’s sixth largest river manage to remain undetected for so long? As it turns out, it’s at the bottom of the ocean.

Researchers working in the Black Sea have found currents of water 350 times
greater than the River Thames flowing along the sea bed, carving out
channels much like a river on the land.


The undersea river, which is up to 115ft deep in places, even has rapids and
waterfalls much like its terrestrial equivalents.

The scientists, based at the University of Leeds, used a robotic submarine to
study for the first time a deep channel that had been found on the sea bed.
They found a river of highly salty water flowing along the deep channel at the
bottom of the Black Sea, creating river banks and flood plains much like a
river found on land.


Dr Dan Parsons, from the university’s school of earth and environment, said: “The
water in the channels is denser than the surrounding seawater because it has
higher salinity and is carrying so much sediment.

You can find more information here.

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“Solar tsunami” headed for earth

Richard
A Solar Flare, image taken by the TRACE satell...

Image via Wikipedia

Brace yourselves, world – things are gonna get sunny, and not in a good way. Astronomers have witnessed a massive explosion on the surface of the sun – a solar flare – and are tracking its progress as it races towards the outer layers of our atmosphere.

Experts said the wave of supercharged gas will likely reach the Earth on
Tuesday, when it will buffet the natural magnetic shield protecting Earth.


It is likely to spark spectacular displays of the aurora or northern and
southern lights.


“This eruption is directed right at us,” said
Leon Golub, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
(CfA).

“It’s the first major Earth-directed eruption in quite some time.”


Scientists have warned that a really big solar eruption could destroy
satellites and wreck power and communications grids around the globe if it
happened today.

While it’s impossible to predict the exact effects of this eruption, it is certainly possible that it will disrupt communications in some areas. The article, which you can read here, notes that NASA “recently warned that Britain could face widespread power blackouts and be
left without critical communication signals for long periods of time, after
the earth is hit by a once-in-a-generation ‘space storm.'”

This is particularly troubling, of course, because we are believed to be in a period of subdued solar activity that is scheduled to end – explosively – in 2013. If a flare like this one is “subdued,” I’d hate to see what’s coming our way in ’13.

UPDATE: You can see pictures of this solar flare, and find more information, at NASA’s website.

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Whooping cough epidemic in California

Richard

Apparently, an outbreak of Whooping Cough (also known as pertussis) is currently afflicting California. This is particularly shocking because, as the article notes below, Whooping Cough is “almost completely preventable” and the vaccination is readily accessible. From Discover Magazine:

According to a
statement just released by the California Department of Public
Health, pertussis — whooping cough — is now officially an epidemic in
California.

That’s right: an almost completely preventable disease is coming back
with a roar in California. There have been well over 900 cases
of pertussis in that state this year, over four times as many
as this time last year (and 600 more suspected cases are being
investigated). If this keeps up, California may see more cases in 2010
than it has in 50 years.

If that doesn’t anger and sicken you enough, then this most assuredly
will: there have been five deaths this year from pertussis as well, all
babies under three months of age.


Infants aren’t fully protected against pertussis until they have
completed the first schedule of vaccinations, when they reach 6 months.
Before then, they are vulnerable to the disease. The most likely
reservoir for the bacterium? Unvaccinated people, including other
children. If too many people go unvaccinated, the disease can find a
host and survive long enough to infect others. If enough people are
vaccinated, that chance drops. This effect is called herd immunity,
and it’s the only thing that can keep this highly contagious and
potentially fatal disease away from infants.

The article goes on to speculate that this may be related to the recent spat of anti-vaccination efforts (many of which were prompted by the faulty, biased study that falsely linked autism to vaccinations). You can read more here.

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Earthquake rattles New York

Richard

From the Huffington Post:

An earthquake that hit parts of Canada earlier today rocked the New
York City area, as well.

The 5.5 magnitude quake in Southern Ontario could be felt as far
south as Brooklyn and Staten Island. Parts of New Jersey and upstate
New York, including Buffalo, were also affected.

Rochester’s 13WHAM-TV newsroom reported feeling “shaking” that lasted “for about 5
to 10 seconds.”

There are no reports of injuries at this time.

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Our musical sun

Richard
Solar Prominence STEREO Ahead

Image via Wikipedia

Apparently, the sun makes music:

For the first time, astronomers have found that the magnetic field in
the outer atmosphere of the Sun produces eerie musical harmonies — a
discovery that could provide new ways of understanding and predicting
solar flares before they happen.

Scientists at the University of
Sheffield found that huge magnetic loops that have been observed coiling
away from the outer layer of the Sun’s atmosphere — known as coronal
loops — vibrate like strings on a musical instrument.

You can read more here (although, unfortunately, you can’t listen).

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Moths drink the tears of sleeping birds

Richard

That sounds at once quasi-poetic and somewhat disturbing. But apparently it’s true. There exists a species of moth in Madagascar that sups on the tears of birds:

A species of moth drinks tears from the eyes of
sleeping birds using a fearsome proboscis 2qa5mwk.jpgshaped like a harpoon,
scientists have revealed. The new discovery – spied in Madagascar – is
the first time moths have been seen feeding on the tears of birds.

Roland Hilgartner at the German Primate Centre in Göttingen, Germany, and Mamisolo Raoilison Hilgartner
at the University of Antananarivo in Madagascar, witnessed the
apparently unique sight in the island state’s Kirindy forest.

If this is not weird enough, apparently

Tear-feeding moths and butterflies are known to exist elsewhere in
Africa, Asia and South America, but they mainly feed on large, placid
animals, such as deer, antelope or crocodiles, which cannot readily
brush them away. But there are no such large animals on Madagascar. The
main mammals – lemurs and mongoose – have paws capable of shooing the
moths. Birds can fly away.

You can read more here.

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Earthworms form herds, make group decisions

Richard 1 Comment
Earthworms!

Image by goosmurf via Flickr

This news is a little old, but irregardless, it creeps me out (most likely due to the subject itself). From the BBC:

Earthworms form herds and make “group decisions”,
scientists have discovered.

The earthworms use touch to
communicate and influence each other’s behaviour, according to research
published in the journal Ethology.

By doing so the worms
collectively decide to travel in the same direction as part of a single
herd.

The striking behaviour, found in the earthworm Eisenia
fetida, is the first time that any type of worm, or annelid, has
been shown to form active herds.

You can read more here.

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Strange creature discovered in Ontario Creek

Richard

mystery-creature.jpgEver since the Montauk Monster controversy, I’m more skeptical of this sort of thing than I used to be (which probably brings me to a normal level of skepticism, overall). Nevertheless, if this isn’t a hoax, it’s certainly quite creepy. From AolNews:

TORONTO – A First Nations community in northern Ontario may be
giving Loch Ness a run for its money.

Reports from the remote
community a few hundred kilometres south of Hudson Bay say a strange
creature was pulled from a local creek earlier this month – a creature
some are calling a monster.
[…]According to the website, two local nurses were hiking near the creek
when they noticed their dog Sam sniffing something in the water.

The
dog pulled the 30-centimetre-long dead creature from the water and the
two women snapped some photos of it.

You can read more here.

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Milwaukee’s 1993 cryptosporidium outbreak

Richard
Life cycle of Cryptosporidium spp., the causat...

Image via Wikipedia

In 1993, thousands of Milwaukee residents began falling mysteriously ill – experiencing stomach cramps, dehydration, fever, diarrhea, and even death. Investigators identified the outbreak’s culprit as cryptosporidium, a protozoan parasite that attacks the intestines of mammals. The vehicle for infection? The city’s water supply. While steps were quickly taken to remedy the contaminated water supply, the incident nonetheless sicked more than 400,000 Milwaukee residents and killed 53, making it the largest waterborne disease outbreak in U.S. history.

After some investigation, city inspectors
realized the city water supply had been contaminated by cryptosporidium,
which various testing and filtering systems had failed to detect and
screen out.

The story was at the top of every local
newscast for some days, and weeks later many people were still boiling
water or avoiding tap water altogether. The story was tragic news for
those with compromised immune systems, and was one more complication in
the attempt to maintain the health and well-being of thousands of local
people infected with HIV and with AIDS. For many of these, as well as
others with compromised immune systems, the contamination was fatal.

The story went national, and 12 years later was still cited in
national news stories and scientific studies regarding the safety of
city water supplies, or of “when things go wrong”. (12 years later the
author still hears people say they haven’t drunk Milwaukee tap water
since.)

The City of Milwaukee and State of Wisconsin made numerous changes to
filtration and testing procedures in an attempt to ensure such a
tragedy can never happen again. One of the simplest is to incerease the
frequency of testing for, and acceptable level of, turbidity
(cloudiness) in drinking water.

You can read more here and here.
In the meantime, 2 million residents of the Boston metropolitan area have been ordered to boil their water because it is unsafe for human consumption due to a huge catastrophic break in a major pipe. No cryptosporidium there, but certainly inconvenient and at least a bit unnerving (people have been making runs on stores and buying every single case of water bottles).

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Strange earthquakes in Texas, Ohio, and elsewhere… who’s to blame?

Richard

Welp, here we are again – more earthquakes in regions that don’t typically experience them. A “rare” 4.0 earthquake hit South Texas on Saturday, April 24. The area, it seems,

does not experience these types of quakes.

The depth of this quake was around 5.0km, which
suggests it was either geological or induced by oil production, which
does happen. Never-the-less this is an interesting area to have a quake
due to the fact the area has a large crack running north to south in
Texas, discovered several years ago, origin being unknown.

Meanwhile, a smaller quake rattled Northeast Ohio the same weekend.While Ohio has seen a few small earthquakes before, “it’s not clear what causes them.”

Why the quakes in strange places? Some scientists have speculated, as we have reported before, that the Haiti earthquake in January forewarned increased seismic activity in the Americas. An Iranian cleric, though, offers an alternative explanation:

A senior Iranian cleric says women who wear revealing clothing and
behave promiscuously are to blame for earthquakes.

Iran is one of the world’s most
earthquake-prone countries, and the cleric’s unusual explanation for why
the earth shakes follows a prediction by the president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,
that a quake is certain to hit Tehran and that many of its 12 million
inhabitants should relocate.

“Many women who do not dress modestly … lead young men astray, corrupt
their chastity and spread adultery in society, which increases
earthquakes,” Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi was quoted as saying by Iranian
media. Women in the Islamic Republic are required by law to cover from
head to toe, but many, especially the young, ignore some of the more
strict codes and wear tight coats and scarves pulled back that show much
of the hair. “What can we do to avoid being buried under the rubble?”
Sedighi asked during a prayer sermon last week. “There is no other
solution but to take refuge in religion and to adapt our lives to
Islam’s moral codes.” Seismologists have warned for at least two decades
that it is likely the sprawling capital will be struck by a
catastrophic quake in the near future. Some experts have even suggested
Iran should move its capital to a less seismically active location.
Tehran straddles scores of fault lines, including one more than 50 miles
long, though it has not suffered a major quake since 1830.

There probably are more “immodest” women in Ohio and Texas, to be sure, but I can’t help but feel that this explanation leaves something to be desired.

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