Geology In

More Plants Survived the World’s Greatest Mass Extinction Than Thought

More Plants Survived the World’s Greatest Mass Extinction Than Thought

A mummified seed-fern frond flaking off a piece of mudrock after being exposed to the light of day for the first time in some 255 million...

Earth's Magnetic Pole Is Wandering and Geologists Don’t Know Why

Earth History, Earth's magnetic field, Researches 6:24 PM

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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The planet’s magnetic field is up to mischief again and geologists are pretty dumbfounded.</span><br />
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Earth’s magnetic poles can wander several kilometers every year, however, the north pole's movement has become increasingly stranger in recent years. For reasons that are currently unclear, the magnetic north pole seems to be increasingly slipping away from Canada and towards Siberia at an erratic rate, according to a news report in Nature.<br />
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Something strange is going on at the top of the world. Earth’s north magnetic pole has been skittering away from Canada and towards Siberia, driven by liquid iron sloshing within the planet’s core. The magnetic pole is moving so quickly that it has forced the world’s geomagnetism experts into a rare move.<br />
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On 15 January, they are set to update the World Magnetic Model, which describes the planet’s magnetic field and underlies all modern navigation, from the systems that steer ships at sea to Google Maps on smartphones.<br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The most recent version of the model came out in 2015 and was supposed to last until 2020 — but the magnetic field is changing so rapidly that researchers have to fix the model now. “The error is increasing all the time,” says Arnaud Chulliat, a geomagnetist at the University of Colorado Boulder and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA’s) National Centers for Environmental Information.<br />
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The problem lies partly with the moving pole and partly with other shifts deep within the planet. Liquid churning in Earth’s core generates most of the magnetic field, which varies over time as the deep flows change. In 2016, for instance, part of the magnetic field temporarily accelerated deep under northern South America and the eastern Pacific Ocean. Satellites such as the European Space Agency’s Swarm mission tracked the shift.<br />
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By early 2018, the World Magnetic Model was in trouble. Researchers from NOAA and the British Geological Survey in Edinburgh had been doing their annual check of how well the model was capturing all the variations in Earth’s magnetic field. They realized that it was so inaccurate that it was about to exceed the acceptable limit for navigational errors.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Wandering pole</span></span></h4>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: World Data Center for Geomagnetism/Kyoto Univ.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“That was an interesting situation we found ourselves in,” says Chulliat. “What’s happening?” The answer is twofold, he reported last month at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in Washington DC.<br />
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First, that 2016 geomagnetic pulse beneath South America came at the worst possible time, just after the 2015 update to the World Magnetic Model. This meant that the magnetic field had lurched just after the latest update, in ways that planners had not anticipated.<br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Second, the motion of the north magnetic pole made the problem worse. The pole wanders in unpredictable ways that have fascinated explorers and scientists since James Clark Ross first measured it in 1831 in the Canadian Arctic. In the mid-1990s it picked up speed, from around 15 kilometres per year to around 55 kilometres per year. By 2001, it had entered the Arctic Ocean — where, in 2007, a team including Chulliat landed an aeroplane on the sea ice in an attempt to locate the pole.<br />
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In 2018, the pole crossed the International Date Line into the Eastern Hemisphere. It is currently making a beeline for Siberia.<br />
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The geometry of Earth’s magnetic field magnifies the model’s errors in places where the field is changing quickly, such as the North Pole. “The fact that the pole is going fast makes this region more prone to large errors,” says Chulliat.<br />
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To fix the World Magnetic Model, he and his colleagues fed it three years of recent data, which included the 2016 geomagnetic pulse. The new version should remain accurate, he says, until the next regularly scheduled update in 2020.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Core questions</span></span></h4>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In the meantime, scientists are working to understand why the magnetic field is changing so dramatically. Geomagnetic pulses, like the one that happened in 2016, might be traced back to ‘hydromagnetic’ waves arising from deep in the core1. And the fast motion of the north magnetic pole could be linked to a high-speed jet of liquid iron beneath Canada2.<br />
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The jet seems to be smearing out and weakening the magnetic field beneath Canada, Phil Livermore, a geomagnetist at the University of Leeds, UK, said at the American Geophysical Union meeting. And that means that Canada is essentially losing a magnetic tug-of-war with Siberia.<br />
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“The location of the north magnetic pole appears to be governed by two large-scale patches of magnetic field, one beneath Canada and one beneath Siberia,” Livermore says. “The Siberian patch is winning the competition.”<br />
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Which means that the world’s geomagnetists will have a lot to keep them busy for the foreseeable future.</span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><u><i><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">The study was published in the journal <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00007-1" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Nature</a>.</span></i></u></span></div>

Earth's Magnetic Pole Is Wandering and Geologists Don’t Know Why

The planet’s magnetic field is up to mischief again and geologists are pretty dumbfounded. Earth’s magnetic poles can wander sever...

New ‘Outer Space’ Mineral Found Inside Gemstones

Geochemistry, Mineralogy 8:03 PM

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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">A mineral new to science has been found inside bits of volcanic rock in a valley below Mount Carmel, northern Israel, a group of scientists revealed last month.</span><br />
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The dark-colored new mineral, called carmeltazite, was formed by the eruption of some rather puny volcanoes along the Carmel crest some time during the Cretaceous, when dinosaurs were prowling the land, geologists say.<br />
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In fact, the mineral mix constituting carmeltazite has been identified in rocks from outer space, says Abraham Taub, CEO of the Israeli gemstone-mining company, Shefa Yamim, that found it.<br />
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But this is the first time it’s been found on Earth, he says.<br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">How did a rock better known in outer space wind up in the Zevulun Valley by the Carmel? Back in the Cretaceous, as much as a quarter-billion years ago (and earlier too), there were no fewer than 14 volcanic vents along the crest of the Carmel, that’s how, Taub tells Haaretz. Over eons, the lava would have eroded and minerals within it would also have flowed down streams to the valleys spilling into the Mediterranean.<br />
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News of the discovery, which Shefa Yamim people made on the Carmel, has done absolutely nothing for the share price of the company – a smallcap firm listed on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (the holding company) with a subsidiary on the London Stock Exchange.<br />
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On Monday, Shefa Yamim stated that its same-name subsidiary had received confirmation from the International Mineralogical Association that the mineral would be registered as a new one. Evidently, English investors were unmoved as well, since Shefa’s London share price began tanking last September and hasn’t recovered since.<br />
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Taub seems equally unmoved by the market’s cold shoulder. “Investors in Israel don’t understand a thing,” he told Haaretz, in the context of his company’s endeavors. In any case, the company with the licenses is the London-listed one and it’s very new there, just listed from last year. “The market doesn’t know us,” he said.<br />
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While investors seem clammy to the revelation, chemists and geologists were delighted to discover the new form of rock – which was found in pockets of trapped rock-melt either within, or in the cracks of, crystalline material within volcanic rock on Mount Carmel.<br />
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Its properties were studied for more than three years by Prof. Bill Griffin of Macquarie University, Sydney, with academics from the University of Western Australia, the University of Florence and the University of Milan, the company says.<br />
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How on earth does one identify a new rock within a rock? Well, after it discovered another rarity – earth-bound moissanite along the banks of the Kishon – Shefa Yamim was contacted by Griffin, Taub explains. “Moissanite is rarer and more expensive than diamonds and only tiny amounts smaller than one millimeter were found. We found much larger minerals,” he says. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> Carmeltazites are forever</span></span></span></h4>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> Driven by the expectation of finding precious stones along such streambeds, Shefa Yamim has been exploring along the bed of the Kishon Stream. Over time its efforts – involving collecting soil, washing and filtering it – have found rubies, sapphires and more, says Taub.<br />
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Griffin is the one whose lab identified the carmeltazite, the CEO adds. Writing in the journal Minerals, he, the team and Vered Toledo of Shefa Yamim say carmeltazite contains titanium, aluminum and zirconium (and oxygen). In fact, the name carmeltazite is based on Mount Carmel and the aforementioned dominant metals present in the mineral.<br />
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The carmeltazite was found within sapphires, Shefa Yamim adds. Both regular sapphires and carmeltazite are based on crystalline aluminum oxide, this is true. Carmeltazite’s specific formula is ZrAl<sub>2</sub> Ti<sub>4</sub> O<sub>11</sub> .<br />
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In color, carmeltazite is black with a tendency to reddish streaks and a metallic luster, though if one squints through various instruments one can discern dark browns and greens. And white spots (“It depends on the angle of light,” Taub observes). Internal reflections are absent, the geologists add in their characterization of it.<br />
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Density testing shows that carmeltazite is harder than diamond, Taub says, and is therefore suitable for jewelry.<br />
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So, will you be able to buy your dog a collar studded with carmeltazite? Not quite yet. But if the new rock makes it into the world of gems – which it should given that the company is working on designs, says Taub – expect to pay through the nose. “Gemstone prices are usually a function of their rarity,” Taub points out.<br />
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While he thinks his company has located seven or eight potential locations along the Kishon for gemstones, including carmeltazite, at this point it remains rarer than diamonds.</span><br />
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<u><i><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"> The above post is reprinted from <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/israeli-company-finds-new-outer-space-mineral-on-earth-1.6823868" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Haaretz.com</a></span></i></u><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
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New ‘Outer Space’ Mineral Found Inside Gemstones

A mineral new to science has been found inside bits of volcanic rock in a valley below Mount Carmel, northern Israel, a group of...

We Still Don’t Know When The Earth’s Magnetic Field Began

Earth's magnetic field, Geochemistry, Tectonic 7:21 PM

We Still Don’t Know When The Earth’s Magnetic Field Began

Blue Zircon Crystal. Photo: Sumarie Slabber A combined team of researchers from the University of Cambridge and the University of...

130-million-year-old Insects Trapped in Amber Right When They Were Born

amber, Earth History 8:56 PM

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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">One of the newly discovered millipede fossilized in Cretaceous amber from Myanmar (Burma).<br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Since the success of the Jurassic Park film series, it is widely known that insects from the Age of the Dinosaurs can be found exceptionally well preserved in amber, which is in fact fossilised tree resin.</span><br />
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Especially diverse is the animal fauna preserved in Cretaceous amber from Myanmar (Burma). Over the last few years, the almost 100-million-year-old amber has revealed some spectacular discoveries, including dinosaur feathers, a complete dinosaur tail, unknown groups of spiders and several long extinct groups of insects.<br />
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However, as few as three millipede species, preserved in Burmese amber, had been found prior to the study of Thomas Wesener and his PhD student Leif Moritz at the Zoological Research Museum Alexander Koenig -- Leibniz Institute for Animal Biodiversity (ZFMK). Their research was recently published in the open-access journal Check List.<br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Having identified over 450 millipedes preserved in the Burmese amber, the scientists confirmed species representing as many as 13 out of the 16 main orders walking the Earth today. The oldest known fossils for half of these orders were found within the studied amber.<br />
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The researchers conducted their analysis with the help of micro-computed tomography (micro-CT). This scanning technology uses omni-directional X-rays to create a 3D image of the specimen, which can then be virtually removed from the amber and digitally examined.<br />
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The studied amber is mostly borrowed from private collections, including the largest European one, held by Patrick Müller from Käshofen. There are thought to be many additional, scientifically important specimens, perhaps even thousands of them, currently inaccessible in private collections in China.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Four insects have been found in amber dating back 130-million years. They were found with their short-lived 'egg-bursters' and pieces of shell </td></tr>
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Over the next few years, the newly discovered specimens will be carefully described and compared to extant species in order to identify what morphological changes have occurred in the last 100 million years and pinpoint the speciation events in the millipede Tree of Life. As a result, science will be finally looking at solving long-standing mysteries, such as whether the local millipede diversity in the southern Alps of Italy or on the island of Madagascar is the result of evolutionary processes which have taken place one, ten or more than 100-million years ago.<br />
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According to the scientists, most of the Cretaceous millipedes found in the amber do not differ significantly from the species found in Southeast Asia nowadays, which is an indication of the old age of the extant millipede lineages.<br />
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On the other hand, the diversity of the different orders seems to have changed drastically. For example, during the Age of the Dinosaurs, the group Colobognatha -- millipedes characterised by their unusual elongated heads which have evolved to suck in liquid food -- used to be very common. In contrast, with over 12,000 millipede species living today, there are only 500 colobognaths.<br />
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Another curious finding was the discovery of freshly hatched, eight-legged juveniles, which indicated that the animals lived and reproduced in the resin-producing trees.<br />
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"Even before the arachnids and insects, and far ahead of the first vertebrates, the leaf litter-eating millipedes were the first animals to leave their mark on land more than 400-million-years ago," explain the scientists. "These early millipedes differed quite strongly from the ones living today -- they would often be much larger and many had very large eyes."<br />
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The larger species in the genus Arthropleura, for example, would grow up to 2 m (6.5 ft) long and 50-80 cm (2-3 ft) wide -- the largest arthropods to have ever crawled on Earth. Why these giants became extinct and those other orders survived remains unknown, partly because only a handful of usually badly preserved fossils from the whole Mesozoic era (252-66-million years ago) has been retrieved. Similarly, although it had long been suspected that the 16 modern millipede orders must be very old, a fossil record to support this assumption was missing.</span><br />
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</span> <u><i><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">The above story is based on <a href="https://checklist.pensoft.net/article/30320/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">materials </a>provided by  <a href="http://www.pensoft.net/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Pensoft Publishers</a>.</span></i></u><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
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130-million-year-old Insects Trapped in Amber Right When They Were Born

One of the newly discovered millipede fossilized in Cretaceous amber from Myanmar (Burma). Credit: Dr Thomas Wesener Si...

Research Reveals 'Fundamental Finding' About Earth's Outer Core

earth, Tectonic 7:24 PM

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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-dtD3lb8haUE/XB0S9zN2goI/AAAAAAAAQsQ/0A-JF-8DhCMa0KkPxW1QPK0o4-d2sXypwCLcBGAs/s1600/Research%2Breveals%2B%25E2%2580%2598fundamental%2Bfinding%25E2%2580%2599%2Babout%2BEarth%25E2%2580%2599s%2Bouter%2Bcore%2B%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Research Reveals 'Fundamental Finding' About Earth's Outer Core" border="0" data-original-height="919" data-original-width="1190" height="494" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-dtD3lb8haUE/XB0S9zN2goI/AAAAAAAAQsQ/0A-JF-8DhCMa0KkPxW1QPK0o4-d2sXypwCLcBGAs/s640/Research%2Breveals%2B%25E2%2580%2598fundamental%2Bfinding%25E2%2580%2599%2Babout%2BEarth%25E2%2580%2599s%2Bouter%2Bcore%2B%25281%2529.jpg" title="" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Researchers used cutting-edge supercomputing techniques to make a critical discovery about the chemical composition of the Earth's outer core. Image credit: Argonne National Labs</td></tr>
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</span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Earth’s core is an exceptionally difficult place to study. Its depths descend a staggering 2,900 kilometers — about the distance from New York City to Denver — and its extreme, otherworldly conditions are extraordinarily challenging to simulate in the lab.<br />
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For scientists like Florida State University Assistant Professor Mainak Mookherjee and his postdoctoral scholar Suraj Bajgain, whose lives’ work is to penetrate the mysteries hidden in the core’s impossible depths, these are serious and stubborn roadblocks. But in a new study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, Mookherjee and his team used high-powered supercomputing techniques to sidestep these obstacles and make a critical discovery about the core’s chemical composition.<br />
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Along with colleagues at Rice University and Louisiana State University, Mookherjee and Bajgain used meticulously calibrated simulations to determine the maximum amount of nitrogen that can possibly exist in the Earth’s outer core: around 2 percent by weight at the core-mantle boundary, and about 2.6 percent by weight at the inner-core boundary.<br />
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“This is an insightful exercise because it gives the upper-most bound of nitrogen in the outer core,” Mookherjee said. “We are providing maximum constraint on the abundance of an element that is a major component of the atmosphere of a habitable planet. That’s the fundamental finding.”<br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Nitrogen is key to organic matter, and how nitrogen is stored in the planet’s rocky and metallic interior is a crucial but elusive piece of information.<br />
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“When a planet is forming, size of the planet and how much nitrogen — or any other light element — is sucked into the core is very important,” Mookherjee said. “If you’re thinking of life as organic life, carbon and nitrogen are important constituents. But if all the nitrogen goes into the core, there’s nothing left to fuel organic life.”<br />
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Questions of which elements roil in the cauldron of the Earth’s core have long puzzled Earth scientists. Important dissonances in prevailing seismological and geochemical models have gone unexplained, and analyses of meteorites that closely model Earth’s bulk rocky material tend to suggest that we should be seeing more nitrogen in our planet’s interior. These inconsistencies provoke perplexing questions.<br />
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“Geochemical evidence often points to the fact that the Earth’s interior might be depleted in terms of nitrogen inventory,” Mookherjee said. “Are we lacking it? Is it hidden in the core? These are unknowns. There are various models, but it’s impossible to access the Earth’s core, and we do not have direct evidence of the planet’s formation process, including redistribution of elements. We’re trying to make inferences by piecing evidence together.”<br />
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Mookherjee circumvented the considerable challenges of experimenting at extreme core conditions by simulating those conditions on powerful supercomputers. Using facilities at LSU, as well as the National Science Foundation’s <br />
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After a battery of benchmark tests to ensure the simulations were running properly, the team added nitrogen to the system. Their goal was to identify the effects of nitrogen on the density and sound wave velocity of liquid iron at conditions analogous to the Earth’s core — readings that would better allow them to determine the core’s nitrogen content.<br />
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Ultimately, the simulations successfully revealed a first-ever, geophysical data-based hint about how much nitrogen might be trapped deep in the Earth’s inhospitable interior.<br />
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“Our estimates on the maximum limit of nitrogen in the Earth’s outer core is based on the assumption that Earth’s core is composed of an iron-nitrogen binary mixture, but more research is needed to incorporate the effect of multiple elements alloying with iron,” Mookherjee said.</span><br />
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<u><i><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">The above story is based on <a href="https://news.fsu.edu/news/science-technology/2018/12/20/research-reveals-fundamental-finding-about-earths-outer-core/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">materials </a>provided by <a href="https://www.fsu.edu/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Florida State University.</a></span></i></u></div>

Research Reveals 'Fundamental Finding' About Earth's Outer Core

Researchers used cutting-edge supercomputing techniques to make a critical discovery about the chemical composition of the Earth's ou...

Earth Loses Hundreds of Tons of Atmosphere to Space Every Day

earth, Researches 7:10 PM

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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-1K0ZE4laaX0/XB0QACNkRcI/AAAAAAAAQsE/EIW7RIjDDKoyTsBmOyPfs1yefdv3J9d9gCLcBGAs/s1600/Earth%2BLoses%2BHundreds%2Bof%2BTons%2Bof%2BAtmosphere%2Bto%2BSpace%2BEvery%2BDay%2B%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Earth Loses Hundreds of Tons of Atmosphere to Space Every Day" border="0" data-original-height="794" data-original-width="1155" height="438" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-1K0ZE4laaX0/XB0QACNkRcI/AAAAAAAAQsE/EIW7RIjDDKoyTsBmOyPfs1yefdv3J9d9gCLcBGAs/s640/Earth%2BLoses%2BHundreds%2Bof%2BTons%2Bof%2BAtmosphere%2Bto%2BSpace%2BEvery%2BDay%2B%25281%2529.jpg" title="" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Credit: ESA/AOES Medialab</td></tr>
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</span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Scientists have known for some time that Earth's atmosphere loses several hundred tons of oxygen each day. They understand how this oxygen loss happens on Earth's night side, but they're not sure how it happens on the day side. They do know one thing though; they happen during auroras.</span><br />
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According to a press release from NASA's Earth Observatory, no two oxygen outflow events are exactly the same, which makes understanding them a challenge. They call the events 'fountains of gas' that escape the Earth during auroral activity, and the Earth Observatory has a mission dedicated to understanding them.<br />
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The mission is part of the NASA's Earth Observatory program called VISIONS-2 (Visualizing Ion Outflow via Neutral Atom Sensing-2), and it requires certain conditions. It's set in Ny Alesund, Svalbard, Norway for good reason. It's the northernmost year-round civilian settlement in the world. It has an ice-free harbour year round, and a modern rocket launch facility. There's also no sun in the winter night here to interfere with studying the auroras.<br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">But there's something else that makes this the perfect setting for the VISIONS-2 mission. Every morning, Ny Alesund passes under a weak point in Earth's magnetic bubble. The weak point is like a funnel that channels the fierce solar wind into our upper atmosphere. That causes auroral displays, and boils the gases of our atmosphere off into the vacuum of space in an auroral fountain.<br />
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Recently, researchers with VISIONS-2 launched two sounding rockets to investigate oxygen loss during auroras. Sounding rockets are small, targeted rockets that can be launched quickly. In this case, the two rockets were loaded with cameras and other instruments, and prepared for launch.<br />
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The launch team has to be very patient. But of course, they have technology on their side. They don't have to wait until they see the aurora, they have advanced notice of an aurora thanks to the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite.<br />
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DSCOVR is the NOAA's solar wind observatory. It sits out at the LaGrange point between the Earth and the Sun and tells the VISIONS-2 team when the solar wind is powerful enough and oriented the right way to cause auroras. At best, the team gets about an hour warning.<br />
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Even with advanced warning, the team is cautious. If the solar wind turns out to be too weak, then they will have wasted the launch. If terrestrial wind conditions in Earth's atmosphere are too strong, that's also a problem. The rockets are unguided, so they have to be oriented before launch to account for winds. Luckily, the team has another tool at their disposal, weather balloons launched every 30 minutes, as needed, to test the wind.<br />
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 The rockets were staged in Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard (Norway), and the researchers waited for an aurora before launching the pair. On December 7th, 2018, the researchers launched the two rockets during an aurora. The photo below is a long exposure of the rockets, which captures both launches even though they occurred a couple minutes apart.<br />
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The mission used a pair of rockets so they could use a mix of different instruments in each. Some instruments required a spinning platform and some didn't. A pair of rockets launched with a couple minutes between them also allowed similar instruments to take readings over time. The above image shows the first stage ignitions and burnouts of the two rockets, as they were sent on their mission to study oxygen loss in Earth's atmosphere.<br />
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"We had such an amazing experience building these very complex and capable payloads, integrating and testing them at Wallops, then bringing them to the field," said Doug Rowland, principal investigator for the mission and a space physicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "The launch was a very emotional moment, even more so when we saw that all the instruments had performed well and the science conditions were good."<br />
After launch, there's ten minutes for the rocket to do its work in the atmospheric fountain. Neutral atom imaging cameras build a picture of the fountain from within and without. The auroral camera documents the aurora itself, its temperature, intensity, and height. If all goes well, the research team is rewarded with a 'wall of science.'<br />
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The December 7 launch appears to have been successful. An early look at the data shows that the instruments functioned properly and returned the intended data. "I believe we did see the 'atmospheric fountain,'" said Rowland. The data still need to be analyzed and scaled, "but we may have evidence of it from multiple perspectives."<br />
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Earth, obviously, is a dynamic, living, active planet. There's a lot going on here. The VISIONS-2 project is designed not only to help us understand our own planet better, but other planets as well. Which planets are habitable? Why are some so desolate? How did a planet like Mars, which once had an atmosphere, lose it?<br />
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Earth's atmosphere won't be gone anytime soon. Not until the sun goes red giant in about 5 billion years, anyway. At that distant point in time, the expanding Sun will boil our atmosphere away like nothing. Then we're done.<br />
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The amount of oxygen (and hydrogen) lost from Earth's atmosphere during these auroras is miniscule. Several hundred tons each day might sound like a lot, but it isn't. In any case, photosynthesis helps restore oxygen. It's still an important piece of the puzzle for understanding how things work, though, and what the details are in the relationship between Earth and its star.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><u><i><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">The above post is reprinted from <a href="https://www.universetoday.com/140917/did-you-know-that-the-earth-loses-several-hundred-tons-of-atmosphere-to-space-every-day/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Universe Today</a>.</span></i></u><br />
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Earth Loses Hundreds of Tons of Atmosphere to Space Every Day

Credit: ESA/AOES Medialab Scientists have known for some time that Earth's atmosphere loses several hundred tons of oxyge...

Why Is Sea Level Rising Faster in Some Places Along the US East Coast Than Others?

climate, Environment, USA 6:39 PM

Why Is Sea Level Rising Faster in Some Places Along the US East Coast Than Others?

(Photo courtesy Joseph R. Melanson, skypic.com) Sea levels are rising globally from ocean warming and melting of land ice, but the se...

Rare-earth Elements Discovered in Georgia Kaolin Mines, Study Finds

Geochemistry, Mining 8:09 PM

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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-S5LYvAKxHeE/XBfXviAEABI/AAAAAAAAQrU/TaL0qSNo5wwgH3iNBl53iW1PNY-F6nJBACLcBGAs/s1600/Rare-earth%2BElements%2BDiscovered%2Bin%2BGeorgia%2BKaolin%2BMines%252C%2BStudy%2BFinds%2B%25282%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="743" data-original-width="1161" height="408" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-S5LYvAKxHeE/XBfXviAEABI/AAAAAAAAQrU/TaL0qSNo5wwgH3iNBl53iW1PNY-F6nJBACLcBGAs/s640/Rare-earth%2BElements%2BDiscovered%2Bin%2BGeorgia%2BKaolin%2BMines%252C%2BStudy%2BFinds%2B%25282%2529.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Scheelite. Photo: Rob Lavinsky</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> <span style="font-size: medium;">The high-density minerals in the Georgia kaolin mines are potential sources of rare-earth elements, including the heavy rare-earth elements that are in high demand for many important uses and are mostly imported to the United States from China, according to a study led by Georgia State University and Thiele Kaolin Co.<br />
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Rare-earth elements are used to make critical products, including magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) contrast agents, X-ray intensifying screens, portable X-ray machines, medical lasers, fiber optics, optical lenses, pressure sensors, monitors and television screens, fluorescent lamps, rechargeable battery electrodes and permanent magnets.<br />
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There are 17 rare-earth elements, which include the 15 elements of the lanthanide series (atomic numbers 57 to 71 on the periodic table), plus scandium (Sc) and yttrium (Y). The heavy rare-earth elements are from gadolinium (Gd) to lutetium (Lu), atomic numbers 64 to 71 on the periodic table.<br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><ins class="adsbygoogle" data-ad-client="ca-pub-1021498709184325" data-ad-format="fluid" data-ad-layout="in-article" data-ad-slot="6157425841" style="display: block; text-align: center;"></ins><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Thiele Kaolin Co. mined for kaolin in two quarries near Sandersville, Ga., and provided Georgia State researchers with the leftover mineral samples, or grit, for analysis. The minerals present were identified using X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy and chemical analysis. The findings, published in the journal Clays and Clay Minerals, suggest a new, potential source of rare-earth elements, including the less common heavy rare-earth elements.<br />
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"We were interested in looking at the very course, sand-sized material from the kaolin ore that they call grit. It accounts for about 10 percent of the mined material and is removed before they make finished kaolin products for a variety of applications, such as paper, paints, adhesives, plastics, ceramics, etc.," said Dr. W. Crawford Elliott, senior author of the study and associate professor in the Department of Geosciences at Georgia State.<br />
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"They gave us samples of the grit. When we processed these samples, we found a particular enrichment in the heavy rare-earth elements, gadolinium through lutetium. An enrichment in the heavy rare-earth elements is interesting and useful because in most cases, the Earth's crust is enriched in the lighter rare-earth elements. The heavy rare-earth elements tend to be more technologically important.<br />
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"After we did a heavy liquid separation on that material, we found the Buffalo Creek Kaolin Member is about 100 times more enriched in the heavy rare-earth elements relative to concentrations in upper continental crust. Our work suggests a way to obtain heavy rare-earth elements from kaolin ore, which hasn't been done before. This constitutes a new resource for the rare-earth elements, which we are getting all from China."</span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"><u><i><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">The above story is based on <a href="https://news.gsu.edu/2018/12/14/rare-earth-elements-discovered-in-georgia-kaolin-mines-study-finds/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">materials </a>provided by <a href="https://news.gsu.edu/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Georgia State University.</a></span></i></u></span></div>

Rare-earth Elements Discovered in Georgia Kaolin Mines, Study Finds

Scheelite. Photo: Rob Lavinsky The high-density minerals in the Georgia kaolin mines are potential sources of rare-earth elem...