Free Republic

The largest land mammals that ever lived, Indricotherium and Deinotherium, would have towered over the living African elephant. The tallest on diagram, Indricotherium, an extinct rhino relative, lived during the Eocene to the Oligocene Epoch (37 to 23 million years ago) and reached a mass of 15,000 kg, while Deinotherium (an extinct proboscidean, related to modern elephants) was around from the late-Miocene until the early Pleistocene (8.5 to 2.7 million years ago) and weighed as much as 17,000 Courtesy of Alison Boyer/Yale University Researchers demonstrate that the extinction of dinosaurs 65 million years ago made way for mammals to get...

Columns of gas and ash 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) high were detected after two strong explosions from the Popocatepetl volcano, Mexico's Cenapred disaster-management agency said Friday. The first blast came at 10:14 p.m. Thursday, followed by another a little more than two hours later. The explosions deposited glowing fragments up to 1.5 kilometers from the crater as well as columns of ash and gas that were carried northeastward by the prevailing winds, Cenapred said. Popocatepetl, which rises 5,452 meters (17,875 feet) above sea level, is located about 64 kilometers (40 miles) from Mexico City. Mexican authorities have prepared contingency plans...

May 17, 2013: For the past 8 years, NASA astronomers have been monitoring the Moon for signs of explosions caused by meteoroids hitting the lunar surface. "Lunar meteor showers" have turned out to be more common than anyone expected, with hundreds of detectable impacts occurring every year. They've just seen the biggest explosion in the history of the program. "On March 17, 2013, an object about the size of a small boulder hit the lunar surface in Mare Imbrium," says Bill Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office. "It exploded in a flash nearly 10 times as bright as anything we've...

<p>It's 1.7 miles long. Its surface is covered in a sticky black substance similar to the gunk at the bottom of a barbecue. If it impacted Earth it would probably result in global extinction. Good thing it is just making a flyby.</p>

https://twitter.com/colifis/status/333733589567037440So much for global warming, eh? Another photo of the ice blob on the south side of Mille Lacs Lake today as ice piled up to 30 feet high in spots. http://t.co/AqsOKUqMY4— Jonathan Yuhas (@JonathanYuhas) May 12, 2013 KSTP TV viewer Garrett Norsten sent this photo of the Mille Lac frozen ice wave smashing thru a garage. http://t.co/3sTPNX2T7D— Jonathan Yuhas (@JonathanYuhas) May 12, 2013 https://twitter.com/13EvanStewart/status/333697845779648512 Wow! RT @WCCO: Lake Mille Lacs ice surges onto shore, threatening resort. | cbsloc.al/10A72cH | http://t.co/TQcFoyw05A— Gregg Litman (@GRLitman) May 11, 2013 Ice anyone. Wind gusts to 45 mph piling Mr Freeze like ice blocks...

...Present day Dunwich is a village 14 miles south of Lowestoft in Suffolk, but it was once a thriving port -- similar in size to 14th Century London. Extreme storms forced coastal erosion and flooding that have almost completely wiped out this once prosperous town over the past seven centuries. This process began in 1286 when a huge storm swept much of the settlement into the sea and silted up the Dunwich River. This storm was followed by a succession of others that silted up the harbour and squeezed the economic life out of the town, leading to its eventual...

Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have broken through a symbolic mark. Daily measurements of CO2 at a US government agency lab on Hawaii have topped 400 parts per million for the first time. The station, which sits on the Mauna Loa volcano, feeds its numbers into a continuous record of the concentration of the gas stretching back to 1958. The last time CO2 was regularly above 400ppm was three to five million years ago - before modern humans existed. Scientists say the climate back then was also considerably warmer than it is today. Carbon dioxide is regarded as the...

Only 3% of all recorded meteorites that have struck the earth were seen falling.

Granite samples could have been submerged by the Atlantic Ocean when Africa split from South America 100 million years agoGeologists have dubbed this mysterious continent the 'Brazilian Atlantis' Comments (36) Share Rocks discovered off the coast of Rio in Brazil could be part of a hidden continent, according to geologists.The granite samples were found when Brazil's Geology Service (CPRM) dredged the seabed near the Rio Grande Elevation - a long seismic mountainous ridge that runs along the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.And now scientists claim the rocks were likely part of a continent that sunk into the ocean when...

An intense solar storm erupted from the sun on Friday (May 3) in a dazzling space weather display captured by a NASA spacecraft. The solar flare erupted from the edge the sun, with NASA's powerful Solar Dynamics Observatory snapping photos of the sun storm. The flare peaked at 1:32 p.m. EDT (1732 GMT), registering as a relatively medium-strength M5.7-class event. Friday's solar storm was the second major space weather event in three days, but was not aimed at Earth. According to astronomer Phil Plait, who chronicled the flare on his Bad Astronomy blog, the solar storm launched super-hot solar plasma...

Prof Christian Sidor and his colleagues headed by Dr Linda Tsuji, also from the University of Washington, created two ‘snapshots’ of four legged-animals about 5 million years before and again about 10 million years after the Earth’s largest mass extinction (about 252 million years ago). Prior to the extinction event, for example, the pig-sized Dicynodon was a dominant plant-eating species across southern Pangea. Pangea is the name given to the landmass when all the world’s continents were joined together. Southern Pangea was made up of what is today Africa, South America, Antarctica, Australia and India. After the mass extinction at...

The 1908 explosion over the Tunguska region in Siberia has always been an enigma. While the leading theories of what caused the mid-air explosion are that an asteroid or comet shattered in an airburst event, no reliable trace of such a body has ever been found. But a newly published paper reveals three different potential meteorite fragments found in the sandbars in a body of water in the area, the Khushmo River. While the fragments have all the earmarks of being meteorites from the event – which could potentially solve the 100-year old mystery — the only oddity is that...

The idea that humans nearly became extinct 75,000 ago because of a super-volcano eruption is not supported by new data from Africa, scientists say. In the past, it has been proposed that the so-called Toba event plunged the world into a volcanic winter, killing animal and plant life and squeezing our species to a few thousand individuals. An Oxford University-led team examined ancient sediments in Lake Malawi for traces of this climate catastrophe. It could find none... Researchers estimate some 2,000-3,000 cubic kilometres of rock and ash were thrown from the volcano when it blew its top on what is...

Park lake hints at buildup to huge blast By Diedtra Henderson Denver Post Science Writer Sunday, August 10, 2003 - YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. - The mystery of the deep at picturesque Yellowstone Lake is a bulge that rises 100 feet from the lake floor, stretches the length of seven football fields, and has the potential to explode at any time. Of all the life-threatening events that could happen at Yellowstone - from volcanic eruptions to massive earthquakes - this type of hydrothermal explosion is likely the most immediate, serious hazard in the park. So, scientists are trying to better...

In the new study (pdf), Pierre Haenecour of Washington University in St. Louis and his colleagues analyzed two meteorites collected in Antarctica in 2003, each named for a geographic feature near the spot where the meteorite fell. (Antarctica makes an ideal hunting ground for dark-colored meteorites, which stand out clearly against the ice fields.) Grove Mountains 021710, found by a Chinese expedition, and LaPaz Icefield 031117, collected by U.S. searchers, each harbor presolar grains of silica (SiO2), the researchers found, as evidenced by the grains’ enrichment in a heavy isotope of oxygen known as oxygen 18. That signature points to...

The disappearance of the Mycenaens is a Mediterranean mystery. Leading explanations include warfare with invaders or uprising by lower classes. Some scientists also think one of the country's frequent earthquakes could have contributed to the culture's collapse. At the ruins of Tiryns, a fortified palace, geologists hope to find evidence to confirm whether an earthquake was a likely culprit. Tiryns was one of the great Mycenaean cities. Atop a limestone hill, the city-state's king built a palace with walls so thick they were called Cyclopean, because only the one-eyed monster could have carried the massive limestone blocks. The walls were...

Evacuation drill held on Surat Thani island.... Reports that the alignment of the planets might cause a tsunami in Andaman coastal provinces have led to emergency evacuation drills being conducted on an island in Surat Thani. The drill yesterday on Rad Island in Don Sak district, located 1km from the mainland, was organised by the National Disaster Warning Centre (NDWC), the Information and Communication Technology Ministry and local authorities. Residents received training in communications and rescue and relief efforts in the event of a tsunami. During the exercise, 150 residents took cover in the municipal office. The drill also included...

A recent flurry of eruptions on the sun did more than spark pretty auroras around the poles. NASA-funded researchers say the solar storms of March 8th through 10th dumped enough energy in Earth’s upper atmosphere to power every residence in New York City for two years. “This was the biggest dose of heat we’ve received from a solar storm since 2005,” says Martin Mlynczak of NASA Langley Research Center. “It was a big event, and shows how solar activity can directly affect our planet.” Earth's atmosphere lights up at infrared wavelengths during the solar storms of March 8-10, 2012. A...

A recent NASA report throws the space agency into conflict with its climatologists after new NASA measurements prove that carbon dioxide acts as a coolant in Earth's atmosphere. NASA's Langley Research Center has collated data proving that “greenhouse gases” actually block up to 95 percent of harmful solar rays from reaching our planet, thus reducing the heating impact of the sun. The data was collected by Sounding of the Atmosphere using Broadband Emission Radiometry, (or SABER). SABER monitors infrared emissions from Earth’s upper atmosphere, in particular from carbon dioxide (CO2) and nitric oxide (NO), two substances thought to be playing...

Unexplained tree-top boulders found in forest By Judy Hess Staff writer JHess@bcdemocrat.com Something unnatural is going on in Yellowwood State Forest. The mystery began a few years ago when a turkey hunter, scouting in a remote area of the 23,000-acre forest, discovered a large boulder in the top of an 80-foot-tall chestnut oak tree. What he saw wedged among its branches was a boulder about 4 feet wide and a foot thick. The boulder was eventually dubbed Gobbler's Rock after the turkey hunter. It sits high on a south-facing slope overlooking a ravine near Tulip Tree Road in western Brown...

t's time to redraw the map of the world during the reign of the dinosaurs, two scientists say. Picture the U.S. West Coast as a tortured tectonic boundary, similar to Australia and Southeast Asia today. Erase the giant subduction zone researchers have long nestled against western North America. Drop a vast archipelago into the ancient Panthalassa Ocean, usually drawn as an empty void, the kind on which medieval mapmakers would have depicted fantastical beasts. "Now it fits together," said Karin Sigloch, a seismologist at Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich, and lead study author. "We've come up with a pretty different solution that...

The U.S. Geological Survey says several earthquakes have shaken central Oklahoma. USGS geophysicist Jana Pursley says the temblors began around 1:45 a.m. Tuesday and all were centered northeast of Oklahoma City. She said three earthquakes have been confirmed and that she was working on a confirming a possible fourth. She says the strongest was a magnitude 4.3 quake centered near the town of Luther.

John E. Beckman, and Terence J. Mahoney Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, E-38200 La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain  Abstract:We discuss how, in the 1970's, Eddy took clues from the historical researches of Spörer and Maunder in the 19th century to draw attention to the virtual absence of sunspot activity between 1645 and 1715. This ``Maunder Minimum'' is not only of interest to solar physicists in the context of the theory of solar magnetic activity, and to stellar astrophysicists working on the properties of cool stars, but may also be a vital clue to the influence of the variability of the Sun's...

Early this morning the sun erupted, sending billions of solar particles into space at over 600 miles per second, raising the prospect of solar radiation storms above the Earth, according to NASA. A spokesman said the resulting emissions sparked a short-lived radio communications blackout on Earth. The radio disruption has since subsided.

Ice core data shows CO2 levels changed less than 10 parts per million from 1600-1800 during the MWP. From the Hockey Schtick:  A new paper from Schurer et al (with Mann as co-author) finds that climate “models cannot explain the warm conditions around 1000 [years before the present, during the Medieval Warming Period] seen in some [temperature] reconstructions.”According to Schurer et al, “We find variations in solar output and explosive volcanism to be the main drivers of climate change from 1400-1900.” They also claim, “but for the first time we are also able to detect a significant contribution from greenhouse gas...

Spending more money on asteroid and meteor detection techniques won't necessarily make the planet safer, according to a planetary scientist. Alexander Deutsch, a professor of planetology at the University of Münster in Germany, explained that the relatively small meteor that exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia, in February would not have been detected using technologies available around the world today. "The problem is that even if they use more of these highly sophisticated observatories, they will not find very small projectiles, but on the other hand, the small projectiles are not very dangerous, and the opinion is that the larger ones or...

Source: University Of California - Berkeley Date: 2004-06-03 17th Century Solar Oddity Believed Linked To Global Cooling Is Rare Among Nearby Stars Berkeley - A mysterious 17th century solar funk that some have linked to Europe's Little Ice Age and to global climate change, becomes even more of an enigma as a result of new observations by University of California, Berkeley, astronomers. For 70 years, from 1645 until 1714, early astronomers reported almost no sunspot activity. The number of sunspots - cooler areas on the sun that appear dark against the brighter surroundings - dropped a thousandfold, according to some...

The co-author of a book on partisan science recently examined by Pacific Standard argues that our reviewer was a little too partisan himself. Any book that touches upon politics almost automatically angers half of the American public, regardless of what is written inside of it. It takes a special person—an objective, open-minded and self-critical one—to read and learn from a science book that criticizes people with whom the reader likes and agrees with politically.Recently, Pacific Standard published a review (“Red Science, Blue Science,” January/February 2013) by Wray Herbert, a pop psychology writer,of political writer Chris Mooney’s book The Republican Brain...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A top senator says President Barack Obama and NASA are planning for a robotic spaceship to lasso a small asteroid and park it near the moon. Then astronauts would explore it in 2021. Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida said the plan would speed up by four years the existing mission to land astronauts on an asteroid by bringing the space rock closer to Earth. Nelson, who is chairman of the Senate Science and Space Subcommittee, said Friday that Obama is putting $100 million for the accelerated asteroid mission in the 2014 budget that comes out next week....

David Lentz from the University of Cincinnati focuses on Cerén, a farming village that was smothered under several metres of volcanic ash in the late sixth century.Lentz will present his research, “The Lost World of the Zapotitan Valley: Cerén and its Paleoecological Context,” at the 78th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, held on 3-7 April 2013 in Honolulu. More than 3,000 scientists from around the world attend the event to learn about research covering a broad range of topics and time periods.Cerén, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site known as Joya de Cerén, was discovered in El...

It's long been held that North America's rugged and mountainous west was formed by the movement of the undersea Farallon plate, and that the process was roughly similar to the way groceries pile up at the end of a supermarket conveyor belt. Now however, a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature argues that the process involved not just one but several plates that remain hidden deep within in the Earth's mantle. Scientists at Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich and the British Columbia Geological Survey used earthquake shockwaves, or seismic tomography, to create a three-dimensional map of these massive plate...

The green rock found in Morocco last year may be the first known visitor from the solar system's innermost planet, according to meteorite scientist Anthony Irving, who unveiled the new findings this month at the 44th annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in The Woodlands, Texas. The study suggests that a space rock called NWA 7325 came from Mercury, and not an asteroid or Mars. NWA 7325 is actually a group of 35 meteorite samples discovered in 2012 in Morocco. They are ancient, with Irving and his team dating the rocks to an age of about 4.56 billion years. Irving...

From the AGU:Global fires after the asteroid impact probably caused the K-Pg extinctionChicxulub Crater, Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico – Artist’s Impression Image: University of Colorado About 66 million years ago a mountain-sized asteroid hit what is now the Yucatan in Mexico at exactly the time of the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) mass extinction. Evidence for the asteroid impact comes from sediments in the K-Pg boundary layer, but the details of the event, including what precisely caused the mass extinction, are still being debated.Some scientists have hypothesized that since the ejecta from the impact would have heated up dramatically as it reentered the Earth’s...

Fresh lava flows down Tolbachik volcano in Russia's Kamchatka peninsula in a new space snapshot from NASA's Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite. The fiery volcano erupted on Nov. 27, 2012, pouring fast-moving basalt lava through snow and ice on its steep flanks. A near-permanent ash plume rose from Tolbachik, visible in the March 6 satellite image. The volcanic edifice records a complex geologic history. The western half of Tolbachik is a steep-sided stratovolcano, like Mount Rainier and Mount St. Helens in Washington, according to NASA's Earth Observatory. The eastern half is a broad, flat shield volcano, like Hawaii's Kilauea volcano, with...

The American Astronomical Society (AAS) today expressed deep concern about the U.S. government’s new restrictions on travel and conference attendance for federally funded scientists. Enacted in response to the budget sequestration that went into effect on March 1st, the policies severely limit the ability of many researchers to meet with collaborators and to present their latest results at professional meetings. The leadership of the AAS is especially worried about the restrictions’ deleterious effects on scientific productivity and on scientists’ and students’ careers.The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued a memo on February 27th offering guidance to federal agencies on...

Migrating planets caused meteor stormMonday, 25 March 2013 Stuart GaryABC New research supports the theory of planetary migration sparking a massive meteor storm that rocked the inner solar system 3.9 billion years ago(Source: NASA) Related Stories Moon map reveals deeply fractured crust, Science Online, 06 Dec 2012Vesta a baby planet, not an asteroid, Science Online, 11 May 2012 Meteor storm Migration of giant gas planets such as Jupiter created the biggest meteor storm in our solar system's history, according to a new study. The research in the journal Nature Geoscience paints the clearest picture yet of the causes of the...

Astronomers discover new kind of supernova March 26, 2013 EnlargeThis artist's conception shows the suspected progenitor of a new kind of supernova called Type Iax. Material from a hot, blue helium star at right is funneling toward a carbon/oxygen white dwarf star at left, which is embedded in an accretion disk. In many cases the white dwarf survives the subsequent explosion. Credit: Christine Pulliam (CfA) (Phys.org) —Supernovae were always thought to occur in two main varieties. But a team of astronomers including Carnegie's Wendy Freedman, Mark Phillips and Eric Persson is reporting the discovery of a new type of supernova...

Enlarge Image No big surprise. Planck has mapped the cosmic microwave background to great precision, but found nothing clearly incompatible with the standard cosmology. Credit: ESA If the universe were ice cream, it would be vanilla. That's the take-home message from researchers working with the European Space Agency's orbiting Planck observatory, who today released the most precise measurements yet of the afterglow of the big bang—the so-called cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation. The new data from Planck confirm cosmologists' standard model of how the universe sprang into existence and what it's made of. That may disappoint scientists who were...

File this under: What don’t we know?We just discovered slice “2″ is alive.  |1 – Continental crust | 2 -Oceanic crust | 3 – Upper Mantle | 4 – Lower Mantle | 5 – Outer Core | 6 – Inner Core | Image Credit: Dake You might have thought that photosynthetic life forms had the Earth covered, but according to some researchers the largest ecosystem on Earth was just discovered and announced last Thursday, and it’s powered by hydrogen, not photosynthesis.The Oceanic Crust is the rocky hard part under the mud that lies under the ocean. It covers 60% of...

Explanation: Moving left to right near the center of this beautifully detailed color composite, the thin, bright, braided filaments are actually long ripples in a sheet of glowing gas seen almost edge on. The interstellar shock wave plows through space at over 500,000 kilometers per hour. Cataloged as NGC 2736, its elongated appearance suggests its popular name, the Pencil Nebula. The Pencil Nebula is about 5 light-years long and 800 light-years away, but represents only a small part of the Vela supernova remnant. The Vela remnant itself is around 100 light-years in diameter, the expanding debris cloud of a star...

Scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego have found a layer of liquefied molten rock in Earth's mantle that may be acting as a lubricant for the sliding motions of the planet's massive tectonic plates. The discovery may carry far-reaching implications, from solving basic geological functions of the planet to a better understanding of volcanism and earthquakes. The scientists discovered the magma layer at the Middle America trench offshore Nicaragua. Using advanced seafloor electromagnetic imaging technology pioneered at Scripps, the scientists imaged a 25-kilometer- (15.5-mile-) thick layer of partially melted mantle rock below the edge of the...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - NASA chief Charles Bolden has advice on how to handle a large asteroid headed toward New York City: Pray. That's about all the United States - or anyone for that matter - could do at this point about unknown asteroids and meteors that may be on a collision course with Earth, Bolden told lawmakers at a U.S. House of Representatives Science Committee hearing on Tuesday. An asteroid estimated to be have been about 55 feet in diameter exploded on February 15 over Chelyabinsk, Russia, generating shock waves that shattered windows and damaged buildings. More than...

Poring over crowd-sourced footage, researchers Jorge Zuluaga and Ignacio Ferrin from the University of Antioquia in Medellin, Colombia, were able to use "simple trigonometry to calculate the height, speed, and position of the rock as it fell to Earth," says BBC News. More importantly, the duo was able to find out where Russia's most famous meteor was likely born. Using astronomy software developed by the U.S. Naval Observatory, Zuluaga and Ferrin gathered enough data to trace the meteoroid's origins in outer space. The information included the meteor's relative angle to the horizon, the shadows it cast, and video timestamps of...

It's the sort of abstract puzzle that keeps a scientist awake at night: Can you predict how three objects will orbit each other in a repeating pattern? In the 300 years since this "three-body problem" was first recognized, just three families of solutions have been found. Now, two physicists have discovered 13 new families. It's quite a feat in mathematical physics, and it could conceivably help astrophysicists understand new planetary systems. The trove of new solutions has researchers jazzed. "I love these things," says Robert Vanderbei a mathematician at Princeton University who was not involved in the work. He says...

A supermassive doomsday comet is heading toward the planet in 2014, and there's nothing anyone can do about it. The comet presents a good-news, bad-news situation for the Red Planet, and for us earthlings as well. NASA says Comet 2013 A1, also known as Comet Siding Spring, is almost certain to miss Mars on Oct. 19, 2014. However, there's still a chance — a less than a 1-in-600 chance — that Mars could be hit, due to the remaining uncertainty about the comet's path. That uncertainty is likely to be cleared up over the next few months, eventually resulting in...

From the AGU weekly highlights: Large solar proton event explains 774-775 CE carbon-14 increase Tree ring records indicate that in 774-775 CE, atmospheric carbon-14 levels increased substantially. Researchers suggest that a solar proton event may have been the cause. In solar proton events, large numbers of high-energy protons are emitted from the Sun, along with other particles. If these particles reach EarthÂ’s atmosphere, they ionize the atmosphere and induce nuclear reactions that produce higher levels of carbon-14; the particles also cause chemical reactions that result in depletion of ozone in the ozone layer, allowing harmful ultraviolet radiation to reach the...

Titanic volcanic eruption seen on Io 14:50 14 November 02 Successive views show the dramatic eruption on Io (Image: Franck Marchis/UC Berkeley) A titanic volcanic eruption has been spotted on the surface of Jupiter's volatile moon Io using a telescope back on Earth. Astronomers believe it to be the most powerful eruption ever witnessed in the entire Solar System. The volcano spewed lava kilometres into the sky during its most explosive period, say the researchers. The consequent lava flow is thought to have spread many hundreds of square kilometres across the surface of Io. "It is clear that this eruption...

On March 25, 2010, the European Space Agency (ESA) announced on their blog that ESA’s study of the mass of Phobos had been accepted for publication in the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters. The announcement excerpted startling conclusions of ESA’s findings: “We conclude that the interior of Phobos likely contains large voids. When applied to various hypotheses bearing on the origin of Phobos, these results are inconsistent with the proposition that Phobos is a captured asteroid.” (1,2) Since that time, a number of prominent ancient astronaut blogs have had plenty to say about the findings. The ESA findings were most...

A fireball that appeared over the Sri Lankan province of Polonnaruwa on December 29, 2012 was a meteorite containing algae fossils, according to a paper published in the Journal of Cosmology. A team of researchers, led by Jamie Wallis of Cardiff University, believes that these fossils provide evidence of cometary panspermia, the hypothesis that life originated in outer space and comets brought it to Earth. Scientists at the Sri Lankan Medical Research Institute in Colombo forwarded 628 stone fragments that allegedly fell from the fireball to Cardiff University, where Wallis' team indentified three as originating from a carbonaceous chondrite. The...