Lifeboat Foundation

A recent study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth sheds new light on the formation of the East Coast of the United States—a “passive margin,” in geologic terms—during the breakup of the supercontinent Pangea and the opening of the Atlantic Ocean around 230 million years ago.

In geology, passive margins are “quiet” areas, locations with minimal faulting or magmatism, where land meets the ocean. Understanding their formation is crucial for many reasons, including that they are stable regions where hydrocarbon resources are extracted and that their sedimentary archive preserves our planet’s climate history as far back as millions of years.

The study, co-authored by scientists from the University of New Mexico, SMU seismologist Maria Beatrice Magnani, and scientists from Northern Arizona University and USC, explores the structure of rocks and the amount of magma-derived rocks along the East Coast and how they change along the margin, which may be tied to how the continent was pulled apart when Pangea fragmented. This event may have also influenced the structure of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, a vast underwater mountain system running down the center of the Atlantic Ocean.

The goal is to improve the speed, accuracy, and accessibility of weather forecasting and other climate applications.

An earthquake of at least magnitude 7.5 struck Mindanao in the southern Philippines late on Saturday, triggering evacuation orders for some areas of the country and for south-west Japan over warnings of tsunami waves of 1 metre (3ft) or more.

The Philippine Seismology Agency, Phivolcs, said the waves could hit the Philippines by midnight local time (4pm GMT) and continue for hours, though there were no initial reports of significant wave damage by that time.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — An entire county school system in coal-producing West Virginia is going solar, representing what a developer and U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin’s office touted on Wednesday as the biggest-ever single demonstration of sun-powered renewable electricity in Appalachian public schools.

The agreement between Wayne County Schools and West Virginian solar installer and developer Solar Holler builds on historic investments in coal communities made possible by the Inflation Reduction Act, which Democratic Sen. Manchin had a major role in shaping as chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

Manchin, who announced this month that he wouldn’t run for reelection in the deep-red state, citing an increasingly polarized political system, was quick Wednesday to tout U.S. President Joe Biden’s 2022 landmark climate, health and tax law, which placed special emphasis on creating new clean energy jobs.

The Earth’s magnetic field plays a big role in protecting people from hazardous radiation and geomagnetic activity that could affect satellite communication and the operation of power grids. And it moves.

Scientists have studied and tracked the motion of the magnetic poles for centuries. The historical movement of these poles indicates a change in the global geometry of the Earth’s magnetic field. It may even indicate the beginning of a field reversal—a “flip” between the north and south magnetic poles.

Continue reading “Earth’s magnetic field protects life on Earth from radiation, but it can move, and the magnetic poles can even flip” »

To address the long-standing debate about whether a massive asteroid impact or volcanic activity caused the extinction of dinosaurs and numerous other species 66 million years ago, a team at Dartmouth College took an innovative approach — they removed scientists from the debate and let the computers decide.

The researchers report in the journal Science a new modeling method powered by interconnected processors that can work through reams of geological and climate data without human input. They tasked nearly 130 processors with analyzing the fossil record in reverse to pinpoint the events and conditions that led to the Cretaceous –Paleogene (K–Pg) extinction event that cleared the way for the ascendance of mammals, including the primates that would lead to early humans.

This week’s COP28 meetings in Dubai show how fossil-fuel companies might be able to contribute to climate progress, and what will happen if they don’t.

The United Arab Emirates is one of the world’s largest oil producers.

The Enabling Technologies Programme (ETP) provides opportunities for the UK space sector to accelerate the development of leading-edge technologies that could be used to tackle global problems and benefit the work of space organisations internationally.

The total government funding is £4 million — made up of £3.2 million from the UK Space Agency with £800,000 contributed by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).

The projects from academia and industry explore how space can be used more efficiently for purposes such as weather prediction, climate-change monitoring, and space debris removal through methods of propulsion, sterilisation, in-orbit servicing, imaging, and more.

Physicists from the Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) have been conducting research on the matter constituting the atomic nucleus utilizing the world’s three most powerful particle accelerators. Their focus has been on mapping the “primordial soup” that filled the universe in the first millionth of a second following its inception.

Intriguingly, their measurements showed that the movement of observed particles bears resemblance to the search for prey of marine predators, the patterns of climate change, and the fluctuations of stock market.

In the immediate aftermath of the Big Bang, temperatures were so extreme that atomic nuclei could not exists, nor could nucleons, their building blocks. Hence, in this first instance the universe was filled with a “primordial soup” of quarks and gluons.