ice
gregladen | March 7, 2017The Crisis We Await
The exact way the Trump presidency ends is not clear. Anything could happen.
Trump had zero idea of what he was getting into with this president thing, and the stresses must be amazing. Clearly, he is being driven over the edge by relatively minor day to day events. Nothing has yet actually happened in this administration. If you ignore self inflicted wounds and self generated drama, and all the protesting against Trump, the world has been pretty quiet. It is as though all the bad guys, all the individuals who do the things that become major international issues or…
dr. dolittle | July 20, 2015
If you happen to be in the Arctic this summer polar bears (Ursus maritimus) can be spotted spending their time on the sea ice or on the shore in areas where ice has melted. While it is difficult to study the physiology of bears living on the ice, it had been hypothesized that bears living on shore experience a state similar to winter hibernation in which they attempt to decrease their energy expenditure when food resources are low. However, new research published in Science shows that bears living on the ice as well as those on shore experience some decrease in activity as well as body…
dr. dolittle | January 26, 2015 A fish found swimming under 740 meters of ice. Credit: Reed Scherer (NIU)
An unexpected find and very exciting moment for researchers exploring what lies beneath 740 meters of ice in Antarctica...fish! An amazing find given the perpetual darkness and cold.
In an expedition sponsored by the National Science Foundation, scientists and ice drillers bored a hole through the Ross Ice Shelf near the coast of Antarctica, 850 kilometers from the closest place where there is sunlight. The area is known as the grounding zone, which is in essence a subglacial beach. According to a quote from glacial…
dr. dolittle | December 17, 2014Ever wonder what lies beneath the polar ice? Turns out several researchers did as well. This past July a team of scientists led an expedition designed to image life under sea ice. The video below was captured with the Nereid Under Ice (NUI) vehicle and shows brown algae living on the bottom of sea ice as well as larvaceans, which are filter-feeding tunicates. The advantage of the new vehicle is that it can travel very far (the spools of cable are ~40 km long) and allows researchers to create maps and collect samples. Researchers are hoping to explore greater distances in future dives that…
gregladen | February 11, 2014Everything is about ice these days, what with the Winter Olympics in full swing. Concerns that the temperatures at the mountain venue of Sochi would be problematically high have panned out; the lower parts of the downhill slopes are slushy and the bottom of the half-pipe is all bumbly wumply. Injuries and lost medal opportunities are mounting up every day, in part caused by the unusual "Spring" conditions.
We all know the Arctic Vortex has been sitting on the middle of North America, and this has caused near zero F temperatures, often as low as -20F, here in central Minnesota. The same…
esiegel | December 5, 2013"Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice." -Robert Frost
Depending on where you are in the world right now, you might really be feeling the effects of the emerging winter, as cold snaps, freezes and snowstorms take hold across the northern hemisphere.
Image credit: NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio, Goddard Space Flight Center.
But we can all be pretty sure that this is temporary,…
pgleick | October 14, 2013Snow. Glaciers. Icecaps, River flows. All of these are vulnerable to climate change, especially rising temperature. This isn't just theory. It’s now observable fact.
Scientists worry about the growing threat of climate change because the global climate is tied to everything that society cares about: human and environmental health, food and industrial production, water availability, extreme events, and more. Figuring out how all these pieces tie together is difficult. And many of us, from scientists to the public to policy makers, have only a partial understanding of the true implications of…
pgleick | February 20, 2013One of the reasons that climate change is such a big issue is because the global climate is an integral part of the Earth’s entire ecosystem, tied to so many of the big and little things that society cares about. Figuring out how all these complicated pieces tie together is hard, as is linking these pieces together in the minds of the public so that we – and our policy makers – can grasp the true implications of a changing climate and plan for them. Because this is so important, I expect that many of my future posts here will address this issue, but let me start with one example: the…
gregladen | January 1, 2013A collection of videos ... that you will enjoy.
BBC Wonders of Life Trailer:
Climate 2013: Perspectives of 8 Scientists:
Chasing Ice movie reveals largest iceberg break-up ever filmed:
Kathleen Dean Moore at Nobel Conference 48 on the greatest violation of human rights ever seen:
With all due respect to the introducers, the talk actually starts at 8 minutes. Also, the best line delivered in any talk this year starts just after 42 minutes and 50 seconds (but really, start at 40:40 for best effect). It would be interesting to hear comments about the religious vs. secular approaches both…
sciencepunk | June 28, 2011Following on from last week's discovery of water that can freeze at room temperature, here's another trick. Water at minus 130 degrees Celsius can flow like a thick fluid. The work carried out by Ove Andersson, a physicist at Umeå University, showed that by increasing pressure to 10,000 times the norm, ice could be coaxed into a viscous liquid state 30% denser than normal water. The findings lend support to the theory that water has two liquid phases, one at much higher density than the other. I'd imagine it also means liquid water is likely to exist even on frozen planets.
As someone…
sciencepunk | June 23, 2011From the Journal of Things Kurt Vonnegut Warned Us About, Japanese scientists have discovered a way to make water freeze at room temperature.
Image CC Nicholas Bufford
The team of scientists were investigating the properties of water molecules wrapped in single-atom thick carbon nanotubes. The nanoconfined water displayed several unusual properties. Most striking was that as the width of the carbon nanotube decreased, the melting point of the water trapped inside rose. These "tubule ices" are unlike any seen in bulk water, and can even occur at room temperatures.
Thankfully, there's no…
grrlscientist | May 19, 2010tags: Richard Feynman Explains Magnets and 'Why?' Questions, science, physics, magnet, forces, offbeat, ice, slippery, physical laws, Richard Feynman, streaming video
Physicist Richard Feynman tries to explain to a non-scientist just how difficult it can be to answer certain questions in lay terms! A classic example of Feynman's clarity of thought, powers of explanation and intellectual honesty - his refusal to 'cheat'.
From the BBC TV series 'Fun to Imagine' (1983).
stoat | February 1, 2010Obvious enough you would have though, but some still fall for it. UN climate change panel based claims on student dissertation and magazine article is the latest excitement.
Breathlessly, they reveal:
It can be revealed that the IPCC report made use of 16 non-peer reviewed WWF reports. One claim, which stated that coral reefs near mangrove forests contained up to 25 times more fish numbers than those without mangroves nearby, quoted a feature article on the WWF website. In fact the data contained within the WWF article originated from a paper published in 2004 in the respected journal Nature…
awild | January 5, 2010Yesterday afternoon, perhaps tired of keeping up with the subzero temps, our furnace up and quit. We were able to keep the house somewhat above freezing until the repair guy installed the replacement bits this morning. We're all fixed now. But the outage wasn't without a bright side: the ice crystals on the windows grew especially wild:
awild | January 2, 2010Ice on the windows:
Photo details: Canon 100mm f2.8 macro lens on a Canon EOS 50D.
(top) ISO 250, f/4, 1/320 sec; (bottom )ISO 160, f/5, 1/500 sec
zooillogix | October 23, 2008Still trying to figure out where the dividing line is between my new project, ZooBorns, and Zooillogix, but this definitely spans the two.
Sixteen-month-old Pacific walrus Akituusaq shows off his new set of titanium crowns at his home in Sea Cliffs at the New York Aquarium. "Aki" was fitted with these crowns by Wildlife Conservation Society Global Health Program veterinarians working with a dental consultant to protect his tusks from damage during growth. Aki seems to be adjusting well to his new armor.
awild | July 19, 2008I've had a week to digest the International Congress of Entomology (ICE) meeting held earlier this month in Durban, South Africa. Thousands of diverse presentations happening in 15 parallel sessions cannot easily be summed up in a single blog post, so I'll stick to a few of my own impressions of the conference.
First, the bad. Durban was a terrible location.
Lovely beaches aside, the city was not safe. Several people were mugged outside their hotels, and there is nothing relaxing about having to watch your back when venturing off the conference grounds. The crime had a surpressive effect…
edyong | February 29, 2008
The next time you watch a snowfall, just think that among the falling flakes are some that house bacteria at their core.
It's a well known fact that water freezes at 0°C, but it only does so without assistance at -40°C or colder. At higher temperatures, it needs help and relies on microscopic particles to provide a core around which water molecules can clump and crystallise. These particles act as seeds for condensation and they are rather dramatically known as "ice nucleators".
Dust and soot are reasonable ice nucleators but they are completely surpassed by bacteria, which can…
grrlscientist | December 24, 2007tags: seedhead on ice, plants, photography, nature, Image of the Day
This is the last image in a series of photos that my friend and long-time reader, Dave Rintoul, took in the aftermath of the recent ice storm that gripped the midwest of the United States. This series began on 20 December.
Seedhead on Ice (Ice Storm, 2007)
Image: Dave Rintoul, KSU [larger view]
Go here to see more of Dave's ice storm photography.