Tag: science

Climate scientists think the first major El Niño since 1997-1998 is beginning to brew in the Pacific.

9:55 am

Climate scientists think the first major El Niño since 1997-1998 is beginning to brew in the Pacific.

The first sign of a brewing El Niño weather pattern came in January, as trade winds that normally blow from the east reversed course near Papua New Guinea. Barrelling back across the tropical Pacific Ocean, they began to push warm water towards South America. Now climate scientists and forecasters are on high alert.

A major El Niño event — a periodic warming of waters in the eastern equatorial Pacific — could boost temperatures and scramble weather worldwide. The most recent major event, in 1997–98, was linked to thousands of deaths and tens of billions of dollars in damage from droughts, fires and floods across several continents. Yet more than 15 years later, forecasting the timing and intensity of El Niño remains tricky, with incremental improvements in climate models threatened by the partial collapse of an ocean-monitoring system that delivers the data to feed those models.

Note the date of the last event, 1997-1998. This was also the last time the world’s global temperature saw an increase. At the time global warming scientists were saying that global warming would increase the number and severity of El Niño events, which in turn would raise havoc with the climate. Instead, we have gone more than a decade and a half without any significant El Niño event, and the global temperature rise has ceased.

Note also that the article focuses on the difficulty scientists have had in predicting El Niño. These are the same global warming scientists who are also certain they can predict the exact temperature rise for the next two hundred years.

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Astronomers have found an asteroid with its own rings.

10:07 pm

Astronomers have found an asteroid with its own rings.

Chariklo is the largest member of a class known as the Centaurs and it orbits between Saturn and Uranus in the outer Solar System. Predictions had shown that it would pass in front of the star UCAC4 248-108672 on 3 June 2013, as seen from South America. Astronomers using telescopes at seven different locations, including the 1.54-metre Danish and TRAPPIST telescopes at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile, were able to watch the star apparently vanish for a few seconds as its light was blocked by Chariklo — an occultation.

But they found much more than they were expecting. A few seconds before, and again a few seconds after the main occultation there were two further very short dips in the star’s apparent brightness. Something around Chariklo was blocking the light! By comparing what was seen from different sites the team could reconstruct not only the shape and size of the object itself but also the shape, width, orientation and other properties of the newly discovered rings.

The team found that the ring system consists of two sharply confined rings only seven and three kilometres wide, separated by a clear gap of nine kilometres — around a small 250-kilometre diameter object orbiting beyond Saturn.

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Astronomers have discovered a new dwarf planet about 300 miles wide at the very edge of the solar system.

1:23 pm

Astronomers have discovered a new dwarf planet about 300 miles wide at the outer edge of the solar system.

The closest it gets to the Sun is 80 AU, or about 7.4 billion miles. More tantalizing, however,

… the findings also suggest the presence of another large planet in the outer reaches of the solar system. When the authors plotted the motion of Sedna, 2012 VP113, and distant Kuiper belt objects, they noticed some odd behaviors which they couldn’t explain — but which a massive, “super-Earth” planet about 250 AU away could. They note that such a dimly lit planet “would be fainter than current all-sky survey detection limits, as would larger and more distant perturbers” (i.e., planets), so it’s certainly possible… but right now it’s little more than a guess. A weird, intriguing guess.

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Curiosity has reached another area of interesting terrain: rows of layered curvy rocks.

10:18 pm

Curiosity has reached another area of interesting terrain: rows of layered curvy rocks.

The science team has been hunting for tasty rock outcrops suitable for the first drilling campaign since she departed the dried out lakebed at Yellowknife Bay in July 2013 and began her epic trek across the floor of Gale Crater towards the base of Mount Sharp. With each passing Sol, or Martian day, Mount Sharp looms larger and larger and the historical layers with deposits of hydrated minerals potentially indicative of an alien habitable zone come ever clearer into focus.

The panoramas are quite spectacular as the rover continues its journey toward Mt Sharp.

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New geological research suggests that the hydrogen levels that have detected on the moon — which are used to predict the presence of water — might be a false positive and not exist at the levels predicted.

11:17 am

The uncertainty of science: New geological research suggests that the hydrogen levels that have been detected on the moon — which are used to predict the presence of water — might be a false positive and not exist at the levels predicted.

Instead, what scientists thought was hydrogen in water molecules might be calcium as part of a mineral called apatite. If so, this would mean that the Moon has a lot less water than hoped. This data might also explain the lack of water seen in the Apollo samples as compared to what is suggested should be there from more recent orbital data. This also might explain the conflicting results from instruments on Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.

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Will the American Physical Society be the first major scientific institution to reject the global warming “consensus”?

10:31 am

Will the American Physical Society be the first major scientific institution to reject the global warming “consensus”?

The essentials: The APS has appointed three of the world’s most well known climate skeptics to its public affairs panel, almost guaranteeing that the organization will change its position from supporting the consensus to a more skeptical approach. Note also that this is the same organization that had one important scientist and a Nobel prize winner resign in disgust three years ago because of its insistence that the evidence of human-caused global warming was “incontrovertible.”

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Using images from the Spitzer Space Telescope, astronomers have assembled a 360 degree zoomable portrait of the plane of the Milky Way galaxy.

1:40 pm

Using images from the Spitzer Space Telescope, astronomers have assembled a 360 degree zoomable portrait of the plane of the Milky Way galaxy.

The image is in infrared, which is why it can see parts of the galaxy obscured by dust in visible wavelengths, and you can explore it at your leisure, from home.

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Putting a spacecraft back in the orbit it was intended, thirty-one years later.

9:14 am

Putting a spacecraft back in the orbit it was intended, thirty-one years later.

The spacecraft, ISEE-3, was intended to study the solar wind and the connection between the Sun and the Earth. In 1986 it was diverted instead to take a look at Halley’s Comet. Now there is an opportunity to return it to its original task, assuming engineers can wake it up after three decades.

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