May 26, 2020 06:12 PM
(This post was last modified: May 27, 2020 06:36 AM by C C.)
Dinosaur-dooming asteroid struck Earth at ‘deadliest possible’ angle
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/197694/d...-possible/
EXCERPT: New simulations from Imperial College London have revealed the asteroid that doomed the dinosaurs struck Earth at the ‘deadliest possible’ angle. The simulations show that the asteroid hit Earth at an angle of about 60 degrees, which maximised the amount of climate-changing gases thrust into the upper atmosphere. Such a strike likely unleashed billions of tonnes of sulphur, blocking the sun and triggering the nuclear winter that killed the dinosaurs and 75 per cent of life on Earth 66 million years ago.
[...] Lead researcher Professor Gareth Collins, of Imperial’s Department of Earth Science and Engineering, said: ... “Our simulations provide compelling evidence that the asteroid struck at a steep angle, perhaps 60 degrees above the horizon, and approached its target from the north-east. We know that this was among the worst-case scenarios for the lethality on impact, because it put more hazardous debris into the upper atmosphere and scattered it everywhere – the very thing that led to a nuclear winter.”
The results are published in Nature Communications. (MORE - details)
Herd of fuzzy green 'glacier mice' baffles scientists
https://www.npr.org/2020/05/22/858800112...scientists
INTRO: In 2006, while hiking around the Root Glacier in Alaska to set up scientific instruments, researcher Tim Bartholomaus encountered something unexpected. "What the heck is this!" Bartholomaus recalls thinking. He's a glaciologist at the University of Idaho.
Scattered across the glacier were balls of moss. "They're not attached to anything and they're just resting there on ice," he says. "They're bright green in a world of white."
Intrigued, he and two colleagues set out to study these strange moss balls. In the journal Polar Biology, they report that the balls can persist for years and move around in a coordinated, herdlike fashion that the researchers can not yet explain. "The whole colony of moss balls, this whole grouping, moves at about the same speeds and in the same directions," Bartholomaus says. "Those speeds and directions can change over the course of weeks."
In the 1950s, an Icelandic researcher described them in the Journal of Glaciology, noting that "rolling stones can gather moss." He called them "jökla-mýs" or "glacier mice."
This new work adds to a very small body of research on these fuzz balls, even though glaciologists have long known about them and tend to be fond of them. "They really do look like little mammals, little mice or chipmunks or rats or something running around on the glacier, although they run in obviously very slow motion," says wildlife biologist Sophie Gilbert, also at the University of Idaho... (MORE) .... PAPER: http://tbartholomaus.org/papers/Hotaling...ar_Bio.pdf
Gizmodo-Earther: Sophie Gilbert, a wildlife ecologist at the University of Idaho and another one of the study’s coauthors, noted that movement is a necessity for the glacier moss balls because the entire surface of the ball must periodically get exposed to the sun. “These things must actually roll around or else that moss on the bottom would die,” Gilbert said.
Each glacier mouse becomes a complete ecosystem (different video than below): https://youtu.be/ozl8jLAirJE
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/dgocP1a_L34
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/197694/d...-possible/
EXCERPT: New simulations from Imperial College London have revealed the asteroid that doomed the dinosaurs struck Earth at the ‘deadliest possible’ angle. The simulations show that the asteroid hit Earth at an angle of about 60 degrees, which maximised the amount of climate-changing gases thrust into the upper atmosphere. Such a strike likely unleashed billions of tonnes of sulphur, blocking the sun and triggering the nuclear winter that killed the dinosaurs and 75 per cent of life on Earth 66 million years ago.
[...] Lead researcher Professor Gareth Collins, of Imperial’s Department of Earth Science and Engineering, said: ... “Our simulations provide compelling evidence that the asteroid struck at a steep angle, perhaps 60 degrees above the horizon, and approached its target from the north-east. We know that this was among the worst-case scenarios for the lethality on impact, because it put more hazardous debris into the upper atmosphere and scattered it everywhere – the very thing that led to a nuclear winter.”
The results are published in Nature Communications. (MORE - details)
Herd of fuzzy green 'glacier mice' baffles scientists
https://www.npr.org/2020/05/22/858800112...scientists
INTRO: In 2006, while hiking around the Root Glacier in Alaska to set up scientific instruments, researcher Tim Bartholomaus encountered something unexpected. "What the heck is this!" Bartholomaus recalls thinking. He's a glaciologist at the University of Idaho.
Scattered across the glacier were balls of moss. "They're not attached to anything and they're just resting there on ice," he says. "They're bright green in a world of white."
Intrigued, he and two colleagues set out to study these strange moss balls. In the journal Polar Biology, they report that the balls can persist for years and move around in a coordinated, herdlike fashion that the researchers can not yet explain. "The whole colony of moss balls, this whole grouping, moves at about the same speeds and in the same directions," Bartholomaus says. "Those speeds and directions can change over the course of weeks."
In the 1950s, an Icelandic researcher described them in the Journal of Glaciology, noting that "rolling stones can gather moss." He called them "jökla-mýs" or "glacier mice."
This new work adds to a very small body of research on these fuzz balls, even though glaciologists have long known about them and tend to be fond of them. "They really do look like little mammals, little mice or chipmunks or rats or something running around on the glacier, although they run in obviously very slow motion," says wildlife biologist Sophie Gilbert, also at the University of Idaho... (MORE) .... PAPER: http://tbartholomaus.org/papers/Hotaling...ar_Bio.pdf
Gizmodo-Earther: Sophie Gilbert, a wildlife ecologist at the University of Idaho and another one of the study’s coauthors, noted that movement is a necessity for the glacier moss balls because the entire surface of the ball must periodically get exposed to the sun. “These things must actually roll around or else that moss on the bottom would die,” Gilbert said.
Each glacier mouse becomes a complete ecosystem (different video than below): https://youtu.be/ozl8jLAirJE
