Stories tagged natural disaster
USS SMM prepares to launchCourtesy Mark RyanI watched the Aquatennial's Milk Carton Boat Races today at Lake Calhoun in Minneapolis. One of the early heats included an entry from the Science Museum. 
Houston we have a problem!: Most of the ship's hull and all of the bilge had to be removed to correct flotation problems.Courtesy Mark RyanI don't know who was sailing the ship but dang if science didn't prevail!
The boat looked sea-worthy enough on land but once it was placed into the water, it just didn't want to remain upright. But the hardy crew never despaired, and instead re-engineered the ship (ala Apollo 13) on the spot by removing the entire pesky bottom half and using only the deck to complete the race. 
Science prevails!: The crew of the reconfigured USS SMM limps bravely and safely toward the finish line with honor and dignity intact.Courtesy Mark Ryan
They didn't win by any means, and at times it looked like they weren't using a boat at all, but they worked together to solve problems and got to shore safely.
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Sarychev Volcano: a stunning view from the International Space Station.Courtesy NASA Earth ObservatoryAstronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) snapped this amazing photograph of Sarychev Volcano as it erupted and punched a hole through the clouds. The volcano is located in the Kuril Islands, northeast of Japan. The ISS just happened to be in the right place at the right time. Talk about lucky! Go here to learn more about the geological event, and how the image was captured.
Derailed: Six Flags park in New Orleans is still swamaped with Katrina problems
Just when we've hit that part of the calendar when we start thinking about making trips to the amusement park, here's some bad news for thrill seekers in the New Orleans area. Insurance disputes and legal hassles have kept Six Flags over New Orleans closed since the 2005 blast of Hurricane Katrina. And it doesn't look like the park will ever open again.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has issued its Atlantic hurricane season forecast. The prediction -- "near-normal" -- fits pretty well with the forecasts from AccuWeather, Colorado State University, WSI Corporation, and the Weather Research Center. What does "near-normal" mean? NOAA is predicting 9 to 14 named storms, with 4 to 7 hurricanes, and 1 to 3 major storms (category 3 or higher on the Saffir-Simpson scale of storm intensity).
But storm prediction is a tricky business. More rainfall over West Africa, warmer sea surface temperatures, and reduced wind shear could encourage more storms. An El Nino pattern in the Pacific or cooler ocean temperatures could discourage them. NOAA will issue another prediction in August, just before the usual peak in the hurricane season.
Here's an amazing video from National Geographic of an underwater volcano eruption. Pretty incredible.
Chinese earthquake anniversary: One year later some surprising developments
Tomorrow – May 12 – marks the one-year anniversary of the devastating earthquake that tore open central China. I've come across two interesting articles regarding that anniversary. Disaster tourism – controversial to many – is huge in the area. And there's a mini baby-boom among couples who lost their only child in the rubble of the quake. Much clean up still needs to be done as this slideshow attests to. Click each link above to learn more.
Two volcanoes in Congo, Africa, are exhibiting signs of erupting soon. Here are the details. Half a million people live with in the impact zone of a major eruption. Lava flows from an eruption seven years ago from one of the volcanoes killed about 100 people.
Killer asteroid?: Artist conception of impact eventCourtesy NASAThe old “What really killed the dinosaurs” controversy is back in the news. And once again, it’s Princeton geophysicist Gerta Keller stirring up the pot.
Death from above?: Perhaps not.Courtesy Mark RyanKeller and her colleague Thierry Adatte of the University of Lausanne in Switzerland have published yet another paper challenging the prevailing theory that an asteroid was the major cause of the extinction of the dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous Period 65 million years ago. The extinction affected over 60 percent of animal species including all of the non-avian dinosaurs.
Actually a number of events were occurring around the end of the Cretaceous including long-term volcanic activity, rapid marine regression, and the infamous asteroid impact. There’s also evidence that some of the dinosaur population was already in decline 10 million years prior to the events. But the scenario is usually played out with the meteor coming late in the sequence and delivering the deathblow to an already weakened eco-system, and paving the way for mammals to take over the ecological gap.
K-T boundary layer: The Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary layer located near Trinidad, Colorado. The pale-gray 1-inch iridium layer (arrow) is sandwiched between coal layers and contains shocked quartz and other evidence of a large asteroid impact. The scale bar is 6 inches in length.Courtesy Mark RyanThe asteroid impact hypothesis was first proposed in 1980 by Luis Alvarez of the University of California after he and his son Walter discovered a claystone layer rich in the rare-earth element iridium and peppered with shocked quartz in many locations around the world. Iridium is a rare element not commonly found on the Earth’s surface but abundant in meteorites. Shocked quartz was first noticed in sand grains in craters created by nuclear test bombs and later in meteor impact sites. Alvarez hypothesized that the only other possible source for this naturally deposited strata would be from a large extraterrestrial object hitting the Earth. From studying the amount of iridium found in Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) boundary formations, he calculated that a bolide about 6 miles across would have been necessary to create that much iridium around the world. But at the time evidence of such an was unknown. It wasn’t until after Luis Alvarez’s death in 1988 that a crater on the Yucatan Peninsula near Chicxulub Mexico became the chief suspect. The Chicxulub impact crater was the right size and the right age fitting all the criteria of a Cretaceous extinction event.
But Keller claims the asteroid came too early to put the coup de grace on dinosaurs or any species for that matter. Her study of spherules in strata at localities in Mexico has convinced her that the asteroid collided with Earth 300,000 years before any mass extinction.
At El Penon, a location very near the impact crater site, Keller and Adatte studied a 30-ft layer of sandstone above the iridium layer that they calculated had been laid down at a rate of about 1-inch per thousand years. This means it took 300,000 years to pile up the entire section of sediment.
Fossils were analyzed on either side of the iridium layer and the researchers found that of 52 species counted below the iridium layer (meaning before the impact), the same 52 species were found above it, meaning the asteroid hadn’t caused any extinction. But at the top of the 30 feet of sandstone overlaying the iridium claystone things were different.
"The mass extinction level can be seen above this interval," Keller says. "Not a single species went extinct as a result of the Chicxulub impact."
The more likely culprit, according to Keller, is India’s Deccan Traps flood basalts which for several million years poured out tremendous amounts of lava and noxious fumes into the atmosphere that would have had put long and tremendous stress on the existing ecosystem. Keller seems to roll out a paper on the subject every year or so in the last decade. We covered some of her Deccan Traps research 2007 which you can read here.
Whatever the case we do know is that non-avian dinosaurs left the planet after the Cretaceous, as none of their fossils have been found above the K-T Boundary. Well, even that doesn’t appear to be the case anymore. Recent dinosaur fossils found in the San Juan Basin in northwestern New Mexico are suspected to come from a stratum that post-dates the Cretaceous extinction. More research needs to be done on the find, but even this wouldn’t be unexpected. Even after the host declares the party’s over, there are always some stragglers who just don’t want to leave.
Keller's paper was published this week in the Journal of the Geological Society.
MORE LINKS
ScienceDaily story
What Killed the Dinosaurs?
Gerta Keller's Chicxulub Debate
Dinosaur Killer May Have Been Volcanism
In another reminder that "Tornado Season" has begun, a twister ripped through a small town in Arkansas last night, killing 3 people and injuring 2 dozen. Damage was also reported in several nearby communities, and more than 10,000 people were without power due to high winds. Like the storm chasers mentioned in Thor's post yesterday, I find tornados and severe weather fascinating, probably because it can be so dangerous and destructive. I think it's great that research has helped us to learn more about how these storms work, so we can better predict them and hopefully prevent deaths and injuries. Source: Reuters
Weather blasts: Video of tornado chasers and slo-motion lightning captures
They promise us that spring is coming, and storm season won't be far behind. Here's some wild storm chaser video of tornadoes and slow-motion lightning strikes. Enjoy!
