Month: May 2019

Exotic Matter Uncovered In The Sun’s Atmosphere

Scientists from Ireland and France have announced a major new finding about how matter behaves in the extreme conditions of the Sun’s atmosphere.

The scientists used large radio telescopes and ultraviolet cameras on a NASA spacecraft to better understand the exotic but poorly understood “fourth state of matter.” Known as plasma, this matter could hold the key to developing safe, clean and efficient nuclear energy generators on Earth. The scientists published their findings in the leading international journal Nature Communications.

Most of the matter we encounter in our everyday lives comes in the form of solid, liquid or gas, but the majority of the Universe is composed of plasma — a highly unstable and electrically charged fluid. The Sun is also made up of this plasma.

Despite being the most common form of matter in the Universe plasma remains a mystery, mainly due to its scarcity in natural conditions on Earth, which makes it difficult to study. Special laboratories on Earth recreate the extreme conditions of space for this purpose, but the Sun represents an all-natural laboratory to study how plasma behaves in conditions that are often too extreme for the manually constructed Earth-based laboratories.

Postdoctoral Researcher at Trinity College Dublin and the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies (DIAS), Dr Eoin Carley, led the international collaboration. He said: “The solar atmosphere is a hotbed of extreme activity, with plasma temperatures in excess of 1 million degrees Celsius and particles that travel close to light-speed. The light-speed particles shine bright at radio wavelengths, so we’re able to monitor exactly how plasmas behave with large radio telescopes.”

“We worked closely with scientists at the Paris Observatory and performed observations of the Sun with a large radio telescope located in Nançay in central France. We combined the radio observations with ultraviolet cameras on NASA’s space-based Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft to show that plasma on the sun can often emit radio light that pulses like a light-house. We have known about this activity for decades, but our use of space and ground-based equipment allowed us to image the radio pulses for the first time and see exactly how plasmas become unstable in the solar atmosphere.”

Studying the behaviour of plasmas on the Sun allows for a comparison of how they behave on Earth, where much effort is now under way to build magnetic confinement fusion reactors. These are nuclear energy generators that are much safer, cleaner and more efficient than their fission reactor cousins that we currently use for energy today.

Professor at DIAS and collaborator on the project, Peter Gallagher, said: “Nuclear fusion is a different type of nuclear energy generation that fuses plasma atoms together, as opposed to breaking them apart like fission does. Fusion is more stable and safer, and it doesn’t require highly radioactive fuel; in fact, much of the waste material from fusion is inert helium.”

“The only problem is that nuclear fusion plasmas are highly unstable. As soon as the plasma starts generating energy, some natural process switches off the reaction. While this switch-off behaviour is like an inherent safety switch — fusion reactors cannot form runaway reactions — it also means the plasma is difficult to maintain in a stable state for energy generation. By studying how plasmas become unstable on the Sun, we can learn about how to control them on Earth.”

The success of this research was made possible by the close ties between researchers at Trinity, DIAS, and their French collaborators.

Dr Nicole Vilmer, lead collaborator on the project in Paris, said: “The Paris Observatory has a long history of making radio observations of the Sun, dating back to the 1950s. By teaming up with other radio astronomy groups around Europe we are able to make groundbreaking discoveries such as this one and continue the success we have in solar radio astronomy in France. It also further strengthens scientific collaboration between France and Ireland, which I hope continues in the future.”

Dr Carley previously worked at the Paris Observatory, funded by a fellowship awarded by the Irish Research Council and the European Commission. He continues to work closely with his French colleagues today, and hopes to soon study the same phenomena using both French instruments and newly built, state-of-the-art equipment in Ireland.

Dr Carley added: “The collaboration with French scientists is ongoing and we’re already making progress with newly built radio telescopes in Ireland, such as the Irish Low Frequency Array (I-LOFAR). I-LOFAR can be used to uncover new plasma physics on the Sun in far greater detail than before, teaching us about how matter behaves in both plasmas on the Sun, here on Earth and throughout the Universe in general.”

The work was funded by the Irish Research Council.

Part II – New Findings Show a Closer Connection Between Galactic Cosmic Rays, Our Solar System, and Milky Way

Just as the Earth and other planets rotate around our Sun, our solar system has a rotation trajectory around our galaxy Milky Way. And I must say…before I leave this plane of existence, I feel confident future research will show our galaxy, along with neighboring galaxies, will also have a periodicity rotation with cyclical parameters…rotating around what is yet to be discovered.

The Earth is regularly exposed to cosmic rays as it oscillates upward through the galactic disc. Every 60 million years or so, astronomers believe that our Sun and planets cycle northward in the galactic plane. Just as the Earth has her magnetic field, Milky Way has its own. Without the galactic plane’s magnetic field shielding our solar system, we would be at even higher risk of radiation exposure. It is hypnotized that the closer our solar system travels to the galactic center, we note a correlation between this cyclical motion and partial to mass extinctions happening with a fair amount of regularity on Earth over the past 500 million years.

Some scientists have surmised we are in the midst of a sixth mass extinction of plants and animals. An assemblage of researchers have noted the cycle we are currently experiencing may be a high ratio of species die-offs since. Although extinction is a natural phenomenon, it occurs at a natural “background” rate of about one to five species per year. Scientists estimate we’re now losing species at 1,000 to 10,000 times the background rate. However, to keep things in perspective – researchers currently know of about 1.2 million species to be recorded by science. What’s left to be discovered however is very interesting. The number of species that scientists think are left to be discovered is around 8.7 million. Still, new discoveries can change a scenario, and so can the numbers.

I have re-written this article and ones coming 3 or 4 times because of its importance. Some of you might remember an importance decision I made concerning the direction of my research. I had such a strong pull to go beyond the study of our Sun-Earth connection and peeking around the corner to see what’s next. What I hope to show you is that I am finding a very similar pattern of cause and effect, symbiotic relationship between each level of co-existence. I hope you agree and perhaps catch a flavor of my enthusiastic venturous demeanor. If so, pledge your donation to match renewed devotion to this work. If you happen to know Bill Gates, or his neighbor, give him a call.

Coming Next: Part III – First Will Come Reversal Excursions Then the Flip

Oldest Meteorite Collection On Earth Found In One Of The Driest Places

Earth is bombarded every year by rocky debris, but the rate of incoming meteorites can change over time. Finding enough meteorites scattered on the planet’s surface can be challenging, especially if you are interested in reconstructing how frequently they land. Now, researchers have uncovered a wealth of well-preserved meteorites that allowed them to reconstruct the rate of falling meteorites over the past two million years.

“Our purpose in this work was to see how the meteorite flux to Earth changed over large timescales — millions of years, consistent with astronomical phenomena,” says Alexis Drouard, Aix-Marseille Université, lead author of the new paper in Geology.

To recover a meteorite record for millions of years, the researchers headed to the Atacama Desert. Drouard says they needed a study site that would preserve a wide range of terrestrial ages where the meteorites could persist over long time scales.

While Antarctica and hot deserts both host a large percentage of meteorites on Earth (about 64% and 30%, respectively), Drouard says, “Meteorites found in hot deserts or Antarctica are rarely older than half a million years.” He adds that meteorites naturally disappear because of weathering processes (e.g., erosion by wind), but because these locations themselves are young, the meteorites found on the surface are also young.

“The Atacama Desert in Chile, is very old ([over] 10 million years),” says Drouard. “It also hosts the densest collection of meteorites in the world.”

The team collected 388 meteorites and focused on 54 stony samples from the El Médano area in the Atacama Desert. Using cosmogenic age dating, they found that the mean age was 710,000 years old. In addition, 30% of the samples were older than one million years, and two samples were older than two million. All 54 meteorites were ordinary chondrites, or stony meteorites that contain grainy minerals, but spanned three different types.

“We were expecting more ‘young’ meteorites than ‘old’ ones (as the old ones are lost to weathering),” says Drouard. “But it turned out that the age distribution is perfectly explained by a constant accumulation of meteorites for millions years.” The authors note that this is the oldest meteorite collection on Earth’s surface.

Drouard says this terrestrial crop of meteorites in the Atacama can foster more research on studying meteorite fluxes over large time scales. “We found that the meteorite flux seems to have remained constant over this [two-million-year] period in numbers (222 meteorites larger than 10 g per squared kilometer per million year), but not in composition,” he says. Drouard adds that the team plans to expand their work, measuring more samples and narrowing in on how much time the meteorites spent in space. “This will tell us about the journey of these meteorites from their parent body to Earth’s surface.”

Geologists Discover Largest Underwater Volcano, Explain Weird Hum Heard Around the World

A strange seismic event off the coast of Africa has led scientists to a mighty finding: the discovery of the largest underwater volcanic eruption ever recorded.

The eruption also may explain a weird seismic event recorded in November 2018 just off the island of Mayotte, located between Madagascar and Mozambique in the Indian Ocean. Researchers described that event as a seismic hum that circled the world, but no one could figure out what sparked it.

For starters, the hum rang at a single, ultralow frequency, which was strange because seismic waves usually rumble at many frequencies. Moreover, there were hardly any detectable “p-waves” or “s-waves,” which usually accompany earthquakes. And, incredibly, the island of Mayotte moved a few inches south and east after the mysterious event. [Photos: Hawaii’s New Underwater Volcano]

Now, scientists have an idea why. This weird seismic hum was likely the birth announcement of a new underwater volcano, according to Science magazine.

The underwater volcano is enormous, rising nearly a half mile (0.8 kilometers) from the ocean floor. It’s the length of a 3.1-mile (5 km) race and lies about 31 miles (50 km) off Mayotte’s eastern coast. And it came into being in just six months.

“We have never seen anything like this,” Nathalie Feuillet, a leader of an expedition to the site by the research vessel Marion Dufresne, who is with the Institute of Geophysics in Paris (IPGP), told Science magazine.

In addition to the weird “seismic hum,” there were other clues that something big was happening. The inhabitants of the French island of Mayotte reported feeling more than 1,800 little earthquakes almost daily since the middle of last year, including a large magnitude-5.8 earthquake in May 2018, the largest ever recorded in the region, National Geographic reported.

How scientists found it
Finding the newborn volcano took an enormous effort, including work from organizations such as the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in France, the IPGP and the French Research Institute for the Exploitation of the Sea (IFREMER), according to a joint statement released May 16.

Part of that research included six seismometers placed on the ocean floor, close to the seismic activity, Science magazine reported. These instruments revealed a tight cluster of earthquakes deep in Earth’s crust, likely stemming from a deep magma chamber that’s gushing molten rock onto the sea’s bottom.

This magma chamber may also be shrinking, as Mayotte has sunk about 5 inches (13 centimeters) and moved 2.5 inches (10 cm) to the east over the past year, Science magazine reported.

In addition, sonar revealed 1.2 cubic miles (5 cubic km) of magma on the seafloor, as well as plumes of bubble-rich water streaming from the volcano. Rock samples collected from the site may reveal the depth of the magma source, as well as the risk of a volcanic eruption.

A volcano in the Indian Ocean?
Mayotte isn’t a stranger to volcanic eruptions, but it’s been at least 4,000 years since volcanoes last stirred in the area, National Geographic reported. The island is part of the Comoro archipelago, islands created by volcanism. [Sunset Crater: Spectacular Photos of a Cinder Cone Volcano]

As news of the seismic hum and the tiny earthquakes spread, a group of French researchers posted a draft of a research study on EarthArxiv, a non-peer-reviewed site in February 2019, positing that the rumblings might have to do with a draining magma chamber. But researchers still have to publish a peer-reviewed study on the events, and it remains unclear exactly how the weird hum, earthquakes and volcano are related.

It’s also a mystery why volcanoes are found near the tiny island. Unlike Hawaii, which formed because of hotspot volcanism roiling up, the volcano near Mayotte lies within the ancient rift where Madagascar tore away from eastern Africa long ago. It’s possible that fissures from this break are now a cradle for this new volcano. However, it’s strange that the volcano popped up by Mayotte, which is the oldest island in the archipelago, Ken Rubin, a volcanologist at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa, told National Geographic.

It also remains to be seen if this volcano is completely new, or whether it sits on an older volcanic structure, the researchers said. In other words, geologists have a lot of work to do, and they’re eager to get to the bottom of this geologic conundrum.

BREAKING NEWS: PART-I Galactic Cosmic Rays Reaching Levels Never Before Seen

Today’s article will come as no surprise to the Science Of Cycles reader. There have been several articles SOC published regarding this issue going back to 2012. One of the highly contested questions regarding the pole shift is…’where’ on the time line of this cycle do we stand. I had addressed this question in previous articles. A significant and conveying influence to the makings of a magnetic pole reversal is the inundation of galactic cosmic rays, often referred to as ‘cosmic rays’.

NASA’s most recent study on galactic cosmic ray levels reaching Earth’s atmosphere are the highest ever reported. It is of no coincidence today’s GCR levels correspond with one of the lowest solar minimums observed. This is compounded by the Earth’s magnetic field weakening at a rate nobody saw coming. Researchers estimated the field was weakening about 5 percent per ‘century’, but new data revealed the field is actually weakening at 5 percent per ‘decade’, or 10 times faster than thought.

These GCRs are made up of high energy electrons, positrons, and other subatomic particles, which originate in sources outside the solar system and distributed throughout our galaxy Milky Way; hence the name ‘galactic cosmic rays’. Although periods of high solar activity such as solar flares, CMEs (coronal mass ejections) and coronal holes (solar winds) play a significant role in space and earth weather (including various natural phenomenon such as earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes and extreme weather) – studies indicate the periods of solar maximum are usually short-lived hovering around the 11 year cycle.

I propose that both solar rays and cosmic rays have an effect on Earth’s atmosphere, mantle, outer and inner core by generating the expansion and contraction of fluids and gas. Additionally, I suggest it is the more powerful highly energetic charged particles racing at nearly the speed of light which has the greater influence to Earth and all living things. It is the radiation from GCRs which can have – a yet to be determined minimal-or-significant measured effect on all forms of life. I would postulate the most sensitive species exposed to increasing radiation would be the most vulnerable – and in fact a significant number has already reached a point of extinction.

Coming Next: Part-II An Understanding of ‘Background’ and ‘Mass’ Extinctions (and why it applies to today’s galactic cosmic rays escalation.)

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Science Of Cycles keeps you tuned-in and knowledgeable of what we are discovering, and how some of these changes will affect our communities and ways of living.

3-D Earth In The Making

A thorough understanding of the ‘solid Earth’ system is essential for deciphering the links between processes occurring deep inside Earth and those occurring nearer the surface that lead to seismic activity such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, the rise of mountains and the location of underground natural resources. Thanks to gravity and magnetic data from satellites along with seismology, scientists are on the way to modelling inner Earth in 3-D.

Solid Earth refers to the crust, mantle and core. Because these parts of our world are completely hidden from view, understanding what is going on deep below our feet can only be done by using indirect measurements.

New results, based on a paper published recently in Geophysical Journal International and presented at this week’s Living Planet Symposium, reveal how scientists are using a range of different measurements including satellite data along with seismological models to start producing a global 3-D Earth reference model.

The model will make a step change in being able to analyze Earth’s lithosphere, which is the rigid outer shell, and the underlying mantle to understand the link between Earth’s structure and the dynamic processes within.

Juan Carlos Afonso, from Australia’s Macquarie University and Norway’s Centre for Earth Evolution and Dynamics, said, “We are realising the new global model of Earth’s lithosphere and upper mantle by combining gravity anomalies, geoid height, and gravity gradients complemented with seismic, thermal, and rock information.”

Wolfgang Szwillus from Kiel University, added, “Data from ESA’s GOCE satellite mission served as input for the inversion. It is the first time that gravity gradients have been inverted on a global scale in such an integrated framework.”

While this is just a first step, 3-D Earth offers tantalizing insights into the deep structure of our world. For example, the new models of the thickness of the crust and the lithosphere are important for unexplored continents like Antarctica.

Jörg Ebbing from Kiel University, noted, “This is just a first step so we have more work to do, but we plan to release the 3-D Earth models in 2020.”

The 3-D Earth research, which involves scientists from nine institutes in six European countries, is funded through ESA’s Science for Society programme. ESA’s GOCE gravity mission and Swarm magnetic field mission are key to this research.

Bermuda Volcano Formed In a Way That Has Never Been Seen Anywhere Else On Earth

A volcano beneath Bermuda formed in a way that has never been seen before, scientists have discovered. The volcano appears to have been created by material rising up from a region deep beneath Earth’s surface—the transition zone.

The transition zone is the region between the upper and lower mantle. It extends between 250 and 400 miles beneath the surface of the planet and is rich in water, crystals and melted rock.

Volcanoes normally form when the tectonic plates are pushed together or pulled apart, producing a crack in Earth’s surface where magma can escape. They can also form at “hotspots,” where mantle plumes rise up and melt a hole in the plate—Hawaii is an example of this.

Now, researchers have found volcanoes can also form when material moves up from the transition zone. The team believes there was a disturbance in the transition zone that forced the material in this layer to melt and move up towards the surface. Their findings are published in the journal Nature.

The researchers were analyzing a now dormant volcano beneath the Atlantic Ocean that was responsible for the formation of Bermuda. They were looking at the chemical composition of a 2,600-foot core sample—by understanding its makeup they could build a picture of Bermuda’s volcanic history.

“Before our work, Bermuda has been interpreted as the result of a deep thermal anomaly in the Earth’s mantle, but there was no direct data to support this. This is due to the fact that the volcanic edifice is completely covered by limestone,” Cornell’s Esteban Gazel, one of the study authors, told Newsweek.

In a statement, he said they were expecting to show that the volcano was a mantle plume formation like Hawaii. This was not what they found, however. The measurements taken from the core sample were unlike anything seen before, suggesting the lava came from a previously unidentified source.

The samples contained signatures from the transition zone. Compared to samples taken from subduction zones, there was more water trapped in the crystals. The transition zone is known to contain vast quantities of water—one study calculated there is three times as much water in this region of Earth than is present in all the world’s oceans.

“I first suspected that Bermuda’s volcanic past was special as I sampled the core and noticed the diverse textures and mineralogy preserved in the different lava flows,” lead author Sarah Mazza, from the University of Münster, Germany, said in the statement. “We quickly confirmed extreme enrichments in trace element compositions. It was exciting going over our first results … the mysteries of Bermuda started to unfold.”

Numerical models developed by the team indicate a disturbance in the transition zone forced the material up. This is thought to have taken place about 30 million years ago and provided the foundation that Bermuda sits on today.

“We found a new way to make volcanoes,” Gazel said in the statement. “This is the first time we found a clear indication from the transition zone deep in the Earth’s mantle that volcanoes can form this way.”

The researchers believe there will be other examples of volcanoes being formed in this way. “With this work we can demonstrate that the Earth’s transition zone is an extreme chemical reservoir,” Gazel said. “We are just now beginning to recognize its importance in terms of global geodynamics and even volcanism.”

Speaking to Newsweek, he added: “I think many hotspot locations … are not deeply rooted to the core-mantle boundary probably have past similar to Bermuda’s.”