Over 15 years of observational data collected by NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory and the Australia Telescope Compact Array have given us a composite image of a tremendous cosmic blast. The image depicts an x-ray beam (blue) casts away from the black hole sitting at the center of Pictor A, a galaxy located 500 million light years from Earth. Other prominent […]
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Antarctica and Greenland are shedding their ice sheets at record rates. The warming of the ocean waters is essentially causing the ice sheets to self-destruct and start to collapse. With this ice melting the sea levels may rise to about 6 inches by the year 2100 which is estimated to be more than previously predicted. Antarctica is suggested to be […]
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New data suggests there may be two undiscovered planets lurking on the outer fringes of our solar system. Astronomers at the Complutense University of Madrid have detected curious abnormalities in the orbits of a belt of icy rocks at the edge of the solar system, far beyond the orbit of Neptune, the eighth and final known planet. (In 2006, Pluto […]
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Just before Christmas… November 1915, while camping on the thawing ice of the Weddell Sea, Shackleton and his men saw their ship, Endurance, going down into the waters of this sea. “She’s going, boys!” Shackleton shouted the evening of November 21, 1915. “She went down bows first, her stern raised in the air. She then gave one quick dive and […]
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The waters off the west coast of Antarctica has started to warm up over the past 50 years. The temperature has risen about 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit, warmer than the average water temperature worldwide. It has reached the temperature of 34 degrees which is warm enough for king crab to survive. Normally the king crab live on the continental slopes and […]
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The newest professor in the University of Rhode Island’s College of the Environment and Life Sciences, Hollie Putnam, thinks some corals and shellfish might have good enough “memories” to buffer the changes in ocean chemistry that are resulting from the effects of climate change on coral reefs. A native of Minnesota who earned a doctorate at the University of Hawaii, […]
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The evidence for a new geological epoch which marks the impact of human activity on Earth is now overwhelming according to a recent paper by an international group of geo-scientists. The Anthropocene, which is argued to start in the mid-20th Century, is marked by the spread of materials such as aluminum, concrete, plastic, fly ash and fallout from nuclear testing […]
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Researchers from Australia, Denmark, Germany, Norway, United Kingdom, and the United States conducted lead concentration measurements of sixteen ice core samples, and found that industrial air pollution has persisted Antarctica since its arrival there in 1889 and remains significant in the current century. Their study was published in Scientific Reports on July 28, and covered in Nevada‘s Review journal. Lead […]
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In 2016, a Canadian novelist, Craig Russell — who is also a lawyer and a theater director in Manitoba — wrote an environmental cli-fi thriller titled “Fragment” about a major calving event along the ice shelf of Antarctica. The Yale Climate Connections website recently recommended the novel, published by Thistledown Press as a good summer read. Ironically, scientists in Antarctica are […]
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According to a new study by Nasa, Antarctica’s Larsen B ice-shelf is on course to completely disintegrate within the next five years. Studies show that the 10,000-year-old ice shelf, after partially collapsing in 2002, is “quickly weakening.” “These are warning signs that the remnant is disintegrating,” said Ala Khazendar of Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. “Although it’s […]
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