Tag: science

Using computer models and data collected in the past decade, some climate scientists now believe that a major Antarctica ice sheet is in the process of collapsing.

10:20 am

Using computer models and data collected in the past decade, some climate scientists now believe that a major Antarctica ice sheet is in the process of collapsing.

One team combined data on the recent retreat of the 182,000-square-kilometer Thwaites Glacier with a model of the glacier’s dynamics to forecast its future. In a paper published online today in Science, they report that in as few as 2 centuries Thwaites Glacier’s outermost edge will recede past an underwater ridge now stalling its retreat. Their modeling suggests that the glacier will then cascade into rapid collapse. The second team, writing in Geophysical Research Letters (GRL), describes recent radar mapping of West Antarctica’s glaciers and confirms that the 600-meter-deep ridge is the final obstacle before the bedrock underlying the glacier dips into a deep basin.

Because inland basins connect Thwaites Glacier to other major glaciers in the region, both research teams say its collapse would flood West Antarctica with seawater, prompting a near-complete loss of ice in the area. “The next stable state for the West Antarctic Ice Sheet might be no ice sheet at all,” says the Science paper’s lead author, glaciologist Ian Joughin of the University of Washington (UW), Seattle.

This result really falls under the category of the uncertainty of science. Though the data suggests a glacier that is part of the much larger West Antarctica ice sheet is melting, the prediction that the ice sheet itself will collapse sometime in the next two centuries is solely based on computer models that have all too often turned turned out to be wrong.

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Some scientists are now calling into question the BICEP2 results that confirmed the existence of inflation just after the Big Bang.

10:12 am

The uncertainty of science: Some scientists are now calling into question the BICEP2 results that confirmed the existence of inflation just after the Big Bang.

The biggest discovery in cosmology in a decade could turn out to be an experimental artifact—at least according to an Internet rumor. The team that reported the discovery is sticking by its work, however.

Eight weeks ago, researchers working with a specialized telescope at the South Pole reported the observation of pinwheel-like swirls in the polarization of the afterglow of the big bang, or cosmic microwave background (CMB). Those swirls are traces of gravitational waves rippling through the fabric of spacetime a sliver of a second after the big bang, argue researchers working with the Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization 2 (BICEP2) telescope. Such waves fulfilled a prediction of a wild theory called inflation, which says that in the first 10-32 seconds, the universe underwent a mind-boggling exponential growth spurt. Many scientists hailed the result as a “smoking gun” for inflation.

However, scientists cautioned that the result would have to be scrutinized thoroughly. And now a potential problem with the BICEP analysis has emerged, says Adam Falkowski, a theoretical particle physicist at the Laboratory of Theoretical Physics of Orsay in France and author of the Résonaances blog. The BICEP researchers mapped the polarization of the CMB across a patch of sky measuring 15° by 60°. To study the CMB signal, however, they first had to subtract the “foreground” of microwaves generated by dust within our galaxy, and the BICEP team may have done that incorrectly, Falkowski reports on his blog today.

When the BICEP2 result was announced, the media went crazy over it. I however didn’t even post anything about it, as I know from experience that cosmological results such as this are very tentative and require confirmation. Too often, they turn out to be false results, with the scientists in charge fooled by the uncertain nature of their data.

The results from BICEP2 might still hold up. We need to wait a bit longer to find out.

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The creation in the lab of an as yet unnamed superheavy element adds weight to the theory that there might exist even heavier elements that are stable in nature.

8:59 am

The creation in the lab of an as yet unnamed superheavy element adds weight to the theory that there might exist even heavier elements that are stable in nature.

The scientists did not observe element 117 directly. Instead, they searched for its daughter products after it radioactively decayed by emitting alpha particles—helium nuclei with two protons and two neutrons. “The heavy nuclei makes an alpha decay to produce element 115, and this also decays by alpha decay,” says Jadambaa Khuyagbaatar of GSI, lead author of a paper reporting the results published on 1 May in Physical Review Letters.

After a few more steps in this decay chain, one of the nuclei produced is the isotope lawrencium 266—a nucleus with 103 protons and 163 neutrons that had never been seen before. Previously known isotopes of lawrencium have fewer neutrons, and are less stable. This novel species, however, has an astonishingly long half-life of 11 hours, making it one of the longest-lived superheavy isotopes known to date. “Perhaps we are at the shore of the island of stability,” Düllmann says.

If these superheavy elements could be created, they would be the stuff of science fiction. They might have properties that we would find extremely useful.

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It turns out that the object dubbed G2 that is zipping past the Milky Way’s central black hole is behaving not like a cloud but more like a star.

10:24 pm

The uncertainty of science: It turns out that the object dubbed G2 that is zipping past the Milky Way’s central black hole is behaving not like a cloud but more like a star.

The latest observations by the Keck Observatory in Hawaii show that the gas cloud called “G2” was surprisingly still intact, even during its closest approach to the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. Astronomers from the UCLA Galactic Center Group reported today that observations obtained on March 19 and 20, 2014 show the object’s density was still “robust” enough to be detected. This means G2 is not just a gas cloud, but likely has a star inside.

When I wrote a piece about this object for Sky & Telescope I found that among astronomers there was great skepticism about it being just a gas cloud that would be ripped apart when it flew past the black hole. The early data was not conclusive, but enough of it suggested G2 was a star, not a cloud. It turns out here that the skeptics were right.

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For the first time astronomers think they have measured the rotation rate of an exoplanet, thus determining the length of its day.

9:30 am

For the first time astronomers think they have measured the rotation rate of an exoplanet, thus determining the length of its day.

Ignas Snellen and his colleagues at Leiden University in the Netherlands report in Nature1 that a gaseous planet orbiting the star β Pictoris rotates at 25 kilometres per second at its equator — faster than any planet in the Solar System and about 50 times faster than Earth. A day on the planet, called β Pictoris b, lasts just over eight hours, even though the planet has a diameter more than 16 times that of Earth’s and carries more than 3,000 times Earth’s heft.

This result falls under my category of “the uncertainty of science.” Though quite cool, and based on real data, the uncertainties are great. Don’t bet the house that this result will stand up to closer observations in the future.

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A new study confirms that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide lengthens the plant growing season.

8:47 am

Chicken Little was wrong! A new study confirms that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide lengthens the plant growing season.

Previous studies have documented a lengthening of the growing season in many parts of the world. In the United States, the time between the last spring frost and the first autumn freeze has gone up by nearly two weeks since 19002; in Europe, a study of more than 540 plant species found that, on average, spring events such as flowering had shifted about a week earlier from 1971 to 2000, and the onset of autumn had been pushed back by about four days3.

Such shifts have long been attributed to warming temperatures. But CO2 also plays a part, says study co-author Heidi Steltzer, an ecosystem ecologist at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado.

Putting aside the uncertainty about whether carbon dioxide can even cause global warming, the assumption that global warming itself will be a bad thing has never been demonstrated clearly, while there is evidence that it might actually be beneficial.

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Budget issues continue to threaten a number of successfully functioning science spacecraft, including Opportunity on Mars and Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter circling the Moon.

9:51 am

Penny wise, pound foolish: Budget issues continue to threaten a number of successfully functioning science spacecraft, including Opportunity on Mars and Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter circling the Moon.

Don’t be surprised if NASA announces soon that they are shutting down these spacecraft so they can save some money. Or as the article notes, “Money not spent on these extended missions will probably slide into [the Science Mission Directorate’s] Black Hole of Funding (the James Webb Space Telescope) or be dissipated on new paperwork, committee meetings and concept studies.”

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According to a new study, Chelyabinsk-scale meteorite impacts happen more often than we have been aware.

9:36 am

According to a new study, Chelyabinsk-scale meteorite impacts happen more often than we have been aware.

The bright flare of the Russian meteor was hard to miss, and left 1,200 people injured in February 2013. What the human eye missed was two separate high-altitude explosions that occurred over Argentina and the North Atlantic Ocean just months later. That’s according to data from an infrasound network used to track nuke tests, released Tuesday by the B612 Foundation.

The data shows that there were 26 comparable events since 2000.

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Red tape appears to be preventing the U.S. military from releasing meteorite data obtained by its nuclear test monitoring system.

7:12 am

Red tape appears to be preventing the U.S. military from releasing meteorite data obtained by its nuclear test monitoring system.

Details of atmospheric meteor explosions, as recorded by U.S. military spacecraft sensors, were posted on a publicly accessible NASA website run by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. In fact, the military-civil cooperation was spurred by the details of the February 2013 fireball explosion over Chelyabinsk, Russia — termed a “superbolide” event. The website postings are designed to assist the scientific community’s investigation of bolides, or exceptionally bright fireballs.

However, multiple scientists noted that the JPL website had not been updated recently. That presumably meant that there was some sort of delay, as some fairly big events were detected by infrasound in the last year. “Because of budget and personnel reductions on our military partner, they ran into workforce issues to accomplish this task,” said Lindley Johnson, NEO program executive within the Planetary Science Division of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, D.C.

In other words, it looks like everyone in the military is saying “Ain’t my job, man!” so it doesn’t get done. They need to assign someone the job and be done with it.

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A history of global warming “Tipping Points” where it was declared that doomsday was certain in only a few years if we didn’t act now

1:26 pm

Crying wolf! A history of global warming “Tipping Points” where it was declared that doomsday was certain in only a few years if we didn’t act now.

The article is quite hilarious. Again and again and again and again the climate fear-mongers have announced with absolute certainty that, unless we pass draconian government regulations, the climate was going to go crazy and we were all going to die. Sometimes they declared we only had hours, sometimes months, sometimes years, sometimes even decades, but every time they were certain they knew what was going to happen and thus we had better obey them. And anyone who dared question their certainty was worse than a fool and should be imprisoned!

Of course, none of these predictions have proven true. The climate might yet warm and even go wild, but none of these doom-sayers have done any of us any good. If things do start going bad in future years, it is now going to be very difficult to convince anyone of this fact.

Posted from Tucson International Airport. I am on the way to Denver to tape two television interviews with George Noory of Coast to Coast for his television show, Beyond Belief. Should be fun.

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The existence of a Kepler-found earth-sized planet in the habitable zone has been confirmed.

1:42 pm

Worlds without end: The existence of a Kepler-found earth-sized planet in the habitable zone has been confirmed.

The newfound planet, called Kepler-186f, was first spotted by NASA’s Kepler space telescope and circles a dim red dwarf star about 490 light-years from Earth. While the host star is dimmer than Earth’s sun and the planet is slightly bigger than Earth, the positioning of the alien world coupled with its size suggests that Kepler-186f could have water on its surface, scientists say.

In this new work, the Keck and Gemini ground-based telescopes confirmed Kepler’s discovery.

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New research suggests that, in general, Mars has always been too cold to harbor liquid water on its surface.

9:35 am

The uncertainty of science: New research suggests that, in general, Mars has always been too cold to harbor liquid water on its surface for long periods.

Mars’ atmosphere was probably never thick enough to keep temperatures on the planet’s surface above freezing for the long term, suggests research published today in Nature Geoscience1. Although the planet’s topography indicates that liquid water has flooded Mars in the distant past, evidence increasingly suggests that those episodes reflect occasional warm spells, not a consistently hospitable phase of the planet’s history.

The research does not say that liquid water never flowed on the Martian surface, only that such events were short-lived. They looked at craters and noted that the surface has impacts from meteorites that would not have survived to the surface had the atmosphere been thick enough for liquid water.

The research however did not address Mars’ relatively smooth northern hemisphere, where there are not a lot of craters and where some scientists think there might once have been a shallow ocean. If Mars never had liquid water for long periods, why does this area lack craters?

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Forecasters at Colorado State University are predicting the 2014 hurricane season will be quieter than normal.

9:50 am

Uh-oh: Forecasters at Colorado State University are predicting the 2014 hurricane season will be quieter than normal.

This is the same team that last year predicted 2013 would be one of the worst hurricane seasons in history. Instead, last year was one of the weakest in history, and as a result they lost their funding. That these same guys are now saying 2014 will be weak makes me fear for the American Atlantic coast. It could be wiped out this time!

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An award winning science teacher was suspended when an unnamed school employee thought two student science projects looked too much like weapons.

3:33 pm

Idiocracy: An award winning science teacher was suspended when an unnamed school employee thought two student science projects looked too much like weapons.

Schiller got into trouble after two of his students turned in science projects designed to shoot little projectiles, reports the Los Angeles Times. One of the projects used compressed air (but was not actually connected to any air). The other one was coil gun: a tube surrounded by a coil and powered by a standard AA battery.

An unidentified school employee saw the air-pressure projectile device and got scared because, to her, it looked like a fearsome weapon. The amount of knowledge the employee has concerning science – if any – is unclear.

As a result of the unnamed employee’s fears, Schiller – who actually never got to see either the air-pressure project or the coil project except in photos – was dismissed from the classroom indefinitely. School officials impounded both projects as “evidence,” according to the mother of the kid who did the coil project.

Why am I reminded of this movie scene?
» Read more

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“A lot of investment in green technology has been a giant scam, if well intentioned.”

9:36 am

“A lot of investment in green technology has been a giant scam, if well intentioned.”

The quote, and entire interview, are significant for two reasons. First, the interview is seeped with many skeptical opinions about human caused global warming, is very critical of that movement’s effort to politicize science, and the person being interviewed is James Lovelock, the founder of of the concept of Gaia, a former strong advocate of global warming but now a skeptic.

Most significant however is where the interview is published. It is in Nature, one of the most important and influential science journals, which previously has been aggressively pushing global warming politics for years. That they allowed these politically incorrect opinions within their walls and then broadcast them to their readers signals a major cultural shift within the science community. It is beginning to be acceptable to be a skeptic again!

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Scientists have found that Saturn’s hexagon-shaped jet stream is deeply rooted and that its rotation might be revealing the planet’s rotation as well.

11:57 am

Scientists have found that Saturn’s hexagon-shaped jet stream is deeply rooted and that its rotation might be revealing the planet’s rotation as well.

Due to the tilt of approximately 27º of the planet Saturn, its polar atmosphere undergoes intense seasonable variations with long polar nights lasting over seven years, followed by a long period of 23 years of variable illumination. However, the seasonal variations do not affect the hexagon and its jet stream at all, so both are part of an extensive wave, deeply rooted in Saturn’s atmosphere. The UPV/EHU researchers suggest that the hexagon and its stream are the manifestation of a “Rossby wave” similar to those that form in the mid-latitudes of the earth. On our planet the jet stream meanders from west to east and brings, associated with it, the system of areas of low pressure and anticyclones which we have been seeing regularly on weather maps.

On Saturn, a hydrogen gas planet, ten times the size of the Earth, cold in its upper clouds, without a solid surface, and with an atmosphere as deep as that of an ocean, “the hexagonal wavy motion of the jet stream is expected to be propagated vertically and reveal to us aspects of the planet’s hidden atmosphere,” pointed out Agustín Sánchez-Lavega, Head of the Planetary Sciences research group. “The movement of the hexagon could therefore be linked to the depths of Saturn, and the rotation period of this structure, which, as we have been able to ascertain, is 10 hours, 39 minutes and 23 seconds, could be that of the planet itself,” he added. Saturn is the only planet in the Solar System whose rotation period is not yet known.

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Geologists, using computer models, have reconstructed the size and impact velocity of a giant asteroid that hit the Earth approximately 3.26 billion years ago.

11:51 am

Geologists, using computer models, have reconstructed the size and impact velocity of a giant asteroid that hit the Earth approximately 3.26 billion years ago.

This is a fascinating result, but it is very important to recognize its very large uncertainties. The article for example says almost nothing about how these conclusions were reached, except for this one paragraph:

Lowe, who discovered telltale rock formations in the Barberton greenstone a decade ago, thought their structure smacked of an asteroid impact. The new research models for the first time how big the asteroid was and the effect it had on the planet, including the possible initiation of a more modern plate tectonic system that is seen in the region, according to Lowe. [emphasis mine]

I have highlighted that one word because it reveals a great deal. What they did was to create a computer model of the data they had, which was merely very unusual geology spread over a certain region called the Barberton Greenstone Belt. Note also that this region is not where the impact occurred. “The study’s co-authors think the asteroid hit the Earth thousands of kilometers away from the Barberton Greenstone Belt, although they can’t pinpoint the exact location.”

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