Tag Archives: new research

Did Astronomers Just Find the First Moon Outside Our Solar System?

by Jacobi Posted on December 27, 2013

Jupiter’s moon Io in orbit around the gas giant. Io is casting a dark shadow on Jupiter’s atmosphere. Photo: Cassini / NASA

As ever more advanced telescopes have shown that our Earth is similar to at least 17 billion Earth-like planets, astronomers have also been looking for something else—a moon in orbit around one of these exoplanets. An exomoon. And now they might have found one.

The potential moon, says Ian O’Neill for Discovery News, is half the size of Earth and in orbit around a planet four times bigger than Jupiter.

The candidate exomoon is around 45 million kilometers (0.13 AU) from its host exoplanet. As a comparison, Jupiter’s most distant satellite (S/2003 J 2) orbits over 30 million kilometers from the gas giant, so such an extreme orbit around a larger planet is certainly feasible.

The potential discovery was announced in a preliminary research paper, says Nature, and is definitely still up for debate: “After sifting through detailed observations of this event, astronomers proposed that the intervening object could be either a smallish star with a Neptune-sized planet orbiting it, or a largish planet with a moon orbiting it.”

If the latter possibility is confirmed, it would be the first ever detection of an exomoon. The problem is that there is no way to repeat the observation and know for sure.

“It’s kind of a shame because we’ll probably never know what the answer is,” says David Kipping, an astronomer at the Harvard‒Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who was not involved in the research.

No one is really surprised by the idea of exomoons. After all, moons are incredibly common in our solar system. Yet, finding the first known exomoon would be a big discovery, so the scientists are taking the more conservative interpretation, says Discovery News.

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Did Astronomers Just Find the First Moon Outside Our Solar System?

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Stop Freaking Out About Lead in Backyard Chicken Eggs

by ClaudioFitzGibb Posted on December 16, 2013

Photo: Matt Green

The rise of foodies and of locavore cuisine has also brought the return of the backyard chicken coop. But this boom in popularity has also brought a surge of news stories fretting about the risks of raising food on contaminated city soils.

The worries are not unfounded, and, actually, they kind of make sense. Soil contamination from things like lead is prevalent in urban centers. According to a new study led by Henry Spliethoff, with the New York State Department of Health, “soils in urban yards, and in vacant lots and brownfields often considered as sites for urban community gardens and farms, may contain chemical contaminants.”

Lead, for example, which has a median background concentration of 23 mg/kg in New York State rural soils (NYSDEC 2006), can be found at concentrations of several hundred or even thousands of mg/kg in soil in NYC and other cities, due to historical sources such as lead-based paint, leaded gasoline combustion emissions, and point sources such as waste incinerators and metal smelters.

Last year the New York Times ran a story on Spliethoff’s preliminary research after he found elevated levels of lead in eggs from urban hens. The big question left by the Times is what those lead concentrations actually mean, health-wise.

A year later, Spliethoff’s results are ready, published recently in the journal Environmental Geochemistry and Health. The result? Everybody can calm down.

All but one of the eggs in our study had less than 100 μg/kg lead, suggesting that, in general, they contained lead at concentrations were not higher than those in foods considered acceptable for commercial distribution.

Lead at 100 micrograms per kilogram is the acceptable level given by the FDA for lead in candy.

The scientists did find detectable levels of lead in roughly half of the urban eggs they tested, while store-bought and rural-raised eggs had no detectable lead. They found that the amount of lead in chickens’ eggs depended on the amount of lead in the soil.

As a worst-case scenario, the scientists calculated lead exposure if a small child ate an egg from the highest measured concentration, “every day, all year.” At these extreme levels the lead exposure would top the recommended daily maximum intake, but just barely.

These evaluations implied that, overall, the lead concentrations we found in eggs from NYC community gardens were not likely to significantly increase lead exposure or to pose a significant health risk. However, frequent consumption of eggs with the highest lead concentration we found could significantly increase lead exposure, and chickens exposed to higher concentrations of lead in soil are likely to produce eggs with higher concentrations of lead. This exposure pathway could potentially be significant in some gardens, and it should not be ignored.

So, if you’re set on raising chickens in the city this is something to keep in mind and deal with, but it’s not really worth freaking out about.

If you do raise chickens in the city, Spliethoff has some tips on how you can help minimize the amount of lead flowing into your chicken’s eggs.

Add clean soil, mulch, or other clean cover material to existing chicken runs to help reduce chickens’ contact with and ingestion of contaminated soil. Use clean soil when constructing new chicken runs. Inspect the clean cover material regularly, and add or maintain material as needed to help keep chickens from coming in contact with underlying soil that may have higher concentrations of lead.
Provide chickens’ regular feed in feeders, and avoid scattering feed, including scratch grains and food scraps, on bare ground in areas where soil has higher concentrations of lead, or where lead concentrations are not well characterized.
Evaluate gardens for potential sources of lead. Do not allow chickens to forage near these sources. For example, keep chickens away from structures painted with lead-based paint and out of areas where the soil has higher concentrations of lead.
Avoid feeding chickens unwashed garden scraps from areas where the soil has higher concentrations of lead.
Consider providing a calcium supplement, which may help to reduce the amount of lead that gets into chickens’ eggs.

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Stop Freaking Out About Lead in Backyard Chicken Eggs

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How Many Birds Do Wind Turbines Really Kill?

by Mike Herman Posted on December 16, 2013

Image: James Butler

One of the most commonly repeated criticisms of wind power is that it kills birds. The giant spinning turbines are basically bird death traps—and often they cut through prime flying space, making the carnage even worse. At least that’s the story. But how many birds really do die?

If you look around for statistics about bird deaths from wind turbines get you wildly different numbers. Some say just 10,000 birds a year meet their end at the hands (blades) of the wind industry. Others ramp that number up to 600,000. Now, a new study tried to actually use science to estimate.

Of course, they didn’t go to each turbine and count how many little feathered bodies they found at the base. Instead, they combed the literature for all the studies they could find on bird deaths, and tried to combine them into an estimate. This meant searching for fun things like “’bird AND wind turbine’ with ‘collision,’ ‘mortality,’fatality,’ ‘carcass,’ and ‘post-construction.’” And then—even more cheerful—searching all those terms again, but “with ‘bird’ replaced by ‘avian’ and ‘wildlife’; and ‘turbine’ replaced by ‘farm,’ ‘facility’ and ‘energy.’”

In the end, using 58 mortality estimates that met their criteria, they came up with an estimate. According to the current literature somewhere between 140,000 and 328,000 birds die each year from collisions with wind turbines. That’s not all, explains the blog Natural Reactions:

In addition, it appears that there is a greater risk of fatal collisions with taller turbines. This is a real problem, as larger wind turbines may provide more efficient energy generation. Consequently, it is expected that new wind farms will contain even bigger turbines, which will result in even more bird deaths. Future developments therefore will have to give very careful consideration to potential wildlife impacts when planning the type of turbine to install.

The estimate, and conclusions, don’t let wind turbines off the hook. And with recent rulings to try and protect certain species from the spinning blades, the scrutiny will probably continue when it comes to bird deaths due to wind power. But at least now there’s a scientifically derived number for those deaths.

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How Many Birds Do Wind Turbines Really Kill?

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By Painting Their Markings, This Scientist Disrupted Birds’ Social Structure

by gt67dx1 Posted on December 9, 2013

Photo: Sally

Remember the Sneetches?, our Dr. Seuss said:

“Now, the Star-Belly Sneetches
Had bellies with stars.
The Plain-Belly Sneetches
Had none upon thars.”

And the plain-bellied Sneetches, with one Sylvester McMonkey McBean,
painted stars on their bellies, to gain social esteem.

Now, there are species like Sneetches, but in very real places.
Pūkekos get status from shields on their faces.

On their foreheads emblazoned are bright shields of red.
The shields’ size affects everything—access to food, sharing of beds.

But like a mean Mr. McBean, Cody Dey had a plan.
With his big brush of black, he caught those birds and began.

Dey painted some, but he did not paint all.
He shrank some shields and some statuses, three sizes too small.

But while Dr. Seuss’ creatures learned that “Sneetches are Sneetches,”
the Pūkekos had trouble with Mr. Dey’s breaches.

Pūkekos’ shields can change size, a display of their might.
But by painting them down, Dey’d sealed their fates tight.

The painted Pūkekos never recovered their status;
their shields, shrunk for good, were now considered the saddest.

H/T CBC

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By Painting Their Markings, This Scientist Disrupted Birds’ Social Structure

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The Arctic Hasn’t Been This Hot for 44,000 Years

by roz3edl Posted on October 25, 2013

Photo: NASA / GSFC / Suomi NPP

Global warming is heating the planet, and the Arctic is getting the worst of it. Polar amplification means that the temperature in the Arctic is rising faster than anywhere on Earth and destabilizing the coast. All that excess heat is also melting ice and snow. While we’ve known that the Arctic is getting warm, according to new research, the weather in the northern regions is actually the warmest it’s been in the past 44,000 years, Christa Marshall reports at Climate Wire.

The average summer temperature in the Arctic over the past 100 years, say lead author Gifford Miller and his colleagues, is “now higher than during any century in more than 44,000 years, including peak warmth of the early Holocene,” a time known as the Holocene thermal maximum.

Getting actual temperature records going back that far is, of course, impossible. Instead, the scientists looked at the plants in the area. By looking at the plants that are emerging from beneath the thawing ice, the scientists can figure out when the ice last melted back this far. Miller and co.:

The ancient rooted plants emerging beneath the four ice caps must have been continuously ice-covered for at least 44 [thousand years]. However, because the oldest dates are near the limit of the radiocarbon age scale, substantially older ages are possible. Based on temperature reconstructions for ice cores retrieved from the nearby Greenland Ice Sheet, the youngest time interval during which summer temperatures were plausibly as warm as present prior to 44 [thousand years] is ~120 [thousand years], at, or near the end of the Last Interglaciation. We suggest this is the most likely age of these samples.

Regardless of the absolute age uncertainties, it remains clear that these four ice caps did not melt behind our collection sites at any time during the Holocene, but did do so recently, indicating that summer warmth of recent decades exceeded that of any interval of comparable length in >44 [thousand years.]

Marshall:

The fact that certain ice caps did not melt during the Holocene Thermal Maximum, despite the extreme warmth at the time, suggests that today’s unusual warming period can only be caused by greenhouse gases, Miller said.

“Nothing else out there can explain it,” Miller said.

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The Arctic Hasn’t Been This Hot for 44,000 Years

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Some Seemingly Harmless Snakes Possess a Secret Venom Gland

by 07ld5ksl Posted on October 18, 2013

Don’t mess with the green whip snake. Photo: Jean-Jacques Milan

Usually, we think of snakes as falling into one of two groups—venomous and nonvenomous. But to the surprise of herpetologists, a new group has emerged, which seems to fall into a previously unknown grey area between venomous and not.

This discovery occurred after victims who received bites from “harmless” snakes—Thrasops flavigularis in Africa and green whip snakes in Europe—began showing suspect symptoms, including problems with neuromotor skills. Upon closer examination, herpetologists noticed that both of those culprit species possess something called the Duvernoy’s gland. Researchers have long puzzled over what this gland’s purpose is; some think it’s used for helping the snakes swallow and digest food, while others believe it’s a primitive version of what scientists consider true venom glands. With these latest findings, however, herpetologists writing in the journal Toxin propose classifying it as a true venom gland.

Before nonvenomous snakes become even more loathed than they largely already are, however, it’s important to note two points the researchers make about these extremely rare events. In all cases of these species causing harm, people were either handling or attempting to capture the animal. Secondly, all of those bites went on for quite a while—one to five minutes. The researchers don’t explain why someone would allow a snake to continue biting them for five full minutes (“for various reasons,” they mysteriously write), but it’s probably safe to assume most victims were not acting in the smartest way—and certainly not how most of us act around snakes, venomous or no.

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Some Seemingly Harmless Snakes Possess a Secret Venom Gland

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This Baby Rogue Planet Is Wandering the Universe All by Itself

by Peggy Mason Posted on October 10, 2013

An artist’s idea of what PSO J318.5-22 may look like. Photo: MPIA/V. Ch. Quetz

Birthed from the protoplanetary disk, most planets spend their days orbiting their parent star, growing old together as they loop around their galaxy’s core. A newly discovered planet named PSO J318.5-22 (which we’ve decided to call Flapjack, because why not?) has no parent. It has no planetary siblings. The planet is adrift, alone.

Estimated to be just 12 million year old, Flapjack is, relatively, just a baby, a planetary toddler off on an adventure to explore the universe. It’s a rogue planet, and it’s sailing through space some 80 light-years away. It is, says Alan Boyle for NBC, about six times the size of Jupiter.

It’s also, say the researchers in a release, the best example we have yet of a rogue planet. Scientists have known that some big objects tend to travel alone, rather than orbiting as part of a system. But they weren’t sure whether these celestial rogues were teeny, faint stars or wandering planets. Recently, though, astronomers have been finding planets all over the universe. Comparing Flapjack to these confirmed planets gave the scientists what they needed to call it a planet.

Rogue planets, says Universe Today, may be planets that formed normally, as part of a solar system, but then were kicked out to wander alone. That’s what they think happened to Flapjack. But there’s also the possibility that rogue planets could be birthed in interstellar space, growing from cold clouds of dust and gas. If that’s the case, Flapjack, says Universe Today, could have been born free.

The red dot in the middle is a telescope’s view of PSO J318.5-22. Photo: N. Metcalfe / Pan-STARRS 1 Science Consortium

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Early Agriculture Nearly Tanked Ancient Europe’s Population

by LilianX28 Posted on October 2, 2013

A recreation of an ancient English farm. Photo: Gordontour

The rise of agriculture changed the world. And we don’t just mean the human world. At its onset, long before the Green Revolution paved the way for vastly improved yields, people were notoriously bad at using the land. To produce our food we used to cut down a staggering number of trees. Deforestation in the western world, driven by land clearing for farming, actually peaked hundreds or thousands of years ago. And, without things like fertilizer or irrigation, or the massive intertwined agricultural system we have today, local shocks—a fire, a drought, a flood—could cut vital food supplies for years.

So, while the rise of agriculture allowed human populations to blossom, it also opened the door for catastrophic collapses. Science News:

Researchers already knew that agriculture in Europe appeared in modern-day Turkey around 8,500 years ago, spreading to France by about 7,800 years ago and then to Britain, Ireland and Northern Europe approximately 6,000 years ago. Farming led to more plentiful, stable food supplies, fueling population growth. But little is known about long-term population trends among ancient European cultivators.

New research looking at the sizes of human populations in ancient Europe found that while agriculture helped populations grow, the burgeoning civilizations were not sustainable.

In most sections of Europe, populations at some point declined by as much as 30 to 60 percent compared with peaks achieved after farming began, Shennan’s team concludes. That population plummet is similar to the continental devastation wreaked by the Black Death, an epidemic that peaked in Europe between 1348 and 1350.

The scientists, says BBC History, are fairly certain that ancient climate change was not the cause of the collapses. The research is a nice reminder that any technology that lets you outpace your natural limits can also send you crashing back down when it fails.

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Sea Turtles Are Nesting in Record Numbers

by Toni Tolve Posted on September 26, 2013

A green sea turtle. Photo: Roy Niswanger

We drove green sea turtles to the brink of extinction, by hunting them, collecting their eggs and killing them, accidentally, with fishing equipment. In 1978, says EarthSky, green sea turtles became protected under the Endangered Species Act, and it looks like those protections are bearing some benefit for the turtles. In the southeast United States, says the Fish and Wildlife Service, green sea turtles are nesting in record numbers:

“Green turtle nest numbers are through the roof,” says Bill Miller manager of Hobe Sound National Wildlife Refuge, FL., where a mid-August count of 1,147 more than doubled the 2011 record of 543. At Archie Carr National Wildlife Refuge, FL, greens had built 10,420 nests by August 21, topping the 2011 record of 6,023. Nesting season won’t end until November.

Loggerheads are doing better, too, says the FWS, though their gains aren’t as dramatic as the green sea turtles. But just because there should be lots of baby sea turtles on the horizon, says the FWS, doesn’t mean the turtles are safe:

[H]ow long nesting gains will offset threats to sea turtle survival is unknown. Says Miller, “If we don’t do something about ocean debris, loss of habitat to erosion and sea level rise, and the pollution of lagoons and estuaries from runoff, nesting gains will be outweighed by environmental degradations.”

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Europe’s Space Agency Is Going to Harpoon a Comet And Ride It Into the Sun

by Roger Frost Posted on September 18, 2013

Rosetta eyeing the comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Photo: ESA

The European Space Agency is gearing up to do its best Captain Ahab. For nine years the ESA’s Rosetta probe has been careening through the solar system, inching closer to its target. Rosetta swung by Mars and the Earth, using the planets’ gravitational pulls like a slingshot, picking up speed. In 2011, Rosetta went to sleep—a bid to save energy during its three billion mile endurance race. But in January the probe will wake up and prepare to catch its quarry—the comet Cheryumov-Gerasimenko.

In August, says the BBC, Rosetta will catch up to the comet, which she’ll survey for the next three months. But then, in November, Rosetta’s mission will climax when the spacecraft, quite literally, harpoons the comet.

Using harpoons and screws, says the BBC, the Philae probe, which was carried by Rosetta all this time, will latch itself to the comet. Then, it will hold on as the two head towards the Sun. Or, at least, it will hold on as long as it can.

Comets are relics of the formation of the solar system. Back when the solar system was just a protoplanetary disc orbiting the newly formed Sun, and everything was banging around and clumping together, some of that material went on to become the planets, and some became asteroids and comets. For this reason astronomers have been fascinated with tracking down these celestial fossils.

As this particular comet—a big ball of frozen gas and ice—heats up it will begin to break down, venting gas into space. “How long Philae could withstand any outgassing as the ices heat up on approach to the Sun is anyone’s guess. Will 67-P be a “bucking bronco”?” asks the BBC.

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