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Radiocarbon dating which is used to estimate the age of every particular thing on earth is facing big threat from the fossil fuel and carbon in the atmosphere. Researchers said excess of carbon in atmosphere due to burning of fossil fuel could reduce the accuracy of Radiocarbon dating. Heather Graven, a climate-physics researcher at Imperial College London, after an analysis has found that emissions from fossil fuels are artificially raising the carbon age of the atmosphere. ... "Combustion of fossil fuels is diluting the fraction of atmospheric carbon dioxide containing radiocarbon. This is making the atmosphere appear as though it...

This image shows mammoth vertebrae in ice, Yukon Territory, Canada. Credit: Photo Kieren Mitchell, University of Adelaide ******************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************* New research has revealed abrupt warming, that closely resembles the rapid man-made warming occurring today, has repeatedly played a key role in mass extinction events of large animals, the megafauna, in Earth's past. Using advances in analysing ancient DNA, radiocarbon dating and other geologic records an international team led by researchers from the University of Adelaide and the University of New South Wales (Australia) have revealed that short, rapid warming events, known as interstadials, recorded during the last ice age or Pleistocene...

“At noontime, if you look at a glancing angle, you can see what seems to be haze,” said Christopher Russell, a planetary scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Dawn principal investigator. “It comes back in a regular pattern.” According to Russell, who was speaking at a NASA exploration meeting at the Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., the haze covers about half of the crater and reaches as far as the rim. So far, scientists have theorized that the bright spots could be concentrations of minerals or salts. Or they might be icy deposits; potentially evidence...

(CBS SF) — The fault that produced a 4.0-magnitude earthquake in Fremont early Tuesday morning is expected to produce a major earthquake “any day now” and Bay Area residents should be prepared, a U.S. Geological Survey scientist said. The 2:41 a.m. earthquake on the border of Fremont and Union City occurred on the Hayward Fault at a depth of 5 miles. The epicenter was at a spot just north of the intersection of Niles Canyon Road and Mission Boulevard. The quake caused some BART delays early today while work crews checked the tracks, but appears to have caused no major...

Opalescent pools full of carbon dioxide have been found at the site of the second biggest volcanic eruption recorded in human history. The eruption in the Aegean Sea off the coast of Santorini wiped out the Minoan civilisation living along the coast in 1600 BC. The newly discovered pools were found forming at a depth of 250m. They is a series of interconnected white pools that have high concentrations of CO2 and scientists say they could shed light on future volcanic eruptions and answer questions about deep sea carbon storage. An international team of scientists used sophisticated underwater exploration vehicles...

The latest data downloaded from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft suggests that mountains of nitrogen ice thousands of feet high have evaporated into Pluto's atmosphere since the dwarf planet formed 4.5 billion years ago, and hundreds of tons of that gas escape into space each hour. New images of Pluto meanwhile show land forms that suggest heat is rising beneath the surface, with troughs of dark matter either collecting or bubbling up between flat segments of crust. Scientists discussed the findings Friday in their second major release of data collected when the $700 million New Horizons mission made a historic pass...

Towering mountains of water ice rise up to 3500 meters tall on Pluto, above smooth plains covered in veneers of nitrogen and methane ice, NASA’s New Horizons team announced today. The discovery, along with the finding that parts of the dwarf planet’s surface are crater-free and therefore relatively young, points to a place that has been geologically reworked in the recent past. “It could even be active today,” said John Spencer, a New Horizons team member at Southwest Research Institute (SWRI) in Boulder, Colorado, at a press conference today at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel,...

Researchers hope to use the fernlike Azolla to reverse the global warming effects of burning fossil fuelsJuly 15, 2014 Fifty-five million years ago, when scientists believe the Earth was in a near-runaway state, dangerously overheated by greenhouse gases, the Arctic Ocean was also a very different place. It was a large lake, connected to the greater oceans by one primary opening: the Turgay Sea. When this channel closed or was blocked nearly 50 million years ago, the enclosed body of water became the perfect habitat for a small-leaved fern called Azolla. Imagine the Arctic like the Dead Sea of today:...

A vast, craterless plain of Plutonian ice no more than 100 million years old and centered amidst Pluto’s big ‘heart’ was unveiled in spectacular new imagery taken by NASA’s resounding successful New Horizons mission, during its history making rapid transit through the Pluto-Charon binary planet system barely three days ago, on Tuesday, July 14. The jaw dropping new imagery was publicly released today, July 17, by NASA and scientists leading the New Horizons mission during a media briefing, and has already resulted in ground breaking new scientific discoveries at the last planet in our solar system to be visited by...

An asteroid worth a potential £3.5 trillion ($5.4 trillion) is due to pass by Earth on Sunday, and you can watch it live from 11pm UK time (6.30pm ET). Asteroid 2011 UW-158's fly-by will be streamed live on the internet from an observatory in the Canary Islands. The space rock has attracted the attention of asteroid mining company Planetary Resources, because it is thought to have a 100 million ton core of platinum that the company might one day want to exploit. Asteroid 2011 UW-158 will pass within 1.5 million miles (2.4 million km) from Earth on Sunday - 30...

<p>To the north of California's famous San Andreas fault is a less known, but possibly more deadly, fault line. The Cascadia subduction zone runs some 700 miles from northern California to Vancouver.</p> <p>In a deeply reported article for The New Yorker, Kathryn Schulz tells the tale of how this fault lies dormant for periods of 243 years, on average, before unleashing monstrous tremors. The Pacific Northwest is 72 years overdue for the next quake, which is expected to be between 8.0 and 9.2 in magnitude.</p>

14 Warring States (464-222BC) Tombs Discovered In Sichuan  ^ 6 posted on 07/15/2004 7:20:44 PM PDT by FairOpinion [#6]Achaemenid, Worldís First Empire to Respect Cultural Diversity  ^ 3 posted on 07/05/2004 6:45:53 PM PDT by FairOpinion [#3]Ancient European Remains Discovered In Qinghai (China)  ^ 27 posted on 07/06/2004 7:23:57 PM PDT by FairOpinion [#27]Archaeologists Dig Up World War II Plane  ^ 21 posted on 05/31/2004 9:46:55 AM PDT by farmfriend [#21]Archaeologists Reveal Utah Canyon Filled With Ancient Settlements  ^ 22 posted on 07/01/2004 9:37:46 PM PDT by FairOpinion [#22]Archaeologists Startled To Discover Neolithic Ritual Site (Scotland)  ^ 3 posted...

HOW IMPACTS CAN TRIGGER VOLCANOS Large asteroid impacts have nasty side effects, as any dinosaur could have told you were she not obliterated by one of these calamity combos 65 million years ago. The ground shakes. Fire arcs across the sky and beyond the horizon. Clouds of debris race around the planet and blot the Sun out for months. At least that's what theory tells us. he scenario has never played out in modern times, scientists don't really know exactly what will happen when the next space rock slams into Earth. One long-supposed incendiary side-effect is enhanced volcanic activity, which...

Solar scientists predict that the Earth will enter a "mini ice age" around 2030 due to decreased activity by the sun, which will bring with it frigid cold winters. The last time the Earth experienced a similar situation occurred between 1645 and 1715.

NASA’s Asteroid Redirect Mission is still gasping along, but at least one space blogger suggests that its cancellation is all but inevitable. In the meantime, Space News just on Tuesday reported that the space agency has decided that the ARM must actually capture a boulder and take it to a retrograde lunar orbit to be considered a success. This metric was actually in doubt, with some NASA managers suggesting that as long as an unmanned probe, propelled by a solar selection propulsion engine, rendezvoused with an asteroid and then returned, even without anything resembling a rock, it would be a...

Blizzard of 1978, Chicago average 19 below zero. Ice is coming. Snowmobiles pressed into service in Buffalo. [Good Lord!] Hundreds died of illness because of the cold. People were running out of heating fuel. Alabama had a New England winter. California glaciers advanced to the San Joaquin Valley. The Ice could return in a single life time. Sea ice could be melted by putting black soot on it.

You’re probably as eager as I am for new images of Pluto and Ceres as both New Horizons and Dawn push ever closer to their respective little worlds. Recent photos, of which there are only a few, reveal some wild new features including what appears to a large crater on Pluto. In the end, this apparent large impact might only be a contrast effect or worse, an artifact of over-processing, but there’s no denying its strong resemblance to foreshortened, shadow-filled craters seen on the Moon and other moons. It’s also encouraging that an earlier photo from June 27 shows the...

A huge fault in the Earth's crust near Los Angeles is leaking helium, researchers have found. They say the unexpected find sheds new light on the Newport-Inglewood Fault Zone in the Los Angeles Basin. It reveals the fault is far deeper than previously thought, and a quake would be far more devastating. It follows a report from the U.S. Geological Survey has warned the risk of 'the big one' hitting California has increased dramatically.

UC Santa Barbara geologist Jim Boles has found evidence of helium leakage from the Earth’s mantle along a 30-mile stretch of the Newport-Inglewood Fault Zone in the Los Angeles Basin. Using samples of casing gas from two dozen oil wells ranging from LA’s Westside to Newport Beach in Orange County, Boles discovered that more than one-third of the sites — some of the deepest ones — show evidence of high levels of helium-3 (3He).Considered primordial, 3He is a vestige of the Big Bang. Its only terrestrial source is the mantle. Leakage of 3He suggests that the Newport-Inglewood fault is deeper...

Before 1878, in a period with increased rate of ablation, a supraglacial lake formed in the centre of the glacier, this lake subsequently became covered by ice and snow. The collapse of the glacier tongue in 1892 finally released the accumulated water, a large cavity 40m in diameter and 20m high containing estimated 20.000 cubic meters water at the glacier terminus remained as testimony. From this lower cavity, an 85m long intraglacial conduit led to the upper cavity (the former lake) with an additional volume of 80.000 cubic meters. [History of Geology: Outburst flood from Glacier de Tete Rousse: A...