Mars Curiosity rover images ancient stream-bed once flowing with water

New hope for life on Mars as Curiosity beams back pictures proving planet was covered in 'waist-deep' streams of water
By DAILY MAIL
September 27, 2012

Hopes that Mars could have supported life have received a boost following the discovery of evidence that water once flowed on the planet in streams several feet deep.

The news, which has left top NASA scientists 'excited', comes thanks to photographs of bedrock beamed back from the red planet by the Curiosity rover.

There have been previous signs that water existed on Mars long ago, but the images released on Thursday showing pebbles rounded off, probably by water, offered the most convincing evidence so far of an ancient streambed which could have been waist-deep.

Carved out: These rounded rocks on Mars were probably caused by rnning water, according to scientists

There was 'a vigorous flow on the surface of Mars,' said chief scientist John Grotzinger of the California Institute of Technology. 'We're really excited about this.'

The discovery did not come as a complete surprise. NASA decided to land Curiosity inside Gale Crater near the Martian equator because photos from space hinted that the spot possessed a watery past.

The six-wheeled rover safely landed on August 5 after a nail-biting plunge through the Martian atmosphere. It is on a two-year, $2.5billion mission to study whether the Martian environment could have been favorable for microbial life.

Mars is now a frozen desert with no hint of water on its radiation-scarred surface, but geological studies of rocks by previous missions suggest the planet used to be warmer and wetter.

Exciting: The discovery, beamed back by the Curiosity rover, makes it more likely that Mars once supported life

Spot the difference: The Martian landscape, left, is similar to bedrock formations on Earth, right

The latest evidence came from photos that Curiosity took revealing rounded pebbles and gravel - a sign that the rocks were transported long distances by water and smoothed out.
The size of the rocks - ranging from a sand grain to a golf ball - indicates that they could not have been carried by wind, said mission scientist Rebecca Williams of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona.

Though Curiosity did not use its high-tech instruments to drill into the rocks or analyze their chemical makeup, Mr Grotzinger said scientists were sure that water played a role based on just studying the pictures.

It is unclear how long the water persisted on the surface, but it easily could have lasted 'thousands to millions of years,' said mission scientist Bill Dietrich of the University of California, Berkeley.

Procession: This overhead image shows the route Curiosity is currently travelling across Mars

Curiosity chanced upon the dried-up streambed while driving to Glenelg, an intriguing spot where three types of terrain meet. Its ultimate destination is Mount Sharp, a mountain rising from the center of crater floor, but it is not expected to travel there until the end of the year.

Finding past water is a first step toward learning whether the environment could have supported microbes. Scientists generally agree that besides water and an energy source such as the sun, organic carbon is a necessary prerequisite for life.

While an ancient streambed holds promise as a potentially habitable environment, scientists do not think it is a good place to preserve the carbon building blocks of life.

The rover will therefore continue its trek to the foothills of Mount Sharp where there is a better chance of finding organic material.

The burning question of every paleontologist - how DID the mighty dinosaurs have sex?

The joy of T-Rex: Scientists show how dinosaurs had sex (tricky, when you weigh 30 tonnes and one crucial part is 12ft long)

By ROB WAUGH
DAILY MAIL
July 11, 2012

Paleontologists answer many tricky questions about dinosaurs - but perhaps the most interesting is how did 30-ton animals larger than four-storey buildings have sex.

A surprising amount of research has been devoted to the subject - and most researchers have concluded that dinosaurs made love like dogs

'All dinosaurs used the same basic position to mate,' said Dr Beverly Halstead, an English researcher who was one of the first to tackle the subject. 'Mounting from the rear, he put his forelimbs on her shoulders, lifting one hind limb across her back and twisting his tail under hers.'

Tyrannosaurus rex dinosaurs mating - like most dinosaur species, the creatures mated like dogs

Sauroposeidon dinosaurs mate: Biologist
Stuart Landry believes that big dinosaurs
would just fall over on land and would have
needed water to provide support

Scientific illustrators have also attempted to capture the intriguing rituals of the huge beasts - including an illustrator who worked with Dr Halstead on a magazine article in 1988.

The physical challenges involved must have been formidable.

The penis of a tyrannosaur is estimated to be around 12 feet long.

Kristi Curry Rogers, Assistant Professor of Biology and Geology at Macalester College in Minnesota, told the Discovery Channel.

'The most likely position to have intercourse is for the male behind the female, and on top of her, and from behind, any other position is unfathomable.’

'I don't think there's much doubt about that,' Dr. Gregory M. Erickson, an evolutionary biologist at Florida State University, told The Huffington Post 'It must have been a hell of a thing to see.'

Some experts have questioned this line of thinking and suggested that dinosaurs romped in water.

Biologist Stuart Landry believes that big dinosaurs would just fall over on land and would have needed water to provide support.

Pentaceratops dinosaurs mating: A surprising amount of research has been devoted to the subject - and most researchers have concluded that dinosaurs made love like dogs

The science behind Arabic letters

                         
                         

http://loveandshowhateandhide.tumblr.com/

Scientists invent life-saving oxygen injection to keep people alive without breathing

Scientist invents way to keep people alive even when they can't breathe by injecting oxygen into the blood
By DAILY MAIL
June 29, 2012

Scientists have discovered a new way of administering oxygen to the blood which could allow people to stay alive without breathing.

The amazing breakthrough could change medical science by eliminating the need to keep patients breathing during complex operations.

The procedure, which works by injecting oxygen molecules enclosed in fatty molecules directly into the bloodstream, could grant people an extra 30 minutes of life when they cannot breathe.

Blood: Injecting oxygen into the bloodstream could help keep patients who cannot breathe alive while undergoing medical treatment. Credit: DailyMail

John Kheir, of the Boston Children's Hospital, was inspired to begin his groundbreaking research after he experienced a patient's tragic death, according to ScienceDaily.

[...]

Much of Dr Kheir's research therefore involved finding a substance which could enclose the oxygen and allow it to be suspended in a liquid for injection into the body.

He found that using fatty molecules called lipids was the best way to retain oxygen after using sound waves to trap the two substances together into particles so small they can only be seen with the help of a microscope.

The particles were then made up into a liquid which is very heavily oxygenated - carrying 'three to four times the oxygen content of our own red blood cells', according to Dr Kheir.

When the liquid solution was injected into animals with abnormally low levels of blood oxygen, their blood returned to normal within seconds.

And when it was administered to animals which were entirely unable to breathe, they remained alive for 15 minutes and were at lower risk of health complications.

When used on humans, the oxygen could probably last for up to 30 minutes, though injecting it for any longer could damage the patient's blood.

'This is a short-term oxygen substitute - a way to safely inject oxygen gas to support patients during a critical few minutes,' Dr Kheir said.

He added that he thought the technique could become routine for doctors and parademics dealing with emergency situations.

'Eventually, this could be stored in syringes on every code cart in a hospital, ambulance or transport helicopter to help stabilise patients who are having difficulty breathing,' he said.

Read more:
ScienceDaily: Injecting life-saving oxygen into a vein

Newly discovered mineral embedded in meteorite

Scientists Find New Primitive Mineral in Meteorite
Science Daily
June 26, 2012

— In 1969, an exploding fireball tore through the sky over Mexico, scattering thousands of pieces of meteorite across the state of Chihuahua. More than 40 years later, the Allende meteorite is still serving the scientific community as a rich source of information about the early stages of our solar system's evolution. Recently, scientists from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) discovered a new mineral embedded in the space rock -- one they believe to be among the oldest minerals formed in the solar system.

Panguite is embedded in a piece of the Allende meteorite.
(Credit: Chi Ma / Caltech)

Dubbed panguite, the new titanium oxide is named after Pan Gu, the giant from ancient Chinese mythology who established the world by separating yin from yang to create the earth and the sky. The mineral and the mineral name have been approved by the International Mineralogical Association's Commission on New Minerals, Nomenclature and Classification. A paper outlining the discovery and the properties of this new mineral will be published in the July issue of the journal American Mineralogist, and is available online now.

"Panguite is an especially exciting discovery since it is not only a new mineral, but also a material previously unknown to science," says Chi Ma, a senior scientist and director of the Geological and Planetary Sciences division's Analytical Facility at Caltech and corresponding author on the paper.

The Allende meteorite is the largest carbonaceous chondrite -- a diverse class of primitive meteorites -- ever found on our planet and is considered by many the best-studied meteorite in history. As a result of an ongoing nanomineralogy investigation of primitive meteorites -- which Ma has been leading since 2007 -- nine new minerals, including panguite, have been found in the Allende meteorite. Some of those new finds include the minerals allendeite, hexamolybdenum, tistarite, and kangite.

Nanomineralogy looks at tiny particles of minerals and the minuscule features within those minerals.

"The intensive studies of objects in this meteorite have had a tremendous influence on current thinking about processes, timing, and chemistry in the primitive solar nebula and small planetary bodies," says coauthor George Rossman, the Eleanor and John R. McMillan Professor of Mineralogy at Caltech.

Panguite was observed first under a scanning electron microscope in an ultra-refractory inclusion embedded in the meteorite. Refractory inclusions are among the first solid objects formed in our solar system, dating back to before the formation of Earth and the other planets. "Refractory" refers to the fact that these inclusions contain minerals that are stable at high temperatures and in extreme environments, which attests to their likely formation as primitive, high-temperature liquids produced by the solar nebula.

According to Ma, studies of panguite and other newly discovered refractory minerals are continuing in an effort to learn more about the conditions under which they formed and subsequently evolved. "Such investigations are essential to understand the origins of our solar system," he says.

Additional authors on the American Mineralogist paper, "Panguite, (Ti4+,Sc,Al,Mg,Zr,Ca)1.8O3, a new ultra-refractory titania mineral from the Allende meteorite: Synchrotron micro-diffraction and EBSD," are John R. Beckett, senior research scientist at Caltech; Oliver Tschauner from the University of Nevada-Las Vegas; and Wenjun Liu from the Argonne National Laboratory. The study was supported through grants from the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy, and NASA's Office of Space Science.

Dramatically shrinking Arctic polar ice - truly global warming is upon us

Are we about to get an ice-free Arctic? Disturbing pictures by NASA show the polar cap is shrinking in mass by around 15% per decade
By EDDIE WRENN
DAILYMAIL
June 20, 2012

Only yesterday, NASA released an image of the 'White Marble' - an image from space showing our snow-and-ice-capped planet from above the North Pole.

Today, a new NASA release of pictures shows an alarming decrease in the amount of ice-locked water on the Arctic's floating ice cap - revealing that the oldest and thickest Arctic sea ice is disappearing at an extremely fast rate.

As the pictures below dramatically make clear, the size of the Arctic's floating ice cap has diminished massively over the last 30 years, lending evidence to the theory we are in a period of global warming.

The thicker ice, known as multi-year ice, survives through the cyclical summer melt season, when young ice that has formed over winter just as quickly melts again.

The rapid disappearance of older ice makes Arctic sea ice even more vulnerable to further decline in the summer, said Joey Comiso, senior scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.


1980: The floating ice cap is a large sprawling mass across the top of our planet, holding giant amounts of water


Sign of the times in 2012: The ice covering has dramatically shrunk, with research showing the cap is losing around 15-20% of its mass per decade

The new research takes a closer look at how multi-year ice, ice that has made it through at least two summers, has diminished with each passing winter over the last three decades.

Multi-year ice 'extent' - which includes all areas of the Arctic Ocean where multi-year ice covers at least 15 percent of the ocean surface - is diminishing at a rate of -15.1 percent per decade, the study found.

There’s another measurement that allows researchers to analyse how the ice cap evolves: multi-year ice 'area,' which discards areas of open water among ice floes and focuses exclusively on the regions of the Arctic Ocean that are completely covered by multi-year ice.

Sea ice area is always smaller than sea ice extent, and it gives scientists the information needed to estimate the total volume of ice in the Arctic Ocean.

Comiso found that multi-year ice area is shrinking even faster than multi-year ice extent, by -17.2 percent per decade...

(click here for the full article)

A universe existed BEFORE the Big Bang, so says scientists according to new evidence

Does this picture show the 'ghost' of a universe that existed before the Big Bang?
By EDDIE WRENN
Daily Mail
June 11,2012

A renowned scientist says he has spotted evidence that a universe existed before the Big Bang.

Professor Roger Penrose from Oxford University says concentric circles discovered in the background microwaves of the universe provides evidence of events that took place before the universe came into being.

The cosmic microwave offers us a ghostly look at the the universe just 300,000 years after the Big Ban' - a microscopic amount of time compared to the universe's estimated age of 13.7billion years.

The research by Penrose, who was awarded the 1988 Wolf Prize along with Stephen Hawkings for adding to our cosmic knowledge, adds evidence to the theory that the universe has expanded ('the Big Bang') and contracted ('the Big Crunch') many times.

A map of the cosmic background radiation (CMB) in the universe with circles which may signify events that took place before the Big Bang

A map of the cosmic background radiation (CMB) in the universe with circles which may signify events that took place before the Big Bang

The cosmic radiation background (CMB) is believed to have cooled to a temperature of -270C in the near 14 billion years since the birth of the universe.

Stars and galaxies started to form around 300 million years later. Our Sun was born around five billion years ago, and life first appeared on the Earth around 3.7 billion years ago.

The Daily Galaxy reports that Prof Penrose, along with Professor Vahe Gurzadyan of the Yerevan State University, Armenia believe images of the CMB from NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotophy Probe shows imprints in the radiation that are older than the Big Bang.

They say they have discovered 12 examples of concentric circles, some of which have five rings - which means the same object has had five massive events in its history.

The rings appear around galaxy clusters in which the variation in the background radiation appears to be strangely low.

Clues in the mist: Microwave radiation from the whole sky, captured by the European Space Agency's Planck satellite. Image credit: PA

The research appears to cast aside the widely-held 'inflationary' theory of the origins of the universe, that it began with the Big Bang, and will continue to expand until a point in the future, when it will end.

They believe the circles are imprints of extremely violent gravitational radiation waves generated by supermassive black hole collisions in a previous aeon before the last big bang.
They say that this means that this means that the universe cycles through aeons dominated by big bangs and supermassive black hole collisions.

Professor Penrose believes that his new theory of ‘conformal cyclic cosmology' means that black holes will eventually consume all the matter in the universe.

According to his theory, when they have finished, all that will be left in the universe will be energy - which will then trigger the next Big Bang - and the new aeon.

Professor Penrose told the BBC: 'In the scheme that I'm proposing, you have an exponential expansion but it's not in our aeon - I use the term to describe [the period] from our Big Bang until the remote future.

'I claim that this aeon is one of a succession of such things, where the remote future of the previous aeons somehow becomes the Big Bang of our aeon.'

100 million year-old oyster discovered

The 100-million-year-old oyster, ten times normal size, which will undergo MRI scan to see if it contains the world's biggest pearl
By EDDIE WRENN
DAILY MAIL
June 5, 2012

A gigantic oyster fossil that was accidentally trawled up by fishermen is to be MRI-scanned to see if it contains an enormous pearl.

The prehistoric mollusc is more than 100million years old and is ten times bigger than a regular oyster shell.

It was hauled up in the Solent and found in the nets of the trawler boat when it returned to port.
After layers of mud were washed off, it was clear the item was a huge fossilised shell that measured seven inches wide and three inches thick.

Bigger on the inside: Aquarist Jenna MacFarlane from the Blue Reef Aquarium holds the gigantic oyster could it contain the world's biggest pearl. Image credit: BNPS.CO.UK

A shell of this size could be concealing a pearl the size of a golf ball, dwarfing the average 7mm diametre size of an oyster pearl.

Such a gem would be worth thousands and thousands of pounds.

The oyster has been given to the Blue Reef Aquarium in Portsmouth, Hampshire, where experts there have managed to date it by studying its growth rings, much like a tree.

They are now waiting to have it MRI scanned to see if it holds the rare gem.

Overgrown: The Jurassic monster is displayed next to a normal oyster. The prehistoric mollusc is more than 100million years old. Image credit: BNPS.CO.UK

Open the box to reveal... A pearl in an oyster shell

A spokesman from the Blue Reef Aquarium said: 'It was discovered in the nets of a fishing boat which was dredging here in the Solent.

'When the fishermen came back to port they thought it was real, but when they picked it up, cleaned it, and had a closer look they could tell it was a fossil.

'It had completely turned to stone.

'A member of the public called and informed us it was on display at a local fishmongers so we called them and they gave it to us to have in the aquarium.

'Oysters can be aged by annual growth rings on their shells and we have counted more than 200 rings on this oyster making it an extremely long-lived individual.

'It's obviously a million-to-one chance that it would contain anything but, if you were to go purely on the dimensions of the shell then you'd be looking at a golf ball-sized pearl.

'We are hoping to have it MRI scanned in the near future to see if it is concealing something.'

Science and Religion according to Dan Brown (author)

Image credit: danbrownnovels - tumblr

Spectacular view of Saturn's moon Dione captured as Cassini probe hurtles past (DailyMail)

By ROB WAUGH
Daily Mail
May 22, 2012

The robotic Cassini spacecraft captured a spectacular view of Saturn's moon Dione on its closest-ever fly-past - and caught two of the ringed planet's 62 other moons in the background.

The picture, shown off this week on Nasa's Astronomy Picture of the Day site, shows off Epimetheus and Prometheus, as well as the snow-white surface of the 680-mile-wide moon Dione, where oxygen was detected by the probe on an earlier fly-past.

The robotic Cassini spacecraft captured a spectacular view of Saturn's moon Dione on its closest-ever fly-past - and caught two of the ringed planet's 62 other moons in the background. Photo credit: DailyMail/NASA/JPL/ESA

The image was taken when Cassini was only about 62,000 kilometers from the large icy moon last year.

The probe was launched in 1997, and continues its mission - it will fly past Titan tomorrow, and later this year will take a picture of Earth passing behind Saturn in June.

Dione has become an object of particular interest to the Cassini mission since oxygen was detected in its upper atmosphere.

The discovery was made by instruments on board the Cassini spacecraft, launched in 1997, and relayed back to scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

A sensor aboard the Cassini spacecraft called the Cassini Plasma Spectrometer detected the oxygen ions during a flyby of the moon in 2010.


Dione: Oxygen was found in the iccy moon's atmosphere by instruments on board the Cassini spacecraft, launched in 1997, and relayed back to scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Photo credit: DailyMail/NASA/JPL/ESA

Dione - discovered in 1684 by astronomer Giovanni Cassini, after whom the spacecraft was named, orbits Saturn at roughly the same distance as our own moon orbits Earth.

The tiny moon is a mere 700 miles wide and appears to be a thick, pockmarked layer of water ice surrounding a smaller rock core.

As it orbits Saturn every 2.7 days, Dione is bombarded by charged particles (ions) emanating from Saturn’s very strong magnetosphere.

These ions slam into the surface of Dione, displacing molecular oxygen ions into Dione’s thin atmosphere through a process called sputtering.

Molecular oxygen ions are then stripped from Dione’s exosphere by Saturn’s strong magnetosphere.

Read more:
Spectacular APOD Image of Saturn's Moon Dione

Voyager, our interstellar travelers reaches the outer boundary of our solar system

To infinity and beyond! Voyager probe will become first man-made spacecraft to reach the edge of our solar system 'within months' (35 years after it left Earth)

By ROB WAUGH
Daily Mail
April 26, 2012

• 'Shouldn't have long to wait to find out what space between stars is like'
• Probe launched in 1977
• More than 11 billion miles from sun
• Still detecting spikes in cosmic radiation - so it is still technically 'within' our solar system
• Batteries will last until 2020 - allowing vehicle to enter 'interstellar space'

More than three decades after launching, NASA’s workhorse spacecraft is now close to the edge of our solar system.

According to recent research published in Geophysical Letters, the probe is now 111 astronomical units from the sun - meaning it is 111 times further from the sun than it is from the Earth.

Voyager 1 has been exploring the fringes of the solar system since 2004 - and it is now close to the very edge of our solar system, affording the first-ever 'alien's eye' view of our planet.

The probe is still detecting 'spikes' in the intensity of cosmic ray electrons - which lead scientists to think it's still within the 'heliosheath', the very outer edge of our solar system. Photo credit: DailyMail

The probe is still detecting 'spikes' in the intensity of cosmic ray electrons - which lead scientists to think it's still within the 'heliosheath', the very outer edge of our solar system.

Voyager 1 still has a little way to go before it completely exits the solar system and becomes the first manmade probe to cross into interstellar space, or the vast space between stars.
The spacecraft has enough battery power to last until 2020, but scientists think it will reach interstellar space before that - in a matter of several months to years.

Chief scientist Ed Stone of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory said the timing is unclear because no spacecraft has ever ventured this far.

For the past year, Voyager 1 used its instruments to explore the new region. It appeared to be the cosmic doldrums where solar winds streaming out from the sun at 1 million mph have dramatically eased. Photo credit: DailyMail

'The journey continues,' Stone told a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.

For the past year, Voyager 1 used its instruments to explore the new region.

It appeared to be the cosmic doldrums where solar winds streaming out from the sun at 1 million mph have dramatically eased and high-energy particles from outside are seeping in - a sign that Voyager 1 is at the doorstep of interstellar space.

Voyager is now detecting the first traces of 'interstellar winds' - the signs it is finally reaching the edges of solar system. Photo credit: DailyMail

Scientists expect to see several telltale signs when Voyager 1 finally crosses the boundary including a change in the magnetic field direction and the type of wind. Interstellar wind is slower, colder and denser than solar wind.

Even with certain expectations, Stone warned that the milestone won’t be cut-and-dried.
'We will be confused when it first happens,' Stone said.

Voyager 1 and its twin, Voyager 2, were launched in 1977 to tour the outer planets including Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. After their main mission ended, both headed toward interstellar space in opposite directions. Voyager 2 is traveling slower than Voyager 1 and is currently 9 billion away miles from the sun.

4 new species of fresh water crab discovered on the Philippine island of Palawan

Incredible purple crab is one of four brand new species discovered on Philippine island
The crabs are unique to the island, but are threatened by mining projects

By TED THORNHILL
DailyMail
April 24, 2012

An amazing purple crab is one of four new species of the creature that have been discovered on the Philippine island of Palawan.

They are all variants of the colourful Insulamon freshwater crab and are unique to the island.

However, various mining projects pose a huge threat to them.

Claws for concern: The purple crab is one of four new species discovered - but mining projects threaten its existence

Bright: The crab is completely unique to Palawan

Located between the Sundaic and Philippine region, Palawan combines two of the world’s most important biodiversity hotspots.

Around 50 per cent of the species living on Palawan are defined as endemic, which means they are exclusively native to the island.

‘In the Aqua Palawana research programme I am head of, we have been investigating the biodiversity of Palawan’s inland waters for over 10 years’, says Dr Hendrik Freitag from the Senckenberg Natural History Collections in Dresden.

‘This also included taking a closer look at the Insulamon crabs and we discovered four new species in the process.’

The reddish violet species of the Insulamon crab genus are the only varieties that are endemic to only one or a few islands.

Unique: The recently discovered Insulamon johannchristiani species also exists only on Palawan

The sea means these creatures are unable to spread elsewhere, as they depend on freshwater at all stages of their development.

Having been completely separated from their relatives, they have developed their own separate species and genera over tens of thousands of years.

‘We have proved that the only previously known type of Insulamon is restricted to the Calamian group of islands to the north of Palawan. The four newly discovered species live exclusively on the actual island of Palawan and make it a unique habitat’, says Freitag.

Insulamon magnum ¿ another of the freshwater crabs recently discovered

But this unique biodiversity is under threat. Several mining projects are to be conducted despite massive protests by people from all walks of life and against the resistance of indigenous peoples, according to a statement from Senckenberg.

Freitag adds: ‘The smaller the remaining natural habitat the greater is the risk to endemic fauna and flora. Even minor environmental changes can lead to extinctions.

‘It is all the more important to do research in this region and show that the biodiversity of these islands is unique and worth protecting. That’s why our next step is to investigate Palawan’s species-rich freshwater prawns’.

The study was recently published in the scientific journal Raffles Bulletin of Zoology.

The crabs all live on Palawan in fresh water

Huge underground water aquifers discovered in North Africa...will this start the re-colonization of Africa or has it started with AFRICOM?

We'll drink to that: Massive underground reserves of water found in some of Africa's driest areas - including the Sahara Desert
Researchers estimate that reserves of groundwater across the continent are 100 times the amount found on its surface

By TED THORNHILL
DailyMail
April 21, 2012

Huge reserves of underground water in some of the driest parts of Africa could provide a buffer against the effects of climate change for years to come, scientists said.

Researchers from the British Geological Survey and University College London have for the first time mapped the aquifers, or groundwater, across the continent and the amount they hold.

‘The largest groundwater volumes are found in the large sedimentary aquifers in the North African countries Libya, Algeria, Egypt and Sudan,’ the scientists said in their paper.

Revelation: Scientists have mapped Africa's underground water reserves

They estimate that reserves of groundwater across the continent are 100 times the amount found on its surface, or 0.66 million cubic kilometres.

Writing in the journal Environmental Research Letters, they cautioned, though, that not all these reserves can be accessed.

Where they can, small-scale extraction using hand pumps would be better than large-scale drilling projects, which could quickly deplete the reservoirs and have other unforeseen consequences.

Groundwater is no panacea for Africa's water shortages but it could form an important part of a strategy to cope with an expected sharp increase in demand for water as the continent's population increases.

Even now, some estimates put the number of Africans without access to safe drinking water at more than 300 million and only 5 per cent of arable land is irrigated.

‘It is not as simple as drilling big bore holes and seeing rice fields spring up everywhere,’ said Dr Stephen Foster, a London-based senior adviser for aid group Global Water Partnership and an expert in groundwater issues.

‘In some places it could be economically and technically feasible to use groundwater to reduce crop loss, but I would question whether that is true everywhere. It will need detailed evaluation.
Foster noted that projects have failed due to cost and logistics problems.

‘In northern Nigeria there have been groundwater irrigation projects that have failed because of the rising cost of fuel - a major factor in drilling costs - and distribution difficulties.’

The researchers say some of the largest deposits are in the driest areas of Africa in and around the Sahara, but they are deep - at 100 to 250 meters below ground level.

‘Water levels deeper than 50 meters will not be able to be accessed easily by a hand pump,’ said the study, led by Dr Alan MacDonald of the British Geological Survey. ‘At depths greater than 100 meters the cost of borehole drilling increases significantly due to the requirement for more sophisticated drilling equipment.’

The amount of water a borehole yields is another key issue. A small community hand pump needs a borehole with a flow rate of 0.1 to 0.3 litres per second. For large-scale irrigation, the rate needs to be much higher, say around 50 litres.

Dry research: It turns out that the biggest reserves of underground water are found near the Sahara Desert. Photo credit: Dailymail/Alamy

Phoebe White, a water, sanitation and hygiene specialist for the UK Department for International Development based in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, said hand pumps in the DRC cost up to $13,000 apiece but in some areas the aquifers are too deep and other pumps must be used.

In areas of DRC where drilling deep boreholes is required the cost can be around $130,000, although problems of accessibility and infrastructure can push that figure up, according to White.

The researchers say the maps, based on existing geological charts from governments and hundreds of aquifer studies, are aimed at promoting a ‘more realistic assessments of water security and water stress’.

Roger Calow at UK think-tank the Overseas Development Institute, which was involved in the program that spawned the research, said the paper shows water shortages in large parts of Africa do not stem from scarcity.

‘What the science is telling us is that we have more storage in these shallow, relatively unproductive (aquifers) than we thought,’ he said, adding that about 60 per cent of Africans still live in rural areas and 80 per cent of those rely on groundwater systems.

Calow said a third of hand pumps across Africa have broken down due to a lack of maintenance.

Aid agencies gave the research a cautious welcome.

‘The discovery of substantial water reserves under parts of Africa may well be good news for the continent but it may prove hard to access in the near term and, if not sustainably managed, could have unforeseen impacts,’ Nick Nuttall, spokesman for the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) in Nairobi.

Nuttall said over-abstraction exploitation of groundwater in Mexico City, for example, is undermining the foundations of buildings.

He said the focus of efforts to improve water supply should be on better collection and storage.
‘The fact is that there is already a tremendous amount of water available for Africa but it is rarely collected’.

A study by UNEP and the World Agroforestry Centre found there is enough water falling as rain over Africa to supply the needs of some 9 billion people.

‘Ethiopia, where just over a fifth of the population are covered by domestic water supply and an estimated 46 per cent of the population suffer hunger, has a potential rainwater harvest equivalent to the population needs of over 520 million people,’ Nuttall told Reuters.

40 fossilized dinosaur eggs from 60 million years ago discovered in Chechnya

Eggs-traordinary: 40 gigantic dinosaur eggs dating back 60million years found in Chechnya - but what laid them is a mystery
The eggs are between 25cm and a metre in height

By TED THORNHILL
Daily Mail
April 17, 2012

Geologists in Russia's volatile Chechnya region have discovered what they believe to be fossilised dinosaur eggs laid by one of the huge extinct reptiles that roamed the Earth more than 60million years ago.

'We've found about 40 eggs so far, the exact number has not been established,’ said Said-Emin Dzhabrailov, a geologist at the Chechen State University.
‘There could be many more lying under the ground.’

The egg-shaped protrusions on a rock face in southern part of Chechnya. Photo credit: Daily Mail, AFP/Getty 

The find was uncovered when a construction crew was blasting through a hillside to build a road near the region's border with former Soviet Georgia in the Caucasus Mountains.

A team of geologists stumbled across the smooth, oval rock-like forms, which range from 25cm to one metre coincidentally on a recent trip to the area, said Dzhabrailov.
He said palaeontologists were needed to determine which species of dinosaur had laid them.

Eggs-traordinary: A man looks at one of the dinosaur eggs, which number around 40 so far. Photo credit: Daily Mail/Reuters

Dzhabrailov said that the regional Chechen government, which is eager to shed the region's reputation for violence, is considering turning the area into a nature preserve and seeking to attract tourists.

Federal forces fought two separatist wars between 1994 and 2001 in Chechnya, and an Islamist insurgency persists in the mostly Muslim region and surrounding provinces of Russia's North Caucasus.

However, violence has declined under the strong-arm rule of Ramzan Kadyrov, whose multi-million dollar construction projects are aimed at raising the region's profile and boosting the tourism potential of the troubled area.

The dinosaur eggs were found by a construction crew blasting rocks to make way for a new road. Photo credit: Daily Mail

The Phenomenon that is Bigfoot

LiveScience Staff
Date: 21 March 2012 Time: 03:06 PM ET

Source:LiveScience
http://www.livescience.com/19178-tracking-belief-bigfoot-infographic.html

The big hairy monster we call Bigfoot has both eluded and fascinated many, with blurry photos and even blurrier video being some of the best evidence the creature exists.

Bigfoot stories of sightings vary on some details and the type of "evidence." In 2008, two Georgia men claimed they had a body, photos of the body and DNA evidence of a Bigfoot. A few days later, evidence surfaced that the DNA was that of an opossum and the body was really a frozen gorilla suit.

More recently in 2011, a Charlotte, N.C.-based man named Thomas Byers claimed that, while driving, he and a companion videotaped a Bigfoot crossing the road in front of their truck and at one point it "made a snarling growling sound and looked back at me," Byers said. Various hints, including the fact that no truck is seen, nor headlights (it was pretty dark in the video), and that the slow-moving creature (or human) seems to be waving in the footage, weighed heavily against the video's validity.

The most famous recording of an alleged Bigfoot is the short 1967 film shot in Bluff Creek, Calif., by Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin. The video shows a dark, humanlike creature striding through a clearing. It has never been proven real, and in the 45 years since the film was shot, it has remained the best evidence for Bigfoot. (It seems even with today's technology, quality video of Bigfoot is tough to come by.)  

And, of course, these sightings are not confined to the United States.

The legendary woodlands ape, though answering to different names, has been a fascination across the globe. For instance, a group of Chinese researchers announced in October 2010 that they were mounting an expedition to seek evidence of the 'yeren', the Chinese version of Bigfoot. Other searches for the yeren in pior decades all failed to find conclusive evidence of the beast's existence. The team, led by a man named Luo Baosheng, is hoping to raise $1.5 million to launch the search.

The so-called Canadian Sasquatch is essentially the same creature as the American Bigfoot, though it is claimed to be primarily nocturnal and a fast runner. Moving to Asia, the Yeti — formerly known as the Abominable Snowman — is said to live in the forest below the snow line of the Himalaya Mountains. Reports suggest the creature is muscular, covered with dark grayish or reddish-brown hair, and weighs between 200 and 400 pounds (90 and 180 kilograms). Compared with Bigfoot, the Yeti is claimed to be relatively short, with an average height about 6 feet (1.8 meters).

The Down Under variety, dubbed Yowie, reportedly stands anywhere from 5 to 11 feet (1.5 to 3.4 meters) tall, and has yellow or red eyes deeply set inside a dome-shaped head.

This lack of evidence hasn't stopped enthusiasts, however. The reason could be human nature: We want to believe. "The human brain is always trying to determine why things happen, and when the reason is not clear, we tend to make up some pretty bizarre explanations," said Brian Cronk, a professor of psychology at Missouri Western State University, back in 2008.

And our belief in all things supernatural, from fairies and elves to gods, ghosts and monsters, seems to go way back in human history. The reason, say some social scientists, is the human need to explain that which we don't understand.