A super-colossal volcanic eruption rocked Italy 39,000 years ago, and troubling signs at the site, now known as Campi Flegrei, have many scientists wondering when the next big one will hit. To probe the issue, so to speak, the Campi Flegrei Deep Drilling Project will drill nearly 2.5 miles down into the collapsed volcanic crater to find out if another blast is on the horizon. Though the researchers on this particular project point out that any risk is small, it will begin amid debate about whether such endeavours are safe, given the unknowns of a volcano’s interior. A few say drilling might even trigger a major eruption [New Scientist]. However, scientists on the project say this isn’t likely, as their drills won’t dig deep enough to set off an eruption.
Campi Flegrei isn’t well known because it lacks a volcanic cone, but it dwarfs Mount Vesuvius. All of Naples sits within its caldera, an eight-mile-wide collapsed area of land formed by the eruption 39,000 years ago. A similar volcanic eruption would leave large parts of Europe buried under ash, say scientists, however smaller eruptions occur every few centuries; the last eruption was in 1538. The researchers hope that by drilling into the volcano, they’ll learn if another smaller eruption is imminent. They hope to locate fracture zones and magma pools that could only be guessed at without drilling. This could show exactly where magma might ascend and collect prior to an eruption. Meanwhile, rock samples could be tested under high stresses in the lab to help model the ground deformation prior to eruption [New Scientist]. The caldera’s center has risen about 10 feet since the 1960s, which has lit a fire under the researchers since a similar rise proceeded a series of intense eruptions 4,000 years ago.
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From an ancient Peruvian civilization comes this warning: Don’t chop down all your trees, or there will be hell to pay.
The Nazca people are famous for the enormous earthworks they carved into an arid plateau, in designs that range from simple geometrical forms to representations of animals like hummingbirds, lizards, and monkeys. They were previously known to have disappeared around A.D. 500, when massive floods powered by El Niño ravaged the valley where they made their home. Now, a new study that examined the pollen in buried layers of soil in order to trace the horticultural history of the land may have revealed why those floods were so devastating.
The Ica Valley, about 120 miles south of Lima, is barren today but was once a riverine oasis — a fertile landscape capable of supporting many people. The key to that fertility was a tree called the huarango [Los Angeles Times]. The huarango tree provided wood for building and fuel, and seed pods that can be ground up and used in flour or beer. Its branches caught the water in morning mists, and its roots stabilized the topsoil. Says lead researcher David Beresford-Jones: “These were very special forests…. It is the ecological keystone species in the desert zone enhancing soil fertility and moisture and underpinning the floodplain with one of the deepest root systems of any tree known” [BBC News].
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Federal experts believe that a major earthquake could trigger fires at Los Alamos National Laboratory, releasing radioactive materials and endangering lives. The rupture of a seismic fault that runs underneath the lab would shake the ground more than scientists previously thought, according to a new report (PDF). A natural disaster here would be bad news, since the lab, just west of Santa Fe, is the main plutonium factory in the United States, believed to hold thousands of pounds of plutonium for use in nuclear weapons (the actual amount is classified).
Researchers study plutonium inside glove boxes—a Hollywood movie staple, consisting of a sealed enclosure with gloves so that someone outside the box can work on dangerous materials inside. A major earthquake would shake the ground enough to topple the glove boxes, says the new study. Some glove boxes are enormous and even contain furnaces to cast and mold plutonium. If one of these were to crash, the resulting fire would be uncontrollable and would create a vaporized plutonium cloud that could drift outside of the lab, says the safety report. In a worst-case scenario, a fire could release so much airborne plutonium that a person on the boundary of the lab would get a dose of radiation—potentially many thousands of times greater than a chest X-ray—that could be fatal in weeks, according to individuals knowledgeable about the study [Los Angeles Times].
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According to a theory proposed in 2007, the explosion of a comet over North America killed off the Clovis people and many of the continent’s largest mammals nearly 13,000 years ago. Not so fast, says a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, fueling a WWE-style stare down between the opposing camps.
The new report explains that archaeologists have examined sediments at seven Clovis-age sites across the United States, and found that the concentration of magnetic debris was insufficient to confirm an extraterrestrial impact at that time [Nature News]. The original theory’s evidence came from magnetic microspherules, or cosmic debris, discovered in sediments at 25 locations. However, one of the new study’s authors, Todd Surovell, said that even after 18 months of sedimentary analysis and hundreds of hours peering into a microscope, he could find no evidence of microspherules to support the the exploding comet theory. Snap.
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Some of the world’s baddest volcanoes, like Chile’s Chaitén volcano that erupted in 2008, are actually even worse than scientists previously thought. A study of Chaitén’s eruption revealed that locals only had 30 hours to to flee from first time they felt rumbling, not the weeks or months that it typically takes a volcano to go from tremors to eruption. That’s because Chaitén is a rhyolitic volcano; these volcanoes are largely fueled by a silica-based, very flow-resistant magma and they tend to build pressure over time before erupting violently [National Geographic News]. Thousands were able to escape before Chaitén’s blast, but scientists are warning that others living in the shadow of a rhyolitic volcano may not be so lucky.
The magma of the Chaitén volcano traveled up to 3 feet per second, according to the study published in Nature. It shot from a depth of more than five kilometres [3 miles] to the surface in about four hours…. The violent and unexpected nature of the blasts, together with their rarity, means the Chaiténeruption is the first rhyolite event to have been scientifically assessed in this way [ABC News]. In the U.S. there are large rhyolitic volcanoes in Wyoming, California, and New Mexico as well as in the Japanese islands and New Zealand’s Taupo Volcanic Zone. Scientists are saying that even though rhyolitic eruptions are rare, the study should serve as a warning call to step up monitoring of potentially active volcanoes.
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Image: Jonathan Castro
Here’s a timely piece of research that may inspire some trepidation, as it comes hard on the heels of Tuesday’s tsunami-triggering earthquake in the South Pacific and today’s destructive earthquake in Indonesia. Researchers have found evidence that major quakes can weaken faults on the other side of the world, increasing the chance of further tremors.
The researchers analyzed 20 years of data at Parkfield, which sits on the mighty San Andreas Fault halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco. It’s the most studied earthquake zone in the world, rigged with sensitive instruments to detect minute changes in the Earth’s crust [AP]. In 2004, the seismic records showed a change beginning shortly after the 9.3 magnitude earthquake in Sumatra that caused a deadly tsunami.
There was an increase in the number of small “repeating earthquakes” that regularly shudder through the ground around the San Andreas fault. Study coauthor Taka’aki Taira says that “after Sumatra, the frequency changed – it increased – but the magnitude decreased. That is a signal of the fault weakening; you only have to push a little bit and the fault fails” [BBC News].
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The tsunami that struck the South Pacific islands of Somoa, American Somoa, and Tongo yesterday has resulted in at least 108 deaths, according to early reports.
Experts monitoring the underwater earthquake that triggered the tsunami have issued various reports of its magnitude, ranging from 7.8 to 8.3. The powerful quake struck early on Tuesday morning, local time, as island residents were getting ready for work and school. About ten minutes after the shock, ten-foot-high waves hit American Somoa’s shore. “American Samoa is a small island, and most of the residents are around the coastline,” [said Filipo Ilaoa, deputy director of the American Samoan office in Honolulu]. “There was no warning or anything at all. By the time the alert was out of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, it had already hit” [The New York Times].
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A 8.3 magnitude earthquake in the South Pacific triggered a tsunami early Tuesday morning local time (5:48 pm Greenwich Mean Time), sending residents of the Samoan Islands running to the hills. At this time there are unconfirmed reports of scattered deaths in American Samoa. The powerful waves reportedly swept into Pago Pago, American Samoa’s capital city.
To the west, in the independent state of Samoa, at least one coastal village was leveled, according to eyewitness Graeme Ansell of New Zealand. “It was very quick. The whole village has been wiped out,” Ansell told National Radio from a hill near Samoa’s capital, Apia. “There’s not a building standing. We’ve all clambered up hills, and one of our party has a broken leg. There will be people in a great lot of need ’round here” [AP].
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Image: flickr / epugachev
Forget, for a moment, all those fancy geoengineering schemes that would alter the face of the planet in an attempt to reduce global warming‘s impact. Population scientists argue that a cheaper and simpler strategy is to hand out birth control to those who want it–especially to people in the developing world, where birth rates are booming.
The world’s population is projected to jump to 9 billion by 2050, with more than 90 percent of that growth coming from developing countries…. In countries with access to condoms and other contraceptives, average family sizes tend to fall significantly within a generation. Until recently, many U.S.-funded health programs did not pay for or encourage condom use in poor countries, even to fight diseases such as AIDS [AP].
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The Mount Wilson Observatory has allowed astronomers to gaze at the heavens for more than a century from a peak in the San Gabriel Mountains, just northeast of Los Angeles, but the devastating conflagration known as the Station Fire that ripped through the Angeles National Forest over the past week had stargazers wondering if the historic facility was about to go up in smoke. The flames got so close at one point that firefighters abandoned the facility, but now L.A. County Deputy Fire Chief Jim Powers has assured astronomers that he foresees “another hundred years for Mount Wilson Observatory.” This is the story of how firefighters saved the birthplace of modern astronomy as well as a virtual forest of communication towers that serve the region [AP].
On Monday night, the scene was grim. The observatory had been hastily evacuated that day, and only two-dozen firefighters stood overnight sentry, positioned along the gloomy perimeters of the observatory and towers. A greater number might have been deployed, but there were more pressing priorities in the urban elevations — the protection of hillside homes [Los Angeles Times]. By daybreak, fire chiefs made the call to retreat from the mountaintop, where firefighters could easily be trapped by the oncoming flames. “It’s not worth dying for,” said Los Angeles County Fire Department Battalion Chief Steve Martin [Los Angeles Times].
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In a series of dramatic (if blurry) photographs, scientists have captured a rare type of lightning known as a “gigantic jet.” These jets strike up from the thunderclouds instead of down from them towards the earth, according to findings published in Nature Geoscience.
Catching the phenomenon on film has boosted scientists’ understanding of the lightning. “These are not just sparks that come out of the thunderstorm and travel upward and tickle the upper atmosphere. They actually deliver to the upper atmosphere as much electric charge as the very strong lightning strokes to ground” [BBC], says lead author Steven Cummer. Capturing gigantic jets as they occur is difficult because they occur infrequently, and because scientists don’t yet know which types of storms promote their formation. Cummer got his shot by luck. He had his cameras trained on the clouds brewed by the 2008 tropical storm Cristobal, hoping to spot another form of electrical discharge, when the jet blasted upward, reaching 40 miles into the upper atmosphere.
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Image: Steven Cummer
Five patent applications for technology that aims to control the weather bear the signature of a man who knows how to think big: Microsoft founder Bill Gates. The applications made public by the U.S. Patent Office last week describe floating devices that could reduce the strength of hurricanes by drawing warm water from the ocean‘s surface and channeling it down to the depths through a long tube. A second tube would reverse the process and bring deep, cold water up to the surface.
The applications were filed by an entity called Searete, which is part of the company Intellectual Ventures that was founded by former Microsoft executives as an “invention business;” Bill Gates is an investor in the company. Gates is listed as one of the inventors on each hurricane-quelling patent application, along with scientists like the geoengineering expert Ken Caldeira. One of the patent applications describes how part or all of the cost of building and maintaining the hurricane-killer ships could be raised by selling insurance to coastal residents whose risk would be reduced by using the new system [New Orleans Times-Picayune].
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In a central California area with a history of dramatic earthquakes, researchers have detected a worrisome amount of seismic activity deep underground. The researchers looked at data from 76 monitoring stations along the central California stretch of the San Andreas fault, and found that almost 2,200 “deep earth tremors” had shaken the earth since 2001, a span of time that included two earthquakes. Tremors increased around the time of those two quakes in 2003 and 2004, and rates have remained high since then. “What’s surprising is that the activity has not gone down to its old level” [Reuters], says study coauthor Robert Nadeau. It’s possible that the continuing tremors could presage another quake, researchers say.
Tremors vibrate quietly and can continue for days. Tremors also tend to happen in a deeper, softer part of the Earth’s crust, rather than in the upper part typically thought to generate earthquakes [Los Angeles Times]. Researchers don’t yet know whether tremors are accurate predictors of the larger earthquakes that can convulse the earth’s surface, but Nadeau says they may be a symptom of stress building up on a fault. “We’ve shown that earthquakes can stimulate tremors next to a locked (fault) zone, but we don’t yet have evidence that this tells us anything about future quakes,” Nadeau said…. “But if earthquakes trigger tremors, the pressure that stimulates tremors may also stimulate earthquakes” [San Francisco Chronicle].
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The state of Louisiana is losing its coastal wetlands to the Gulf of Mexico, and a new study suggests that conservationists won’t be able to turn the tide. If engineers don’t divert sediment-rich waters from the Mississippi River to help replenish a sinking river delta, about 10 percent of [the] state will slip beneath the waves by the end of this century. However, even if the engineers do try to abate the subsidence, the Mississippi doesn’t carry enough sediment to offset more than a small fraction of that loss, a new analysis suggests [Science News].
Before American settlers subdued the Mississippi and its tributaries, the river periodically overflowed its banks and spilled muddy water, thick with sediment, into surrounding wetlands. But the new study found that the Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers today carry only half the sediment they did a century ago — between 400 million and 500 million tons a year then, compared with just 205 million tons today. The rest is now captured by more than 40,000 dams and reservoirs that have been built on rivers and streams that flow into the main channels [The Times-Picayune].
So even if Louisiana officials embark on an all-out campaign to restore the marshes through controlled levee breaks and diversion projects that bring back river water, it wouldn’t be enough to save the land–especially since sea levels are rising due to global warming. “We conclude that significant drowning is inevitable” [The Guardian], the study’s authors wrote.
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As of tomorrow, 101 years will have passed since the Tunguska Event, the mysterious explosion that flattened 800 square miles of Siberian forest. Just in time for the anniversary researchers have come up with yet another explanation for what may have caused the baffling blast. Previously, researchers best hypothesis was that a meteor struck the forest, but scientific expeditions failed to turn up an impact crater or any fragments of rock. The new hypothesis, which will be published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, suggests that the Earth was hit by the icy core of a comet, which exploded in the atmosphere.
Researchers say that a comet strike would have released huge volumes of water vapour at very high altitude, creating highly reflective clouds that may explain why the sky was lit up for days after the collision, with people as far away as London saying that they could read newspapers outdoors at midnight, the scientists said [The Independent]. In an unusual twist, the evidence for the new theory comes from studies of the water vapor exhaust created by space shuttle launches.
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