There may be a quadrillion tons of diamond in the Earth’s depths — but we’ll never mine it

BY MIHAI ANDREI

Researchers have discovered what appears to be a cache of diamonds hidden in the Earth’s mantle. This suggests that, at a geological scale, diamond might not be the exotic mineral we once thought it to be — they may be quite common, though not easily accessible.

Diamond embedded in a rock matrix.

Image credits: Rob Lavinsky.

Earthquakes and diamonds

The world’s deepest borehole goes down 12.262 kilometers (40,230 ft). How is it then that we know so much about the depths of the Earth, which boasts an average radius of over 6,300 km? As is so often the case, scientists have gathered a trove of data which enabled them to infer many things beyond sight — in this case, of the Earth’s interior properties.

A Stash of a Quadrillion Tons of Diamonds May Be Hiding Deep Inside Earth

Most of this data comes from seismic waves — which are essentially subsurface acoustic waves. Every time an earthquake (or a large enough explosion) takes place, it sends out seismic waves which can be picked up by seismic stations across the world. According to the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Earthquake Information Center, there are over 3000 seismic stations currently operating across the world.

Seismometers record the ground movement on a seismograph. Based on the wiggles of the seismograph, certain pieces of information can be drawn, particularly about the nature of the ground the wave has passed through. Of course, this is a great simplification and the seismogram analysis process is much more intricate, often involving a great deal of complexity and mathematical algorithms. You can pick up simpler things, like where the earthquake epicenter was and how much energy the earthquake had, or use the data for complex things — like constructing an image of what the Earth’s interior might look like.

A simplified “slice” of the Earth, showing its major components (not to scale).

Image credits: Siyavula Education.

For decades, agencies such as the USGS, universities, and research groups have been keeping track of this seismic activity. Among many other things, scientists have noticed an intriguing anomaly: the velocity of some seismic waves in some areas could not be explained with our existing knowledge of the Earth’s structure.

In this particular case, an MIT team aimed to identify the composition of so-called cratonic roots that might explain the spikes in seismic speeds. They concluded that the reason for this anomaly is diamonds.

“This shows that diamond is not perhaps this exotic mineral, but on the [geological] scale of things, it’s relatively common,” says Ulrich Faul, a research scientist in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences. “We can’t get at them, but still, there is much more diamond there than we have ever thought before.”

Cratons

Cratons whose ancient rocks are widely exposed at the surface are typically called shields. If the ancient rocks are largely overlain by a cover of younger rocks, the craton is generally referred to as a platform.

Image credits: USGS.

The Earth’s crust made out of mobile, dynamic tectonic plates. We don’t see that because the movement is essentially unnoticeable at a human scale, but at a geological scale, tectonic plates move about quite a lot. Most tectonic plates’ movement is on the scale of a few centimeters per year.

Cratons are very old and stable parts of the Earth’s tectonic crust. Most cratons on Earth have survived cycles of merging and rifting of continents, and are typically located at the interior of tectonic plates. They have a thick crust and deep lithospheric “roots” that can extend several hundred kilometers into the Earth’s mantle.

Cratons are also colder and less dense than the surrounding mantle, which means that they would yield slightly faster seismic waves — but this alone can’t entirely account for the speed anomaly. So there must be something else.

“The velocities that are measured are faster than what we think we can reproduce with reasonable assumptions about what is there,” Faul says. “Then we have to say, ‘There is a problem.’ That’s how this project started.”

In order to solve this conundrum, Faul and colleagues started assembling virtual rocks which could theoretically exist at the temperature and pressure conditions in those parts of the mantle. They then calculated how fast seismic waves would pass through these structures, to see if this would fit the observed seismic data.

They found that the data would be best explained by a craton rock composition of 1 to 2 percent diamond. This would translate to about quadrillion tons of diamond.

In a way, this makes a lot of sense. We know that diamonds are forged deep in the bowels of the Earth, in high-pressure, high-temperature environments. The only reason why we’re able to find diamonds is that they’re brought closer to the surface by volcanic eruptions which act like “pipes” — bringing them to the surface, where we at least have a chance of finding them.

Of course, it’s important to note that Faul and colleagues found no direct evidence that the craton roots do contain diamonds, it’s just that this explanation seems to fit best. But this line of thinking has brought us so far, so at least for now, it seems convincing enough.

“It’s circumstantial evidence, but we’ve pieced it all together,” Faul says. “We went through all the different possibilities, from every angle, and this is the only one that’s left as a reasonable explanation.”

Journal Reference: Joshua M. Garber et al. Multidisciplinary “Constraints on the Abundance of Diamond and Eclogite in the Cratonic Lithosphere”, Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems (2018). DOI: 10.1029/2018GC007534.

Scientists found a quadrillion tons of diamonds hiding in Earth

{ https://www.zmescience.com/ }

18-07-2018 om 22:59 geschreven door peter  

Every point of light in this photo is a galaxy

BY MIHAI ANDREI 

Ever had a moment when you feel like you’re important and what you do matters? Here’s the antidote.

Infrared view of a section within the North Galactic Pole, a region near the constellation Coma Berenices. Every point of light in this image represents anentire galaxy. 

Image: ESA/Herschel/SPIRE; M. W. L. Smith et al 2017.

At a first glance, not much is going on in this image — just some yellowish noise on a blue-green background. But this photo from ESA’s Herschel Space Observatory shows much more than you’d think: every yellowish speck is a galaxy.

This is the North Galactic Pole, an area which covers some 180 square degrees of the sky and features a galaxy-rich cluster known as the Coma Cluster, which contains at least 1,000 points of light (read: galaxies).

Visual depiction of the spherical coordinate system for a point P.The polar angle is in blue, the azimuthal angle in red.

Just like on Earth, astronomers define observations using a coordinate system — but unlike the XYZ coordinate systems you might be more familiar with, they use a spherical coordinate system. In the former, a point is described by its X, Y, and Z coordinates.

A visual depiction of the spherical coordinate system for a point P. The polar angle is in blue, the azimuthal angle in red.

In a spherical system, a point is also described by three coordinates but, in this case, it’s the radial distance of that point from a fixed origin, the polar angle, and the azimuth angle. It can be a bit weird to wrap your head around, but it can be much easier to navigate astronomical observations. 

So here, we have the North Galactic Pole, which lies far from the cluttered disc of the Milky Way and offers a good view of the distant Universe beyond our home galaxy.

Zoomed-in view showing about 8 percent of the entire photo width. How many galaxies can you count?
Image: ESA/Herschel/SPIRE; M. W. L. Smith et al 2017. via Gizmodo.

The image above was taken at a wavelength of 250 μm, in the infrared range (the human visible range is generally within 0.4 – 0.7 μm).  It was taken using the Herschel Astrophysical Terahertz Large Area Survey (H-ATLAS). Unfortunately, Herschel isn’t active anymore — it functioned from 2009 to 2013, using its instruments to study the sky in the far infrared range.

Aside from making us feel incredibly small and showing us just how puny our struggles really are, these pictures also help astronomers to estimate how many galaxies there are in the Universe. Recent surveys have estimated that number to be around 20 trillion, which is 20 times more than previous estimates gathered using the Hubble telescope. All these galaxies are packed with billions of stars, which can also host planets just like Earth.

Kind of puts things into perspective, doesn’t it?

{ https://www.zmescience.com/ }

18-07-2018 om 22:41 geschreven door peter  

Twelve new moons discovered around Jupiter, pointing to a violent past

BY ALEXANDRU MICU

Jupiter is definitely the most popular planet in the Solar System — at least as far as moons are concerned.

Image credits NASA / JPL-Caltech / JunoCam.

In Roman mythology, Jupiter (Zeus for the Greek) is quite the player. Never content to let a pretty mortal get by without his (usually unwanted) affections, the mythos abounds with the thunder god’s, um, transgressions. Which, quite understandably, gets everyone in deep trouble with his wife Juno (Hera in Greek mythology).

New research shows that the planet Jupiter is also quite happy to collect consorts. Twelve new moons have been discovered orbiting it, bringing the gas giant’s total collection to an impressive 79 moons — more than any other planet in the Solar System. One of these moons, according to the researchers who made the discovery, is an “oddball” that might help explain how the ochre giant got all of its moons. In a twist of mythological foreshadowing, it likely wasn’t a peaceful process.

12 new moons discovered around Jupiter

New moons

The team from the Carnegie Institution for Science (story source) first spotted the moons in the spring of 2017. They weren’t looking for the moons per se — the team was actually looking for very distant objects in the Solar System as part of the hunt for Planet X, nestled somewhere far beyond Pluto. Some of the members involved in this research were actually part of the team that proposed the existence of this planet in the first place.

But back to the moons. As luck would have it, the researchers were simply looking in the right place at the right time to spot the gas giant — so they decided to have a look.

“Jupiter just happened to be in the sky near the search fields where we were looking for extremely distant Solar System objects, so we were serendipitously able to look for new moons around Jupiter while at the same time looking for planets at the fringes of our Solar System,” said team leader Scott Sheppard.

Based on these observations, members of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) calculated the orbits of the recorded bodies — and were surprised to see that they didn’t match any of Jupiter’s known moons.

“It takes several observations to confirm an object actually orbits around Jupiter,” said Gareth Williams, from the IAU’s Minor Planet Center, who was involved in the orbit calulations. “So, the whole process took a year.”

Various groupings of Jovian moons with the newly discovered ones shown in bold.
Image credits Roberto Molar-Candanosa / Carnegie Institution for Science.

Nine of these bodies are more distant relative to other Jovian moons, and orbit in retrograde — the opposite direction of the planet’s spin. These distant moons form at least three distinct orbital groups; the team believes they’re the remnants of larger bodies that broke apart during past collisions with asteroids, comets, or other moons. They generally take about two years to orbit their host planet.

Two others form a closer group that orbits in the prograde — the same direction as Jupiter’s rotation. Since they both have similar orbital distances and inclinations relative to Jupiter, they’re also likely remnants from a larger moon that since broke apart. They take just shy of a year to orbit Jupiter.

The most surprising moon, however, is the runt of the litter.

“Our other discovery is a real oddball and has an orbit like no other known Jovian moon,” Sheppard explained. “It’s also likely Jupiter’s smallest known moon, being less than one kilometer in diameter.”

This tiny moon has a more inclined orbit and keeps a wider berth to the planet that the prograde group. Its orbit crosses that of the outer, retrograde group, making head-on collisions much more likely between itself and this latter group.

This situation could explain how Jupiter got so many moons. Today, head-on collision would break any of the bodies “down to dust”, Shepard says, and could shatter a larger body into the tiny moons of today. It’s possible then that the current various moon groupings were formed in the distant past through such collisions.

The oddball itself could be all that remains of a much larger prograde moon that impacted with other bodies to create the retrograde group identified by the team. It has yet to be christened, but the name Valetudo (the Roman goddess of health and hygiene and Jupiter’s great-granddaughter) has been suggested.

{ https://www.zmescience.com/ }

18-07-2018 om 22:32 geschreven door peter  

9 bizarre wetenschappelijke ontdekkingen -  HLN.be

Bron: Medical News Today

Onderzoekers houden zich normaal zoet met de grote levensvragen. Zo riep Archimedes luidkeels eureka uit eenmaal hij zijn beroemde natuurkundewet neerschreef die verklaart waarom een schip blijft drijven. Newton testte met behulp van een appel uit hoe de zwaartekracht werkt en Thomas Edison gaf ons meer dan enkel kaarslicht: de gloeilamp.

Lees ook

Van Cleopatra’s vibrator tot da Vinci’s auto

Natuurlijk is het vandaag de dag wat moeilijker om een belangrijk onopgelost vraagstuk te vinden. Dus houden wetenschappers zich bezig met bedenkelijke experimenten met even bizarre resultaten. Nieuwsgierigheid is toch de motor van de wetenschap?

1. Één kilogram veren

“Wat weegt meer? Een kilogram lood of een kilogram veren?” Het is een klassieke instinker. Logischerwijs zouden beide opties evenveel wegen. Het hoopje pluimen is waarschijnlijk wel een pak groter.

Toch bewees een proef het tegendeel. Onderzoekers blinddoekten enkele personen waarna ze een doos gevuld met lood en een doos gevuld met hetzelfde gewicht aan veren moesten optillen. Wanneer men hen vroeg om de zwaarste doos aan te duiden, selecteerden de meeste proefpersonen de doos met veren.

2. Van vetberg naar biodiesel

In 2017 werd Londen geteisterd door een gigantische blokkade van de rioleringen. Bijna 250.000 kilogram samengekoekt vet, luiers, toiletdoekjes en ander afval had zich opgehoopt en verhinderde de goede werking het rioolbeheer.

Eenmaal de bevoegde instanties de reusachtige berg afval verwijderden, gingen de beelden de wereld rond. Het prikkelde niet enkel de nieuwsgierige kijker maar ook enkele wetenschappers. Ze beweerden dat ze de vetberg voor andere doeleinden konden gebruiken. Ze besloten de berg in kleinere stukken te hakken en het afval van het vet te scheiden. Dat vet zetten ze uiteindelijk om in biodiesel, een milieuvriendelijkere brandstof dan diesel en benzine. Zo’n 350-tal bussen konden een dag rondrijden met het resultaat van het experiment.

3. De kracht van pinguïnuitwerpselen

Wanneer pinguïns poepen, doen ze dat gewoon vanuit hun nest. Dat lijkt misschien niet zo netjes. Toch bevuilen de zeevogels hun slaapplaats niet. Ze bewegen hun achterste simpelweg naar de rand van het nest waarna ze met enorm veel druk hun uitwerpselen naar achter spuiten. De druk die daarbij komt kijken is veel groter dan die bij de menselijke ontlasting. Je zou er als ongelukkige pinguïn maar net achter staan.

4. Blinkende vrouwen door anticonceptiepil

In 1994, toen de anticonceptiepil een beetje beter in de markt lag, onderzochten wetenschappers wat voor ’n zichtbaar effect het pilletje had op vrouwen. Zo ondervonden ze dat vrouwen die de pil innamen feller blonken dan vrouwen die dat niet deden.

Al lijkt het niet meteen geloofwaardig, recenter onderzoek bewijst dat een anticonceptiepil een invloed uitoefent op 150 verschillende biologische functies. Eentje daarvan is waarschijnlijk verantwoordelijk voor een vettere en glimmende huid.

5. Een vinger in de poep tegen het hikken

In de jaren ’90 kon een zestigjarige man maar niet stoppen met hikken. Een vervelend kwaaltje vond hij. Dus bezocht hij zijn dokter. Die dacht dat het misschien te wijten was aan de neussonde die zijn patiënt moest dragen. Maar ook na het verwijderen van de sonde stopte het hikken niet. Vervolgens schreef hij de oude man enkele medicijnen voor. Tevergeefs.

Tenslotte zocht de wanhopige dokter zijn antwoord bij een eerder gerapporteerd geval. Daar werd de patiënt van zijn lijden verlost met behulp van een prostaatmassage. Kortom, de dokter stak zijn vinger in de poep van zijn patiënt en vreemd genoeg kon dat soelaas bieden.

6. De gevaren van een grasmaaier

Heb je jezelf al eens ooit pijn gedaan tijdens het grasmaaien? Dan ben je niet alleen. In 1988 ondervonden enkele onderzoekers dat maar liefst 70.000 van de verwondingen in de Verenigde Staten te wijten waren aan grasmaaiers. Daarvan ging het bij vijf procent om een pijnlijke wonde aan het oog.

Al denk je dat het er misschien op vooruit ging omdat grasmaaiers heel wat hipper zijn, nieuwe studies bewijzen het tegendeel. Intussen blijkt de grasmaaier verantwoordelijk te zijn voor 75 doden per jaar. Ook het aantal gewonden wordt alleen maar groter. Meestal gaat het om verwonde vingers of handen.

7. Kleur van medicatie doet er toe

Nog voordat we een pilletje innemen, vraagt ons brein zich al of het zal werken of niet. De kleur en vorm ervan beïnvloeden het verdict. Blauwe medicatie wordt als kalmerend waargenomen. Pillen met een rode en oranje kleur hebben een tegengesteld effect. Van zulke pillen verwacht men een stimulerend effect en die verwachting wordt meestal ingelost, zelfs bij placebo’s. Gele varianten hebben dan weer een antidepressieve werking en heldere kleuren blijken over het algemeen een beter effect te hebben dan neutrale kleurtjes.

8. Viagra verlost hamsters van hun jetlag

Hoe ze in godsnaam op het idee kwamen, weet niemand. In 2007 vermoedden enkele vernuftige onderzoekers dat Viagra een handje kon helpen bij het verwerken van hamsters hun jetlag. Ze wijzigden de tijdzone en simuleerden een verschil van zes uur. Na het toedienen van Viagra bleken de hamsters tot vijftig procent sneller te herstellen van het tijdsverschil dan de hamsters die geen hulp kregen. Of de sekspil eenzelfde invloed heeft op de mens moet nog onderzocht worden.

9. Honden poepen enkel noord of zuid 

Let eens op de manier waarop je hond poept. Tenslotte toont onderzoek aan dat de dieren steevast naar het noorden of het zuiden kijken wanneer ze hun uitwerpselen lozen. Blijkbaar doen ze dat omdat ze zich bewust zijn van het magnetisch veld van onze aarde. En ze zijn niet alleen. Ook koeien en herten houden er rekening mee. Leg gerust een kompas naast je trouwe viervoeter wanneer hij nog eens hurkt.  

{ https://www.hln.be/ }

18-07-2018 om 17:51 geschreven door peter  

The Hunt for Earth’s Deep Hidden Oceans

{ https://www.quantamagazine.org/ }

18-07-2018 om 17:32 geschreven door peter  

18-07-2018 om 17:18 geschreven door peter  

At first, ancient Egyptians buried all of their dead, regardless of social status, in pits in the sand that covers much of their country. The dry air quickly and naturally preserved these bodies, giving Egyptian religions support for their beliefs in the afterlife. Unfortunately, animals had no such respect for the human dead, so the bodies were later placed in coffins or sarcophagi, which protected them from beasts but not from decomposition. Somewhere around 2800 BCE, a type of artificial mummification began to be developed and tested, using oils and minerals and techniques that have mystified and baffled those trying to duplicate them.

Until now.

At a press conference in Cairo, Egypt’s Ministry of Antiquities announced that German and Egyptian archeologists led by Ramadan Badry Hussein have uncovered an ancient laboratory or workshop dating back to the Saite-Persian period (664-404 BCE) which contains fragments of mummy cartonnages (funeral masks), canopic jars (used for storing human organs removed before mummification) and clay and glazed ceramic cups (pictures here). Even more exciting to Hussein was the discovery of the ingredients and possible measurements for making the secret embalming fluids.

“This [discovery] is so important as it’s extensive. We have oils and measuring cups – all of them are labelled … from this we can find the chemical composition of the oils and discover what they are.”

Set of canopic jars

The laboratory was located next to a 30 meter (98 foot) shaft filled with the end results – mummies. On one of these mummies they found something nearly as significant as the workshop – a gilded silver mask belonging to a priest. Only a handful of these masks covered with precious metals have been found due to looting.

That brings us to how the mummy lab was found in the first place. The Saqqara necropolis of Memphis was last excavated in 1900 but was looted in 2011 during Egyptian protests. It was reopened in 2016 as part of Egypt’s push to use archeology to increase tourism. Artifacts from the discovery of the mummy lab are already on display at the Grand Egyptian Museum, which is still under construction.

Is this push to increase Egyptian tourism through mummies the new looting? Despite warnings, archeologists plan to open a giant mysterious sarcophagus discovered in Alexandria. Researchers are also going back to previously-investigated tombs and sites to search again. Is archeology and history being pushed aside in the name of money? Peru seems to be making an attempt to protect its mummies – real or otherwise – and the World Congress on Mummy Studies is pushing for the same in other countries. Can the mummy workshop at least be protected until its secrets are studied by scholars?

Or is this just another example of why we can’t have nice things?

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

18-07-2018 om 17:09 geschreven door peter  

Emerald City Found On Moon In NASA Photo Index, July 2018, Video, UFO Sighting News.

Date of discovery: July 18, 2018
Location of discovery: Earths moon
Source photo: (21MB) http://ser.sese.asu.edu/MOON/CLEM_COLOR/moon.tiff

I founds some mind-blowing alien structures in this large moon photo from the Univ of Arizona index controlled by the USGS and NASA. 

The most remarkable thing I found was an emerald green dome over a crater. Reminds me of the Emerald City from the Wizard of Oz. 

There were also two large black shiny domes over craters not far away. I'm not sure how astronomers around the world have ignored such discoverers, but from my research I have learned that NASA has donated a lot of money to observatories around the world, probably to control their research and their released findings. 

Its up to us, the public to release the truth about the existence of aliens. The truth is...every planet and moon in our solar system has had alien life upon it or within it.
Scott C. Waring

{ http://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

18-07-2018 om 17:03 geschreven door peter  

Large “Mythological” Fire Bird Spotted Near Yellowstone

A strange colorful bird has been spotted on the Grand Teton National Park live webcam just days after a highly popular area near Jenny Lake in Grand Teton National Park located near the Yellowstone National Park has been closed to the public for the immediate future due to concerns over expanding cracks and fissures in a large rock formation.

While Yellowstone seems to be in a perpetual state of unrest with its Steamboat geyser that has erupted for the 11th time since March and now the expanding cracks and fissures at the Grand Teton National Park the appearance of this colorful bird that resembles the mythological fire bird is at least odd.

The fire bird also called as a phoenix is a sacred fire bird found in the mythologies of many cultures and described as a large magical glowing bird with majestic plumage that glows brightly emitting red, orange, and yellow light, like a bonfire that is just past the turbulent flame.

The fire bird can be seen at around the 2.08 mark in the video and according to the ancient legend the fire bird comes from a faraway land which is both a blessing and a bringer of doom.

  

{ http://ufosightingshotspot.blogspot.com/ }

18-07-2018 om 12:31 geschreven door peter  

Roads have always seemed to attract about them tales of the strange and unusual. They push out, further and further ahead of us, their destinations not visible, mysterious, as the landscape rushes by us, sometimes bringing with it bizarreness. It is perhaps this almost primal sense of oddness that has spawned countless tales of haunted roads, inhabited by all manner of strange entities and apparitions. One feature of some spooky haunted roads are ghost lights, also called spook lights, dancing and twirling in the dark to baffle and amaze, and sometimes they seem to be far from harmless.

Real Ghost Or Unexplained Light (Crossett, Arkansas)

Some malevolent spook lights seem to be linked to some sort of phantom motorists, and perhaps one of the more well-known of these is said to prowl a rural road in Switzerland, in St. Johns County, Florida, in the United States. Here there is a modest little road called Greenbriar Road, which runs just east of the main town, and there have for years been tales of a rather aggressive spook light that stalks vehicles that dare to drive along here at night. The enigmatic light is typically said to look just like a motorcycle headlight, which will pull up behind cars and steadily catch up no matter how fast one goes, growing ever larger in the rear view mirrors of the startled drivers.

The light of Greenbriar Road will then either chase the car until it is gone, or bizarrely perch itself atop the vehicle, sort of piggybacking the car for some distance before blinking out of existence as if it were never there at all. In some cases the mysterious light has even been blamed for causing crashes along this lonely stretch of road. The most common origin story for this mysterious light is that it is the wraith of a doomed motorcyclist who died along the road when he was decapitated after running into a telephone pole wire, and that he now terrorizes the stretch upon which he met his fate, with only the headlight of his phantom bike visible. One witness named Todd M. gave an account on the site Weird U.S. thus:

A few years ago I went to see Greenbriar Road at night with three of my friends. We had heard the stories about that light that people see and we wanted to see it. We drove up and down the road for like forty-minutes trying to see something but never saw anything until we got ready to leave. My friend Tom was driving and he looked in the rear view mirror and said what is that? We looked behind us and there was the headlight of a motorcycle coming up fast. We slowed down a little and thought that the biker would pass us but then just as it got right behind us about a hundred feet the light went out. There was no motorcycle or anything. We turned around and went back but didn’t see anything. I really think we saw a ghost biker of that guy that was killed on his motorcycle on that road.

The malignant Greenbriar ghost light is so well-known in the area that it has been the target of paranormal investigations and even scientific studies and police investigations trying to find a rational explanation for what people are seeing, but no explanation has ever been found. Speaking of phantom motorcyclists, there is another similar spook said to haunt a remote stretch of road winding through the rural farming community of Exeter, in Tulare County, California, which is supposedly the stomping ground of a similar ghost.

In this case, in the 1950s a group of friends allegedly decided to play a prank on one of their friends by stretching out some rope across a narrow road called Bardsley road, in the Fresno Valley, after which they lied in wait for their motorcycle riding pal to come cruising by on his way home from work. The plan was for the rope to just hit him in the chest and knock him off his bike, which was pretty mean but they certainly didn’t intend to seriously hurt him, certainly not kill him.

The Mysterious "Paulding Light" (unedited)

The story goes that the rider came along the darkened road as expected and hit the rope just as expected. What wasn’t expected was that the rope would be too high and lop his head clean off to go rolling across the pavement. In the aftermath of the gruesome accident, people started occasionally claiming to see a bright light shooting up and down the road, sometimes accompanied by the sound of a motorcycle engine, and with the full apparition of a headless rider visible as well. Motorists and people walking along the road at night have also told of being followed or even chased by the phantasm motorcyclist, and it is believed that if you encounter the rider you will be cursed to be in an accident yourself.

Adding to these a is headless rider is said to prowl Creek Road of Ojai, California, apparently riding a vintage 1940s motorcycle and appearing as a glowing light at first, often pulling up next to motorists to bang on their vehicles or chasing them. Interestingly, Creek Road is ground zero for all manner of ghostly phenomena and high strangeness, including at least two phantom horse riders, numerous apparitions, a smoking, horribly burned and disfigured entity called the Char Man, and even a supposed vampire, making a headless motorcycle rider actually one of the less bizarre tales from this place. For more on phantom motorcyclists, you can read my article on this phenomenon here.

Other sinister spook lights seem to be malevolent spirits or even possibly demons. Located out just northeast of Jacksonville, Florida, is St. George Island, which is home to a historic sugar cane, cotton, and corn plantation from the slave days called Kingsley Plantation, established by a Zephaniah Kingsley in 1813. The original plantation would quickly grow until Kingsley owned around a total of 32,000 acres of land and employed about 200 slaves. Despite having so many slaves, Kingsley was known for being a very lax and kind master, allowing his workforce to basically do whatever they wanted when they were off duty, and they were allowed to sell any crafts they made on their own time. Kingsley even married one of his slaves, Ana Madgigine Jai, who would go on to take a prominent management role on the plantation, own her own land, and end up being one of the richest women in the state.

Although conditions were much better for slaves on the Kingsley plantation than they were elsewhere, there was some amount of tragedy on the plantation nevertheless. At some point one of the slaves allegedly took to beating and raping other female slaves, even according to the stories murdering a few and hiding their bodies in the wilderness. When the other slaves got wind of this grim behavior they are said to have gathered a lynch mob to hunt the perpetrator down and hanged on a massive, spooky looking oak tree right in front of the plantation along the main road to the premises, leaving his lifeless body to swing there in the wind. Although Kingsley would move to Haiti along with all of his slaves in 1837, it seems that at least some of them remained, in a macabre sense.

Over the years the Kingsley plantation has come to gather quite a reputation for being intensely haunted, supposedly by the ghosts of those murdered here. One is a woman in white that is frequently spotted roaming around, and has a habit of photo-bombing pictures taken at the locale, while another is an unearthly  screaming or wailing that supposedly emanates from the old abandoned well on the property, said to be from a victim of the crime spree whose body was unceremoniously dumped down there in the darkness.

Kingsley Plantation

However, one of the most frightening of the spirits of the old Kingsley Plantation is supposedly the vindictive spirit of the slave murderer himself, who terrorizes the plantation’s creepy and rugged unpaved road. This particularly malicious spirit typically takes the form of two malevolent, angry looking red lights, said to be his glowing eyes, earning the phantom the name “Old Red Eyes.” These lights will supposedly appear behind cars right about at the old oak tree and chase them, in some reports even relentlessly attacking them. One report of an encounter with Old Red Eyes was described by a witness thus:

I’ve saw Old Red Eye several years ago. I have a friend that lives just off that road and had taken him home from Jacksonville one night. It was about midnight and after dropping him off, I was driving back down that road to the hard road and looked in the side mirror on my car and saw two red lights. At first I thought it was the tail lights of another car but they were too close together. I slowed down a little and watched them in the mirror and it looked like they were coming closer. I knew that I had not passed another car and it did not seem like a car would be coming down that dark road backwards. I stopped and stuck my head out the window and looked back and there was nothing there. Then I looked in the mirror again and there they were and they were right behind my car. I gunned it and got the hell out of there. What I saw wasn’t a car.

Just as ominous is the appropriately named “Demon’s Road” in Huntsville, Texas, which is already spooky enough, as it meanders through groves of twisted trees and darkened woods and ends up at the desolate Martha’s Chapel Cemetery. The real name is Bowden Road, but it has earned its nickname in the decidedly frightening phenomena that have been reported from here, such as shadow people, a ghostly child on a tricycle, a hulking faceless beast, a strange hooded figure, and arms reaching out from graves. There are many spirits said to lurk along the murky stretches of this road and in the cemetery, but one of the creepiest is a ghost light that seems to be quite malicious indeed.

Motorists venturing down the Demon’s Road have often reported mysterious red lights hovering about in the dark, the number of which seems to depend on how many people are in the vehicle at the time. These spook lights will supposedly aggressively pursue cars, and spookiest of all, will leave unexplained handprints on the outside. Indeed these lights have plagued many who have travelled down the road, often leaving those handprints and always hostile, sometimes even clawing or grabbing at cars to leave scratches and dents behind. What could this diabolical force be and why does it want to attack vehicles? Who knows?

Another case in Texas of an aggressive ghost light is that said to roam a road in Hardin County leading from Bragg to Saratoga, which actually at one point was a part of the Santa Fe Railroad back in the early 1900s before being paved over to be turned into a road. In an area called Big Thicket there have long been reports of a multicolored spook light hovering about at night along the road and in the surrounding wilderness, with many of them pointing at the light being quite evil.

Even from beginning the reports of the Big Thicket ghost light, also called the Saratoga ghost light, were far from friendly. Hunters reported being chased by the lights and it was not uncommon to here of them rushing amongst horses to send the animals into a panicked frenzy, to the point that on at least one occasion a horse drawn wagon was forced to go crashing into a ditch because of the lights. At the time the lights became a pretty widespread rumor, attracting all sorts of curiosity seekers, and author F.E. Abernethy would explain of the phenomenon in his book Tales from the Big Thicket thus:

Light-seers poured onto the road by the hundreds. People of all ages and intellects came to see and test their belief in the supernatural. They shot at it, they chased it, and they tested it with litmus paper and geiger counters. A preacher harangued the road’s multitudes from the top of his car, making the Light as an ill omen of the world’s impending doom. There were some nights the light didn’t show at all, but for the most part it was there to inspire stories that could be passed on, to change and grow at the will and imagination of the story teller.

The Big Thicket Ghost Light road

In later years the light did not stop its antics in the slightest bit, with reports of it chasing people or even attacking them common, such as cases in which the light stopped car engines, burned people’s hands, or even violently knocked them down. There have been reports of cars being dinged, dented, or smashed by the ghost light, and it is generally not something one wants to encounter while driving down the already eerie rural road. As usual there have been many attempts to rationally explain the Big Thicket Light, such as that it is some sort of illusion, swamp gas, or merely headlights, and there have been a fair number of more paranormal explanations as well, including that it is the spirit of a hunter or Civil War soldier, or even that it is a curse placed over a lost Spanish treasure. Whatever the case may be, the stories of the evil ghost light of Saratoga persist.

Texas seems to be a haven for such spook lights, because there is another road in this state that has its own scary stories of such entities. In the area of the Mitchell Flat, east of Marfa, Texas, there have long been reports of mystery lights floating out over the desert landscape since at least the 1800s. The phenomena are usually described as dancing orbs of light that zip and zoom low to the ground over the parched desert scrub, and they have collectively been coined the “Marfa Lights.” While the phenomenon is puzzling but usually harmless, there have been some reports that show these lights can be rather frightening on occasion.

In one report from Weird Texas, one man named Tim Stevens gave an account of a very bizarre experience witnesses by a friend of his father’s named Roy while traveling down Route 90 in the 1970s. According to the report, Roy had been driving for hours out from San Antonio after sunset and just before dark, and there had been no other cars out on this remote stretch of the highway that evening. Suddenly, he noticed what he took to be headlights in his rear view mirror. For some time the lights remained a comfortable distance away, but at some point the lights quickly closed the distance to follow right behind him. The report explained the follwing sequence of events:

My dad said that Roy had been driving with the lights a comfortable distance behind him for several minutes when the vehicle sped and up and approached his truck rapidly. For a few seconds, he honestly thought he was about to be rear-ended. Before an impact occurred, however, the lights stopped a few feet short of hitting his truck. At 60 MPH, in the middle of an otherwise deserted highway, it probably wasn’t too much to ask for the courtesy of a little breathing room. So Roy tapped the brakes. The driver of the vehicle behind him maintained his distance. Roy again tapped his brakes––no response. Finally, very annoyed, Roy jammed hard on his brakes for a fraction of a second. To his amazement, the vehicle behind him stayed the exact distance from his rear bumper as it had been.

Roy decided to try a different approach. He said he floored the gas pedal making his small truck shudder and lurch ahead. The speed crept up to 80 MPH. The lights behind him reacted in perfect unison, staying several feet behind his truck, as it approached speeds Roy was sure he’d never pushed it to before. At nearly 100 MPH, the truck was beginning to vibrate badly, but the lights did not waiver.

Enough was enough. Roy eased off the gas and let the truck coast down to a sane speed, and then he stood on the brakes. The tires screeched and smoked, and the truck pitched and slid slightly to the side––but the whole time, Roy watched the lights in the mirror. They stayed in exactly the same spot until the truck came to a stop. Roy then saw something completely unexpected––the lights shot out, off the road to the right, and fired across the desert like missiles. He craned his neck around to try and follow them visually, impressed by the driver’s driving on what was sure to be very rough road. He smiled and was about to drive on when a thought occurred to him.

He frowned, and, making sure that he wasn’t about to be run over by a big rig or other traffic, put his truck in reverse and slowly backed up maybe a couple of hundred feet. He checked the barbed wire fence line for a road, a gate, or other break of some kind where his pursuer might have slipped through––but there was none. Roy said he was pretty spooked, alright. Off in the distance he could see lights moved swiftly across the horizon.

Whatever this was, whether it was connected to the Marfa Lights or not, it certainly seems hard to explain away as a trick of light or headlight reflections from the distance. Ghost lights have been a persistent phenomenon within the world of the weird, and there have been countless theories to try and explain them. Yet, none seem to touch on those lights that seem to reach out from the merely mysterious to lash out at those who encounter them. Is there some explanation for this or is this hoaxes and tall tales? If it is indeed real, then why do these particular spook lights cling to these locations, and why do they seem so hostile and threatening? It seems to be beyond our ability to comprehend at this point, and these lights may flit about the periphery of our understanding prowling their haunting grounds without ever being satisfactorily explained.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

18-07-2018 om 01:26 geschreven door peter  

Which is more shocking: the fact that Jupiter has at least 12 more moons than once thought or the fact that they were discovered by real astronomers who were looking for the mythical Planet Nine? Planetary scientists announced that the discovery of the tiny and somewhat erratic moons brings Jupiter’s total to 79, but are they just bragging to cover up the time they spent searching for an allegedly apocalyptic yet unproven giant planet?

12 new moons discovered around Jupiter

“Jupiter just happened to be in the sky near the search fields where we were looking for extremely distant Solar System objects, so we were serendipitously able to look for new moons around Jupiter while at the same time looking for planets at the fringes of our Solar System.”

In a press release by The Carnegie Institution for Science, part of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, astronomer Scott S. Sheppard admitted publicly that he and his team were looking for Planet Nine or Planet X in 2017 when Jupiter passed into the field of vision of their telescopes and they spotted the 12 tiny new moons. “Tiny” is an overstatement – most the moons range from just one to three miles in diameter. It required waiting a year for them to appear a few more times before the team was confident enough to announce the find.

Jupiter and its four biggest moons

12 new moons discovered around Jupiter

Nine of the newly discovered moons are in three groups making distant retrograde orbits (opposite Jupiter’s rotation) and the researchers speculate they may be what’s left of three larger moons that suffered collisions with each other, other moons, asteroids or comets. Two more moons are closer to Jupiter and follow its spin. Their matching orbits and tilts indicate they were probably once a single moon.

Then there’s the tiny eccentric satellite.

“Our other discovery is a real oddball and has an orbit like no other known Jovian moon. It’s also likely Jupiter’s smallest known moon, being less than one kilometer in diameter. This is an unstable situation.”

According to Sheppard, this moon’s orbit is prograde despite being far enough from Jupiter that it should be retrograde or at least off-kilter due to collisions. The abundance of these tiny moons suggests that they formed after the solar system’s planetary creation had settled down, allowing them to survive rather than be knocked down by Jupiter’s formational gas and dust.

While Sheppard seemed excited about the discovery of this odd and minute moon, its chosen moniker suggests otherwise. The astronomers named it Valetudo after the Roman goddess of health and hygiene. Really? There’s a goddess of hygiene? How far down the line of succession is she?

Valetudo

And what about Planet Nine? The announcement seems to overplay the discovery of moons around a planet that already had five dozen of them and doesn’t mention much about the Planet Nine search. Is it being phased out due to lack of success? Did the discovery of Valetudo and her friends save some jobs?

Is there a god of hygiene or did the Romans figure men wouldn’t listen to one anyways?

{https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

18-07-2018 om 01:12 geschreven door peter  

A giant black sarcophagus the likes of which have never been seen before has been found deep within the ground in Egypt, and a whole lot of scientists want to open it – despite having neither one earthly nor one unearthly idea what might lie waiting possibly maliciously inside. Say it with me now: “What! Could! Go! Wrong?” [cue applause and intro music]

Today’s episode of What The Hell Are They Thinking? comes to you straight from the ancient city of Alexandria in Egypt, one of the cradles of Western civilization as we know it. Earlier this month, construction crews there unearthed a true archaeological mystery the likes of which can only be found in Egypt. A massive alabaster head was found in the ground, the identity of which still remains a mystery. Even stranger (and scarier), a massive black sarcophagus was discovered nearby, measuring two meters by three meters, weighing over 30 metric tons, and carved entirely from black marble. Sounds like the perfect way to entomb an immortal evil wizard if you ask me.

How would you feel if some science nerds a few thousand years from now cracked open your coffin to look at your embarrassingly shriveled remains? How are they supposed to know you’re a grower and not a shower?

But they didn’t ask me. Instead, a team of archaeologists and scientists from Egypt’s money hungry Ministry of Antiquities will crack the menacing-looking thing open despite the entirety of the internet knowing that it’s a terrible idea. “We are hoping this tomb may belong to one of the high dignitaries of the period,” Ayman Ashmawy, the head of Egypt’s Ministry of Antiquities said in a statement, his pupils turning into dollar signs as he eyes the sarcophagus and licks his lips. “The alabaster head is likely that of a nobleman in Alexandria. When we open the sarcophagus, we hope to find objects inside that are intact, which will help us to identify this person and their position.”

Let’s take a step back for a second, though: why would you take the time and resources to bury something underneath a 15-ton slab of black marble unless you really, really want it to stay there? But no, fetch the crowbars and let’s get crackin’ boys! There’s museums to stock and tours to plan!

“Why did you release me!? I wasn’t finished with my cleanse yet!”

While in all likelihood the tomb contains nothing more than the stinking remains of some poor inbred aristocrat and all of his junk, there does in fact seem to be a precedent for a real-life pharaoh’s curse – although it seems the “curse” is more like a lifetime of disappointment and waning fame living in the shadow of your greatest discovery than a persistent haunting from a vengeful ancient ghost. But who knows? Maybe vengeful ancient ghosts work in mysterious ways. Maybe evil wizards don’t like being buried for 2,000 years in a musty black marble box. Maybe some things are better left in the ground where one of the most advanced civilizations in human history clearly wanted it to stay.

I’ll be in the bunker tonight, honey; no dinner for me. I’ve got talismans to enchant and salt circles to pour.

{https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

18-07-2018 om 01:05 geschreven door peter  

Are we sitting on a gold mine? No, it's a gigantic diamond mine 120-km below us

We are sitting on top of a 1,000 trillion tonnes of diamond buried 120-km below the Earth, but it is out of reach to humans.

By : Immanuel Jotham

Diamonds are famously known to be both rare and "forever". Both of those supposedly well-known facts are, as it turns out, not true at all.

New research by a team from MIT, Harvard, and Berkeley has found that there is a lot more diamond in the planet than once believed. A quadrillion tonnes, or about a 1,000 trillion tonnes of diamond is buried below the Earth, but it is out of reach to humans. At about 120 to 150 km below the surface, it is out of reach of even the best drills available right now.

That means there are more diamonds than gold on the planet. According to a BBC report, there is only 2.5 million tonnes of the shiny metal in the world.

"This shows that diamond is not perhaps this exotic mineral, but on the [geological] scale of things, it's relatively common," said Ulrich Faul, of MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences.

"We can't get at them, but still, there is much more diamond there than we have ever thought before."

This massive stash of diamonds are stored in rock formations called cratons. Cratons form as a result of tectonic plate movement. Similar to the way mountains happen as a result of tectonic movement and are pushed up, cratons are pushed down. They can be likened to inverted mountains and can go as deep as 200 miles, says MIT. At the very bottom of these cratons lie the diamond "roots". The study found that diamonds likely make up about 1 to 2 percent of croton roots.

As to how this find was made, the tech is similar to what is used to detect and measure seismic activity, or earthquakes. Seismic data can also be used to effectively see inside Earth, similar to an ultrasound scan.

Sound travels faster in more dense material than light materials, so its speeds vary according to the composition, temperature, and density of rocks below the surface. By comparing the way sound travels and bounces back, scientists can accurately find what rock lies beneath the surface and at what depth they lie.

The study was published by the American Geophysical Union.  

{ https://www.ibtimes.co.in/ }

18-07-2018 om 00:53 geschreven door peter  

Astronomers stumble upon 12 new Moons orbiting Jupiter while looking for Planet X

This discovery was made while on the lookout for massive, distant solar system objects far beyond Pluto.

18-07-2018 om 00:47 geschreven door peter  

UFOs are real, but don't know what they are: Former UK ministry official Nick Pope

Former MoD official Nick Pope has claimed that UFOs are real, but nobody knows what they really are

By : Nirmal Narayanan

Representational ImageCreative Commons

Nick Pope, a British media commentator who worked with the British Government's Ministry of Defence (MoD) from 1985 to 2006 has claimed that unidentified flying objects (UFO) are real. In an exclusive story written for the Sun, Pope revealed that most of the UFO sightings could be explained, but around five percent remain mysterious.

UFOs are real

As per Nick Pope, the cases which perplexed his MoD team during the investigation were the near misses between UFOs and commercial aircraft. The former MoD insider argued that many pilots have reported mysterious UFO encounters which still remain unanswered.

"The bottom line was that we knew UFOs were real, but we didn't know what they were. What was much more fun was the other weird stuff that came our way simply because there was nowhere else in government to send it: crop circles, claims that people had been abducted by aliens, ghost sightings and people who claimed to be psychic and volunteered their services to British intelligence," wrote Nick Pope on the Sun.

Nick Pope also made it clear that Russians and Chinese had conducted tremendous probe to unravel the mystery behind UFO sightings. As per Pope, Russians had also researched and investigated about parapsychology, telekinesis, and various other psychic phenomena.

US government's clever move

The former Directorate of Defence Security also talked about Pentagon's secret UFO search program 'Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP)'. He wrote that the US government did a very clever move by not mentioning the word UFO in the name of the investigation program.

"We still don't know much about AATIP, and it may take Congressional hearings to resolve the issue. Either way, if anyone was laughing about UFOs before, they're not laughing now," added Pope.

He also revealed that the UFOs spotted in the gun camera footage of the Royal Air Force were very similar to that of the flying objects featured in the declassified videos released by Pentagon.

worldufoday.com

18-07-2018 om 00:19 geschreven door peter  

Former UK Ministry Official Says UFOs Are Real

Symbolic picture

Unidentified flying objects (UFOs) are real, according to British media commentator Nick Pope. While conceding the fact that most of the UFO sightings could be explained, Pope stressed that five per cent remain mysterious. Pope, who worked with the Ministry of Defence (MoD) from 1985 to 2006, stated that near-misses between commercial aircraft and UFOs perplexed his MoD team during the investigation. He said that several pilots had reported unexplained UFO encounters, which remain mysterious.

Pope said that they knew UFOs were real, but no idea what they were. He revealed that other weird stuff also came their way because there was nowhere else in the government where people could send it. They also met people who claimed to be psychic and volunteered to be part of the British intelligence.

Nick Pope also disclosed that China and Russia had conducted serious investigations to shed light to reported UFO sightings. As per Pope, Russia had also researched about parapsychology, telekinesis and several other psychic phenomena.

Pope also made mentioned about the Pentagon’s secret UFO search program “Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program” (AATIP). He noted the smart move of the American government not to mention the word UFO in the name of the investigation program.

He said that they do not know much about the program and it might need Congressional hearings to resolve the issue.

He further revealed that the UFOs recorded in the gun camera of the Royal Air Force had similarity to the flying objects in the Pentagon’s declassified videos.

The Navy Pilot Who Encountered The UFO (Pentagons Secret UFO Project)

{ http://www.latest-ufo-sightings.net/ }

18-07-2018 om 00:13 geschreven door peter  

‘Alien arachnids’: Spider-like mounds captured by NASA on Martian surface (PHOTO)

An image, taken by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in May as the South Pole of Mars edged towards spring, shows patterns etched across the surface, freakishly similar in appearance to Earth’s eight-legged creatures.

“But these aren't actual spiders,”NASA clarifies in a post explaining the scientific process behind the distinct features.

View image on Twitter

NASA

✔@NASA

So where are the spiders? On Mars! Our Mars orbiter took this image of "araneiform terrain," spider-like radiating mounds that form when Martian carbon dioxide ice below the surface heats up and releases each spring in a process not seen on Earth: https://go.nasa.gov/2KYSRAn 

1:06 AM - Jul 16, 2018

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The spider-like radiating mounds are known as “araneiform terrain,” and form when carbon dioxide ice below the surface heats up and releases. This is an active seasonal process not seen on Earth, according to the space agency.

The carbon dioxide ice on Mars changes from solid to gas as it warms, causing the gas to become trapped below the surface. Over time this trapped gas builds in pressure and breaks through the ice as a jet that emits dust.

• READ MORE: ‘Once in a blue dune’: NASA shares striking image of Martian crater

The result is veiny spider-like ‘formations’ spread across the planet accompanied by dark spots formed by dust deposited around vents during the CO2 eruption.

{ https://www.rt.com/news/ }

17-07-2018 om 23:53 geschreven door peter  

Southern bull kelp can drift huge distances before washing ashore. 

Ceridwen Fraser, Author provided

How an alien seaweed invasion spawned an Antarctic mystery

Two small pieces of seaweed found by a Chilean scientist on an Antarctic beach set in train research that may transform our understanding of ocean drift and reveal what the future holds for Antarctic ecosystems affected by climate change.

It all started in January 2017, when sharp-eyed marine biologist Erasmo Macaya spotted two clumps of southern bull kelp washed up on the tide line of an Antarctic beach.

Most of us would have walked right on by, but it stopped Macaya in his tracks. To him it was as if an alien had just landed – and in many ways that was exactly what had happened.

Every piece of science he knew said that this species of kelp should never have ended up in Antarctica. Its home was the regions around New Zealand, Chile and the sub-Antarctic islands. Indeed, a genetic test later confirmed that the pieces he found had travelled tens of thousands of kilometres from the Kerguelen and South Georgia islands.

So how did the kelp get to Antarctica?

The ocean barrier

Many scientists considered such a journey impossible, because of the fierce barrier of winds and currents that encircle Antarctica. These winds – known to sailors as the Roaring Forties – combine with the world’s strongest ocean current, the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, and the Coriolis force generated by Earth’s rotation.

Together, these forces push floating objects east and north, away from Antarctica. Before Macaya’s discovery, this barrier was thought to be impenetrable to floating debris.

But if kelp and other organisms could make it to Antarctica, this would have profound consequences for Antarctic ecosystems. So was there a way for the kelp to drift through that barrier?

• Read more: Why I'm spending three months sailing right around Antarctica for science

Surfing kelp

We took up the challenge, using our ocean models. The mystery deepened when our first modelling attempts suggested that the Southern Ocean was indeed uncrossable by floating kelp. Even ocean eddies – the “weather” of the ocean – were not able to push floating objects southward away from the main ocean currents.

Yet the kelp had undeniably made the crossing. This led us to think about other influences on ocean drift that could play a role. We decided to add a very small effect known as Stokes drift to our models.

You can think of Stokes drift as deep ocean surfing. Waves can push floating objects in unusual directions. In the kelp’s case, each time a wave passes, the kelp will move a short distance with the wave. This drift is slow when waves are small, but in regions with large waves (such as the Southern Ocean) it can be much faster.

During storms around Antarctica, waves are typically 10-15m high. The largest wave ever recorded in the Southern Hemisphere, more than 23m, was in the Southern Ocean off New Zealand. Stokes drift must be large here.

When we added this factor to our ocean models, the change was instant. The massive waves generated by Antarctic storms pushed a small proportion of floating objects southwards. As we report in Nature Climate Change today, this conceivably explains the kelp’s voyage to Antarctica.

We calculated that the kelp specimens must have drifted at least 20,000km to reach Antarctica – the longest biological rafting events ever recorded.

Our results will also change the way that drift pathways for floating objects – such as plastics, aeroplane crash debris, pumice from volcanoes, driftwood, seaweeds, and messages in bottles – will be calculated, particularly in stormy oceans.

What this means for Antarctica

The implications don’t stop there. Until now, Antarctica was thought to be an isolated ecosystem, largely insulated from environmental change. This is not in fact true.

Southern bull kelp can carry many other species of plants and animals when it detaches and floats out to sea. The discovery that this kelp can raft to Antarctica means we could see major ecological changes in Antarctic marine ecosystems as the climate warms.

So far there is almost no evidence of natural colonisations of Antarctica from northern regions in the past few tens of thousands of years. Many Antarctic plants and animals are distinct from those found on other continents and sub-Antarctic islands.

In fact, the kelp strands Macaya found are the first recorded foreign organisms to have drifted across the Southern Ocean. But our models suggest these are unlikely to be the only ones to have made the trip.

This means that Antarctica’s ecological differences are not really due to physical isolation. It is more likely that the harsh Antarctic climate prevents new plants and animals from establishing themselves.

But Antarctica is changing. Parts of the frozen continent are among the fastest-warming regions on Earth. As Antarctica and the ocean around it warms, the kelp rafts – and other floating organisms, including invertebrates hanging onto the kelp, seeds, driftwood that could harbour insects, and larvae – may one day be able to colonise.

By the end of this century, when parts of Antarctica are expected to be similar to current sub-Antarctic environments, we might see many new species colonising Antarctica, bringing dramatic ecosystem change.

Other human-caused influences may also be felt. If kelp can break through the barrier, then floating plastic debris from the large garbage patches in the South Atlantic and South Pacific, just north of the Southern Ocean, could conceivably make a similar journey.

• Read more: The winners and losers of Antarctica’s great thaw

Plastic litter is still very rare in the waters around Antarctica. But with ever-growing amounts of plastic entering our oceans and the new drift pathways we have discovered, more plastic will likely find its way south to pollute one of our last near-pristine environments.

And all of this has been revealed through the discovery of two small pieces of kelp on a distant beach, and the application of a relatively insignificant piece of ocean physics. From these small beginnings we now know that one of the world’s last great wildernesses might not escape our influence.

{ https://theconversation.com/uk }

17-07-2018 om 23:44 geschreven door peter  

SpaceX: 'Mr Steven' Giant Net Tested at High Speeds in Stunning Video

By Mike Brown

{ https://www.inverse.com/ }

17-07-2018 om 23:27 geschreven door peter  

Another Volcano? Jupiter Probe Sees Hotspot on Roiling Moon Io (Photo)

17-07-2018 om 23:19 geschreven door peter