Most recent 20 articles: PHYS.ORG - Earth
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Is life possible on a Jupiter moon? NASA goes to investigate - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Oct 14, 2024) |
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Oct 14, 2024 · Is there anywhere else in our solar system that could support life? An imposing NASA probe is due to lift off on Monday on a five-and-a-half-year journey to Europa, one of Jupiter's many moons, to take the first detailed step toward finding out.
The Europa Clipper mission will allow the US space agency to uncover new details about the moon, which scientists believe could hold an ocean of liquid water beneath its icy surface.
Liftoff is scheduled for "no earlier than" Monday, October 14, from Cape Canaveral in Florida aboard a powerful SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, NASA said in a statement.
"Europa is one of the most promising places to look for life beyond Earth," ... Read more ...
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Scientists successfully breed corals to improve their heat tolerance - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Oct 14, 2024) |
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Oct 14, 2024 · A new study has shown that selective breeding can lead to a modest rise in coral heat tolerance.
Led by experts at Newcastle University's Coralassist Lab, the study documents the world's first effort to selectively breed adult corals for enhanced heat tolerance, i.e. the ability of adult corals to survive intense marine heat waves. The breeding effort was a success, showing that it is possible to improve the heat tolerance of adult coral offspring, even in a single generation.
However, the improvement was modest in comparison to future marine heat waves expected under climate change. The authors stress that rapid reductions of global greenhouse gas emissions are an ... Read more ...
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Eight dead as heavy rain thrashes Brazil after long drought - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Oct 13, 2024) |
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Oct 13, 2024 · At least eight people died after heavy rains in Brazil, authorities said Saturday, as storms swept parts of the country following a severe drought that fueled a record wave of wildfires.
Central and southeastern Brazil have been pounded since Friday by winds reaching 62 miles (100 kilometers) per hour and up to four inches (10 cm) of daily rainfall, according to the National Institute of Meteorology.
Seven people died in Sao Paulo, Brazil's most populated state, mainly due to falling trees and walls toppled by violent winds and rain, according to the state civil defense.
Blackouts struck large parts of Sao Paulo city, and energy firm Enel said around 1.6 million ... Read more ...
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In a first, Starship megarocket booster caught by SpaceX's 'chopsticks' - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Oct 13, 2024) |
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Oct 13, 2024 · SpaceX on Sunday successfully flew the first-stage booster of its Starship megarocket back to the launch pad after a test flight, a technical tour de force that furthers the company's quest for rapid reusability.
The "super heavy booster" had blasted off attached to the uncrewed Starship rocket minutes earlier, then made a picture-perfect controlled return to the same pad in Texas, where a pair of huge mechanical "chopsticks" reached out from the launch tower to bring the slowly descending booster to a halt, according to a livestream from Elon Musk's SpaceX company.
Not long afterward, the upper stage of Starship splashed down, as planned, in the Indian Ocean, a ... Read more ...
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New survey reveals doubt, and hope, that world will achieve climate targets - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Oct 13, 2024) |
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Oct 13, 2024 · How hot is it going to get? This is one of the most important and difficult remaining questions about our changing climate. The answer depends not only on how sensitive our climate is to greenhouse gases, but also on how much carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases we as a civilization choose to emit over coming decades.
In order to help think more clearly about this question, we asked authors who have contributed to the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to share their best guesses about where the world is headed.
The results of our recently published study show that most of the responding climate experts believe our planet will ... Read more ...
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Why hurricanes like Milton in the US and cyclones in Australia are becoming more intense and harder to predict - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Oct 13, 2024) |
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Oct 13, 2024 · Tropical cyclones, known as hurricanes and typhoons in other parts of the world, have caused huge damage in many places recently. The United States has just been hit by Hurricane Milton, within two weeks of Hurricane Helene. Climate change likely made their impacts worse.
In Australia, the tropical cyclone season (November to April) is approaching. The Bureau of Meteorology this week released its long-range forecast for this season.
It predicts an average number of tropical cyclones, 11, are likely to form in the region. Four are expected to cross the Australian coast. However, the risk of severe cyclones is higher than average.
So what does an average number ... Read more ...
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'Killer electrons': Lightning storms play cosmic pinball with space weather - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Oct 12, 2024) |
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Oct 12, 2024 · When lightning strikes, the electrons come pouring down. In a new study, researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder, led by an undergraduate student, have discovered a novel connection between weather on Earth and space weather. The team utilized satellite data to reveal that lightning storms on our planet can dislodge particularly high-energy, or "extra-hot," electrons from the inner radiation belt - a region of space enveloped by charged particles that surround Earth like an inner tube.
The team's results could help satellites and even astronauts avoid dangerous radiation in space. This is one kind of downpour you don't want to get caught in, said lead author and ... Read more ...
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AI empowers iNaturalist to map California plants with unprecedented precision - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Oct 12, 2024) |
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Oct 12, 2024 · Utilizing advanced artificial intelligence and citizen science data from the iNaturalist app, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have developed some of the most detailed maps yet showcasing the distribution of California plant species.
iNaturalist is a widely-used cellphone app, originally developed by UC Berkeley students, that allows people to upload photos and the location data of plants, animals or any other life they encounter and then crowdsource their identity. The app currently has more than 8 million users worldwide who collectively have uploaded more than 200 million observations.
Botanists usually build high-quality maps of species by ... Read more ...
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Ancient climate analysis reveals unknown global processes - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Oct 12, 2024) |
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Oct 12, 2024 · According to highly cited conventional models, cooling and a major drop in sea levels about 34 million years ago should have led to widespread continental erosion and deposited gargantuan amounts of sandy material onto the ocean floor. This was, after all, one of the most drastic climate transitions on Earth since the demise of the dinosaurs.
Yet a new Stanford review of hundreds of studies going back decades contrastingly reports that across the margins of all seven continents, little to no sediment has ever been found dating back to this transition. The discovery of this globally extensive gap in the geologic record was published this week in Earth-Science ... Read more ...
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Climate change: Care for humans, other species and the natural environment is the key to a just transition - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Oct 12, 2024) |
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Oct 12, 2024 · Communities across the world are facing two worsening crises: a climate crisis and a care crisis.
The evidence and urgency on the climate crisis has been expertly illustrated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The root cause of this crisis is the increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. This is due to excessive exploitation of fossil fuels, deforestation and industrial processes. In short, it is a result of development processes that have not been based on caring for the environment.
Less discussed is the care crisis. This refers to a society's capacity to maintain livelihoods in households, raise children and sustain communities. In short, ... Read more ...
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How mainstream climate science endorsed the fantasy of a global warming time machine - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Oct 12, 2024) |
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Oct 12, 2024 · When the Paris agreement on climate change was gaveled into being in December 2015, it briefly looked like that rarest of things: a political victory for climate activists and delegates from the poorest regions of the world that, due to colonization by today's wealthy nations, have contributed little to the climate crisis - but stand to suffer its worst ravages.
The world had finally agreed an upper limit for global warming. And in a move that stunned most experts, it had embraced the stretch target of 1.5°C, the boundary that small island states, acutely threatened by sea-level rise, had tirelessly pushed for years.
Or so, at least, it seemed. For soon, the ambitious ... Read more ...
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Humanity's future depends on our ability to live in harmony with nature - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Oct 12, 2024) |
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Oct 12, 2024 · The world is facing multiple - potentially catastrophic - crises, including inequality, poverty, food insecurity, climate change and biodiversity loss. These issues are interconnected and require systemic solutions, as changes in one system affects others.
However, human systems have largely failed to acknowledge their connection to ecological systems. Most modern societies have dominating and exploitative relationships with nature, which are underpinned by imperialist and dualistic thinking that divides living beings into racial, gender, class or species hierarchies.
Our current mindset, with its focus on competition, growth and profit, has been a key contributor to ... Read more ...
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Saturday Citations: All that sparkles is plastic; woke tree diversity; the gravitational basin in which we reside - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Oct 12, 2024) |
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Oct 12, 2024 · This week, astronomers considered whether dark energy varies over cosmic timescales. Via neutron analysis, physicists revealed that some Early Iron Age swords were altered recently by swindlers in order to be more historically exciting. And a professor in New Jersey solved two fundamental problems that have baffled mathematicians for decades. Additionally, there were developments in children's crafting supplies, carbon sequestration and the shifting map of the universe:
Microplastics are toxic to ocean species, and they're often consumed by land animals, causing a range of problems including starvation and gastrointestinal abrasions. And unlike such sources as degrading ... Read more ...
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Research vessel provides comprehensive assessment of the changing Central Arctic Ocean - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Oct 11, 2024) |
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Oct 11, 2024 · Sparse sea ice, thousands of data points and samples, a surprising number of animals and hydrothermal vents - those are the impressions and outcomes that an international research team is now bringing back from a Polarstern expedition to the Central Arctic. After a four-month-long Arctic season, the Alfred Wegener Institute's research icebreaker is expected to arrive back in Bremerhaven with the morning high tide on Sunday.
When the research icebreaker Polarstern returns to Bremerhaven, tentatively on Sunday, 13 October 2024, the ArcWatch-2 expedition will bring home an up-to-date scientific overview of the Eurasian and Central Arctic. Researchers from 17 countries and 24 ... Read more ...
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Shaping nanocrystals: Unlocking the future of screens, solar and medical tech - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Oct 11, 2024) |
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Oct 11, 2024 · From brighter TV screens to better medical diagnostics and more efficient solar panels, new Curtin-led research has discovered how to make more molecules stick to the surface of tiny nanocrystals, in a breakthrough that could lead to improvements in everyday technology.
Lead author Associate Professor Guohua Jia from Curtin's School of Molecular and Life Sciences, said the study investigated how the shape of zinc sulfide nanocrystals affected how well molecules, known as ligands, stick to their surface. The full study titled "Deciphering surface ligand density of colloidal semiconductor nanocrystals: Shape matters" is published in the Journal of the American Chemical ... Read more ...
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Evacuating in disasters like Hurricane Milton - there are reasons people stay, and it's not just stubbornness - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Oct 11, 2024) |
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Oct 11, 2024 · As Hurricane Milton roared ashore near Sarasota, Florida, tens of thousands of people were in evacuation shelters. Hundreds of thousands more had fled coastal regions ahead of the storm, crowding highways headed north and south as their counties issued evacuation orders.
But not everyone left, despite dire warnings about a hurricane that had been one of the strongest on record two days earlier.
As Milton's rain and storm surge flooded neighborhoods late on Oct. 9, 2024, 911 calls poured in. In Tampa's Hillsborough County, more than 500 people had to be rescued, including residents of an assisted living community and families trapped in a flooding home after a tree ... Read more ...
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'Party atmosphere': Skygazers treated to another aurora show - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Oct 11, 2024) |
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Oct 11, 2024 · Scientist Jim Wild has traveled to the Arctic Circle numerous times to study the northern lights, but on Thursday night he only needed to look out of his bedroom window in the English city of Lancaster.
For at least the second time this year, skygazers in many parts of the world were treated to colorful auroras at latitudes beyond the polar extremes where they normally light up the skies.
The dazzling celestial shows were caused by a gigantic ball of plasma - and an accompanying magnetic field - which erupted from the sun earlier this week.
When this eruption, called a coronal mass ejection (CME), arrived at Earth at around 1600 GMT on Thursday, it triggered a ... Read more ...
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'Widespread noncompliance and poor performance' in world's largest nature-based carbon removal projects - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Oct 11, 2024) |
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Oct 11, 2024 · One of the largest types of carbon offset projects the Australian government is using to meet climate change targets and reduce carbon in the atmosphere is failing to do so, new research has shown. The findings are published in The Rangeland Journal.
The projects aim to regenerate native forests across large parts of Australia, but analysis shows most of the selected areas have never had forests, are unsuitable for forest regeneration and are not producing the increase in tree canopy cover that projects are being credited for.
Australian human-induced forest regeneration (HIR) projects are the largest pure carbon removal nature-based offset type in the world. They are ... Read more ...
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A geomagnetic storm is hitting the northern part of the US. Here's how the solar event may impact you - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Oct 11, 2024) |
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Oct 11, 2024 · Warnings about Hurricane Milton hitting Florida have dominated news reports this week. But there have been warnings from forecasters with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center about another storm brewing: a severe geomagnetic storm.
According to Jonathan Blazek, an assistant professor of physics at Northeastern University, these events are triggered by a coronal mass ejection, which is when the sun lets off a mass ejection of particles. Sometimes, these particles hit Earth and interact with our magnetic field and upper layers of the atmosphere. This, Blazek says, is a geomagnetic storm.
Blazek, who specializes in ... Read more ...
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A quantum material could be the future of high-energy X-ray imaging and particle detection - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Oct 11, 2024) |
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Oct 11, 2024 · Scintillators are detectors that make high-energy X-rays or particles visible through flashes of light to form an image. Their many applications include particle physics, medical imaging, X-ray security and more.
Despite their usefulness, however, scintillators have presented researchers with a conundrum. Until recently, scientists had to decide whether fast imaging or optimal performance was more important when choosing the appropriate scintillator technology for a particular experiment.
Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory may have found a way to resolve this dilemma. It involves a scintillator material composed of spherical ... Read more ...
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