Astronomers have been captivated by the unusual activities of the supermassive black hole 1ES 1927+654. Located about 100 million light-years away, this particular black hole has a mass that is equivalent to roughly one million Suns.&nbsp;



Initially, in 2018, researchers witnessed a striking event when the <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/how-do-black-holes-become-supermassive/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">black hole</a>'s corona - a cloud of whirling, white-hot plasma - vanished unexpectedly, only to reassemble months later. 



This dramatic "shut-off" was a first in the study of black holes, setting the stage for further intriguing events.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-x-ray-flashes-from-a-black-hole">X-ray flashes from a black hole</h2>



More recently, the same black hole has displayed another baffling phenomenon. Over a span of two years, astronomers detected <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/understanding-x-ray-radiation-that-spews-out-of-black-holes-surroundings/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">X-ray</a> flashes from 1ES 1927+654 that increased in frequency from one flash every 18 minutes to one every seven minutes. This dramatic speed-up in X-ray oscillations is unprecedented for black holes.



The research team explored various explanations for these flashes and leaned toward a scenario involving a <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/hungry-white-dwarf-stars-eat-heavy-metals/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">white dwarf</a>.&nbsp;



They propose that a spinning, compact core of a dead star - a white dwarf - is orbiting dangerously close to the black hole's event horizon.&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-the-white-dwarf-hypothesis">The white dwarf hypothesis</h2>



This white dwarf appears to be approaching the boundary where nothing can escape the black hole's gravitational pull while remarkably avoiding being consumed.



“This would be the closest thing that we know of around any black hole,” said lead author Megan Masterson, a graduate student in physics at <a href="https://www.mit.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">MIT</a>. “This tells us that objects like white dwarfs may be able to live very close to an event horizon for a relatively extended period of time.”&nbsp;



The scientists suggest that the white dwarf, estimated to be about one-tenth the mass of the Sun, is engaged in a precarious orbit around 1ES 1927+654. Its intense proximity is inferred from the observed X-ray variability, which points to processes occurring near the black hole's edge.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-flashes-from-a-death-defying-star">Flashes from a death-defying star</h2>



As the white dwarf orbits, it would emit <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/gravitational-waves-dark-matter-big-bang-breakthrough/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">gravitational waves</a>, drawing it ever closer to the black hole. This tightening orbit would naturally lead to an increase in the frequency of X-ray flashes. 



Remarkably, the white dwarf may not actually fall into the black hole despite its close approach.&nbsp;



The researchers theorize that as the white dwarf sheds part of its outer layers, this process provides a counteracting force that prevents the star from crossing the point of no return.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-gravitational-waves-and-future-observations">Gravitational waves and future observations</h2>



If the white dwarf scenario is correct, the system is expected to emit gravitational waves at frequencies detectable by instruments like NASA’s upcoming Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA).&nbsp;



“These new detectors are designed to detect oscillations on the scale of minutes, so this black hole system is in that sweet spot,” said Erin Kara, an associate professor of physics at MIT and co-author of the study. 



The detection of such gravitational waves would offer a new way to study the extreme physics near black holes and confirm the presence of the white dwarf.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-dramatic-variability-in-the-black-hole-flashes">Dramatic variability in the black hole flashes</h2>



Researchers have never before observed such dramatic variability in the X-ray emissions of a supermassive black hole.&nbsp;



“We’ve never seen this dramatic variability in the rate at which it’s flashing,” Masterson said. 



The frequent and escalating X-ray pulses suggest that the phenomenon is occurring very close to the black hole, where high-energy processes dominate and where objects must move at incredible speeds due to strong gravitational forces.



The team examined data from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">European Space Agency</a>’s XMM-Newton observatory, which specializes in capturing X-ray emissions. 



The discovery of quasi-periodic oscillations in the X-ray light from this black hole indicates that the source of these emissions is likely in the innermost regions near the event horizon.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-extreme-environments-near-supermassive-black-holes">Extreme environments near supermassive black holes</h2>



While one possible explanation for the X-ray patterns was oscillations in the black hole’s corona, the team currently favors the white dwarf hypothesis due to a better grasp of the underlying physics.&nbsp;



The researchers plan to continue monitoring 1ES 1927+654 with current telescopes and prepare for future observations using LISA.



Masterson emphasized the need for continuous observation. “The one thing I’ve learned with this source is to never stop looking at it because it will probably teach us something new.”&nbsp;



As gravitational wave detectors are built, they may capture signals from this extraordinary system, providing deeper insights into the extreme environments near black holes.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-understanding-the-physics-of-black-holes">Understanding the physics of black holes </h2>



The behavior of 1ES 1927+654 offers a rare opportunity to study the dynamics of objects in extreme gravitational fields. 



If a white dwarf is indeed orbiting close to the event horizon, this system will serve as a unique laboratory for understanding how matter behaves under such intense conditions.&nbsp;



The increasing frequency of X-ray flashes and the potential detection of gravitational waves could revolutionize our understanding of black hole physics and the life cycles of compact objects in their vicinity.



A preprint of the article - which has been accepted by the journal <a href="https://www.nature.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Nature</a> - has been published in the <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2501.01581" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">arXiv</a> database.



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Mysterious x-ray flashes are accelerating in a black hole

Astronomers have been captivated by the unusual activities of the supermassive black hole 1ES 1927+654. Located about 100 million light-years away, this particular black hole has a mass that is equivalent to roughly one million Suns.&nbsp; Initially, in 2018, researchers witnessed a striking event when the black hole's corona - a cloud of whirling, white-hot plasma - vanished unexpectedly, only to reassemble months later. This dramatic "shut-off" was a first in the study of black holes, setting the stage for further intriguing events. X-ray flashes from a...

Toxic Algae Bloom

The 2015 'blob' on the West Coast was caused by unusual ocean conditions. A study led by researchers at the University of Washington and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration connects the unprecedented West Coast toxic algal bloom of 2015 that closed fisheries from southern California to northern British Columbia to the unusually warm ocean conditions — nicknamed "the blob" — in winter and spring of that year.

"We have toxic algae events that result in shellfish closures off the Washington and Oregon coast every three to five years or so, but none of them have been as large as this one," said lead author Ryan McCabe, a research scientist at the UW's Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean, a collaborative center with NOAA. "This one was entirely different, and our results show that it was connected to the unusual ocean conditions."

The study is now online in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.
"This paper is significant because it identifies a link between ocean conditions and the magnitude of the toxic bloom in 2015 that resulted in the highest levels of domoic acid contamination in the food web ever recorded for many species," said co-author Kathi Lefebvre, a marine biologist at NOAA's Northwest Fisheries Science Center. "This is an eye-opener for what the future may hold as ocean conditions continue to warm globally."
The authors found that the 2015 harmful algal bloom, which set records for its spatial extent and the level of toxicity, was dominated by a single species of diatom, Pseudo-nitzschia australis, normally found farther south off California.

Warm water not only allowed this species to survive, it also created an environment favoring its growth. By early 2015 the warm "blob" had moved toward shore and spread all along the West Coast. Warmer water creates less dense surface water that is more likely to stay floating on the surface, where it can become depleted in nutrients.
Previous laboratory studies by co-author William Cochlan of San Francisco State University showed that P. australis can take up nitrogen very quickly from a variety of sources, and appear to outcompete other, nontoxic phytoplankton in nutrient-depleted warm water.

For the new study, Cochlan's lab performed experiments with P. australis from the 2015 bloom. They showed that when these cells experience warmer temperatures and get more nutrients they can double or triple their cell division rates, allowing them to potentially bloom into a large population fairly quickly at sea.

"When springtime shifts in wind direction brought deeper, nutrient-rich water upward near the coast, a small population of P. australis became a big population, which was then washed ashore along the West Coast by late spring storms," said co-author Barbara Hickey, a UW professor of oceanography.
This was especially damaging in a year dominated by P. australis.
"This species is almost always highly toxic," said co-author Raphael Kudela, a marine ecologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz. "It blooms every spring off California, and there are frequently marine mammal impacts. But to see P. australis up and down the coast like this was unprecedented."

[caption id="attachment_87712" align="alignleft" width="150"]<img class="wp-image-87712 size-thumbnail" src="https://www.earth.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/west-coast-blob-algae-bloom-2015_1big_UWash-150x150.png" alt="A map showing impacts of the 2015 West Coast toxic algal bloom. " width="150" height="150" /> A map showing impacts of the 2015 West Coast toxic algal bloom.[/caption]

Toxic algae come in many forms, but off the West Coast the major health and economic threat comes from various Pseudo-nitzschia species which can, under certain conditions, produce domoic acid, which can cause gastrointestinal distress, seizures, memory loss and even death.
Toxins can accumulate in razor clams and mussels, making them unsafe for human consumption. But the effects in the ecosystem are more widespread and long-lasting. Shellfish and anchovies containing toxins can get eaten by marine mammals and birds. If toxic algae settle to the ocean floor, they also can get eaten by bottom-dwelling animals like crabs, which then become unsafe to eat.
In late May 2015, a sea lion was found convulsing on a Washington beach, and domoic acid was identified in its feces.

"That's something we'd never seen before in Washington, and when we heard this news we knew something huge was going on," said co-author Vera Trainer, a research oceanographer at NOAA's Northwest Fisheries Science Center.

That year saw the largest geographic extent of marine mammal impacts ever recorded.

The UW participated in a NOAA-led cruise in June 2015 that sampled water from southern California up to Vancouver Island, British Columbia. The new study includes those observations, collected near the end of the Washington bloom, as well as other ongoing beach monitoring and water sampling efforts that filter seawater to see the life it contains.
Researchers at the Northwest Fisheries Science Center examined the water samples under a high-resolution scanning electron microscope to identify the species present.

"As we started getting more and more of the samples that coincided with the peaks in the razor clam toxicity, it was quite clear that P. australis was the dominant species all along the coast," Trainer said.

State resource managers have been collecting shellfish to monitor for toxins for decades. Out on the water, samples collected by the Olympic Region Harmful Algal Blooms Partnership and other efforts have also contributed to a 25-year record of toxic<a href="https://www.bing.com/search?q=algae&amp;cvid=9fb02275929d4ad2996c404f95d853ac&amp;FORM=ANAB01&amp;PC=HCTS"> algae</a> events.

The new paper compares the history of toxins in razor clams to indices of ocean climate variability, and finds a connection with El Niño and the longer-term <a href="http://www.earth.com/image/noumea-in-the-south-pacific-archipelago-of-new-caledonia/">Pacific</a> Decadal Oscillation.

"There's a significant connection there," McCabe said. "The toxic events also tend to coincide with previously established marine ecosystem shifts. We had not made that connection before, and I think it's fascinating."
Ocean climate cycles could help understand and better predict the emergence of toxic algal blooms. And while the blob was a one-time event that was not due to global warming, it provides a window into what climate change might look like.

"Species like Pseudo-nitzchia are extremely well-poised to take advantage of background warming," McCabe said. "Pseudo-nitzchia are always out there along our coast. The fact that they are almost engineered to take advantage of situations like this — warm temperatures and low nutrients — that is concerning."

He recommends more monitoring of harmful algal blooms, through collecting shellfish and water samples on the coast and offshore to see whether toxins or toxin-producing algae are present, and if so, which species.
"Without stably funded programs like that, we're just going to be blind," McCabe said.

Other co-authors are Richard Thomson at Canada's Department of Fisheries and Oceans; Frances Gulland at The Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, California; and Nicolaus Adams and Brian Bill at NOAA's Northwest Fisheries Science Center. The 2015 'blob' on the West Coast was caused by unusual ocean conditions
The research was primarily funded by NOAA's National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science's Center for Sponsored Coastal Ocean Research. Additional funding was provided by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and COAST through SFSU.

--

<a href="http://www.washington.edu" target="_blank" rel="noopener">University of Washington</a>

The 2015 'blob' on the West Coast was caused

The 2015 'blob' on the West Coast was caused by...

Scientists: World unlikely to avoid hitting dangerous warming level. A team of top scientists is telling world leaders to stop congratulating themselves on the Paris agreement to fight climate change because if more isn't done, global temperatures will likely hit dangerous warming levels in about 35 years.
Six scientists who were leaders in past international climate conferences joined with the Universal Ecological Fund in Argentina to release a brief <a href="http://feu-us.org/the-report/">report</a> Thursday, saying that if even more cuts in heat-trapping gases aren't agreed upon soon, the world will warm by another 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius) by around 2050.
That 1.8 degree mark is key because in 2009 world leaders agreed that they wanted to avoid warming of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. Temperatures have already risen about 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit), so that 2 degree goal is really about preventing a rise of another degree going forward. Scientists: World unlikely to avoid hitting dangerous warming level
Examining the carbon pollution cuts and curbs promised by 190 nations in an agreement made in Paris last December, the scientists said it's simply not enough.
"The pledges are not going to get even close," said report lead author Sir Robert Watson, a University of East Anglia professor and former World Bank chief scientist who used to be chairman of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. "If you governments of the world are really serious, you're going to have to do way, way more."
If carbon pollution continues with just the emission cuts pledged in Paris, Earth will likely hit the danger mark by 2050, Watson and colleagues calculated, echoing what other researchers have found. They said with just a few more cuts, the danger level might be delayed by 20 years,
In Paris, the countries also added a secondary tougher goal of limiting warming to just another 0.9 degrees Fahrenheit (half a degree Celsius) as an aspiration.
There "is no hope of us stabilizing" at that temperature because the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere already commits the world to hitting that mark, Watson said.
Watson said a few weeks ago he was in Washington at an event with United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon and former Vice President Al Gore celebrating the accord as a victory.
"It struck me that this was naive," Watson said. "This is a real major challenge to stay even close to 2 degrees Celsius."
That 2-degree danger mark is on a continuum with harmful effects already being felt now at lower warming levels, Watson said. But he added: "As you go more and more above 2, the negative effects become more and more pronounced, more and more severe."
The report wasn't published in a scientific journal. Six outside scientists looked at for The Associated Press and said the science behind it was sound and so were the conclusions.
"It is a good summary of what is common knowledge in the climate expert community but not widely appreciated by members of the public and even policy makers," said Stefan Rahmstorf, head of Earth system analysis at the Potsdam Institute in Germany. "So indeed it is a useful reminder notice to the world about what is at stake."
On Tuesday, scientists at Climate Interactive In Asheville, North Carolina, who weren't part of the report ran a <a href="https://www.climateinteractive.org/tools/c-roads/">computer simulations</a> using pledges from the Paris agreement and found that dangerous mark arrives around 2051, said group co-director Drew Jones.
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Scientists: World unlikely to avoid hitting dangerous warming level

Scientists: World unlikely to avoid hitting dangerous warming level. A...

When will electric cars become a practical choice for ordinary people? The question hangs in the air at the Paris auto show, where Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz and General Motors are showing off electrics they hope are the on-ramp to a profitable future.
The raft of new vehicles lends buzz to electrics. But earlier over-optimistic predictions have also bred skepticism.
Volkswagen compared its I.D. electric compact to its historic Beetle and mainstay Golf models and said it was the leading edge of 30 new electric models it plans to put out by 2025.
Daimler AG CEO Dieter Zetsche looked more Silicon Valley than Stuttgart when he donned faded jeans and sneakers to tout the Mercedes-Benz EQ, a battery powered crossover SUV concept. The vehicle is meant to illustrate the company's longer term strategy that connects electric cars with other new technology such as autonomous driving and vehicle sharing.
Zetsche said the company aimed for 10 electric vehicles by 2025, making up 15-25 percent of global sales - a bold prediction he immediately tempered by saying that was based on "continued development of infrastructure and customer preferences."
General Motors Co.'s European division Opel is showing off the Ampera-e, a rebadged version of the Chevrolet Bolt. The car's range is rated at 238 miles on a full charge, a significant leap. The Bolt goes on sale this year in the U.S., but it's hardly cheap at the manufacturer's suggested retail price of $37,495 for a five-seat hatchback. That's not counting the tax break of up to $7,500 the federal government offers to encourage the growth of zero-emissions vehicles.
For now, the limited range and higher costs mean battery-powered vehicles have little attraction for regular folks trying to get the most for their money. They remain largely a niche market, often for people enthusiastic about new technology or the environment, and with the extra disposable income to act on that. Palo Alto, California-based Tesla has won attention with rising sales of electrics to well-heeled customers - but doesn't turn profits yet.
Subsidies and incentives have been key in government efforts to help electric vehicles get a foothold. That has been the case in urban areas like the greater Oslo area in Norway, around San Jose, California, and in Shanghai, China.
In the short run, at least, they help burnish companies' image as technologically advanced and environmentally friendly. Volkswagen is struggling to recover from a scandal over diesel cars rigged to cheat on emissions tests.
But companies are also laying the groundwork for the day when the cost of electric falls to, or below, that of internal combustion. It's a day that some analysts think is only a few years off. When that happens, sales could hit a tipping point - a moment carmakers want to be ready for.
The arrival of such an "E-Day" could be accelerated by increasing government regulation mandating lower average emissions and higher mileage. Electrics in the product lineup would help carmakers meet new, lower European Union limits on greenhouse gas emissions blamed by scientists for global warming that go into effect in 2021. In the U.S., nine states have followed California in adopting a requirement that 15 percent of new vehicles sales be zero-emission vehicles by 2025.
Electrics have good acceleration, and fewer moving parts to wear out. And imagine: never stopping for gas, ever again.
But there are a host of other factors to consider: the price of gas; the price of electricity; charging times; battery costs; the ease with which you can find places to charge up.
Accordingly, predictions for the future of electric vehicles are uncertain. In 2008, presidential candidate Barack Obama called for a million electric vehicles on the road in the U.S. by 2015, and repeated the call in 2011. At year end, there were 506,000 plug-in electrics - either battery only or plug-in hybrids - on the road, out of 114 million total. Plug-in hybrids start on battery power, then use a small internal combustion engine to general electricity and extend the vehicle's range.
Pure hybrids like Toyota's Prius can't be plugged in and rely on the engine alone to charge the battery.
Bloomberg New Energy Finance issued a report in August that predicted electrics would match internal combustion vehicles in ownership costs in 2022, assuming oil prices of $50-$70 per barrel and battery prices of $125 per kilowatt hour. That key cost has fallen from $1,000 per kilowatt hour in 2010 to around $350 per kilowatt hour today - faster than many expected.
Thomas Turrentine, director of the Plug-In Hybrid and Electric Vehicle Research Center at the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Davis, says electrics will reach price parity "after 2020" but still might need some incentives to win over consumers.
He said the key will be the usual motive: "Once there's profit, you will see the car companies rush in and make more investments" in production.
Brett Smith, an expert on alternative power trains at the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Michigan, cautions that automakers will still face a lot of consumer hurdles to overcome.
Those include battery durability, places to charge up, charging times, and reluctance to commit hard-earned cash to unfamiliar technology: "In the mid-term, it offers uncertainty. Most buyers are going to trust what they know, and most buyers don't know electrics," he said.
Renault-Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn says consumer choices can change, if the technology does. The company makes the Leaf battery-only electric.
"It's like with a smartphone, in the beginning you had eight hours charging for 30 minutes of discussion," Ghosn told The Associated Press. "Today it is the reverse."
"You need time for technology to do its job."
---
Angela Charlton contributed to this report.
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When will carbon-free electric cars be practical for everyone?

When will electric cars become a practical choice for ordinary...

The Paris Agreement on Climate Change appears likely to enter into force with India announcing that it has ratified the agreement and the EU signaling it may ratify within the next few days, officials said.
The two ratifications would mean countries accounting for nearly 65 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions will have approved the accord, which is set to take effect 30 days after 55 countries accounting for 55 percent of emissions deposit their ratification instruments with the U.N.
Currently 61 countries accounting for nearly 48 percent of emissions have joined the accord.
"We've heard that the European Union may deposit its ratification instruments with us much sooner than we had expected, which would be tremendous news because that would put us over the top in terms of the percentage of emissions, because we're already there in terms of the number of countries needed," U.N. Spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Wednesday.
If that were to happen before Oct. 7 the next U.N. conference on climate change set to take place in Marrakech would begin on Nov. 7 with the agreement already in force, something Dujarric said "would send a very strong signal to the rest of the world."
Indian officials, who declined to be identified because they were not authorized to speak with the press, said India, accounting for about 4.5 percent of emissions, ratified the agreement on Wednesday and planned to deposit the ratification instruments with the U.N. on Oct. 2, the anniversary of Mahatma Ghandi's birth.
Germany ratified the accord on Sept. 23 but EU rules require European countries, responsible for around 12 percent of emissions, to deposit their ratifications as a bloc when all 28 members have approved the deal.
Diplomats and media reports said the EU hoped to speed the process at a meeting later this week and finalize approval by Oct. 7.
The Paris Agreement asks both rich and poor countries to take action to curb the rise in global temperatures that is melting glaciers, raising sea levels and shifting rainfall patterns. It requires governments to present national plans to reduce emissions to limit global temperature rise to well below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit).
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European Union set to ratify Paris Agreement on Climate Change

The Paris Agreement on Climate Change appears likely to enter...

Group is suing ExxonMobil over climate change. ExxonMobil is being sued by a Boston-based environmental group that says the company has polluted the Mystic River and failed to consider the potential impacts of climate change.
The lawsuit filed in federal court on Thursday by Conservation Law Foundation accuses the petroleum company of violating the Federal Clean Water Act and other federal <a href="https://www.bing.com/search?q=environment&amp;cvid=9a854c87292845b288ea776360f88350&amp;pglt=43&amp;FORM=ANNTA1&amp;PC=HCTS">environmental</a> laws in operating its Everett, Massachusetts, fuel terminal.
The lawsuit alleges the company has ignored an "imminent" threat posed by rising sea levels, which could leave much of the<a href="http://www.earth.com/news/oakland-officials-want-to-build-coal-transport-terminal/"> terminal</a> underwater in the event of a hurricane or other major storm.
The foundation announced its intent to file suit in May. Group is suing ExxonMobil over climate change
The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment but has previously said the Everett facility was in compliance with federal rules. Climate variability includes all the variations in the climate that last longer than individual weather events, whereas the term climate change only refers to those variations that persist for a longer period of time, typically decades or more. In the time since the industrial revolution, the climate has increasingly been affected by human activities that are causing global warming and climate change.
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Group is suing ExxonMobil over climate change

Group is suing ExxonMobil over climate change. ExxonMobil is being...

A new study of lead pollution in the North Atlantic provides strong evidence that leaded fuel emissions have declined over the past few decades.

For the first time in around 40 years, scientists have detected lead from natural sources in samples from this ocean. In the intervening period, the proportion of lead in the ocean from manmade sources, most importantly leaded petrol emissions, had been so high that it was not possible to detect any lead from natural sources.

Trace metals such as lead are continuously recycled on land, in the ocean and in the atmosphere, and are important barometers that help scientists to understand planetary processes. Scientists are particularly keen to monitor levels of lead from natural sources, such as windblown dust, and lead from manmade sources, such as burning coal, to determine the impact of industrialisation on the planet and levels of pollution.

A team of scientists from Imperial College London, and their collaborators, analysed the chemistry of seawater samples collected from across the tropical North Atlantic in 2010 and 2011. The aim of the study, published in the journal Nature Communications, was to determine variations in the proportions of natural and manmade lead in the tropical North Atlantic Ocean.

The scientists found that up to 50 per cent of the lead was from natural sources, which they say reflects a decrease in the amount of lead pollution emitted from combustion engines. They caution however that this finding is confined to a specific area of the ocean, which is expected to receive particularly high inputs of natural lead, and that continuing pollution from sources such as coal-burning and smelting processes are still overwhelming natural lead elsewhere in the Atlantic ocean.

Dr Luke Bridgestock, who carried out the study while doing his PhD in the Department of Earth Science and Engineering at Imperial, said: “Lead pollution has never been a hazard to the health of ocean ecosystems, as it occurs in very dilute amounts in seawater. However, the proportion of lead from human activities and naturally occurring sources in the surface of our oceans reflects the extent of environmental lead pollution. That is why today’s find is encouraging. It demonstrates how effective policies to phase out leaded petrol have been.”

“The big catch though is that lead pollution from other sources is still high, overall remaining dominant over naturally occurring lead in the oceans.”

Over the last 100 years, the North Atlantic Ocean has been heavily affected by high levels of lead pollution from the industrialised regions of North America and Europe. The primary source of this pollution has been lead emitted from car engines and other combustion engines. Starting in the 1970s, countries have introduced a raft of policies to eliminate lead additives from combustion engines. However, previous scientific expeditions since the 1970s have failed to detect any naturally occurring lead in the oceans because it was still completely masked by high levels of lead from manmade sources.

The ocean samples in the new study were collected over a radius spanning thousands of kilometres in an area between the continents of Africa and the Americas. They were collected in 2010 and 2011 as part of the GEOTRACES programs - an ongoing international effort to study the cycling of various trace metals in the ocean.

Dr Tina Van de Flierdt, co-author of the study from the Department of Earth Science and Engineering at Imperial, added: “This is the first time since similar studies began in the late 1970s that natural lead in the ocean has been at an observable level. However, this finding is confined to this particular region of the North Atlantic and pollutant lead from industrial processes is still dominant in this ocean and elsewhere. For example, lead pollution in the Indian ocean has increased in recent times due to the economic development of countries surrounding it.”

The researchers used a technique that analyses the isotopic composition of lead in the seawater samples. This helped them to determine the origin of the lead. Different isotopes of lead are produced by different radioactive decay processes, which are like fingerprints, enabling scientists to infer information about lead’s journey through different environmental systems.

Analysing the lead isotope composition of seawater samples showed the team that vast plumes of windblown dust from Saharan Africa deposited naturally occurring lead in the tropical North Atlantic. It is also being transported into the ocean via the Amazon River in South America. Lead from manmade sources was being delivered by westerly winds from industrialised North America and by easterly winds from Europe and North Africa.

Pollutants inadvertently act like dyes, enabling individual “parcels” of water to be traced as they move around the world’s oceans. The next step will see the team using this principle in their research to track lead pollution as it is transported deep into the ocean. In doing so, they will be able to learn valuable information about ocean circulation patterns.

---

<a href="http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Imperial College London</a>

Leaded fuel emissions in the ocean are declining

A new study of lead pollution in the North Atlantic...

Ecological traps pose big risks for grizzly bears.  With its rustic small mountain towns, postcard-perfect vistas, and abundance of “pow” days, <a href="http://www.earth.com/image/the-fall-rhapsody-in-ottawa/">British Columbia’s</a> East Kootenay region has an undeniable lure for outdoor enthusiasts of all varieties—and the appeal extends beyond ski bums and hikers. The resource-rich Elk Valley (including the towns of Jaffray, Fernie, Elkford, and Sparwood) is also a highly desirable home for wildlife like grizzly bears which are drawn to the area’s bountiful fruit supply.

The habitat is really attractive, and it’s a good spot for bears to be,” says Clayton Lamb, a PhD candidate and Vanier Scholar in the University of Alberta’s Department of Biological Sciences studying population dynamics in the region. “They’re using evolutionary cues to search for areas with abundant food and less competition for space—the <a href="http://www.earth.com/news/tule-elk-ranchers-seashore/">Elk</a> Valley satisfies that need’” Ecological traps pose big risks for grizzly bears

The biggest attractors are huckleberries and buffaloberries, both high-energy fruits that attract bears to the region, often from tens of kilometres away. “In the absence of humans, those berries are really important to bears and drive their demography,” explains Lamb. Once there, the bears may then stumble onto additional human-created food sources like garbage or livestock.

That’s where the bears’ dream habitat becomes a nightmare.

In a new study, Lamb and colleagues analyzed nine years' worth of grizzly bear detection or capture data and found that the presence of humans has made this area into an ecological trap. This occurs where attractive habitat masks the significant risk associated with the area, creating a mortality sink that has far-reaching effects on the population.

“In the last eight years we’ve lost 40 per cent of our grizzly bears in that area—that’s not normal,” says Lamb. Forty percent of those fatalities were caused by collisions with vehicles and trains as a result of the nearby highway and railway.

Though hunting is often blamed for this type of population decline, Lamb emphasizes that the issue is far more complex. “Only one in roughly every three bears that die in that area is a result of hunting, so the bigger problem is really non-hunting sources,” he says. “It’s a cumulative effect. It’s not just one thing—it’s a perfect storm of bear mortality in that area.”

The reduced population makes the area even more appealing to bears, since there is less competition for the berries and space. “It’s basically like a mouse trap,” says Lamb.

There is a human cost to these interactions as well, with a number of serious bear attacks reported every year. “It’s not just that bears are scaring people. We have bears physically attacking people annually—it’s a pretty serious thing.”

The study has implications for the delisting of grizzly bears in Yellowstone, U.S., human-carnivore interactions, and population dynamics, particularly since these bears create a link to one of only three peninsular populations of grizzly bears in the U.S. and the continuous population in central British Columbia.

Lamb hopes that the findings can be used in shaping future plans to minimize human impacts on large carnivore populations.

The study, “Forbidden fruit: Human settlement and abundant fruit create an ecological trap for an apex omnivore,” was recently published in the Journal of Animal Ecology.

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<a href="https://www.ualberta.ca/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">University of Alberta</a>

Ecological traps pose big risks for grizzly bears

Ecological traps pose big risks for grizzly bears.  With its...

Volkswagen Emission Testing

Volkswagen CEO Matthias Mueller says the company is cooperating with U.S. authorities and hopes to reach a settlement on a fine with the Justice Department for equipping diesel vehicles to cheat on emissions tests.
Mueller said the company admits it "made a big mistake" and that "we have worked on a very cooperative basis with the authorities in Germany, Europe, and the U.S. and we hope, especially in the United States, the results of the investigation are pronounced by the Justice Department with a settlement and a corresponding fine."
Mueller told The Associated Press on Wednesday that possible fines reported in different news media were "pure speculation."
Asked if a fine could threaten the company's credit rating or financial solidity, he said Volkswagen was a "financially very robust organziation" but added that "I can only answer that question when I know the amount of the fine."
Volkswagen has admitted wrongdoing in equipping cars with software to evade emissions testing and has agreed on a $15 billion civil settlement with environmental authorities, state governments and vehicle owners in a federal court in San Francisco. The deal, which still has to be approved by a federal judge, requires the company to spend up to $10 billion buying back or fixing about 475,000 2-liter diesel vehicles involved in the scandal and paying owners an additional $5,100 to $10,000 each.
One Volkswagen engineer has pleaded guilty to federal criminal charges in the United States and agreed to cooperate with federal authorities in the investigation. Volkswagen has brought in a law firm to conduct its own probe over the emissions scandal. Mueller said the Jones Day law firm had put 13 million documents in a database made available to the Department of Justice and that "they will certainly identify the people who were involved."
Volkswagen showed off a new electric drive small car at the Paris auto show, part of the company's effort to emphasize low-emissions vehicles and its embracing of new technology and ways of doing business, including autonomous driving, car-sharing and ride-sharing.
---
AP Business Writer Tom Krisher contributed to this report from Detroit.
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Volkswagen working on a settlement with US over emissions scandal

Volkswagen CEO Matthias Mueller says the company is cooperating with...

Dense arrays of seismometers are letting scientists get a clearer look at a giant scar that underlies the American Midwest

When Doug Wiens approached Minnesota farmers to ask permission to install a seismometer on their land, he often got a puzzled look. “You could tell they were thinking ‘Why are you putting a seismometer here?,’ ” said Wiens, professor of earth and planetary sciences in Arts &amp; Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. “‘We don’t have earthquakes and we don’t have volcanoes. Do you know something we don’t?’ ”

Actually, he did. Deep beneath the fertile flat farmland, there is a huge scar in the Earth called the Midcontinent Rift. This ancient and hidden feature bears silent witness to a time when the core of what would become North America nearly ripped apart. If the U-shaped rip had gone to completion, the land between its arms — including at least half of what is now called the Midwest — would have pulled away from North America, leaving a great ocean behind.

Weisen Shen, a postdoctoral research associate with Wiens, will be presenting seismic images of the rift at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America (GSA) Sept. 25-28. The images were made by analyzing data from Earthscope, a National Science Foundation (NSF) program that deployed thousands of seismic instruments across America in the past 10 years.

What is that thing?

The Midcontinent Rift was discovered by geophysicists who noticed that gravity was stronger in some parts of the upper Midwest than in others. In the 1950s and 1960s, they mapped the gravity and magnetic anomalies with airborne sensors. Shen is contributing to a session at the GSA dedicated to Bill Heinze, a geophysicist who helped discover and map the Midcontinent Rift.

But understanding of the rift then stalled until 2003, when the NSF funded Earthscope, a program whose mission is to use North America as a natural laboratory to gain insight into how the Earth operates.

As part of Earthscope, the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS) installed a network of 400 seismometers, called the USArray, that rolled across the United States from west to east, gathering data at each location for two years before moving on. USArray was installed on the West Coast beginning in 2004, and had advanced to the Midwest by 2010.

Earthscope also made available a pool of seismometers, called the flexible array, for more focused field experiments. A consortium of universities, including Washington University in St. Louis, installed 83 of these stations along and across the rift in 2011, creating a dense array called SPREE.

A telescope looking down

[caption id="attachment_87633" align="alignleft" width="150"]<img class="size-thumbnail wp-image-87633" src="http://www.earth.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/seismometers-US-map_1big_WUSTL-150x150.jpg" alt="The USArray consisted of 400 seismometers" width="150" height="150" /> The USArray consisted of 400 seismometers[/caption]

Seismologists had never before been able to blanket the landscape with seismometers in this way, and so the USArray has stimulated many innovations in the manipulation of the seismic data to extract information about Earth’s crust and upper mantle.

Seismic interpretation is a thorny version of what is called an inverse problem. If the Earth’s interior were of uniform composition, seismic waves would travel in straight lines. But instead, underground structures or differences in temperature and density refract and reflect them. The problem is to figure out mathematically which obstructions could have produced the wave arrivals that the seismometers recorded.

It’s a bit like trying to figure out the shape of an island in a pond by throwing a pebble into the lake and recording the ripples arriving at the shore.

The data wizard on the Washington University team is Shen, who has devised new techniques for combining many types of seismological data to create sharper images of Earth’s interior.

The farmers in Minnesota have a point when they wonder what an “earthquake sensor” could detect in an area where there are no earthquakes. The answer is that the seismometers record distant earthquakes, such as those on the Pacific Ring of Fire on the opposite side of the planet, and ambient noise, caused by activity such as powerful storms slamming into the Jersey Shore.

Shen has seasoned the mix with several other measurements that can be extracted from the seismic record as well. By inverting all of these data functions simultaneously within a Bayesian statistical framework, he is able to obtain much clearer images of Earth’s interior than one type of data alone would produce, together with estimates of the probability that the images are correct.

Not just a scar, a keloid scar

[caption id="attachment_87631" align="alignleft" width="150"]<img class="size-thumbnail wp-image-87631" src="http://www.earth.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/seismometers-spree-array_1big_WUSTL-150x150.png" alt="The SPREE array" width="150" height="150" /> The SPREE array[/caption]

What have the scientists learned about the rift?

“When you pull apart a continent, like a piece of taffy, it starts to stretch and to thin,” said Michael Wysession, professor of earth and planetary sciences and a member of the SPREE team. “And as it sags, the dip fills with low-density sediment.

“So if you go over a rift with a gravity sensor, you expect to find a negative gravity anomaly. Mass should be missing. But that’s not what happened with the Midcontinent Rift. Instead of being thinner than the surrounding crust, it is thicker.

“We know that lava comes out at rifts,” Wysession said. “The East African rift zone, for example, includes a number of active and dormant volcanoes, such as Mount Kilimanjaro. But the Midcontinent Rift was flooded with lava, and as it sank under the weight of the cooling basaltic rock, even more lava flowed into the depression.

“A huge volume of lava erupted here,” Wysession said. “It was perhaps the largest outflowing of lava in our planet’s history. And then, after the eruptions ended, the area was compressed by mountain building event to its east, thickening the scar by squeezing it horizontally.

Shen published images of the rift made with USArray data in the Journal of Geophysical Research 2013. But at that time, he had only sparse coverage in the rift’s vicinity. At the 2016 GSA meeting he will present images made with both USArray and SPREE data (especially many more “receiver functions,” a type of seismic data that is particularly sensitive to seismic boundaries) that show what lies beneath the rift more clearly.

Miles beneath the Earth’s surface, there is a seismic boundary called the Mohorovičić discontinuity, or Moho. At the Moho, seismic waves hit higher density material and suddenly accelerate. But beneath the rift, Shen said, the Moho is blurred rather than sharp. “Its structure has been destroyed,” he said.

He also sees evidence of something called magmatic underplating. “We think magma might have trapped, or stalled out, at the Moho or within the crust during its rise to the surface,” he said. This might explain why the Moho is so disrupted, although Shen can think of alternative explanations and expects there to be lively discussions at the GSA.

He compares images of the Midcontinent Rift made with the SPREE array to images of the Rio Grande rift made with a similar seismic array called La Ristra. The La Ristra images show that the Rio Grande rift is thinner than the surrounding crust, not thicker. The Moho is clear and rises rather than sinks under the rift.

“I think we’re looking at different stages of rifting,” Shen said. The Rio Grande Rift is still active, still opening, but the Midcontinent Rift is already dead and has been squeezed shut.

Wiens commented that the tremendous outpouring of magma at the Midcontinent Rift might also have disrupted its structure, making it look different from other rifts.

“My goal,” Shen said, “is to provide basic seismic models of interesting tectonic regions like this one for geologists, geochemists and scientists from other disciplines to use — to help them interpret their results and also help the public to better understand the story of the land they live on.”

Rural Minnesota is already onboard. “Some landowners were quite interested in what we were doing,” Wiens said. “We got into one or two small town newspapers. ‘So-and-so now has a seismometer on his farm,’ the headline would read.”

---

<a href="http://www.wustl.edu" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Washington University in St. Louis</a>

Midcontinent rift: Scientists find a giant scar under the American Midwest

Dense arrays of seismometers are letting scientists get a clearer...

Many people are concerned about conservation of the planet’s cute and cuddlies. But in a world of global climate change, sometimes we must prioritize species survival and which species we can and should save from extinction. Dr. Alycia Stigall and her colleagues are leading the charge in studies to help us make those determinations by looking at the fossil record. She will report their findings at the Annual Meeting of the Geological Society of America on 25 September in Denver, Colorado, USA.

As a paleontologist, Stigall has looked at seven different events in deep time that experienced dramatic shifts in the biodiversity (number of species) and the size of species populations from as recent as 15,000 to 30,000 years ago (Beringia dispersals) to 485 to 460 million years ago (Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event).

So how does biodiversity generate on Earth? Stigall and her colleagues (all of whom are former students of hers) have found evidence for a cycle that explains how species diversify and disappear over time. Some animals living on a continent are generalists (able to thrive in multiple environments and/or from multiple resources). These animals spread out across the continent so that they reduce the amount of competition for resources. Over time, the continent breaks apart into numerous islands and the animals are isolated from each other. This leads to speciation (formation of new species) because the animals are all competing for limited resources and thus specialize into ecological niches in order to coexist peacefully. This speciation increases biodiversity, but if the environment changes, those specialized species are less likely to survive. So as those islands begin to form a new continent, the generalists invade the ecological niches of specialists and drive speciation, and thus biodiversity, down.

This information is critical for understanding modern conservation efforts because it tells us that specialist species are going to need a lot more help surviving global climate change than generalist species. As we undergo this changing environment, invasive species will become more of a common occurrence. Stigall explains that while this pattern keeps occurring throughout time, there are always going to be idiosyncrasies associated with the multitude of different drivers in each of those geological events. And when you start taking human interferences into account, predictive modeling becomes even more difficult.

“Places that are tropical and stable, regions that have similar climate year-round, will likely be impacted the most by invasive species,” Stigall explains. “Data sets for modern species are usually limited in terms of the number of species and years available when talking about biodiversity, so hopefully we can use the fossil record to expand our knowledge and use the past to make informed decisions about the future.”

--

<a href="http://www.geosociety.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Geological Society of America</a>

Scientists are using fossils to predict future species survival

Many people are concerned about conservation of the planet’s cute...

Sea surface temperatures dipped dramatically during a period from 7 million to 5.4 million years ago, a time of massive global ecological change.

Around 7 million years ago, landscapes and ecosystems across the world began changing dramatically. Subtropical regions dried out and the Sahara Desert formed in Africa. Rain forests receded and were replaced by the vast savannas and grasslands that persist today in North and South America, Africa and Asia.

Up to now, these events have generally been explained by separate tectonic events — the uplift of mountain ranges or the alteration of ocean basins — causing discrete and local changes in climate. But in a new study, a team of researchers has shown that these environmental changes coincided with a previously undocumented period of global cooling, which was likely driven by a sharp reduction in atmospheric carbon dioxide.

The research, led by a Brown University geologist and published in Nature Geoscience, is based on a newly developed record of global sea surface temperatures spanning the past 12 million years. The record reveals a distinct period of cooler sea surface temperatures spanning 7 million to 5.4 million years ago, the end of the Miocene epoch. The global climate during the Miocene is known to have been much warmer than the present. During the cool period detected in this study, sea surface temperatures dropped to near modern levels.

“This is the first time the late Miocene has been put in a context of global sea surface temperatures, and we were surprised to see the amount of cooling we found,” said Timothy Herbert, professor in the Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences at Brown, who led the study. “In light of this temperature change, the paleobiological observations from this period start to make a lot more sense.”

The new record of sea surface temperatures was derived from ocean sediment sampled at 17 different sites around the world. The sediment preserves the remains of a plankton species that varies cellular chemistry with temperature. By measuring amounts of those temperature-sensitive molecules, scientists can recreate temperature through time.

The late Miocene cool period was detected at every site sampled, in both hemispheres and in every ocean basin on the planet. The cooling was strongest toward the poles and more moderate toward the equator. That pattern, Herbert says, suggests a global atmospheric cause for the temperature decline. The most likely suspect is carbon dioxide (CO2).

“The hemispheric symmetry and the fact that cooling is much greater at the high latitudes — these are the fingerprints of CO2-related temperature change,” Herbert said. “We haven’t proven that it was a decline in CO2 because we’re not measuring it directly, but we’re making a circumstantial case for a reduction in CO2.”

The cooler temperatures would likely have played a role in the drying of the subtropics in the late Miocene, the researchers say. “A cooler world — particularly a cooler ocean — would have decreased moisture in the atmosphere,” Herbert said. “The hydrological cycle basically slows down with cooling.”

And if the cooling was indeed driven by a reduction in atmospheric CO2, it could explain a critical shift in global vegetation that occurred during the late Miocene: the transition from forests to grassland and savanna in the subtropical regions of North and South America, Asia and Africa. These ecosystems are still present today. In Africa, these are the habitats associated with the evolution of our early human ancestors.

Many of the grassy plant species that began thriving during this period are “C4” plants. These species use a slightly different photosynthetic pathway than trees and other plants. The C4 pathway is more efficient in low CO2 environments. “It could be that that if CO2 declined, these C4 species were favored,” Herbert said. “So we can associate that shift in vegetation with the same thing that we suspect was driving the late Miocene cooling.”

It isn’t clear at this point what might have driven a reduction in CO2 during this period, Herbert says. It could be that there were large-scale geological changes occurring at this time that affected the carbon cycle. Herbert’s lab is looking into that possibility now.

But what is clear is that there was a significant global shift in global temperatures during the late Miocene.

“The prevailing view was that this wasn’t a particularly exciting time in terms of global climate,” Herbert said. “It turns out to be more interesting than people thought.”

---

<a href="http://www.brown.edu" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Brown University</a>

Study: Global cooling led to modern ecosystems

Sea surface temperatures dipped dramatically during a period from 7...

A recent spate of whale entanglements off of New England could help shape future regulations to preserve the endangered animals, federal authorities said Tuesday.
A North Atlantic right whale was found dead about 12 miles off the Maine coast over the weekend, entangled in fishing gear. Two other right whales were also found entangled recently. One of them was reported alive, and researchers plan to reassess its condition.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said the 45-ton animal's death near Maine was still being investigated, including whether the gear can be traced back to its owner.
The agency is using gear recovered from the entanglements to see if the fishermen who owned them were in compliance with fishing regulations, NOAA Marine Mammal and Sea Turtle Program Coordinator David Gouveia said. Gouveia said the investigation could also inform future regulations.
"We're on par for the course with the averages for the year for entanglements," he said. "Overall, if you look at entanglements of all large whale species, we're a little bit above our average."
Entanglement is a key cause of death among North Atlantic right whales, which are among the rarest whales.
The population of the whales has crept up from about 300 in 1992 to about 500 in 2010, but a recent study in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science stated that the number of baby right whales born every year has steeply declined since. The study's author, Scott Kraus, said the whales' population suffers even when the animals survive entanglements in fishing gear because of negative effects to reproduction.
It's too early to say what form any new regulations could possibly look like. Patrice McCarron, executive director of the Maine Lobstermen's Association, said it's unlikely that the rope that entangled the Maine whale was from a Maine lobsterman because of how thick it was.
"It's not the kind of gear that we typically see in Maine," she said.
© 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

Call to action as whale entanglements increase

A recent spate of whale entanglements off of New England...

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Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> features Nushagak Bay, a large estuary in southwest Alaska. Nushagak runs mainly north to south and exits in Bristol Bay, a large body of water in the Bering Sea.



"The bay is primarily fed by the Nushagak River, which begins in the Alaska Range and flows southwest approximately 450 km. The bay is also fed by several additional rivers including the Wood, Igushik, Snake and Weary rivers," says ESA.



"The dark colors of the Nushagak River are most likely due to tannins or lignins (chemical substances found in plants). Tannins and lignins from roots, leaves, seeds, bark and soil can leach into the water and give it a brown or even black colour. The sediments then flow southwards where it is mixed with the bluer waters of the bay."



Video/ Image Credit: ESA



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By <a href="http://csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer

Nushagak Bay in southwest Alaska

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Today's Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.acs.org/">American Chemical Society</a> (ACS) reveals that proteins on flu viruses are actually flexible, tilting and waving in a “breath-like” motion. According to the experts, these proteins could be used to better defend against the flu.



"The main antigenic targets of influenza virus are two surface glycoproteins, hemagglutinin (HA) and neuraminidase (NA). Whereas the structural and dynamical properties of both glycoproteins have been studied previously, the understanding of their plasticity in the whole-virion context is fragmented," wrote the researchers.



To investigate, the team conducted detailed simulations of the influenza A H1N1 virion, or the swine flu. The experts concluded that the visualizations show many new vulnerable states of flu viruses, which could improve future vaccines and antiviral drugs.



Video/ Image Credit: American Chemical Society&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

Flu viruses are more flexible than expected

[sendtonews key="G9bUoxcjr4-2511624-12187" type="single"] Today's Video of the Day from the...

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Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> features Lake Trasimeno, which is located west of Perugia in central Italy. It is the fourth largest lake in the country. While Trasimeno’s water level varies, it has a maximum depth of approximately six meters.&nbsp;



"In this Copernicus Sentinel-2 image, captured on 6 August 2022, the lake’s emerald green colour is likely due to the presence of phytoplankton. Streaks in the water, particularly visible in the west, indicate the presence of soil and sediments which have been stirred up by winds. Dark colored waters in the southern part of the lake indicate a presence of submerged and floating macrophytes (aquatic plants) as well as algae," says ESA.



"Surrounded by hills on three sides, Trasimeno is subject to heavy storms created by winds, especially from the north and west. There are three islets in the lake: Maggiore, Minore and Polvese (the largest). The lake’s shores are sparsely inhabited with only two popular villages: Castiglione del Lago and Passignano sul Trasimeno."



"Italy is experiencing its worst drought in 70 years which has affected drinking water supplies, hydroelectric power and agricultural production. High temperatures, hot winds and lack of rainfall are the main causes of drought in the Umbrian region which saw Lake Trasimeno’s drop 1.3 m, reaching the limit of the hydrometric zero in July 2022."



Video/Image Credit: ESA&nbsp;



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By <a href="http://csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer

Lake Trasimeno in Central Italy

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Today's Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.acs.org/">American Chemical Society</a> describes a new self-powered nanosensor that can instantly detect mercury contamination with the tap of a finger.&nbsp;



The oxidized form of mercury can be harmful when it is ingested through contaminated water or food. This makes it necessary for experts to develop sensors that can quickly and accurately detect the presence of mercury.&nbsp;



Zong-Hong Lin and colleagues have now created a triboelectric nanosensor (TENS) that can detect mercury by simply by touching a sample. According to the researchers, their TENS could serve as the basis for similar devices to safely and remotely monitor other pollutants.



Video Credit: American Chemical Society&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

Detecting mercury contamination with the tap of a finger

[sendtonews key="LvS8v8bp9z-2564889-12187" type="single"] Today's Video of the Day from the...

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Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> features Kainji Lake, a reservoir on the Niger River.



In 1968, Kainji Lake was created by the construction of the Kainji Dam. The Niger River, the third longest in Africa, enters the lake in the north.&nbsp;



According to <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/rivers-in-the-american-west-are-a-lifesaving-resource-for-birds/">ESA</a>, the creation of the lake submerged Foge Island and the town of Bussa and permanently flooded other riverine settlements, leaving around 50,000 people displaced.&nbsp;



Large parts of Foge Island are temporarily exposed during low water tides, and the land is often used by migrating fishermen. Kainji Dam is a dam across the Niger River in Niger State of Central Nigeria. 



Wild mammals occur at relatively low densities due to illegal hunting. Lake Kainji has suffered a dramatic decline as a fishery due to the high numbers of artisanal and subsistence fisherfolk using the lake. It has been suggested that a period of closure, together with controlled fishing rights may help improve fish stocks.



Kainji Lake National Park is the oldest of its kind in Nigeria. The park contains three distinct areas: a part of the Kainji Lake, the Borgu Game Reserve to the west of the lake, and the Zugurma Game Reserve to the southeast. The park is home to around 65 mammal species, 350 bird species, and 30 species of reptiles and amphibians. 



Video/ Image Credit: European Space Agency&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

Kainji Lake in north central Nigeria

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Today’s Video of the Day from <a href="https://www.igb.illinois.edu/">Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology</a> reveals how scientists can modify common crops like soybean, rice, and wheat to protect them from heat stress.



“We need to double crop production by 2050 to feed a growing global population, and not only are we not on track to do that, but climate change is further complicating things,” said Amanda Cavanagh, a lecturer at the University of Essex. 



The study is part of Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency (RIPE), an international research project that aims to develop food crops that turn the sun’s energy into food more efficiently.



“Using an engineering approach we designed multiple alternative metabolic pathways to photorespiration. Testing them in the field showed increases in productivity which led Amanda to significantly move the project forward by showing our engineered plants can withstand pretty extreme temperature stress,” said study co-author and RIPE researcher Paul South.&nbsp;



“As the climate changes and temperature stresses increase the pressure on our global food supply, farmers will need every tool available including engineering approaches like the synthetic biology used here to maintain safe and productive harvests.”



The experts tested plants modified to have more efficient photorespiration to see if they were better adapted to warmer temperatures.&nbsp;



The team found that the engineered plants produced 26 percent more biomass than the wild-type plants exposed to the same temperatures, and had 15 percent less yield loss under the higher temperatures.



Video Credit: Amanda Nguyen/University of Illinois



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

Designing crops that can beat the heat

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Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.acs.org/">American Chemical Society</a> explores the ability of salt to transform the way that foods and beverages taste. Salt is known to cover up undesirable flavors, such as bitterness in coffee or beer, but how exactly does sodium chloride change the taste of other compounds?



One previous study showed that, not only does salt suppress bitterness, but also enhances sweetness and sourness. Another study revealed that bitterness reduction by salt seems to be happening at the tongue receptor level as well as in the brain.&nbsp;



While it is known that salt taste is mediated by the presence of sodium channels in the form of taste buds, experts believe that there is also an unknown receptor responsible for how we taste salt that has not yet been identified.&nbsp;



Video Credit: ACS Reactions



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



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How does salt makes things taste better?

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Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> features Santiago, the capital city of Chile. The city is located in the center of the Santiago Metropolitan Region, which has a population of about eight million people.&nbsp;



'The weather of Santiago resembles the Mediterranean climate with dry and warm summers with temperatures reaching up to 35°C (from October to March) and cool and humid winters that can drop to 0°C (from April to September)."



"The city lies in the centre of the country’s central valley around 80 km from the Pacific Ocean to the west and borders Argentina to the east. A tiny part of Argentina is visible in the top-right corner of the image where the mountain crest of the Andes Mountains acts as a divider between the two countries," says ESA.



Video/ Image Credit: ESA



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



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Santiago, Chile in South America

[sendtonews key="JRaP49ISmm-2357509-12187" type="single"] Today’s Video of the Day from the...

Spiral,Galaxy,,Illustration,Of,Milky,Way

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Astronomers at <a href="https://www.jhu.edu/">Johns Hopkins University</a> have created an interactive map of the universe, including the actual position and real colors of 200,000 galaxies. The map allows the public to access data that was previously only available to scientists.



The map was developed using data collected by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. For over two decades, a telescope in New Mexico was aimed at slightly different locations to capture the night sky.&nbsp;



"Growing up I was very inspired by astronomy pictures, stars, nebulae and galaxies, and now it's our time to create a new type of picture to inspire people," said map creator Brice Ménard, a professor at Johns Hopkins. "Astrophysicists around the world have been analyzing this data for years, leading to thousands of scientific papers and discoveries. But nobody took the time to create a map that is beautiful, scientifically accurate, and accessible to people who are not scientists. Our goal here is to show everybody what the universe really looks like."



"In this map, we are just a speck at the very bottom, just one pixel. And when I say we, I mean our galaxy, the Milky Way which has billions of stars and planets. We are used to seeing astronomical pictures showing one galaxy here, one galaxy there or perhaps a group of galaxies. But what this map shows is a very, very different scale."



"From this speck at the bottom, we are able to map out galaxies across the entire universe, and that says something about the power of science."



The <a href="https://mapoftheuniverse.net/">interactive map</a> is available online, where it can be downloaded for free.



Video Credit: Johns Hopkins&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



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Interactive map of the universe includes 200,000 galaxies

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Today's Video of the Day from <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/goddard">NASA Goddard</a> describes the first comprehensive estimate of carbon density in the Saharan, Sahel, and Sudanian zones of Africa. In an effort to measure the amount of carbon stored across these drylands, a team of scientists used high-resolution satellite images and artificial intelligence to map nearly 10 billion individual trees. 



"The high spatial resolution (50 cm) combined with AI and field measurements used in this study is key to improving tree inventories in drylands," said Pierre Hiernaux, a French researcher working for NASA. "The ever-increasing availability of very high-resolution satellite imagery will make it possible to assess carbon pools and their dynamics at the individual tree level on a global scale."



"This study is exceptional because it is pioneering a type of approach that will revolutionize the monitoring of trees and forests on a global scale: in the short term, it will be possible to map the world's trees from the centre of the Amazon to our schoolyards," said <a href="https://www.inrae.fr/en">INRAE</a> researcher Jean-Pierre Wigneron.



"Many fields of application will become much more efficient and accurate, such as tracking carbon stocks, biodiversity, monitoring logging and protection against illegal forest degradation, in near real time.”



Video Credit: NASA Goddard&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



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Remote sensing will revolutionize the way we monitor trees

[sendtonews key="EjmSP20gQK-2593093-12187" type="single"] Today's Video of the Day from NASA...

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Today's Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> features Dublin, the capital and largest city of Ireland. Beyond its pub culture, Dublin is known as a modern culinary destination and a UNESCO City of Literature.



"Dublin is located near the midpoint of Ireland’s east coast in the province of Leinster. The city, which covers an area of around 115 square kilometers, is bordered by the Dublin Mountains, a low mountain range to the south, and is surrounded by flat farmland to the north and west," says ESA.



"The city straddles the River Liffey, which rises in the Wicklow Mountains and flows around 80 kilometers eastwards through the city of Dublin, in which it is canalised and bordered with quays. It then empties into Dublin Bay, an arm of the Irish Sea."



Dublin has an abundance of green spaces, including one of the largest enclosed public parks in any European capital city. Phoenix Park, which was originally formed as a royal hunting park in the 1660s, includes 707 hectares of green space.



Video Credit: ESA&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



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The city of Dublin on Ireland's east coast

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Today's Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> features the province of Zaragoza in northeast Spain. The image was captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission.



"Together with the provinces of Huesca and Teruel, Zaragoza formed the old kingdom of Aragon. Its capital, also called Zaragoza (not visible in this image) is home to around half of Aragon’s population," says ESA.



"The Ebro River can be seen winding its way through the province from west to east in this image. Between its source in the Cantabrian Mountains in the northwest and its delta on the Mediterranean coast, the Ebro River is fed by more than 200 tributaries as it flows 910 km across much of northern Spain."



Since rainfall is very scarce in this region, irrigation in the Ebro basin is critically important. In the valleys surrounding the Ebro River, many fields are used for growing crops such as corn, wheat, and barley.



Video/ Image Credit: ESA



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



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The province of Zaragoza in northeast Spain

[sendtonews key="oL4FnPTGCV-2384527-12187" type="single"] Today's Video of the Day from the...

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Today's Video of the Day from <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/goddard">NASA Goddard</a> features a visual dataset of.methane emissions from wetlands across the globe. Atmospheric methane levels have reached record highs in recent years, and wetlands are a major source of these emissions.&nbsp;



"Methane is an important greenhouse gas that contributes substantially to global warming. On a molecule by molecule basis, methane is much more efficient at trapping heat than carbon dioxide, the main driver of warming," says NASA.



"Though human activities, including agriculture, oil and natural gas production and use, and waste disposal, collectively contribute the majority of methane to the atmosphere, about a third of total methane emissions comes from wetlands."&nbsp;



According to NASA, understanding methane emissions from wetlands and other natural sources is critically important for scientists and policymakers who are working to combat climate change by reducing emissions from human activities.



Video Credit: NASA Goddard



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



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Wetlands are a major source of methane emissions

[sendtonews key="f8fukm28Vz-2491833-12187" type="single"] Today's Video of the Day from NASA...

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Today’s Video of the Day from <a href="https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/">NASA Earth Observatory</a> reveals the evolution of the Columbia Glacier in southeastern Alaska. Columbia is among the fastest shrinking glaciers in the world, and the video documents its rapid retreat over the years.&nbsp;



Columbia Glacier is a large, multi-branched calving glacier that flows out of the Chugach Mountains to the Prince William Sound.&nbsp;



According to USGS, Columbia had a long history of stability prior to 1980, with a length 41 miles, and small, short-lived advances or retreats.



In the years since 1980, however, satellite images have captured Columbia’s alarming retreat. By using false-color images, scientists can distinguish between snow and ice, open water, vegetation, and rocky debris on the glacier’s surface.



The series of false-color images featured in today's video were acquired over the span of 35 years. You can see that by 2021, the glacier’s main branch had retreated about 15 miles from its initial position.



The Columbia Glacier has also lost more than 50 percent of its volume, mostly due to calving. <a href="https://www.earth.com/video/nasa-reveals-3d-visual-of-an-atmospheric-river/">NASA</a> reports that while climate change likely started the retreat, mechanical processes kept the disintegration going.



The NASA images are provided by Jesse Allen, Robert Simmon, Joshua Stevens, and Lauren Dauphin using data from Landsat satellites, from the U.S. Geological Survey, and data from MODIS on NASA’s Terra satellite. The structure of Columbia’s moraine played a large role in the stability of the glacier before 1980. 



Like other tidewater glaciers, the Columbia built up a moraine over time, and the mixture of ice and rock functioned like a dam keeping out the sea. It was supported on one end by the shoreline and by the underwater terminal moraine at the other.



Video Credit: NASA Earth Observatory/&nbsp; NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio



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The rapid retreat of the Columbia Glacier

[sendtonews key="0879czfG3k-1785905-12187" type="single"] Today’s Video of the Day from NASA...

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Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> features the Pyrenees Mountains, which form a natural boundary between France and Spain in southwest Europe.



The mountain range is 430 kilometers in length. It stretches from the Mediterranean Sea on the east to the Atlantic Ocean on the west.



At an elevation of 3404 meters, Pico de Aneto is the highest mountain peak in the Pyrenees, and the third-highest peak in Spain. Pico de Aneto is located in the Posets-Maladeta Natural Park, which spans more than 82,000 acres.&nbsp;



"Geological studies have revealed that the Pyrenees Mountains have been around for longer than the Alps, with their sediments first deposited in coastal basins during the Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras," reports ESA.



"The entire mountain range formed due to the upwelling of large sedimentary rocks by the collision of the Iberian and the Eurasian plate around 100 to 150 million years ago, followed by intense erosion from ice and water."



The western Pyrenees receive more precipitation due to moisture blowing in from the Atlantic Ocean. The mountain range contains many lakes, several small glaciers, and some of the highest waterfalls in Europe.



Video &amp; Image Credit: ESA



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



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The Pyrenees Mountains in southwest Europe

[sendtonews key="6HyfrAJTBI-1831843-12187" type="single"] Today’s Video of the Day from the...

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Today’s Video of the Day from <a href="https://www.stowers.org/">Stowers Institute for Medical Research</a> describes why experts are studying zebrafish to gain a better understanding of how the immune system responds to injury. Zebrafish have the ability to repair and regenerate organs.



“Organ regeneration offers an exciting opportunity for studying the immune system and to inquire why some species can regenerate organs like the heart or missing limbs while others like humans cannot,” explained Dr. Tatjana Piotrowski.



Zebrafish sensory organ hair cells are an ideal system to investigate the pathways and cell types involved in regeneration since they are easily destroyed with antibiotics and begin regenerating within five hours. This enabled the researchers to identify the exact timing and genetic programs for each anti-inflammatory macrophage activation state.&nbsp;



“Our hypothesis is that human macrophages do not receive the proper chemical activation 'cocktail' to instruct pro-regenerative processes,” said Dr. Nicolas Denans. “Identifying the molecular recipe of macrophage activation in zebrafish may one day enable us to design regenerative immunotherapies in humans.”&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



“The new evidence is a valuable resource for comparative studies on the genetic programs involved in macrophage-mediated repair and regeneration. In other words, different types of injuries may induce different kinds of inflammatory responses. We want to decipher whether this 'language' is universal or if there are a variety of dialects."



Video Credit: Stowers Institute for Medical Research&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



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How the immune system responds to injury

[sendtonews key="0dEcERCq61-2283382-12187" type="single"] Today’s Video of the Day from Stowers...

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Today's Video of the Day from <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/goddard">NASA Goddard</a> describes how record-breaking heat expressed itself around the world in 2022.



Scientists have determined that 2022 was the 5th warmest year since 1880. Furthermore, the last nine consecutive years have been the warmest on record.



From devastating floods and wildfires to natural disasters like Hurricane Ian, 2022 showed us yet again how a warming climate affects people across the globe.&nbsp;



"As we look back at 20:22 and years past, we see that each year we better understand the challenges we face and how important it is to meet them," says NASA.



Video/ Image Credit: NASA Goddard



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



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2022 illustrated the consequences of a warming climate

[sendtonews key="3UUsNkFOuS-2487333-12187" type="single"] Today's Video of the Day from NASA...

Earth,Like,Exoplanet,3d,Render

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Today's Video of the Day from <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/goddard">NASA Goddard</a> describes two exoplanets that are orbiting a star 218 light-years away. A team of researchers led by the University of Montreal has found evidence that these planets are "water worlds."



The experts used data from NASA’s Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes. They discovered that exoplanets Kepler-138 c and Kepler-138 could be composed largely of water.



"We previously thought that planets that were a bit larger than Earth were big balls of metal and rock, like scaled-up versions of Earth, and that's why we called them super-Earths," explained study co-author Björn Benneke.&nbsp;



"However, we have now shown that these two planets, Kepler-138 c and d, are quite different in nature and that a big fraction of their entire volume is likely composed of water. It is the best evidence yet for water worlds, a type of planet that was theorized by astronomers to exist for a long time."



Video Credit: NASA Goddard



Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and Leah Hustak (STScI)



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



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Two distant planets may be "water worlds"

[sendtonews key="QIoVYJqRBi-2434608-12187" type="single"] Today's Video of the Day from NASA...

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Satellites reveal how Earth's systems are interconnected Today’s Video of the Day from <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/goddard">NASA Goddard</a> describes Earth’s interconnected systems, and how this network is affected by rising temperatures.&nbsp;



During 2020, average global temperatures matched the hottest year on record. The hurricane season was also record-breaking, with many of the storms intensifying at extraordinary speeds. Hot water in the ocean is fuel for hurricanes. The satellite data shows that it's all one interconnected system showing how Satellites reveal how Earth's systems are interconnected.



According to NASA, dust swept up from Northern Africa plays a major role in the formation of hurricanes, and is also a key source of fertilization in the Amazon rainforest. As a result of<a href="https://www.earth.com/news/seagrass-wasting-disease-is-fueled-by-climate-change/"> climate</a> change, dust plumes are expected to decline, which will have an effect on vegetation far away.&nbsp;



Images from Earth-observing satellites show how the world’s plant life is affected by natural disasters, fires, and deforestation. Satellites also reveal how widespread changes in vegetation impact waterways,&nbsp; the climate, air quality. Satellites communicate by using radio waves to send signals to the antennas on the Earth. "Earth From Space" is a groundbreaking two-hour special that reveals a spectacular new space-based vision of our planet. 



Video Credit: NASA Goddard&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



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Satellites reveal how Earth's systems are interconnected

[sendtonews key="JbW4VsY53O-1632195-12187" type="single"] Satellites reveal how Earth's systems are interconnected...

Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://welcome.miami.edu/">University of Miami</a> Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science explores how changes in water temperatures have affected tiger shark habitats and movements in the North Atlantic Ocean. The study reveals that rising temperatures have caused the sharks to shift toward the poles over the past 40 years.



“Tiger shark annual migrations have expanded poleward, paralleling rising water temperatures,” explained study lead author Neil Hammerschlag. “These results have consequences for tiger shark conservation, since shifts in their movements outside of marine protected areas may leave them more vulnerable to commercial fishing.”



The researchers analyzed nine years of tracking data from satellite-tagged tiger sharks, combined with four decades of conventional tag and recapture data provided by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Cooperative Shark Tagging Program.



The experts found that during the last decade of record heat, for every one-degree Celsius increase in water temperatures, tiger sharks migrated further poleward by over 400 kilometers. They also migrated two weeks earlier than usual to waters off the northeastern coast of the United States.



“Given their role as apex predators, these changes to tiger shark movements may alter predator-prey interactions, leading to ecological imbalances, and more frequent encounters with humans,” concluded Professor Hammerschlag.



Video Credit: University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



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Tiger sharks are shifting poleward as temperatures rise

Today’s Video of the Day from the University of Miami...