Clipmarks | Earth Clips

EXPLORING THE SUBGLACIAL GAMBURTSEV MOUNTAINS

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 02:46:44 GMT

clipped by: amgumen
clipper's remarks: Somewhere in the Gamburtsev region there could be a location were it is possible to drill down to ices that are more than a million years old. This is at least 200,000 years older than the most ancient ices currently in the possession of scientists.

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

EXPLORING THE SUBGLACIAL GAMBURTSEV MOUNTAINS

1. Aircraft will use radar to detect ice thickness and layering, and to map the shape of the deeply buried bedrock

2. The planes will also conduct gravity and magnetic surveys to glean more information about the mountains' structure

3. By listening to seismic waves passing through the range, scientists can probe rock properties deep in the Earth

The Gamburtsevs were discovered by a Soviet team making a traverse across the ice in the late 1950s. The rocky prominence was totally unexpected; scientists thought the interior of the continent would be relatively flat.

The mountains are believed to have been a key nucleation point for the vast East Antarctic Ice Sheet.

as Earth's climate cooled just over 30 million years ago, the snows that fell on the mountains produced mighty glaciers, which then merged to form one giant spreading ice-mass

Single Species Ecosystem Gives Hope For Life on Other Planets

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 20:06:16 GMT

clipped by: Silkweaver
clipper's remarks: Scientists extracted all of the DNA present within 5,600 liters of fluid from a fracture deep within the mine. Expecting to find a mix of species within the fluid, the researchers were surprised to find that 99.9% of the DNA belonged to one bacterium, a new species. The remaining DNA was contamination from the mine and the laboratory.

A community of a single species is almost unheard of in the microbial world. But this little bacteria has been happily living on its own and seems to have all of the genetic machinery to enable it to survive independently. Since it is the only species in the ecosystem, it must extract everything it needs from an otherwise dead environment.

Clip Source: www.universetoday.com

The discovery of solitary little critters deep beneath Earth's surface has set the world of microbiology on its head while exciting astrobiologists about the possibility of life on other planets. A community of bacteria was found 2.8 kilometers below ground in a goldmine and it lives completely alone and completely independent of any other life forms.

It also subsists without sunlight or oxygen. Planetary scientist Chris McKay, of NASA's Ames Research Center says that the species Candidatus Desulforudis audaxviator is an amazing discovery, and represents the kind or organism that could survive below the surface of Mars or Saturn's sixth largest moon Enceladus.

Nicknamed "the bold traveler," the species was found in fluid-filled cracks of the Mponeng goldmine in South Africa. The discovery of the species contradicts the principle that all life on earth is part of one great, interdependent system.

Tags: exobiology, biology, ecology

Earth Night: pic.

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 23:03:58 GMT

clipped by: mugofcoffee
clipper's remarks: see it in the sight (on a bigger scale) very nice...

Clip Source: www.bfi.org

Google invests in geothermal power research more than the US government

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 03:01:35 GMT

clipped by: darkduskx

Clip Source: www.sciam.com

More than 2,000 times the entire annual energy consumption of the U.S. is available deep underground

For $1 billion over the next 40 years, the U.S. could develop 100 gigawatts (a gigawatt equals one billion watts) of electricity generation that emits no air pollution and pumps out power to the grid even more reliably than coal-fired power plants, according to scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Now Google.org—the charitable wing of the search engine giant—has chipped in nearly $11 million for this renewable resource: so-called geothermal power, or tapping the Earth's heat to make electricity.

That makes Google.org the largest funder of enhanced geothermal research in the country, outspending the U.S. government.

[Video]

"The fireball that sits within the Earth is a resource,"

"We walk on it, we sleep on it, we work on it; the question is: How do we harness it?"

said

Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, president of Iceland, a country now largely heated and powered by the Earth's heat

The Sunspot Enigma: The Sun is “Dead”—What Does it Mean for Earth?

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 10:57:47 GMT

clipped by: vk2yoc
clipper's remarks: I wish they'd make up their minds.

Clip Source: www.dailygalaxy.com

Dark spots, some as large as 50,000 miles in diameter, typically move across the surface of the sun, contracting and expanding as they go. These strange and powerful phenomena are known as sunspots, but now they are all gone. Not even solar physicists know why it’s happening and what this odd solar silence might be indicating for our future.

Although periods of inactivity are normal for the sun, this current period has gone on much longer than usual and scientists are starting to worry—at least a little bit.

"This is the fastest temperature change in the instrumental record, and it puts us back to where we were in 1930," Dr Chapman noted in The Australian today.

If the world does face another mini Ice Age, it could come without warning.

Now this 11-year low in Sunspot activity has raised fears among a small but growing number of scientists that rather than getting warmer, the Earth could possibly be about to return to another cooling period

"Stock up on fur coats"…just in case.

The Virgo Mystery

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 00:52:46 GMT

clipped by: bakancs
clipper's remarks: Most astrologers and even non-astrologers feel that Mercury is the true ruler of Gemini and this appears to be so athough we wil never be fully certain untill the split up occurs

Clip Source: www.librarising.com

The Virgo Mystery

Virgo is perhaps the last sign without its own planetary ruler. The mythology of the sign can give us clues as to where this ruler might be. My favorite is the Persephone myth which sees her as being abducted into Pluto's underworld where she is forced to be his wife for six months months of the year. This upsets her mother who causes the Earth to be cold and unyielding for the time that she is away from her.

Persephone is also known as Prosperine and Kore or Core which can mean the center of the Earth or where our word "corn" comes from. Persephone is an agricultural godess, as is her mother Demeter or Ceres, but she also has the distinction of being the queen of the underworld. She is always pictured as holding an ear of grain in her hand.

Virgo in her many guises as...

...Persephone/Prosperine/Kore

...Isis

...Ceres/Demeter/Inanna

Actress Rose McGowan(Sun in Virgo)
beautifully portrays the image of the Virgin Godess

Is a Death Star Aimed at Earth?

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 08:47:34 GMT

clipped by: vk2yoc
clipper's remarks: A massive burst of gamma rays may already be on it's way, somehow the state of the economy doesn't seem so important.
So, .....live life like there's no tomorrow.......there may not be.

Clip Source: www.dailygalaxy.com

Australian astronomers have been studying an intergalactic assassin poised to wipe out life on Earth. Maybe. Observations indicate that cosmological curiosity WR104 may be a killer - and we might be the victim

The pretty pinwheel that makes the system so distinctive is now know to be a combination of two stars

it's a swollen star getting ready for final supernova detonation. At the moment its fusion reactions are blasting its own photosphere off into space, where the blue companion orbits and illuminates the material, creating a seriously impressive spiral over twice the size of our solar system

We have a perfect view of this pinwheel pattern, since the spiral is at right angles to us, in the same way a man being held at gunpoint has a perfect view of the little hole the bullets come out of

And the gun is over twenty-five times the size of the sun

it can release a gigantic burst of gamma rays

On the upside we'll never see it coming.

Tags: the sky is falling

Tina Fey ‘leaving Earth’ if Palin wins

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 20:40:14 GMT

clipped by: wiccantexan

Clip Source: www.msnbc.msn.com

Tina Fey is generating big laughs and big audiences for “Saturday Night Live” with her impersonation of Gov. Sarah Palin, but the actress hopes it doesn't last.

“We're gonna take it week by week. If she wins, I'm done,” Fey tells TV Guide in the Oct. 20 issue. “I can't do that for four years. And by ‘I'm done,’ I mean I'm leaving Earth.”

The “30 Rock” star also said the election season and playing Sen. John McCain's running mate has been a fun and busy time.

“Election time is always good for ('SNL,') and this is a bonkers election,” Fey said. “And that lady is a media star. She is a fascinating person. She's very likable. She's fun to play, and the two bits with Amy (Poehler) — that was super fun.”

Tags: snl, tina fey, palin, comedy, tv, television

A Comic Strip View of Reality

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 17:10:15 GMT

clipped by: powerof2

Clip Source: www.nydailynews.com

ITEM: An Alaskan music teacher claims that back when Sarah Palin was mayor of Wasilla, she told him that 6,000 years ago, "dinosaurs and humans walked the Earth at the same time." Phillip Monger, a fellow Wasilla resident who teaches music at the University of Alaska at Anchorage, told the Los Angeles Times that after he pressed her about fossil evidence of prehistoric tracks that date back millions of years, Palin responded that, "she had seen pictures of human footprints inside the tracks."

PAST THE TIPPING POINT ?

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 05:56:39 GMT

clipped by: klippety
clipper's remarks: Environmental balance act and the very real possibility that we are past the threshold of return or stall

Clip Source: www.sciam.com

Global Warming: Beyond the Tipping Point

The world's most outspoken climatologist argues that today's carbon dioxide levels are already dangerously too high. What can we do if he is right?

The basic proposition behind the science of climate change is so firmly rooted in the laws of physics that no reasonable person can dispute it. All other things being equal, adding carbon dioxide (CO₂) to the atmosphere—by, for example, burning millions of tons of oil, coal and natural gas—will make it warm up. That, as the Nobel Prize–winning chemist Svante Arrhenius first explained in 1896, is because CO₂ is relatively transparent to visible light from the sun, which heats the planet during the day. But it is relatively opaque to infrared, which the earth tries to reradiate back into space at night. If the planet were a featureless, monochromatic billiard ball without mountains, oceans, vegetation and polar ice caps, a steadily rising concentration of CO₂ would mean a steadily warming earth.

Space rock found on collision course with Earth

Sat, 11 Oct 2008 19:24:17 GMT

clipped by: cakebelly

Clip Source: www.grahamhancock.com

October 11 2008

Space rock found on collision course with Earth

For the first time, astronomers have found an object on a certain collision course with Earth. Fortunately, it is so small it is not expected to cause any damage, burning up in the atmosphere somewhere above northern Sudan in the wee hours of Tuesday morning. It may, however, produce a brilliant 'shooting star'.

The space rock, dubbed 2008 TC3, was first spotted on Monday in a survey by the Mt Lemmon Observatory near Tucson, Arizona.

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Earth From Above - Stunning!

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 18:09:48 GMT

clipped by: JohnWaterman
clipper's remarks: Another Boston Globe must see.

Clip Source: www.boston.com

Earth From Above comes to NYC

Photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand will bring his work back to the United States - to New York City for the first time in 2009. Aiming to inspire people to think globally about sustainable living, Arthus-Bertrand has been photographing unique views of our planet, seen from the sky, since 1994 - and has produced an exhibit of over 150 4-ft. by 6-ft. prints which will be on display in New York City at the World Financial Center Plaza and along the Battery Park City Esplanade from May 1, 2009 to June 28, 2009. When completed in New York City, the Earth From Above exhibit will also move on to California in 2010. Photographs and captions all courtesy of Yann Arthus-Bertrand. (38 photos total)

bales of cotton

Sand dune in the heart of vegetation

Flock of sheep

Mountainous countryside

"Tree of life"

Dun Eochla fort on Inishmore Island

Iraqi tank graveyard

The Athabasca Oil Sands

Village of Bacolor under a layer of mud

Waste from the copper mine

graves

Is this the loneliest life-form?

Sun, 12 Oct 2008 18:58:27 GMT

clipped by: jimbo1000

Clip Source: www.sciencedaily.com

Journey Toward The Center Of The Earth: One-of-a-kind Microorganism Lives All Alone

ScienceDaily (Oct. 10, 2008) — The first ecosystem ever found having only a single biological species has been discovered 2.8 kilometers (1.74 miles) beneath the surface of the earth in the Mponeng gold mine near Johannesburg, South Africa. There the rod-shaped bacterium Desulforudis audaxviator exists in complete isolation, total darkness, a lack of oxygen, and 60-degree-Celsius heat (140 degrees Fahrenheit).

The rod-shaped D. audaxviator was recovered from thousands of liters of water collected deep in the Mponeng Mine in South Africa. (Credit: Micrograph by Greg Wanger, J. Craig Venter Institute, and Gordon Southam, University of Western Ontario, used with permission)

Tags: science

Cosmic eye looks back in time to picture a galaxy forming in the early Universe

Sun, 12 Oct 2008 06:21:47 GMT

clipped by: einbar

Clip Source: www.dailymail.co.uk

Cosmic eye looks back in time to picture a galaxy forming in the early Universe

Scientists have used a Cosmic Eye to 'look back in time' and glimpse a galaxy formation in the early Universe.

Using gravity from a galaxy in the foreground as an enormous zoom lens, researchers were able to see into the distant Universe.

The Cosmic Eye allowed scientists to observe a young star-forming galaxy, which lies about 11 billion light years from Earth, as it appeared just two billion years after the Big Bang.

The Cosmic Eye is so called because the foreground galaxy, which is 2.2 billion light years from Earth, appears in the centre of an arc created by the distant galaxy - giving it the appearance of a human eye.

Its name also derives from its resemblance to the Eye of Horus, the ancient Egyptian symbol representing the god of the sky and the ruler of the world of the living.

The distant galaxy was originally identified using the Hubble Space Telescope.

The Coolest Apartment Block on Earth

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 15:20:36 GMT

clipped by: CarnivalBorn

Clip Source: www.environmentalgraffiti.com

Viennese artist, Friedensreich Hundertwasser, has designed what has become one of the more unique and visually stimulating buildings in the world. With over 1000 unique windows, individualized handles on windows and doors, a living roof, café, parking garage, restaurant, bar, playground, and a running stream, the Waldspirale in Darmstadt, Germany is an architectural wonder. Upon first glance, second and third, one is simply enchanted and astonished.