Gizmorama

July 23, 2012

Good Morning,

Researchers in Europe have been tracking the 34 billion tons of carbon dioxide measured in 2011 with the question: where is it coming from? Check out the second article to view their results.

Until Next Time,
Erin

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Cassini sees daytime lightning on Saturn

PASADENA, Calif. - NASA has released images from the orbiting Cassini spacecraft of lightning flashes seen during a huge storm on Saturn that encircled its northern hemisphere. The lightning flashes were recorded as bluish spots in the middle of swirling clouds in a 2011 storm, the largest ever seen up close on the ringed planet, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory reported Wednesday. Scientists said the recently released images mark the first time lightning has been detected in visible wavelengths on the side of Saturn illuminated by the sun. "We didn't think we'd see lightning on Saturn's day side -- only its night side," said Ulyana Dyudina, a Cassini imaging team member at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif. "The fact that Cassini was able to detect the lightning means that it was very intense." The intensity of the flashes is comparable to the strongest flashes on Earth, scientists said, with the visible energy alone estimated to be about 3 billion watts lasting for 1 second. "As summer storm season descends upon Earth's northern latitudes, Cassini provides us a great opportunity to see how weather plays out at different places in our solar system," Linda Spilker, JPL Cassini project scientist, said. "Saturn's atmosphere has been changing over the eight years Cassini has been at Saturn, and we can't wait to see what happens next."


European researchers track world emissions

BRUSSELS - Global emissions of carbon dioxide, the main cause of global warming, increased to an all-time high of 34 billion tons in 2011, European researchers said. As part of a global increase of 3 percent last year, emissions in China reached 7.2 tons per capita, putting that country in the company of the major industrialized countries, whose emissions vary from 6 to 9 tons per capita, the European Commission Joint Research Center said in a release Thursday. Of the industrialized countries, the United States remains one of the largest emitters of CO2, with 17.3 tons per capita despite a decline due to the recession in 2008-2009, high oil prices and an increased share of natural gas, the researchers said. In the European Union CO2 emissions dropped by 3 percent to 7.5 tons per capita, they said. The 3 percent increase in global CO2 emissions in 2011 is above the past decade's average annual increase of 2.7 percent, the researchers said. However, they said, this is being mitigated by the expansion of renewable energy supplies, especially solar and wind energy and biofuels, with so-called modern renewables -- which does not include hydropower -- growing with increasing speed, and quadrupling from 1992 to 2011.


Mission to study plasma around Earth

GREENBELT, Md. - NASA says its next science mission, to study two giant donuts of electrified gas known as plasma that surround Earth, will launch in August. The Radiation Belt Storm Probes will improve understanding of what makes the plasma move in and out of a region known as the Van Allen Radiation Belts, the space agency said in a release Thursday. There are two such belts. The inner belt stays largely stable, but the number of particles in the outer one can swell 100 times or more, easily encompassing a horde of communications satellites and research instruments orbiting Earth. "We discovered the radiation belts in observations from the very first spacecraft, Explorer 1, in 1958," David Sibeck at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., said. "Characterizing these belts filled with dangerous particles was a great success of the early space age, but those observations led to as many questions as answers. These are fascinating science questions, but also practical questions, since we need to protect satellites from the radiation in the belts." Figuring out what drives the changes in the belts requires understanding what drives the plasma, scientists say. "We know examples where a storm of incoming particles from the sun can cause the two belts to swell so much that they merge and appear to form a single belt," Shri Kanekal, deputy project scientist at Goddard, said. "Then there are other examples where a large storm from the sun didn't affect the belts at all, and even cases where the belts shrank. Since the effects can be so different, there is a joke within the community that 'If you've seen one storm ... You've seen one storm.' We need to figure out what causes the differences."


Bones give clues to Neanderthal lifestyle

CAMBRIDGE, England - Spear hunting may not have given Neanderthals their powerful right arms; it may have come from scraping animal skins for clothes and shelters, researchers say. Skeletons show Neanderthals, our closest known extinct relatives, had unusually strong right arms, as their right humerus -- the long arm bone associated with the biceps and triceps -- often possessed large anchor points thought to attach to powerful muscles, scientists said. "Neanderthals have really interesting upper bodies," researcher Colin Shaw, a biological anthropologist at the University of Cambridge in England, told LiveScience. "If you and I are both right-handed, you'd expect 4 to 13 percent asymmetry between our arms. "Neanderthals have up to 50 percent or more asymmetry. They were doing something with their dominant arms that were either more intense or repetitive or both than we do today." Shaw thought to test a prevalent theory that held the arms might have grown strong through regular underhanded spear-thrusting. The research measured electrical activity in the muscles of 13 right-handed men as they performed three different spear-thrusting tasks, and also analyzed the men as they carried out different scraping tasks on carpet. The researchers found spear-thrusting led to significantly higher muscle activity on the left side of the body than on the right, opposite to what is seen in Neanderthal fossils. "Spear-thrusting did not appear to explain the mystery," Shaw said. In comparison, scraping tasks led to much higher muscle activity on the right side than on the left, he said. "While hunting was important to Neanderthals, our research suggests that much of their time was spent performing other tasks, such as preparing the skins of large animals," Shaw said. "If we are right, it changes our picture of the daily activities of Neanderthals," he said. "This is a lot more mundane than hunting big game all the time, but it shows forethought to prepare skins for use throughout the year."

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