Aurelia Butler

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    in Heart

    Earth’s ancient ‘greenhouse’ conditions were hotter than thought

    Over the last 485 million years, Earth has been both a lot colder and a lot hotter than once thought.

    A new temperature timeline that combines geologic data with computational simulations reveals a rich, detailed and dramatic picture of the ebb and flow of icehouse and greenhouse conditions on Earth throughout this span of time, which includes most of the Phanerozoic Eon. The timeline shows Earth’s average temperature dropping to as low as 11° Celsius and rising to as high as 36° C, researchers report in the Sept. 20 Science. More

  • 163 Shares169 Views

    in Space & Astronomy

    How to spot tiny black holes that might pass through the solar system 

    Black holes about the size of a hydrogen atom could be careening through the solar system unnoticed. But their days of stealth may be numbered.

    Two teams of researchers propose methods to search for these tiny, hypothetical objects, which would have the mass of an asteroid. Because they would have formed in the universe’s infancy, they are known as primordial black holes.

    If they exist, primordial black holes in this mass range could explain some or all of the universe’s dark matter (SN: 8/7/16). That unknown invisible source of mass exerts gravitational influence on galaxies and, perplexingly, seems to outweigh normal matter by about 6 to 1. Extensive searches for subatomic particles that could explain dark matter have come up empty, putting new focus on primordial black holes (SN: 8/26/24).  More

  • 88 Shares179 Views

    in Heart

    Can solar farms and crop farms coexist?

    Transcript

    James McCall: Solar production in the US really started to pick up around 2012. As solar really became mainstream, there was a lot more concerns of land use changes.

    Ravi Sujith: If you look at the type of land that’s been converted for solar installations, over 60 percent of those landscapes are converted croplands.

    Chong Seok-Choi: They both require flat areas with a lot of sun, and that’s close to transmission infrastructures. So in this context, it is important for us to figure out how to combine farming and solar power production so that both can exist in harmony. More

  • 125 Shares99 Views

    in Heart

    Mega El Niños kicked off the world’s worst mass extinction

    A barrage of intense, wild swings in climate conditions may have fueled the largest mass extinction in Earth’s history. A re-creation of how ancient sea surface temperatures, ocean and atmosphere circulation, and landmasses interacted revealed an Earth plagued by nearly decade-long stints of droughts, wildfires and flooding.

    Researchers knew that a spike in global temperatures — triggered by gas emissions from millions of years of enormous volcanic eruptions in what is now Siberia — was the likely culprit behind a mass extinction roughly 252 million years ago (SN: 8/28/15). But it was the resulting catastrophic “mega El Niños” that whiplashed ecosystems, ultimately wiping out some 90 percent of all ocean species and 75 percent of those on land, researchers report in the Sept. 13 Science. More

  • 125 Shares119 Views

    in Heart

    How much is climate change to blame for extreme weather?

    This video was supported by funding from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

    TRANSCRIPT

    Maria Temming: In 2021, a historic heat wave baked the Pacific Northwest killing hundreds of people and fueling wildfires. Researchers later reported that human-caused climate change made this heat wave at least 150 times more likely.

    But how do scientists figure out how much climate change is to blame for a specific weather event?

    Researchers use a variety of techniques for this work, which is called extreme event attribution. One method compares the world we have today–which has warmed 1.2 degrees Celsius since the Industrial Revolution –with what the world would look like without climate change. Researchers estimate what that second world would look like based on historic trends in weather data and climate models. More

  • 125 Shares129 Views

    in Physics

    A quantum computer corrected its own errors, improving its calculations 

    For the first time, a quantum computer has improved its results by repeatedly fixing its own mistakes midcalculation with a technique called quantum error correction.

    Scientists have long known that quantum computers need error correction to meet their potential to solve problems that stump standard, “classical” computers (SN: 6/22/20). Quantum computers calculate with quantum bits, or qubits, which are subject to quantum physics but suffer from jitters that result in mistakes. 

    In quantum error correction, multiple faulty qubits are combined to make reliable qubits, called logical qubits, which are then used to perform the calculation. Previous efforts found that error correction made calculations worse, rather than better, or detected errors but didn’t actually fix them (SN: 10/4/21). More

  • 100 Shares129 Views

    in Heart

    Fiddler crabs are migrating north to cooler waters

    This video was supported by funding from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

    TRANSCRIPT

    David Johnson: So in 2014, we were on a muddy bank in the marsh up here in Massachusetts, and I saw this small crab scuttle across the mud bank and pop into a hole. And so I dug out the crab, and it was a fiddler crab. I was shocked. I had worked a decade in this marsh and had never seen a fiddler crab up here. More

  • 125 Shares119 Views

    in Heart

    Summer-like heat is scorching the Southern Hemisphere — in winter

    It’s winter in the Southern Hemisphere — but you wouldn’t know it from the thermostat.

    On August 26, a remote stretch of the coastline in Western Australia experienced the highest winter temperature ever recorded anywhere in the country: a blistering 41.6° Celsius (107° Fahrenheit).

    In Bidyadanga, an Aboriginal community in Western Australia, the overnight low temperature on August 28 was a staggering 27.2° C (81° F). That’s in winter, when the long-term average nighttime temperature has been around 15° C (59° F). Such heightened nighttime temperatures can disrupt sleep, leading to decreased cardiovascular and mental health (SN: 8/6/23). More