>"Sleeping" Volcanoes Can Wake Up Faster Than Thought

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The Soufrière Hills volcano erupts on Montserrat in January 2010.

The world’s “sleeping giants” can wake up much quicker than thought, according to a new volcano model.

Scientists believe the magma chambers—or reservoirs of molten rock—under dormant volcanoes are filled with sticky, viscous mush.

For a volcano to “wake up,” this mush needs to be thoroughly heated by fresh, hot magma rising up from the deep Earth.

According to current theory, it would take several hundred or perhaps a thousand years for the heat to distribute through the chamber and make the magma fluid enough to erupt.

But a new model based on fluid dynamics shows that hot, deep magma can mix with the older, sticky stuff much easier than believed, scientists say.

“That’s one reason that the rejuvenation can happen so quickly—the transport of hot material coming in [to the] magma system is much more efficient than we previously had understood,” said study co-author George Bergantz, a geologist at the University of Washington.

The team compared their model with two real-life eruptions: the Philippines’ Mount Pinatubo in 1991 and an ongoing eruption of the Soufrière Hills volcano (picture) in the British Caribbean territory of Montserrat (see map).

The scientists analyzed the two volcanoes’ magma temperatures, chamber sizes, and other physical features to come up with rough time intervals between the first warning signs and the actual eruptions.

In the case of Pinatubo, the team discovered that the magma chamber took only 20 to 80 days to reactivate, versus the 500 years predicted by conventional theory.

Still, the model doesn’t suggest reawakened volcanoes are more likely to cause dangerous eruptions, Bergantz cautioned.

“I don’t think it really changes our take on that,” he said. “Many of the hazards associated [with a dormant volcano waking up] are more related to landslides than eruption processes.”

Likewise, a reheated magma chamber doesn’t always lead to an eruption, the study authors noted.

The new study should bring more attention to supposedly resting volcanoes, said Michael Petronis, a geologist at New Mexico Highlands University in Las Vegas, New Mexico, who was not involved in the research.

In general, “whether or not a volcano is actually dormant is up for discussion,” Petronis said.

“If this model works, and you can rejuvenate a magma chamber by a pulse of magma, you can kick off an eruption when you weren’t expecting it.”

Mount Pinatubo, for example, had never erupted in recorded history before it stirred to life in 1991, killing at least a thousand people. …

via “Sleeping” Volcanoes Can Wake Up Faster Than Thought | National Geographic.

>Color pics of San Francisco after ’06 quake found

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A museum volunteer has unearthed what the Smithsonian Institution believes to be the first — and perhaps only — color photographs of San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake and fire that nearly leveled the city.

The six never-published images were snapped by photography innovator Frederick Eugene Ives several months after the April 1906 “Great Quake,” the San Francisco Chronicle reports. Most were taken from the roof of the hotel where Ives stayed during an October 1906 visit.

They were stowed amid other items donated by Ives’ son, Herbert, and discovered in 2009 by National Museum of American History volunteer Anthony Brooks while he was cataloguing the collection.

Although hand-colored photographs of the quake’s destruction have surfaced before, Ives’ work is probably the only true color documentary evidence, Shannon Perich, associate curator of the Smithsonian’s photography history collection, told the Chronicle.

She says Ives was one of only a few photographers experimenting with color photography in the early 20th century and that his San Francisco images were meant to be viewed through a 3-D device he invented but which never became a commercial success.

“Can you imagine how shocking these were?” she said.

Ives is known to have visited San Francisco in October 1906, but it’s unknown if he shot all the newly discovered photos during that trip or if he also made an earlier one.

The pictures are street-level shots of San Francisco’s shattered downtown and rooftop views overlooking miles of ruins. They depict buildings damaged by fire and broken by the shaking ground. Some of the buildings still exist.

via Color pics of San Francisco after ’06 quake found – Yahoo! News.

I can see these in stereo if I get about a foot away from my laptop and then let my eyes  cross.  Neat stuff. Can you do it?

>Color pics of San Francisco after ’06 quake found

>

A museum volunteer has unearthed what the Smithsonian Institution believes to be the first — and perhaps only — color photographs of San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake and fire that nearly leveled the city.

The six never-published images were snapped by photography innovator Frederick Eugene Ives several months after the April 1906 “Great Quake,” the San Francisco Chronicle reports. Most were taken from the roof of the hotel where Ives stayed during an October 1906 visit.

They were stowed amid other items donated by Ives’ son, Herbert, and discovered in 2009 by National Museum of American History volunteer Anthony Brooks while he was cataloguing the collection.

Although hand-colored photographs of the quake’s destruction have surfaced before, Ives’ work is probably the only true color documentary evidence, Shannon Perich, associate curator of the Smithsonian’s photography history collection, told the Chronicle.

She says Ives was one of only a few photographers experimenting with color photography in the early 20th century and that his San Francisco images were meant to be viewed through a 3-D device he invented but which never became a commercial success.

“Can you imagine how shocking these were?” she said.

Ives is known to have visited San Francisco in October 1906, but it’s unknown if he shot all the newly discovered photos during that trip or if he also made an earlier one.

The pictures are street-level shots of San Francisco’s shattered downtown and rooftop views overlooking miles of ruins. They depict buildings damaged by fire and broken by the shaking ground. Some of the buildings still exist.

via Color pics of San Francisco after ’06 quake found – Yahoo! News.

I can see these in stereo if I get about a foot away from my laptop and then let my eyes  cross.  Neat stuff. Can you do it?

>How Can Robots Get Our Attention?

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YouTube – How Can Robots Get Our Attention?.

>Our Beautiful Sun a Furry Egg Yolk

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Casey Chan – This amazing picture was taken by Alan Friedman and it shows a side of the Sun that I’ve never seen before. Look at it, I mean, the Sun’s surface looks like milky peach fuzz that’d be so soft to touch—the texture is just incredible. To take the picture, Friedman used:

Alan used a filter that lets through only a very narrow wavelength of light emitted by hydrogen (called Hα for those of you keeping track at home), so this tracks the activity of gas on the solar surface. He also inverts the image of the solar disk (makes it a negative) to increase contrast.

The smoke to the left of the sun is actually leftover material from an erupting sunspot. Seeing the Sun so close and personal makes it easy for us to forget how big it is, Earth is literally a mere dot compared to this beast. [Alan Friedman via Discover]

via Our Beautiful Sun Looks Like a Peaceful, Furry Egg Yolk.

>Meet the spider with a human face – the lichen crab spider

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Since 1890 only 41 one of them have ever been seen in Britain – and it’s not surprising, because they’re only the size of a 20p piece and blend into lichen on tree trunks, hence their name.

Wareham RSPB nature reserve worker Mark Singleton said: ‘This is the first one that has been found in Dorset in 35 years.

‘It is something of a rarity. If this were a bird, the queues would be stretching round the car park. But it’s not, it’s a spider with a slightly amusing abdomen.

‘We found it in the electricity box a few feet from our work centre and got quite excited when we realised what it was.’

With its scary-looking face the spider – Latin name Philodromus margaritatus – looks like something from a B-movie, but it is in fact harmless to humans.

The spider can move at quite high speeds and uses its running power to chase its main food source – ants.

Needless to say, the little critter has caused a huge stir on the web.

via Meet the spider with a human face – the lichen crab spider | Metro.co.uk.

>The power of lonely

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You hear it all the time: We humans are social animals. We need to spend time together to be happy and functional, and we extract a vast array of benefits from maintaining intimate relationships and associating with groups. Collaborating on projects at work makes us smarter and more creative. Hanging out with friends makes us more emotionally mature and better able to deal with grief and stress.

Spending time alone, by contrast, can look a little suspect. In a world gone wild for wikis and interdisciplinary collaboration, those who prefer solitude and private noodling are seen as eccentric at best and defective at worst, and are often presumed to be suffering from social anxiety, boredom, and alienation.

But an emerging body of research is suggesting that spending time alone, if done right, can be good for us — that certain tasks and thought processes are best carried out without anyone else around, and that even the most socially motivated among us should regularly be taking time to ourselves if we want to have fully developed personalities, and be capable of focus and creative thinking. There is even research to suggest that blocking off enough alone time is an important component of a well-functioning social life — that if we want to get the most out of the time we spend with people, we should make sure we’re spending enough of it away from them. Just as regular exercise and healthy eating make our minds and bodies work better, solitude experts say, so can being alone.

One ongoing Harvard study indicates that people form more lasting and accurate memories if they believe they’re experiencing something alone. Another indicates that a certain amount of solitude can make a person more capable of empathy towards others. And while no one would dispute that too much isolation early in life can be unhealthy, a certain amount of solitude has been shown to help teenagers improve their moods and earn good grades in school. …

via The power of lonely – The Boston Globe.

>China’s shrinking lakes

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A new report says that over the period from 1960-2005 Chinese lakes have shrunk in size and in number. The total area of Chinese lakes over that period shrank by 13 percent of their original size, an area just a bit smaller than Connecticut.

Sixty new lakes appeared, mainly in the high altitudes of Tibet. This new water might come from melting glaciers. But, 243 lakes with a size larger than one square kilometer (roughly half a square mile) vanished all together.

A collaboration of Chinese and American scientists used pictures taken by satellites and a variety of other methods to compare past lake conditions, from the 1960s to the 1980s, to conditions recorded more recently in the period 2005-06.

China is a big place and the lake shrinkage works differently in the northern and southern parts of the country. In the north, which tends to be more arid, the decline of lakes seems to be chiefly caused by changes in climate. Over the period 1951-2000, the average temperature in the north has increased by 0.02 degrees Celsius per year, more than twice the temperature increase for the south of China.

In the south the decline of lakes is more likely to be related to human activities such as increasing industrial production and lakeside reclamation, including the building of new homes and factories. The new report on lake loss in China is published as a cover story in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

via China’s shrinking lakes.

>Oval object emitted sound of ’dog whistle’

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Two South Carolina witnesses in Greenwood report a large, black, oval-shaped object moving overhead with four lights that emitted the sound of a “dog whistle”, according to March 8, 2011, testimony from the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) witness reporting database.

“As it got closer the sound got louder,” the witness stated. “I also saw what I thought might be some sort of girders or support structure on the underside of the vehicle. I am enclosing a drawing of the underside of the vehicle in this report.”

The object moved in one direction during the entire sightings and seemed to be slower than a jet and faster than “any lighter than air craft I am aware of.”

The witness states that others in the area also saw the same object.

via Oval object emitted sound of ’dog whistle’ – National ufo | Examiner.com.

>Anti-fox hunting views given the same legal footing as religion

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Anti-fox hunting views have been given the same legal footing as religion after a judge ruled that an animal rights campaigner’s opinions amounted to philosophical beliefs.

Joe Hashman won the right to sue a garden centre for discrimination after he claimed he was sacked when its pro-hunting bosses discovered he was a leading animal welfare activist.

The management of Orchard Park Garden Centre, in Gillingham, Dorset, fought to prevent Mr Hashman bringing the case, claiming his views did not qualify as philosophical beliefs under employment tribunal rules.

But on Tuesday, an employment judge ruled in favour of Mr Hashman, who is a Western Morning News gardening columnist. In a decision that could pave the way for a procession of similar claims, Judge Lawrence Guyer said: “The claimant has a belief in the sanctity of life.

“This belief extends to his fervent anti fox hunting belief (and also anti-hare coursing belief) and such beliefs constitute a philosophical belief for the purposes of the Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003.”

The country’s leading pro-hunting organisation yesterday told the WMN it was “a shame” Mr Hashman himself failed to respect the beliefs of those in favour of fox hunting. A spokesman for the Countryside Alliance said: “This issue is not about hunting as much as it is about respect for beliefs, which is important to everyone, even though in this case it could be taking employment legislation to an extreme.

“It is a shame that Mr Hashman, who is so keen that his own beliefs be respected, has so little respect in return for those he has monitored and disrupted over the years as they hold to their own beliefs and manage the fox population in the UK.”

The League Against Cruel Sports backed the decision, saying: “It is no-one’s right to be cruel to an animal and an individual certainly shouldn’t be discriminated against for holding this view.”

Mr Hashman, of Shaftesbury, Dorset, said he was “thrilled” that his case would be heard. …

via Anti-fox hunting views have been given the same legal footing as religion after a judge ruled that an animal rights campaigner’s opinions amounted to philosophical beliefs..