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Categories: Environmental: Water, Space: The Solar System
Published New study puts a definitive age on Saturn's rings -- they're really young
(via sciencedaily.com) Original source Physicists measured the flux of interplanetary dust around Saturn. The researchers concluded that the planet's rings formed less than 400 million years ago, making them much younger than Saturn itself.
Published Astronomers reveal the largest cosmic explosion ever seen
(via sciencedaily.com) Original source Astronomers have uncovered the largest cosmic explosion ever witnessed. The explosion is more than ten times brighter than any known supernova and three times brighter than the brightest tidal disruption event, where a star falls into a supermassive black hole.
Published Land use linked to water quality and quantity
(via sciencedaily.com) Original source Researchers recently published a study that focuses on the Sudbury-Assabet and Concord watershed in eastern Massachusetts, and which links hydrological changes, including floods, drought and runoff, to changing patterns of land use.
Published Metal-filtering sponge removes lead from water
(via sciencedaily.com) Original source Engineers have developed a new sponge that can remove metals -- including toxic heavy metals like lead and critical metals like cobalt -- from contaminated water, leaving safe, drinkable water behind. In proof-of-concept experiments, the researchers tested their new sponge on a highly contaminated sample of tap water, containing more than 1 part per million of lead. With one use, the sponge filtered lead to below detectable levels.
Published Great Basin: History of water supply in one of the driest regions in the USA
(via sciencedaily.com) Original source An international team has reconstructed the evolution of groundwater in the Great Basin, USA -- one of the driest regions on Earth -- up to 350,000 years into the past with unprecedented accuracy. The results shed new light on the effects of climate change on water supply and provide important insights for the sustainable use of groundwater resources.
Published Global warming puts whales in the Southern Ocean on a diet
(via sciencedaily.com) Original source In the autumn, when right whales swim towards the coasts of South Africa, they ought to be fat and stuffed full. But in recent years, they have become thinner because their food is disappearing with the melting sea ice.
Published Hammerhead sharks hold their breath on deep water hunts to stay warm
(via sciencedaily.com) Original source Scalloped hammerhead sharks hold their breath to keep their bodies warm during deep dives into cold water where they hunt prey such as deep sea squids. This discovery provides important new insights into the physiology and ecology of a species that serves as an important link between the deep and shallow water habitats.
Published Astronomers find no young binary stars near Milky Way's black hole
(via sciencedaily.com) Original source Scientists analyzed over a decade's worth of data about 16 young supermassive stars orbiting the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy. Supermassive stars typically are formed in pairs, but the new study found that all 16 of the stars were singletons. The findings support a scenario in which the supermassive black hole drives nearby stars to either merge or be disrupted, with one of the pair being ejected from the system.
Published Dark clouds on the horizon
(via sciencedaily.com) Original source Our industrialized society releases many and various pollutants into the world. Combustion in particular produces aerosol mass including black carbon. Although this only accounts for a few percent of aerosol particles, black carbon is especially problematic due to its ability to absorb heat and impede the heat reflection capabilities of surfaces such as snow. So, it's essential to know how black carbon interacts with sunlight. Researchers have quantified the refractive index of black carbon to the most accurate degree yet which might impact climate models.
Published Unlocking the power of photosynthesis for clean energy production
(via sciencedaily.com) Original source Researchers are embarking on a groundbreaking project to mimic the natural process of photosynthesis using bacteria to deliver electrons to a nanocrystal semiconductor photocatalyst. By leveraging the unique properties of microorganisms and nanomaterials, the system has the potential to replace current approaches that derive hydrogen from fossil fuels, revolutionizing the way hydrogen fuel is produced and unlocking a powerful source of renewable energy.
Published Researchers measure the light emitted by a sub-Neptune planet's atmosphere
(via sciencedaily.com) Original source Researchers observed exoplanet GJ 1214b's atmosphere by measuring the heat it emits while orbiting its host star. Astronomers directly detected the light emitted by a sub-Neptune exoplanet -- a category of planets that are larger than Earth but smaller than Neptune.
Published Water warming study shows unexpected impact on fish size
(via sciencedaily.com) Original source The theory that water-breathing animals such as fish will shrink due to global warming has been called into question by a new study.
Published How 1,000 undergraduates helped solve an enduring mystery about the sun
(via sciencedaily.com) Original source For three years at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, a group of students spent an estimated 56,000 hours analyzing the behavior of hundreds of solar flares. Their results could help astrophysicists understand how the sun's corona reaches temperatures of millions of degrees Fahrenheit.
Published Cleanup of inactive Gulf of Mexico wells estimated at $30 billion
(via sciencedaily.com) Original source A new article examines the cost to plug 14,000 wells that are inactive, have not produced for five years and are unlikely to be reactivated in the Gulf of Mexico region, which is the epicenter of U.S. offshore oil and gas operations.
Published Researchers discover a cause of rapid ice melting in Greenland
(via sciencedaily.com) Original source While conducting a study of Petermann Glacier in northwest Greenland, researchers uncovered a previously unseen way in which the ice and ocean interact. The glaciologists said their findings could mean that the climate community has been vastly underestimating the magnitude of future sea level rise caused by polar ice deterioration.
Published Plastic can drift far away from its starting point as it sinks into the sea
(via sciencedaily.com) Original source Discarded or drifting in the ocean, plastic debris can accumulate on the water's surface, forming floating islands of garbage. Although it's harder to spot, researchers suspect a significant amount also sinks. In a new study in ACS' Environmental Science & Technology, one team used computer modeling to study how far bits of lightweight plastic travel when falling into the Mediterranean Sea. Their results suggest these particles can drift farther underwater than previously thought.
Published Webb looks for Fomalhaut's asteroid belt and finds much more
(via sciencedaily.com) Original source Astronomers used NASA's James Webb Space Telescope to image the warm dust around a nearby young star, Fomalhaut, in order to study the first asteroid belt ever seen outside of our solar system in infrared light. But to their surprise, the dusty structures are much more complex than the asteroid and Kuiper dust belts of our solar system. Overall, there are three nested belts extending out to 14 billion miles (23 billion kilometers) from the star; that's 150 times the distance of Earth from the Sun. The scale of the outermost belt is roughly twice the scale of our solar system's Kuiper Belt of small bodies and cold dust beyond Neptune. The inner belts -- which had never been seen before -- were revealed by Webb for the first time.
Published First observational evidence of beaufort gyre stabilization, which could be precursor to huge freshwater release
(via sciencedaily.com) Original source A new study provides the first observational evidence of the stabilization of the anti-cyclonic Beaufort Gyre, which is the dominant circulation of the Canada Basin and the largest freshwater reservoir in the Arctic Ocean.
Published Quantum lidar prototype acquires real-time 3D images while fully submerged underwater
(via sciencedaily.com) Original source Researchers have demonstrated a prototype lidar system that uses quantum detection technology to acquire 3D images while submerged underwater. The high sensitivity of this system could allow it to capture detailed information even in extremely low-light conditions found underwater.
Published How seaweed has been misleading scientists about reef health
(via sciencedaily.com) Original source For decades, scientists have used the amount of seaweed at the ocean's surface as a proxy for the health of coral reefs below. However, a new global study of more than 1,200 marine locations over a 16-year period reveals that this approach has been misleading -- and may even have hidden signs of reef stress.