PLEASE NOTE:
*
CCNet 105/2003 - 13 November 2003
IS THE SUNSPOT CYCLE BROKEN?
---------------------------------------
Imagine you're in California. It's July, the middle of summer.
The sun rises early;
bright rays warm the ground. It's a great day to be outside.
Then, suddenly, it begins
to snow--not just a little flurry, but a swirling blizzard that
doesn't stop for two
weeks. That's what forecasters call unseasonal weather. It sounds
incredible, but
"something like that just happened on the sun," says
David Hathaway, a solar physicist
at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center.
--Science@NASA,
12 November 2003
These [sun] spots are still active. Explosions from their
vicinity have been hurling
clouds of gas over the sun's limb in recent days, e.g., on Nov.
11th and Nov. 12th.
The sun's 27-day rotation will soon carry the pair around to the
Earth-facing side of
the sun. So get ready for more solar activity.
--Space Weather News, 12 November 2003
(1) IS THE SUNSPOT CYCLE BROKEN?
Science@NASA,
12 November 2003
(2) SOLAR STORM STILL RAGING ON
Space Weather News for Nov. 12, 2003
(3) MARS EXPRESS DODGES SOLAR BULLET
Space.com, 11 November 2003
(4) NEAR-EARTH HAZARDS: TOO HOT TO HANDLE?
Tech Central Station, 12 November 2003
(5) K/T MASS EXTINCTION: WHAT REALLY KILLED OFF THE DINOSAURS?
The Guardian, 13 November 2003
(6) DID DISASTER KILL OFF ALASKAN HORSE? HUMANS EXONERATED FOR
LATE PLEISTOCENE EXTINCTION
BBC News Online, 13 November 2003
(7) ARCTIC SEA ICE MELTING - ANTARCTIC SEA ICE INCREASING
Eurekalert, 11 November 2003
===== SCARES, SCARES, AND MORE SCARES ======
(8) BBC SCARE: "GLOBAL WARMING MAY LEAD TO BIG CHILL
THREAT"
The Scotsman, 13 November 2003
(9) METHANE EXTINCTION SCARE: "COULD IT HAPPEN AGAIN?"
San Diego Union-Tribune, 12 November 2003
(10) HYDROGENE SCARE: "HYDROGENE USE WILL MAKE AIR DIRTY AND
PLANET WARMER"
The International Herald Tribune, 13
November 2003
(11) 2003 LEONID METEOR PREDICTIONS
Jeremie Vaubaillon <vaubaill@imcce.fr>
(12) AND FINALLY: IS THE U.S. PLANNING TO ESTABLISH HUMANKIND'S
FIRST LUNAR BASE?
Spaceref.com, 12 November 2003
===========
(1) IS THE SUNSPOT CYCLE BROKEN?
Science@NASA, 12 November 2003
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2003/12nov_haywire.htm?list20392
Solar maximum is years past, yet the sun has been remarkably
active lately. Is the sunspot cycle broken?
November 12, 2003: Imagine you're in California. It's July,
the middle of summer. The sun rises early; bright rays warm the
ground. It's a great day to be outside. Then, suddenly, it begins
to snow--not just a little flurry, but a swirling blizzard that
doesn't stop for two weeks.
That's what forecasters call unseasonal weather.
It sounds incredible, but "something like that just happened
on the sun," says David Hathaway, a solar physicist at
NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center.
Only a few weeks ago solar activity was low. The face of the sun
was nearly blank--"very few sunspots," says
Hathaway--and space weather near Earth was mild. "Mild is
just what we expect at this point in the 11-year solar
cycle," he explains. "The most recent maximum was in
2001, and solar activity has been declining ever since."
Then, suddenly, in late October the sun began to behave
strangely. Three giant sunspots appeared, each one larger than
the planet Jupiter. In California where smoke from wildfires
dimmed the sun enough to look straight at it, casual sky watchers
were startled by the huge blotches on the sun. One of them, named
"sunspot 486," was the biggest in 13 years.
Sunspots cause solar flares and, usually, the biggest flares come
from the biggest spots. The three giant sunspots unleashed eleven
X-class flares in only fourteen days--equaling the total number
observed during the previous twelve months. "This was a big
surprise," says Hathaway.
The effects on Earth were many: Radio blackouts disrupted
communications. Solar protons penetrated Earth's upper
atmosphere, exposing astronauts and some air travelers to
radiation doses equal to a medical chest X-ray. Auroras appeared
all over the world--in Florida, Texas, Australia and many other
places where they are seldom seen.
Researchers rank solar flares according to their x-ray power
output. C-flares are the weakest. M-flares are middling-strong.
X-flares are the most powerful. Each category has subdivisions:
e.g., X1, X2, X3 and so on. A typical X-flare registers X1 or X2.
On Nov. 4th, sunspot 486 unleashed an X28 flare--the most
powerful ever recorded.
"In 1989 a flare about half that strong caused a widespread
power blackout in Quebec," recalls Hathaway. Last week's
blast was aimed away from Earth, so its effects on our planet
were slight--a bit of good luck.
All this happened two years after solar maximum, which raises a
question: is something wrong with the solar cycle? Is the sun
going haywire?
"Nothing's wrong," reassures Hathaway. The sun isn't
about to explode, nor is the sunspot cycle broken. "These
latest sunspots were whoppers," he allows, "but sunspot
counts averaged over many weeks are still declining as predicted.
We're still on course for a solar minimum in 2006."
Indeed, it's possible that what we've just experienced is a
normal part of the solar cycle, speculates Hathaway.
"There's a curious tendency for the biggest flares to occur
after solar maximum--on the downslope toward solar minimum. This
has happened during two of the last three solar cycles." The
plot below illustrates his point.
Consider the year 1984, says Hathaway. Sunspot counts were
plunging, and the sun was rapidly approaching the 1985-86 solar
minimum. Suddenly a giant sunspot appeared, Jupiter-sized like
sunspot 486, and unleashed two dozen M-flares and three X-flares,
including a remarkable flare registering X13. People then
probably wondered too if the solar cycle was broken.
"It's hard to be sure what's normal and what's not,"
notes Hathaway. "Astronomers have been observing x-rays from
the sun for only 35 years--or three solar cycles. We can't draw
good statistical conclusions from so few data."
One thing is certain, though: flurries of solar activity can
happen at any time. The next time, says Hathaway, could be just a
week or so away.
Sunspot 486 and its companions are on the far side of the sun
now, carried around by the sun's 27-day rotation. "We
suspect they're still active," says Hathaway, because the
Solar and Heliospheric Observatory--a sun-watching satellite--has
photographed clouds of gas being thrown over the sun's limb by
unseen explosions. Unless these sunspots dissipate, which could
happen, they will reappear on the Earth-facing side of the sun
beginning as early as Nov. 14th.
And then...? No one knows. "We might get some more
unseasonal space weather," says Hathaway. But this time he
won't be surprised.
=============
(2) SOLAR STORM STILL RAGING ON
Space Weather News for Nov. 12, 2003
http://spaceweather.com
FAR SIDE SUNSPOTS: Using a technique called helioseismic
holography, astronomers can do
something amazing: look through the sun to find sunspots on the
far side of our star. On
Nov. 11th their holographic maps revealed giant sunspots 486 and
488--the same active
regions that caused so much intense space weather a few weeks
ago.
These spots are still active. Explosions from their vicinity have
been hurling clouds of
gas over the sun's limb in recent days, e.g., on Nov. 11th and
Nov. 12th. The sun's 27-day
rotation will soon carry the pair around to the Earth-facing side
of the sun. So get ready
for more solar activity.
===========
(3) MARS EXPRESS DODGES SOLAR BULLET
Space.com, 11 November 2003
http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/marsexpress_update_031111.html
By Tariq Malik
Europe's Mars Express spacecraft has overcome the effects of last
week's solar flares, which temporarily knocked out navigation
equipment aboard the orbiter while leaving the mission's Beagle 2
lander unscathed.
Researchers with the European Space Agency's (ESA) Mars Express
mission said their spacecraft is in good health after solar
storms blinded the orbiter's two star trackers for up to 15
hours. Mission controllers said both instruments, which trackers
are crucial to keeping Mars Express oriented properly, are now
working properly and there appears to be no long-term damage. The
flares also delayed a scheduled Beagle 2 checkout procedure, but
caused no ill effects otherwise.
"The Beagle 2 is designed to be radiation hard, but of
course the mission manager will not be happy until we turn [the
lander] back on in a week or two," said Mark Sims, referring
to himself during a mission update Tuesday morning. Sims actually
is the Beagle 2 mission manager.
Sims and other ESA officials discussed the status of Mars Express
and Beagle 2 during the mission update, which was held in London,
England. The mission is currently six weeks away from its Dec. 25
arrival at the red planet, which the Mars Express orbiter will
begin circling as the lander plummets toward the surface.
John Reddie, ESA's Mars Express flight director, said engineers
are still working to solve a power problem that struck the
orbiter in July. That affliction resulted in a 30 percent drop in
the craft's power generation.
"The situation is the same as it was, but there has been no
degradation either," Reddie said. While engineers are
working to remedy the problem, should it persist up to Mars
Express' red planet arrival the spacecraft will still be able to
perform up to 85 percent of its original mission, he added.
Ground controllers may also put the orbiter in a safe mode during
periods of power loss such as eclipse, when Mars blocks sunlight
from reaching the probe's solar panels.
FULL ARTICLE AT http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/marsexpress_update_031111.html
============
(4) NEAR-EARTH HAZARDS: TOO HOT TO HANDLE?
Tech Central Station, 12 November 2003
http://www.techcentralstation.com/111203E.html
By Sallie Baliunas
The Sun is the origin of deadly hazards in near space, which
begins approximately 60 miles above earth's surface. An extreme
flare that erupted from the sun on November 4 showed that the
Sun's ferocity knows few limits. This extraordinarily powerful
flare proved how difficult it is to predict flare hazards.
Humans have threaded low-earth orbit with electronic equipment
used for navigation, communication and science aboard satellites.
The gear can be damaged by bursts of swift particles ejected from
the sun during a flare.
Flares occur over relatively small regions on the sun, and
sometimes burst in the direction of the earth. When they do,
their fast-moving protons, electrons, and nuclei of heavy atoms
bombard the earth's environment. The charged particles may smash
into the earth's magnetic field, releasing energy that
temporarily excites the air's oxygen atoms. The atoms quickly
emit the energy, often as visible greenish or reddish light seen
shaped as shimmery curtains, called aurorae, washing across the
night sky.
The Nov. 4 flare was of the highest energy class known -- the
X-class -- and was off-scale compared to flares recorded
systematically by satellite observations since the 1970s. The
flare barely touched the earth because the magnetically disturbed
area had been carried away from direct line of sight to the earth
by the sun's spin. Still, the ensuing aurorae were spectacular,
and spacecraft measurements observed the might of the flare. The
flare's offset punch perhaps meant sparing some spacecraft
electronics.
The sun has exhibited surprising flare activity this year. In
general flares tend to occur at times when sunspots appear in the
greatest number -- that is, when the sun is most heavily covered
by intense regions of intense magnetic field. The sunspot cycle
brings high magnetism and the possibility for flares roughly
every 11 years. The cycle last peaked in 2000-2001, and the
number of sunspots has been dropping to the cycle's expected low
around 2005. Despite the low number of sunspots, some that have
appeared have been unusually large. There is no good explanation
why large spots have been recently appearing.
The unusual Nov. 4 flare probably ranks with a few great flares
of the past for which satellite monitoring was unavailable, but
whose strengths can be inferred from supporting observations.
On the afternoon of Thursday, Sept. 1, 1859, Richard Carrington
and Richard Hodgson independently observed what is thought to be
the first recorded flare in visible light. Carrington, observing
the projected image of the sun, saw "a ray of light"
whose "brilliancy was fully equal to that of direct
Sun-light" that persisted for about five minutes. Some 17
hours later the plasma bombarded the earth so violently that
aurorae were seen over much of the Northern Hemisphere, even as
far south as Havana and the region of Mahastra, India, according
to D. Kimball of the University of Alaska who compiled the 1859
aurora information in 1960. The ejected material had to be
speeding at approximately 5 million miles per hour to cross the
93 million miles from the sun to the earth in so brief a time.
Because satellites have been destroyed during solar particle
eruptions, satellites are now built to withstand the
hardest-hitting known flares, with excess margin for the super
events. As humans travel to the moon or Mars, they will also need
to be protected from powerful flares.
Now that societies of earth have crossed the threshold of space
they will have to comprehend the bizarre and dangerous
environment of space. In this next phase of humankind, the cosmos
will remain entirely unchanged but humans will be irrevocably
altered by our experience. Knowledge of solar hazards must be
advanced because they are of the first magnitude of importance
among near-space hazards.
Copyright 2003, Tech Central Station
=============
(5) K/T MASS EXTINCTION: WHAT REALLY KILLED OFF THE DINOSAURS?
The Guardian, 13 November 2003
http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/thisweek/story/0,12977,1083410,00.html
Ian Sample
Just as scientists thought they had nailed down the answer, the
debate has been reopened. A team of scientists claims the widely
accepted theory that the extinction was triggered by a huge
asteroid thumping into Mexico 65m years ago, cannot be true.
Evidence that a giant asteroid impact was the cause of the
dinosaurs' demise first emerged in the 1980s. Scientists
analysing ancient soils in Italy found that layers of clay from
the end of the Cretaceous period, the time the dinosaurs
vanished, were unusually rich in a heavy metal called iridium.
Later evidence of the layer was found in other countries,
including Denmark and New Zealand. The most likely cause was
believed to be an extraterrestrial rock that struck Earth and
showered iridium across the continents. Such an impact would have
had a devastating affect on life, as hot rocks fell from the
skies and dust shrouded the sun.
The theory gained credibility a decade ago when scientists
declared they had found the smoking gun for the impact. A crater
more than 100km across, that seemed to date back to the end of
the Cretaceous period, was discovered near a village called
Chicxulub on the Yucatan peninsula.
But according to Gerta Keller, a geologist at Princeton
University, the Chicxulub crater is not linked.
Keller's team analysed rock which had melted in the intense heat
of the impact, been thrown into the stratosphere and scattered
far and wide. They found the oldest pieces, which have the same
chemical composition as molten rock in the crater, were formed
some 300,000 years before the dinosaurs became extinct. Samples
from the crater back up the idea that dinosaur life existed long
after the impact at Chicxulub, says Keller.
"What this means is that Chicxulub is not the smoking gun
that caused the extinction. What really killed the dinosaurs must
have been another impact," she says.
And so the search for the real smoking gun is on again. If, of
course, an asteroid was actually responsible.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003
==========
(6) DID DISASTER KILL OFF ALASKAN HORSE? HUMANS EXONERATED FOR
LATE PLEISTOCENE EXTINCTION
BBC News Online, 13 November 2003
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3264157.stm
Alaska's native horse was killed off by food shortages caused by
climate change - not human hunters, scientists say.
Researchers found the horses shrank in size before their
extinction 12,500 years ago, which fits with the theory that they
didn't have enough to eat.
Humans were unlikely to have had a hand in the horses' demise,
they claim, because fossil records show man had hardly arrived on
the scene by then.
The research is published in the scientific journal, Nature.
Mass extinction
Until about 20,000 to 10,000 years ago the Mammoth Steppe in
Alaska contained a rich panoply of large mammals.
While London and New York lay submerged in glacial ice, the
Mammoth Steppe provided a cold grassy haven to woolly mammoths,
lions, bison, sabre tooth tigers - and the Alaskan horse.
Then a catastrophic thing happened. In a 10,000-year period, 70%
of North America's large mammals died. Something killed those
warm blooded giants, although quite what - or who - remains a
matter for discussion.
There are two main suspects: our own species, Homo sapiens, or
climate - or perhaps a mixture of both.
Around 12,000 years ago human migrants - known as the Clovis
people - entered the New World across a land bridge from Asia.
These people are often implicated in the late Pleistocene
extinction, and indeed fossil records prove they did hunt some of
the animals that died out - like mammoths.
Climate change
But many experts believe climate change was the biggest culprit.
At the end of the ice-age the environment in North America
changed dramatically. It got warmer - and wetter. The cold dry
grassland morphed into tundra, which is largely characterised by
unpalatable plants.
Large mammals like the horse - which needs a great bulk of food
and has a slow breeding cycle - suffer the most from such
changes.
"Horses are almost obligatory grazers," wrote Professor
Dale Guthrie, from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. "And
these northern horses appear to have been the most specialized
grassland-dependent component of the large mammal fauna."
Shrinking bones
In an attempt to find out what happened to the Alaskan horse,
Professor Guthrie looked at how the size of their foreleg bones
changed over time.
He radiocarbon-dated a series of fossilized bones, from as far
back as 27,000 years.
He noticed that as time progressed the bones became smaller - in
other words, the horses shrank before they went extinct.
The timing of this reduction in size coincides with the decline
of grassland, which suggests the horses were suffering from a
shortage of food.
Professor Guthrie believes this shrinkage, along with the date of
the horses' disappearance, exonerates man.
After all, evidence for the first human settlement can be dated
to 12,000 years ago - a long time after the horses' went extinct.
"There is a hiatus of over 500 radiocarbon years between the
last dated Alaskan horses and the earliest undisputed human
artefacts," wrote Professor Guthrie.
"Even if we allow that human hunters may have been present
in Alaska at levels below archaeological visibility when horses
became extinct, the idea that such a low density of hunters could
have caused horse extinction requires an unlikely scale of
overkill performance."
Copyright 2003, BBC
============
(7) ARCTIC SEA ICE MELTING - ANTARCTIC SEA ICE INCREASING
Eurekalert, 11 November 2003
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2003-11/nsfc-aaa111103.php
Contact: Krishna Ramanujan
krishna_ramanujan@ssaihq.com
607-273-2561
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center--EOS Project Science Office
Arctic and Antarctic sea ice marching to different drivers
A 30-year satellite record of sea ice in the two polar regions
reveals that while the Northern Hemisphere Arctic ice has melted,
Southern Hemisphere Antarctic ice has actually increased in more
recent years. However, due to dramatic losses of Antarctic sea
ice between 1973 and 1977, sea ice in both hemispheres has shrunk
on average when examined over the 30-year time frame.
This study presents the longest continuous record of sea ice for
both hemispheres based primarily on satellites, and the longer
reading already begins to highlight some new information about
sea ice trends over time, like the fact that more recently the
Arctic has been losing ice at a faster rate.
"If you compare the rate of loss in the Arctic for the last
two decades, it is 20 percent greater than the rate of loss over
the last three decades," said Don Cavalieri, lead author of
the study, and a senior researcher at NASA's Goddard Space Flight
Center. The study appeared in a recent issue of Geophysical
Research Letters.
Over 30 years, from 1972 to 2002, the Arctic sea ice cover
decreased per decade by roughly the size of the state of Arizona,
some 300,000 square kilometers (almost 116,000 square miles) per
decade. However, between 1979 and 2002 the sea ice area shrunk by
the greater rate of 360,000 square kilometers (139,000 square
miles) per decade.
The greater rate of sea ice loss in the Arctic may be due to a
general warming trend in the Arctic as well as the influence of
long-term oscillations or other changes in atmospheric pressure
systems, which could pull in more warm air from the south.
In contrast, there was a dramatic loss of Antarctic sea ice cover
from 1973 to 1977, and since then the ice has gradually spread in
area.
"The increase has been slow enough that it does not totally
wipe out the earlier decreases," said Claire Parkinson,
senior researcher at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, and a
co-author of the paper. Another co-author is Konstantin Y.
Vinnikov, of the department of meteorology at the University of
Maryland, College Park.
Overall, from 1972 to 2002, the Antarctic ice declined on average
by 150,000 square kilometers per decade (almost 58,000 square
miles).
In the Antarctic, the gradual advance of ice from the late 1970s
may be related to long-term atmospheric oscillations in the
Southern Hemisphere resulting in stronger westerly winds and
cooler temperatures.
"Trying to explain why these things happen becomes
tricky," said Parkinson. "The temperature connection
where warmer temperatures lead to greater melt is reasonably
direct, but far from the complete story. Winds and waves move ice
around, and consequently the ice can move to places where it is
warm enough that it wouldn't have formed."
While the study represents the longest continuous record
comparing the two polar regions, there was a major gap in the
satellite sea ice data between early 1977 and late 1978. This gap
was filled by maps of sea ice created from ship and other reports
in polar areas and conveyed to the National Ice Center.
The study uses satellite data from NASA's Nimbus 5 Electrically
Scanning Microwave Radiometer (ESMR), NASA's Nimbus 7 Scanning
Multichannel Microwave Radiometer (SMMR), and the Defense
Meteorological Satellite Program Special Sensor Microwave Imagers
(SSMIs). The Nimbus 5 ESMR data covered from December 1972 to
March 1977, with the Nimbus 7 SMMR combined with the Defense
Program's SSMIs picking up data from October 1978 to December
2002. For the year and a half in between 1977 and 1978, the
researchers used data and maps from the National Ice Center.
"The National Ice Center all along created operational maps
of sea ice cover to help ships in the region trying to navigate
around or through the ice," Parkinson said. These maps,
while not as comprehensive as satellite data, had to be created
every week, using the best data available at the time. The
researchers figured it was the most accurate data to bridge the
gap between the satellite records. Previously, NASA scientists
had blended the SMMR and SSMI data sets together to generate a
20-year time series of sea ice extents from 1979 to 1998.
By having a 30 year record, the researchers have a much longer
baseline to see the trends in both the Arctic and the Antarctic,
and they can see seemingly unusual events like the rapid loss of
ice in Antarctica in the mid-70s.
"It seems the two regions are responding to different
hemispheric variations," said Cavalieri. "What remains
is to sift out and understand how these variations are driving
the sea ice in each hemisphere."
====== SCARES, SCARES, AND MORE SCARES ============
(8) BBC SCARE: "GLOBAL WARMING MAY LEAD TO BIG CHILL
THREAT"
The Scotsman, 13 November 2003
http://www.news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=2170942
By John von Radowitz, Science Correspondent, PA News
Britain could have a climate like Iceland's within the next 100
years, a scientist warns today.
Ironically, the change would come about as a result of global
warming.
Speaking on a television programme today, scientists will voice
their fears about the Gulf Stream being suddenly cut off.
They say the process may have already begun because of changes
caused by global warming.
The Gulf Stream carries ocean heat past Britain's shores,
ensuring that the climate stays mild.
If it was not there, temperatures in the UK would plunge.
The Iceland Britain scenario is investigated on the Big Chill,
broadcast on BBC 2's Horizon programme tonight.
Expert Terry Joyce, from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in
the US says: "The likelihood of having an abrupt change is
increasing because global warming is moving us closer and closer
to the brink. We don't know where it is, but we know one thing,
we're moving closer to the edge.
"And so I'd say that within the next 100 years it's very
likely, in other words a 50% probability that this might
happen."
The change would come almost out of the blue.
"It will be quick, and suddenly one decade we're warm, and
the next decade we're in the coldest winter we've experienced in
the last 100 years, but we're in it for 100 years," he says.
Dr Bill Turrell, from the Fisheries Research Service in Aberdeen,
has been measuring the salt-content of the Gulf Stream current
flowing north of Scotland.
If salinity is dropping, it is a sign that the driving force
behind the Gulf Stream is weakening.
Global warming threatens the gulf stream because it is predicted
to produce more fresh water, which would dilute the salty waters
of the current. This in turn would stop it sinking, and if this
happened the heat it carries would be cut off.
Dr Turrell's measurements show that the Gulf Stream's salinity is
indeed dropping.
"It's the most fundamental change I've observed in my
career," he tells the programme. "We were really
worried when we saw these results. We'd never seen a change like
this before.
"These changes are fundamental; they are substantial; They
are going to impact our climate and the climate our children have
to live in."
Copyright 2003, The Scotsman
==========
(9) METHANE EXTINCTION SCARE: "COULD IT HAPPEN AGAIN?"
San Diego Union-Tribune, 12 November 2003
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/science/20031112-9999_1c12permian.html
A geologist thinks methane releases nearly caused the end of
Earth; could it happen again?
By Richard A. Lovett
Two hundred fifty million years ago, at the end of a geological
epoch known as the Permian, the Earth went through an
environmental upheaval so severe that life nearly ended. At least
90 percent of the planet's plant and animal species were wiped
out - and some estimates put the figure much higher.
"It was the mother of all extinctions," says Gregory
Retallack, a geologist from the University of Oregon who has
traced the event across narrow bands of rock in places as remote
as South Africa and Antarctica.
Scientists have long been puzzled by what might have caused such
a massive die-off, posing theories that range from catastrophic
volcanism to a wallop from a large asteroid, similar to the one
believed to have wiped out the dinosaurs 185 million years later.
But, in a study published in the September issue of the
Geological Society of America Bulletin, Retallack proposed a new
explanation: The denizens of the Permian died of altitude
sickness caused by a drastic decline in atmospheric oxygen.
That's right: altitude sickness - the problem that leaves you
gasping for breath in the thin air of Denver or Mexico City. At
higher elevations it produces headaches, nausea, dizziness, and,
if you go high enough, deadly fluid buildups in the lungs and
brain.
Retallack bases his theory in part on the fact that of the few
land animals that survived, one of the most abundant was a
reptile called Lystrosaurus. A burrowing creature, Lystrosaurus
had a barrel chest, short, squat legs and a flat face. These
characteristics helped it live underground, but Retallack says
that they would also aid survival in a world of reduced oxygen.
The animals' barrel chests allowed strong chest muscles for
powerful breathing. Short limbs reduced the workload on the heart
as it pumped oxygenated blood to the muscles. A flat face
facilitated rapid, unobstructed breathing. In addition,
Lystrosaurus' nasal passages were designed like those of humans,
allowing the animals to breathe and chew at the same time.
Other Permian reptiles were like modern-day alligators, which
must hold their breaths while eating, a disadvantage if oxygen is
in short supply.
Methane key
Lystrosaurus isn't the only Permian survivor that showed traits
that would be important in a reduced-oxygen environment. In the
ocean, surviving mollusks were muscular varieties that could pump
large volumes of seawater through their bodies for the most
efficient extraction of oxygen. On land, surviving plants tended
to be those that grew in dry, well-aerated soils, where oxygen
could easily get to their roots.
All these factors help build a case that the ability to live on
reduced oxygen was important for surviving the Permian
extinction. But the theory would be little more than an exercise
in speculation if there were no way to explain what happened to
all that oxygen.
Retallack believes the answer can be found in vast, seabed
reservoirs of methane, a chemical comprised of a single carbon
atom linked to four atoms of hydrogen.
On the seabed, methane is continuously formed by the action of
bacteria on buried organic matter. Methane is a gas, but instead
of percolating to the surface, it remains beneath the ocean,
trapped by the pressure of the overlying water in a form called
methane hydrates.
These hydrates can lie dormant for millions of years, until
something disturbs them and frees the methane to bubble to the
surface and enter the atmosphere.
"Several things could have done the trick," Retallack
says. "A meteorite impact or volcanic eruption right into a
big methane reservoir, a volcanic eruption, volcanic gases
warming the Earth, a submarine landslide triggered by an
earthquake. Or, all of these could have happened together."
Once it reached the atmosphere, the methane would have reacted
with oxygen to form water and carbon dioxide. Plants would then
have used the carbon dioxide to form stems, roots and leaves, but
not without a net loss of atmospheric oxygen throughout the
process.
One of the many mysteries of the Permian extinction is that
fossil soils from that era are unusually low in the heavier of
carbon's two stable isotopes, carbon-13. For that to have
occurred, the atmosphere's usual mix of carbon must have been
diluted by a large admixture of the other isotope, carbon-12.
Some scientists have proposed that this carbon might have been
belched out of volcanoes, which were known to have been extremely
active at the end of the Permian. But volcanoes can't account for
the isotope ratios seen in end-Permian soils, says Robert Berner,
a geochemist from Yale University.
"Carbon dioxide from volcanoes could not give you that
carbon isotope spike," he says. "You have to do it with
something isotopically light, and the best candidate is
methane."
Berner, who published his results last year in the Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences, adds that the most likely
source of methane is from the rapid release of methane hydrates
from the seabed.
The soils from the end-Permian era are so heavily enriched with
light carbon, however, that a truly enormous amount of methane
must have been released into the atmosphere - enough to contain
nearly twice as much carbon as is currently contained in every
living thing on the surface of the earth, Retallack says.
Before the extinction, the Permian was an era when swamp-dwelling
plants were forming large amounts of coal and, as a byproduct,
jacking up the oxygen content of the atmosphere substantially
beyond that which we know today. Geologists estimate that during
this era, the air was comprised of 35 percent oxygen, compared
with today's 21 percent.
The methane hydrates, Retallack calculates, would have consumed
enough oxygen to reduce the atmospheric content all the way to 12
percent - roughly equivalent to the amount found today at an
elevation of 16,500 feet. For creatures adapted to the high
oxygen levels of the Permian, the effect would have been
comparable to being lifted from sea level to the summit of Mount
Everest.
Such a change would certainly have been a severe stress for many
types of animals, says Dr. John West, a professor of medicine and
physiology at UCSD, who studies human adaptations to high
elevations. Andean miners can live indefinitely at elevations as
high as 19,000 feet, West adds, but it's anyone's guess how well
animals would adapt.
West notes that few animals live that high today, due to lack of
food. But most of those that do, he says, have adaptations that
wouldn't show in fossils, such as blood hemoglobin with an
unusually high affinity for oxygen. Interestingly, he says,
burrowing animals adapted to poorly ventilated tunnels show the
same trait, a characteristic that he thinks might be more
important to their survival than the barrel chests and short
limbs observed by Retallack.
Future energy source
Retallack's theory has drawn cautious interest from some
geophysicists, who regard it as intriguingly innovative. Others
are more dubious.
Most scientists agree that the end of the Permian was accompanied
by a rapid drop in atmospheric oxygen, but among geologists,
"rapid" is a relative term. Berner thinks it took at
least a million years, far too long to account for the rapid
die-off that marked the Permian extinction.
But Retallack believes that while methane releases might have
occurred in several stages spread across several thousand years,
each one occurred quickly.
"I don't see any way to get (the methane) out slowly,"
he says. "I'm inclined to think of a catastrophic release
within days or months."
Another question is whether the seabeds could have released
enough methane to knock the atmospheric level of oxygen down by
the amount proposed by Retallack.
Retallack says yes, but another methane hydrate researcher,
Gerald Dickens of Rice University in Houston, thinks that
Retallack's theory takes about 10 times too much methane.
Perhaps Retallack's use of the term "altitude sickness"
has inadvertently polarized the debate. To most people, altitude
sickness is an ailment that strikes quickly, when one ascends too
far, too fast. Retallack admits that he himself was once struck
down by the condition on an ill-fated attempt to climb Africa's
19,340-foot Mount Kilimanjaro.
Permian species may not have suffered sudden death from altitude
sickness. Most could have been out-competed by the few that best
adapted when the atmosphere changed.
More disturbing is the question of whether something similar
could happen again. The Permian isn't the only time when
geophysicists believe that large volumes of methane were released
from the seabed. Something similar appears to have happened
during the Eocene, 52 million years ago, although the amount of
methane involved was considerably smaller.
And, methane hydrates exist today on the seabed, where in theory
they could be released by another earthquake, volcanic eruption
or asteroid impact similar to whatever event it was that may have
triggered their release at the end of the Permian.
More importantly, humans are looking at methane hydrates as
potential sources of energy. Before progressing too far, we'd
better be sure that our extraction methods won't trigger
large-scale releases. "The possibility for environmental
catastrophe is a bit of a worry," Retallack says.
Richard A. Lovett is a freelance science writer in Portland,
Ore.
© Copyright 2003 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.
============
(10) HYDROGENE SCARE: "HYDROGENE USE WILL MAKE AIR DIRTY AND
PLANET WARMER"
The International Herald Tribune, 13 November 2003
http://www.iht.com/articles/117469.html
Matthew L. Wald NYT
WASHINGTON Widespread hydrogen use has been enthusiastically
embraced by corporations and environmentalists as a panacea for
global warming and the depletion of fossil fuels.
Next week the Bush administration is bringing energy ministers of
15 countries to Washington for a meeting on hydrogen, and
President George W. Bush pledged in his 2003 State of the Union
address that "the first car driven by a child born today
could be powered by hydrogen, and pollution-free."
But skeptics, and even some hydrogen advocates, say the use of
hydrogen could instead make the air dirtier and the planet
warmer. Hydrogen is only a place to store energy. Where the
energy comes from in the first place is where the problems start.
The most ambitious use of hydrogen is in a car powered by a fuel
cell, a batterylike device that turns hydrogen into electricity
while emitting only heat and water vapor. Hydrogen can also be
burned directly in engines much like those that run on gasoline,
but the Energy Department goal is fuel cells because they get
twice as much work out of a pound of hydrogen.
Companies and universities in North America are intensely
researching development of a practical fuel cell.
The main source for hydrogen is natural gas, which is in short
supply, is cumbersome to convert and may have better uses.
Waiting in the wings is coal, burned in old power plants around
the world that are already the focus of a dispute over their
emissions.
The long-term hope is to make hydrogen from emission-free
"renewable" technologies, like windmills or solar
cells. In fact, hydrogen may be an essential step to translate
the energy of wind or sunlight into power to turn a car's wheels,
experts say. But electricity from renewable technologies is
costly. At Sharp Solar, which says it is the world's largest
maker of solar cells, the general manager, Ronald Kenedi, said it
was possible that the energy source to produce hydrogen for
vehicles would initially not be the sun or wind. "The first
stop on the hydrogen trail will be coal," he said.
A likely source of hydrogen is from a machine called an
electrolyzer, which is like a fuel cell in reverse. The fuel cell
combines oxygen from the air with hydrogen to produce an electric
current, with water as a byproduct, while an electrolyzer runs an
electric current through water to split the water molecule into
its constituent hydrogen and oxygen atoms. The problem is that if
the electricity came off the national power grid to run an
electrolyzer, about half of it, on average, would be generated by
coal.
The president's proposal contained an implicit recognition that a
big part of the fuel-cell question is the fuel. He called for
spending $1.2 billion on hydrogen to include money for
production, delivery and storage. Another problem is emissions.
According to the Energy Department, an ordinary gasoline-powered
car emits 374 grams of carbon dioxide per mile, or 1.6
kilometers, it is driven, counting the energy used to make the
gasoline and deliver it. The same car powered by a fuel cell
would emit nothing, but if the energy required to make the
hydrogen came from the electric grid, the emissions would be 436
grams per mile. Similarly, the car would not emit nitrogen
oxides, a precursor of smog, but the power plant would.
Copyright © 2003 the International Herald Tribune All Rights
Reserved
========= LETTERS =========
(11) 2003 LEONID METEOR PREDICTIONS
Jeremie Vaubaillon <vaubaill@imcce.fr>
Just a few words to recall that the Leonid meteor shower level
from the 1533
trail predicted by our method is very uncertain. For more
information,
please visit:
http://www.imcce.fr/s2p/leonides/predictions/Leonid_Prevision_2003.html
Thanks a lot!
Jeremie Vaubaillon
************************************************************
* Jeremie VAUBAILLON
* Institut de Mecanique Celeste et de Calcul
* des Ephemerides (www.imcce.fr,
ex bdl.fr)
* 77 Avenue Denfert Rochereau
* 75014 PARIS
* FRANCE
************************************************************
* tel : +33 (0)1 40 51 22 66
* fax : +33 (0)1 40 51 20 58
* URL : http://www.imcce.fr/Equipes/GAP/equipeGAP-jv-GB.html
************************************************************
==========
(12) AND FINALLY: IS THE U.S. PLANNING TO ESTABLISH HUMANKIND'S
FIRST LUNAR BASE?
Spaceref.com, 12 November 2003
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=894
Keith Cowing
The Bush Administration is nearly finished with an internal
effort to develop a new space
policy for America. The process has been performed in a quiet
cloistered manner, out of
public view. The longer this process has gone on, the more
interested parties want to know
what is going on. Speculation has started to mount to the point
that certain specific venues
for "an announcement" by the President are circulating
inside and outside of the White House....
Many have called for a specific destination to be named - one
that will pull or push technology
development - rather than Sean O'Keefe's currently espoused
approach wherein NASA seeks to
develop technology and then see what destination opportunities it
might provide down the road.
Word from knowledgeable sources would suggest that an overt
Kennedy-esque commitment to send
humans to Mars is simply not in the cards. Indeed, Mars (as an
option) is not on the table at
the present time.
Rather, the focus seems to be coalescing around sending humans
back to the Moon and to the
establishment of a inner solar system infrastructure that would
allow decisions to where to
go next (e.g. Mars, asteroids, etc.) to be made once certain
technological and operational
unknowns are better understood....
FULL ARTICLE at http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=894
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