The Antarctic Ice is hosting over 100 volcanoes which threaten to become active

BEACON TRANSCRIPT – You would probably expect the highest concentration of volcanoes in the world to be placed somewhere in the Pacific, but scientists have just found out you were wrong. They discovered over 90 volcanoes trapped beneath the ice layer of Antarctica. This makes the continent the most ‘volcano populated’ area in the world.

At first, this might sound extremely unlikely. The idea of volcano implies fire and heat, so they will most probably not be found in a region covered in ice. However, Earth surprises us again, as Antarctica has plenty of volcanic activity.

More volcanoes hidden under the Antarctic ice

Previously, researchers knew of about 50 volcanoes hidden underneath the ice. A recent discovery surprised everyone, as their number nearly tripled, and this might not be all. Scientists are suspecting even more volcanoes could be hidden on the bottom of the sea.

Researchers haven’t been able to find these newly discovered volcanoes so far as they lie hidden under the ice layer. In fact, some of them might be covered by ice measuring more than a mile. Therefore, they required advanced technology to spot them, such as radars, satellite observations, or advanced geological data.

Global warming threatens the peace and quiet of these volcanoes

These volcanoes are not active, but the situation might not stay like that forever, posing threats to the sea level. Also, the current environmental state of the planet could be a trigger. As ice keeps melting, the pressure around the volcanoes might get relieved, facilitating an eruption.

Many ice shelves have already broken into pieces, setting icebergs free into the sea. The latest event of the kind was so massive that the entire balance of the ice shelf is in danger. This might lead to dozens of serious consequences, including sea level rise, ice melting and, of course, a trigger of volcanic activity in the Antarctic.
Image Source: Wikimedia Commons

The TRAPPIST-1 system might be twice the age of our own, according to new research.

The TRAPPIST-1 System has been discovered to contain seven rocky, Earth-like exoplanets. At least three of these appear in the famed “Goldilocks Zone” where temperatures are neither too hot nor too cold for liquid water to form. At first, however, scientists estimated the Sun-like star at only half a billion years old. Now, with some newly garnered information, these astronomers believe that the star at TRAPPIST-1 may be almost twice the age of our own.

Changing the Chance for Life

In a study recently published by The Astrophysical Journal, researchers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and the University of California, San Diego analyzed the currently available data. They determined that, at a minimum, the TRAPPIST-1 system is some 5.4 billion years old. That is a billion years older than our Sun. At a maximum, it could be 9.8 billion years old. This is almost twice the age of our solar system.

The discovery has multiple implications for the potential of life to develop. Half a billion years might have been too young for many beyond the simplest forms to evolve. However, a billion years older than us means that life would have had far more opportunities for catastrophic destruction.

It also means the planets have soaked up a billion more years of radiation from their host star. It is a fine balance between creating a durable, life-sustaining planet like earth, and a burned off the planet with minimal water or oxygen like Mars.

“If there is life on these planets,” said Adam Burgasser with the University of California, “I would speculate that it has to be hardy life because it has to be able to survive some potentially dire scenarios for billions of years.”

While this may change the potential for life to be on TRAPPIST-1 right now, it only serves to make the system more unique and interesting.

Image Source: JPL/NASA

The biggest dinosaur yet discovered finally received a name as it is now the Patagotitan mayorum.

Four years ago, a scientist in Argentina found samples from six different individual specimens of dinosaurs. Ever since, researchers have been giving those bones a serious examination. Now, they are ready to give discovered species a name, Patagotitan mayorum. This newly named titanosaur was also proven to be the biggest dinosaur, and the largest land animal, to have ever roamed the Earth. Or at least the largest one discovered as of yet.

Biggest Dinosaur Had the Weight of Ten Elephants

This biggest dinosaur ever discovered is the subject of a study published in the journal Royal Society B. The team examined over 160 different bone fragments. All of them were found in the same quarry in the Patagonia region of Argentina. The researchers estimated this titanosaur’s weight at adulthood to have been of around 76 tons – the same weight as the Space Shuttle. It was over 37 meters or 112 feet long. That is one massive animal, larger than anything ever measured until now.

“All contenders for the largest dinosaur species were similar sized, within a 10 to 15 percent difference,” stated Diego Pol from the Egidio Feruglio paleontology museum in Argentina. “This suggests we are approaching the maximum possible body size for a terrestrial animal, which was unknown until recently, and it is an exciting discovery.”

This newly named Titanosaur drops the previously biggest dinosaur, the Argentinosaurus, down to second place. It too was discovered in a similar part of South America.

This is still only the largest land animal discovered. The blue whale can be as much as 400,000 pounds, while the largest of this species is estimated to weigh in at about 152,000 pounds. It was also registered to reach over 6 meters or 20 feet tall at the shoulder.

Currently, there is a replica of the dinosaur’s skeleton on display at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Since 2016, it has been greeting the visitors of the museum’s dinosaur section.

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Moon Express set some ambitious targets for the near future. The Florida-based private company intends to extract some lunar samples and bring them back to Earth in three years. The private space organization is working on some innovative equipment to help them pull some lunar excavation missions. The company is also participating in a contest to win the Google Lunar X Prize for which it has to launch a mission to the moon by the end of 2017.

The Hardware Part of Upcoming Lunar Excavation Missions Is Almost Ready

Moon Express caught large attention during a Capitol Hill event where the design of a new drone was unveiled. The lander was dubbed as MX-1E and was followed by plans for better landers. The ship can accommodate around 60 pounds of equipment. Moon Express Chief Executive Bob Richards described this future spaceship design as the key to an innovative space exploration model that is flexible and scalable.

The CEO stated that the hardware part of the ship is all ready. The engine is called PECO and works on rocket-grade kerosene and hydrogen peroxide propellants. There are already two such models built, and the next step is to have them tested. Other elements are either in the testing phase or are currently constructed. For instance, its laser altimeter is at Goddard Space Flight Center that is part of NASA to undergo some tests.

Moon Express Wants to Extract Lunar Precious Metals

The company intends to accomplish three missions by the year of 2020. These are Lunar Scout, Lunar Outpost, and Harvest Moon. All these operations have already raised the necessary funds. After these quests, the company hopes to be ready for some lunar excavation missions.

Moon Express has the necessary equipment and technology by its side to do some real digging on Earth’s only natural satellite. The company aims for precious metals and water which can be turned into rocket fuel. There are  high chances that the organization will capitalize on these resources.

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A new controversy sparks debate about the age limit of old age people as being around 115 years.

An article published in the journal Nature has sparked intense debate among peers and scientists for its theme: age limit of humans. It is problematic, according to scholars from the field, because the study published by Jan Vijg, Ph.D., and two other peers from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine (New York), claims that the maximum age limit of humans would be 115 years.

Controversy Regarding the Maximum Age Limit Sparks Intense Debate

The core idea of the article revolves around the idea that humans and the age limit would be of 115 years, as opposed to the previous longest living people (a French citizen who lived a 122-year life).

One researcher, S. Jay Olshansky, School of Public Health University of Illinois at Chicago wrote, in an email to Gizmodo, that

“The authors of the rebuttals quibble about how to deal with the mathematics of small numbers at extreme old age”.

He then continues to argument that the problem is that the conclusion would be wrong. He says that the data that is available indicates not only that the assertion that the age limit would be 115 years, but that the oldest people alive are getting even older.

Rudi Westendorp, professor of Healthy Ageing at the University of Copenhagen, says that, in his opinion, Vijg focuses on a small group of people that achieve extreme longevity. However, this is wrong, because, he says, a larger pool of people that have reached an advanced old age indicates that the life expectancy of people doesn’t increase, but it increases.

Another researcher, Nick Brown from the University Medical Center Groningen in the Netherlands, said that he and his team, along four other teams, went over the Nature paper all over again and found plentiful errors. First of all, the existence of the age limit at 115 years is dependent on the age and death date of the oldest person known in history. That person was Jeanne Louise Calment (French citizen), who lived 122 years. In other analyses, there has been an increase in the number of people who have passed the age of 100 years, which makes it likely, according to the respective analyses, that there will be more people to live beyond the age limit of 115 or 122 years.

Among others, there is one more problem that envisages the use of statistic tools. Breaking the data into individual years of death of respective people is an arbitrary decision, as is the division of time itself an arbitrary concept, says one study.

A core of ideas regarding the age limit study was published in the Dutch magazine NRC.

Image Source: Pixabay

Two black holes were found in the centre of a Galaxy. The discovery startled scientists

Researchers at the University of Mexico have found a galaxy that is 750 million light-years away with two supermassive black holes in its center. The discovery of two black holes in a galaxy’s center was published on Tuesday in the Astrophysical Journal. And it is the first ever confirmation of orbital motion between two supermassive black holes since it was first theorized.

Two Black Holes in a Galaxy’s Center

Greg Taylor, a professor at the University of New Mexico and co-author of the paper, has stated that he is excited by the finding.

The galaxy in which the two black holes were found is called 0402+379. The mass of the two black holes is 15 billion times than that of the Sun. And the fact that they have this massive size makes their orbital period extremely long. As long as 24,000 years. This finding comes after an observation period of 12 years, in which the researchers have not seen any curvature in the orbit.

Karishma Bansal, a graduate student at the University and lead author of the paper, said that:

“As I learned there was data going back to 2003, we plotted it and determined they are orbiting one another. It’s very exciting”.

She further said that her team will be able to make further observation of the binary supermassive black holes in the galaxy’s center in the following 3 to 4 years.

Their finding shows that their angular motion is very slow and hardly observable. Roger W. Romani, professor of physics and Stanford University, a member of the research team, said that

“If you imagine a snail on the recently-discovered Earth-like planet orbiting Proxima Centauri — 4.243 light-years away — moving at 1 cm a second, that’s the angular motion we’re resolving here”.

This is a significant discovery because scientists can draw from this research and try to understand what happens with other galaxies which are on a collision course, such as the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy. Both of them have a massive black hole and are headed one towards the other.

Image Source: Pixabay

The ocean will never cease to amaze the world with all its well-hidden secrets. There are still virgin underwater realms that have never seen the presence of a human being. However, today’s technology made one more step further in revealing the mysteries of the blue abyss. Thanks to a collecting gear, the team of researchers aboard the RV Investigator ship discovered 300 new species of sea creatures in just one month.

The Collecting Gear Was Crucial in This Type of Endeavour

If we take a look at a map of our Earth, it is surprisingly easy to see the extensive territory that belongs to the ocean. The abyss of the waters off the Australian coast represents the largest habitat on the planet. Therefore, scientists couldn’t deploy an extensive enough mission to scan the entire surface of this large aquatic land until now.

The team aboard the RV Investigator vessel turned to technology to help them in their efforts of exploring the abyss. They set the target in a zone that is around 13,123 feet deep. At this depth, a human being couldn’t survive as the pressure would get him or her crushed.

First things first, the team of daring scientists had to map the floor of the abyss with a multibeam sonar. Once they gathered enough data to recreate the bottom of the ocean, they were safe to deploy their gear without damaging it because of the landforms.

Scientists Made 1,000 Entries in One Month, Out of Which 300 Were New Species

The next step was to launch special equipment in the waters of the Australian Coast. This gear was specially designed to collect samples. In the end, this collecting gear returned with 1,000 various species. Out of this compendium, there were 300 who managed to remain unknown to us until the very last moment.

Most of them are unusual for the human eye. Their shape was adapted to the difficulties of the conditions that the abyss presented them with such as coldness and darkness. However, the most astounding finding was the bottom of the ocean is far from being clean. On the contrary, human activity turned it into the trash of beer cans, bottles, PVC pipes, and another residue.

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In life, small details matter. With this in mind, it comes to no surprise that crumb-free bread has the power to turn lifestyle on the International Space Station around. From the beginning, astronauts had no other choice than to swap this Earth staple food with their duller version, namely tortilla wraps. However, this situation is about to change thanks to the first spatial bread baked on board ISS.

Bread Crumbs Can Wreak Havoc on Board Space Station

Astronauts have to make a whole lot of sacrifices in order to pursue their dreams of conquering space. They have to change the way they move and let go of many products and services that make life easier on Earth for an extensive period of time. Bread is one of these sacrifices. It may not seem like much, but it is quite a challenge if you come to think about it.

The reason why no one can bring a good loaf of bread on board ISS lies in its crumbs. Those tiny particles are life-threatening if they are let loose in space. This is because they are hard to pick up. Once they are free to roam the space station, they can easily infiltrate in electrical equipment and cause a fire.

A German Bakery Came up with a New Recipe for Spatial Bread

However, Back in Space which is a German company might have come up with a solution. The bakery invented a new recipe for a special dough that doesn’t leave crumbs behind. The challenge was even bigger to not only devise a tough yet chewy texture but also endow it with the traditional taste of bread.

Therefore, astronauts on ISS are going to test the recipe themselves. However, the experiment is scheduled for April 2018 during the Horizon mission. Bake in Space is going to guide astronauts through the process of baking the very first spatial bread. There will be plenty of benefits if this project succeeds. Some experts are strong believers in the fact that fresh hot bread can energize astronauts and make them feel like home.

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Super corals are formations capable of adapting, living and thriving even in extreme areas.

A recently released study brings new hope for the salvation of coral reef formations. This paper presents the discovery and research results on the so-called “super corals”. Such structures were noted to be able to survive in otherwise extreme environments for their kind.

This new study is the result of a collaboration between the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) and the International Research for Development, Noumea (IRD). Research results are now available in the journal Scientific Reports.

Super Corals, Living On the Edge and Thriving

Back in 2016, a scientific expedition traveled to a remote lagoon system discovered in New Caledonia. This was noted to house a varied community of reef-building corals, capable of living in the system’s extreme conditions. But not only that, these super corals first adapted and then started thriving in their unexpected habitat.

The area has hot, low on oxygen and acidic waters that have been associated with mangroves. As it is, the super corals renewed hope that such formations could still be able to adapt and exist in the warming global waters.

“The existence of corals living under this usually deadly trio of conditions, comparable and even exceeding what is predicted under climate change, gives us new hope that some corals will be able to persist into the future,” states Dr. Emma Camp.

She is one of the researchers part of the mission and a marine biologist at the UTS. Dr. Camp points out that the existence of the super corals indicates potentials future reef management options. She states that these could help “support proactive management options”. Ones that could help increase a reef’s resilience.

Now, Dr. Camp and her colleagues are planning to take a closer look at the Great Barrier Reef. An area deeply affected by bleaching, the scientists will be looking to detect reef-neighboring mangroves. In doing so, they are hoping to find super corals in such areas as well.

Still, the researchers acknowledge that this is in no way a quick fix solution for the problems encountered by coral reefs and their ecosystems.

Image Source: Wikimedia

The Juno spacecraft has been bringing incredible new information about Jupiter.

 

One of the challenges of scientific exploration is that often one discovery just leads to another question, and sometimes it leads to many more. While stargazers already found Jupiter intriguing, the arrival of the Juno probe may have only deepened our King of the Planets’ mysteries.

Juno Compounds the Mysteries of Jupiter

“We are excited to share these early discoveries, which help us better understand what makes Jupiter so fascinating,” said Diane Brown, a spokesperson at NASA headquarters in Washington.

A researcher noted that Cuban boa snakes are capable of carrying out coordinated attacks.

A scientist noted an unusual and quite unexpected occurrence as he was guiding a watching tour, which prompted him to take up research on the matter. According to his results, Cuban boa snakes not only attack together, but they also seem to be capable of coordinating such attacks and act almost as a “pack”.

A paper with the study results is available in the journal Animal Behaviour and Cognition.

Boa Snakes Act Together when Preying On Bats

Vladimir Dinets, part of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, was in the Desembarco del Granma National Park in Cuba when he noted an unusual behavior in the local boa snakes.

These were gathered at the entrance of a cave, and seemingly on the look-out. Interested by this action, he took to observing the species and recording their actions. After eight days of recordings, Dinets reached quite a surprising conclusion.

The analyzed Cuban boa snakes were resting at the entrance of a cave which held Jamaican fruit bat colonies. A nocturnal species, these rest throughout the day in the adjacent chambers of sinkhole caves. Then, as twilight starts falling, they fly out looking for food, and possibly in the fangs of an awaiting predator.

Dinets states that, after spending the day in the vicinity of the cave entrance, some of the observed boa snakes slithered into its passageways as the light started dimming. There, they swung their bodies and started dangling from the cave ceiling. This way, as the bats flew past them, they could quickly snatch them up mid-flight.

The same ritual was followed as day was about to break, and the bats returned to their cave home. Only, this time, different snakes set up to eat and in different locations. Dinets recorded the snakes’ position throughout each of the possible feeding times. According to him, these never repeated, which seems to indicate that the boas did not just choose the same or a preferred spot.

Instead, they changed and coordinated their locations so that all involved could make the most of their meal.

“There is an old dogma stating that reptiles are mostly solitary and stupid. My finding is just one of many recent discoveries challenging it,” states Dinets.

Still, Dinets points out the need for more research on the matter, which should come with a “lot of patience”. Also, he concluded that although the boa snakes exhibited a “pack” like attack, they showed no sign of the communication required by such an appellative.

Image Source: Flickr

A new study showed that frozen, space-kept sperm could result in healthy mice babies.

A team of Japanese scientists raised an important question as it looked to determine if humans and animals could one day reproduce in space. To test and better study this fact, the researchers deployed frozen sperm and stored it aboard the ISS. As it returned to Earth, these same samples helped give birth to healthy baby mice.

Frozen Sperm can Help Give Birth to Healthy Mice Babies, but Here on Earth

The researchers pointed out that the ISS (International Space Station) has to deal with an average daily dose of radiation 100 times higher than that here on the planet. In turn, this could lead to damages to the reproductive system of most animals.

So to better establish the effects of living in space on animal offspring, the team freeze-dried mouse sperm. These samples were then launched in space and stored aboard the ISS. They were kept there in between August 2013 to May 2014 or 288 days at -139 degrees Fahrenheit.

At the same time, the researchers preserved an identical set of samples here on Earth, but under the same conditions. As the space-bound frozen sperm returned from its trip, it was analyzed and compared to the terrestrially kept one.

The research team found that the ISS samples showed signs if DNA damage, slightly more than the control ones. This came as quite a surprise, according to Teruhiko Wakayama, the study’s senior author.

Still, the space-bound frozen sperm was also used for the in vitro fertilization of female mice. The team compared the average birth rates resulting from the two samples groups and noted that they were comparable. They also found that the male-to-female ratio was in the normal range.

An analysis of the healthy mice babies and their genomes also revealed only minor differences to the other offspring. As the space fertilized babies grew, they developed into normal, fertile adults, which then had healthy offspring of their own.

The study team published its research results in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Their research findings generated mixed opinions, as some underline its being a first step in the area. At the same time, others pointed out the results’ dependency on several factors, such as their Earth return.

But as the study author Wakayama pointed out ” it is too preliminary to say it is a good idea or if it is possible.”

Image Source: Pixabay