Someone is going to get a serious haunting: until I get my whiskey back!
Courtesy BrianboultonIt’s widely accepted that, if it weren’t for whiskey, some of humankind’s greatest discoveries never would have been made.
The North Pole? Forget it. Nuclear power? No chance. Einstein’s house keys? No way. (Although, to be fair, he never would have lost the keys in the first place if it hadn’t also been for whiskey.)
Whiskey is for explorers and their ilk what spinach is to Popeye.
Don’t believe me? Check this out: A quasi-archaeological expedition to Antarctica to recover the explorer Ernest Shackleton’s 100-year-old whiskey.
Apparently there were several crates buried beneath a shed Shackleton had used. So, you know, why not grab a couple? Ice had cracked some of the bottles, but the freezing point of pure ethanol is about -114º C, and the whiskey was likely at least 80 proof (40% alcohol), so, buried beneath the hut, most of the bottles were safe from freezing.
The distillery that had originally supplied the Shackleton expedition with whiskey is hoping that one of the recovered bottles might be used to reverse-engineer the whiskey blend, since that recipe was lost a long time ago.
It’s sort of like the efforts to map frozen mammoth DNA to bring the species back through cloning. Except with whiskey.
Tags : A 12-mile long iceberg which broke off from Antarctica 10 years ago is now closer to Australia than any iceberg has gotten to the continent in over a century. The mega-iceberg is now just a third of its original size and continues to break up into pieces, posing a shipping hazard in the south Pacific. Here is more information, and photos, on the huge berg.
Ice sheets in Greenland
Courtesy ...TimDid you know that glaciers could be up to two miles thick and weigh more than a million tons? Have you ever wondered how snowflakes become ice? And what’s the albedo effect?
The Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets (CReSIS) has the answer to such questions and much, much more. Over the past four years, CReSIS has been developing technologies, conducting field investigations and compiling data to help understand the rapid changes in the polar ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland. In conducting this research, their vision is to one day understand and predict the role of polar ice sheets in sea level change.
A total of five multi-disciplinary teams work together to conduct research allowing for efficient and well-coordinated progress. I took a closer look at the Satellite Measurements team and the instrumentation they’re using is quite fascinating. The instruments provide high-resolution information on everything from topography to temperature to surface melt. When comparing how these parameters change over time, the team can determine their effects on sea level, identify potential mechanisms controlling that effect, and then create computational models that explain these changes. You can even follow the field experiments that the center is currently conducting at their blog.
On top of all of that, CReSIS is also helping to inspire, educate and train K-12, undergrad and graduate students by encouraging the pursuit of careers in science and engineering as well as offering a variety of research opportunities. My personal favorite is the Ice, Ice, Baby lessons activities. Who cares if its designed for K-8 students! If you’re looking for something to do on a rainy day, I highly recommend making glacier goo. You can learn a lot while making a mess!
Climate change causing wind change in Antarctica changing Antarctic food chain
Krill: a link in the food chain.
Courtesy Wikipedia (Photo by Øystein Paulsen)The above title is a bit clumsy but it conveys what some scientists claim is going on around the south polar region due to climate change and warming temperatures. Changes in wind patterns across Antarctica are not only affecting the composition and levels of phytoplankton in areas there but rising temperatures are also causing sharp changes in the Chinstrap and Adelie penguin populations that feed on the krill that feed on the phytoplankton. The ecosystem appears to be going out of whack. Read more...
“Lost World” is like my bedroom: cold, damp, poorly lit.
in Life Science, Diversity of Organisms, and The Water Cycle, Weather and Climate
The entrance to my bedroom: Inside you'll find an Xbox, dirty dishes, and something like a bed.
Courtesy Rita WillaertUnlike my bedroom, however, the Russians are frantically trying to get to the Lost World. Unless…
Oh, God! Do you think the Russians might be drilling into my bedroom? They probably want my natural resources! The thought of the Reds, bursting through my coal chute, snatching up my… clean socks, or something. Brr. It hardly bears thinking about.
But, yes, I live in a basement. “Tiempos Finales” I call it, and it bears some striking similarities to the “lost world” I read an article about recently.
There are a few key differences. The main difference, I suppose, is that the lost world the article describes is buried beneath about two miles of ice in Antarctica. Tiempos Finales is buried under 2 layers of wood flooring (and some linoleum in the bathroom) in St. Paul. Also, while a healthy person can survive almost indefinitely in the basement (assuming they have the proper protective equipment), you would suffocate, or freeze to death, or both, in Antarctica’s lost world, because it consists of sub-glacial lakes.
And while Tiempos Finales is teeming with mysterious creatures (largely arthropods—there’s rarely more than one chordate present at a time), Antarctica’s lost world only may be teaming with mysterious creatures.
But if there is anything down there, under the ice… it would be a very mysterious creature indeed. And that’s why the Russians are drilling away.
Russians and Brits are both drilling, in fact, but not together. A team of British scientists intends to drop probes into Lake Ellsworth, which they believe to be about 300 feet deep with a bottom covered in thick sediment. The Russians are drilling into the much larger Lake Vostok. Both lakes (and about 150 others) were discovered relatively recently thanks to ice-penetrating radar.
Many scientists think that it’s likely that the Antarctic lakes could hide living organisms (probably microorganisms). If that is the case, those organisms will have been isolated from the rest of the world for somewhere between 400,000 and 2 million years—ever since the ice sheet above the lake was formed. That’s a long time to spend by yourself, evolving in the cold and dark…
Cool. If any organisms are found, they’d likely be pretty different than anything else on the planet (remember my post a few weeks about aliens living among us? I knew you would. This is like that—isolated, extreme environments, etc). Also, the presence of life beneath the Antarctic ice would raise the odds that life could exist elsewhere in our solar system. Europa, one of the moons of Jupiter is the main analogy here. Europa is a frosty little moon (it’s a little bit smaller than our moon). Its surface is entirely covered with ice, but many scientists believe that a liquid water ocean could exist beneath the icy crust. The water could be kept liquid by heat generated by tidal and tectonic activity.
Organisms in the Antarctic lakes would be living under very similar conditions. With no light reaching that far into the ice, they would have to survive by consuming nutrients accumulated in the sediment millennia ago. Life on Europa might be nourished by heat and nutrients from mineral-rich hot water vents on the sea floor.
The British scientists don’t expect to break through the glacier until the Antarctic summer of 2012-2013, and when they finally do they’ll have just 36 hours to drop their probes through the 14-inch hole before it seals up again. They plan to get two probes into Lake Ellsworth. The first probe will capture video, and sample the water for living organisms, or for chemical evidence of them, and it will grab some sediment from the surface of the lakebed. The second probe will be sunk deeper into the lakebed, and will hopefully bring back several feet of sediment.
The Russians don’t plan on putting any probes into Lake Vostok—they just intend to tap into the lake to sample the water. The Russian project is somewhat controversial because their equipment is lubricated with kerosene, and is non-sterile (the British use a sterile, hot water-based drilling technique). There’s a good chance that the Russian equipment could contaminate the otherwise completely pristine lake, which, you know, slightly defeats the purpose. The Russians have had trouble with their equipment, however, and when they will break through the ice is much less certain.
So what do y’all think? Are they going to find anything? If Ellsworth and Vostok are anything like Tiempos Finales, whatever they find will be pretty depressing. Still, this is pretty cool stuff.
That wasn’t a pun.
Post global warming realty alert—invest heavily in Antarctica
A golden opportunity: A minimal investment now and we could be real estate moguls in about a hundred years! Also... wait. Who do we ask about buying Antarctica?
Courtesy AugneblinkenDon't tell me I'm not looking out for y'all's best interests, Buzzketeers.
I recently received a very secret tip, about some very secret mountains hiding under the antarctic ice.
Actually, nobody is totally surprised that there are mountains on Antarctica—these mountains under the glaciers were first discovered something like 50 years ago—but the region has only recently received detailed mapping with ground penetrating radar, and the mountains have been revealed to be very Alpine in nature. That is, they have high, sharp peaks, and deep, er... what's the opposite of sharp... not dull, but like the inverse of... whatever. The mountains have deep valleys. Sharply cleft valleys, we'll say.
It's interesting information because it tells us something about how these massive (about 2 miles thick!) slabs of ice formed: quickly. If the glaciers had formed slowly, the mountains would probably have been ground down do just about nothing by now. But that's not the case.
Perhaps more significantly, knowing more about the character of these glaciers can tell us something about how they might melt if Antarctic temperatures rise significantly with global warming. 2-mile-thick chunks of ice hold lots of water, enough to significantly change sea levels if it all became liquid.
And certainly most importantly is the investment opportunity this presents. I don't know much about real estate. Or the Alps. Or money. But don't people love the Alps? And spend lots of money to be around them, and slide down them on things? Something like that. So c'mon, kidz. Let's move on this! With all the coasts gone, people are going to be searching for new tourism destinations! These mountains could be ours!
Whatever. Check out the article.
Ice capade: Aerial views of the ice sheet breaking at the Wilkins Ice Sheet in Antarctica show the massive amount of ice that's come free in the past month.
Courtesy National Snow and Ice Data Center/NASASo we’ve been grumbling the past few days about the latest round of snow and ice that’s descended upon us in the early days of spring. At least we’re a long way from Antarctica.
The National Snow and Ice Center today reported, and released photos, of a huge ice sheet collapse from the cold continent. About 160-square miles of ice have broken free from the Wilkins ice sheet since Feb. 28 in some major league size pieces. While the Wilkins ice sheet is about the size of Connecticut, one large portion of broken ice sheet is seven times larger than the Manhattan district of New York City.
While that’s a big chuck of ice to break free, larger ice collapses have happened two other times since scientists have been monitoring the site: in 1995 and 2002. Yet, the experts are saying that this latest ice break is another sign of global climate change.
Other portions of the ice shelf are hanging on by thin margins and one expert predicts that the entire shelf could be gone in 15 years. Cracks in the thin ice fill with water, which accelerates the melting, and leads to more major ice breaks.
Here's a link to some great video of the fragile ice sheet area from National Geographic.
A sea spider. Deal with it.: And this one's not even giant.
Courtesy NOAAHave y’all heard about the dang sea spiders? The giant, antarctic ones? Of course you have--you’re Buzzketeers, and, hence, are all over this Internet.
Not me. I’m not really into the Internet. Scrapbooking? Yes, I’m into that. Gin Rummy? Yes, that too. Sharing my feelings? God, yes. But the Internet not so much. Plus, I just moved, and I don’t have internet at my new home yet. I’m not actually sure that Internet even exists in West Saint Paul (I think they have to pipe it in, or ship it in trucks).
At any rate, apparently “giant sea spiders” are all the rage these days, and I had no idea. It’s frustrating, partly because it’s in my professional interest to know what’s going on with strange new creatures, and partly because I feel that the lives of these giant sea spiders must mirror my own so much--pale, slender-limbed things living in the dark. I can relate.
Sea spiders themselves are nothing new. People have known about them for hundreds of years, and, in fact, have existed since at least the Devonian Period, a hot, sticky mess of a time, full of leggy fish and 30-foot-tall mushrooms, about a hundred million years before dinosaurs even thought about existing. Sea spiders are arthropods, but not technically spiders. They can have four to six pairs of long, wormy legs, a tiny body, and a proboscis that “allows them to suck nutrients from soft-bodied invertebrates.” An enviable skill, that.
The giant sea spiders were found during an Australian scientific survey of the Antarctic sea floor, are attracting some extra attention, I suppose, because they are, you know, giant. Giant, obviously, being a relative term. The “giant” sea spiders are a foot or more across, so, you know, you still wouldn’t want one in the tub with you (or maybe you would - check out the video and decide for yourself), but it’s not like they could destroy Tokyo, or anything.
Along with the “spiders” the census revealed dozens of bizarre deep-sea creatures, many of which had never before been catalogued. The expedition was also part of an effort to monitor the sea floor (over 1000 meters below the surface in this case) as it undergoes environmental change. Rising carbon levels, for instance, will make the water more acidic, and will hinder the growth of coral and creatures with calcium carbonate skeletons.
As it happens, the sea spiders have non-calcareous exoskeletons, which is lucky for them, but contributes to my general reaction to their existence: they’re weird, and they make me uncomfortable. I don’t trust them. Invertebrates have been separated from us chordates for so long... there’s just no telling what could be going through their heads at any given time. And when you consider something like giant sea spiders, living at the bottom of an icy Antarctic sea, just... squirming around. It almost too much to bear. They’re probably into the weirdest things. And if you accept that arthropods are bad, well, don’t even get me started on molluscs--squid and cuttlefish with their fancy brains, they just give me the willies. I’ll do a Buzz post on them someday.
Meteor Crater near Winslow, AZ: This crater formed when a meteor collided with Earth about 50,000 years ago. It is approximately 3/4 mile in diameter and 650 feet deep.
Courtesy Mark Ryan
A 300 mile wide crater (bigger than Ohio) has been detected beneath a half-mile of ice in Anartica. This crater is twice as big as the one thought to have killed the dinosaurs. Reseachers believe the impact may have broken up the Gondwana supercontinent, pushing what is now Australia northward.
Two separate data sets were combined to understand more about this impact. Radar to detect a crater, and gravity measurements to detect a mass concentration, or "mascon" in the same place. When a large mass slams into the earth, there is a rebound of mantle material up into the earth's crust creating a bump or mascon..
"On the moon, you can look at craters, and the mascons are still there," von Frese said. "But on Earth, it's unusual to find mascons, because the planet is geologically active. The interior eventually recovers and the mascon goes away." He cited the very large and much older Vredefort crater in South Africa that must have once had a mascon, but no evidence of it can be seen now.
"Based on what we know about the geologic history of the region, this Wilkes Land mascon formed recently by geologic standards -- probably about 250 million years ago," he said. "In another half a billion years, the Wilkes Land mascon will probably disappear, too." Ralph von Frese, a professor of geological sciences at Ohio State University
The Permian-Triassic extinction about 250 million years ago, when almost all animal life on Earth died out, may have resulted from this impact.
Not all scientists agree, however
Scientists contacted by news@nature.com say they are sceptical, as no signs of such an enormous impact have been found in other, well-studied areas of Antarctica. Jane Francis, a geologist at the University of Leeds says, "That sequence has been worked on before, and no one has found evidence to support a massive impact like this," Paul Wignall, a palaeontologist at the University of Leeds, UK, who studies mass-extinction events says that few scientists will be convinced by the hypothesis until the team can precisely date their crater directly, and find rocks there that have been altered by the searing heat of the explosion.
Most think that the extinction started when a vast volcanic eruption released huge amounts of gas, including sulphur dioxide and carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere, causing acid rain and greenhouse warming. Von Frese notes that the explanations aren't mutually exclusive: the shockwaves from a huge impact could have travelled through the planet to trigger the eruptions in Siberia, delivering a devastating combination of disasters.
Too much ice covers the putative crater for a drilling expedition. But Von Frese hopes to make a research trip to Antarctica to look for rocks at the base of the ice sheet along the continent's coast that could attest to an impact.
Sources:
NatureNews
physorg
space
BBCnews
Yahoo news
Subscribe
I want to learn about
Science Buzz is supported by the National Science Foundation.Copyright © Science Museum of Minnesota, 2004-2010, except where noted.
Add a new comment