discuss Science & Technology news & discussion

CraigD · Oct 19, 2020

Post and discuss interesting articles & videos about science and technology.

You don't need to be an expert - just interested in the wonders of modern science, technology, and the history of these fields.

Please keep it rational, and post articles from reputable sources.
Try not to editorialise headlines and keep the copy to just a paragraph with a link to the original source. When quoting excerpts from articles, I think the best method is to italicise the copy, and include a link to the source.

Have some fun with your comments and discussions... just keep the sources legitimate.

Other threads:
The Break Room has a number of other popular threads, so there is no need to post material here that is better suited to these other threads:

- Covid19-Coronavirus updates and news
- Conspiracy Thread Free For All
- The *religious* discussion thread

Please enjoy!

CraigD · Apr 11, 2021

NASA delays Mars helicopter Ingenuity's 1st flight to April 14

The little chopper was grounded after a test ended early.

NASA has delayed the first flight of its Mars helicopter Ingenuity after the vehicle's last test ended earlier than planned.

Ingenuity will now remain planted firmly on the Red Planet's surface until at least Wednesday (April 14), according to a statement from the agency. The delay comes in response to an anomaly during a test that was meant to see the helicopters blades reach flight-like speeds of 2,400 revolutions per minute.

wrote in a statement today (April 10). "This occurred as it was trying to transition the flight computer from 'Pre-Flight' to 'Flight' mode. The helicopter is safe and healthy and communicated its full telemetry set to Earth."

Read on...

https://www.space.com/nasa-mars-helicopter-flight-delay

----

According to NASA, Ingenuity has 30 sols (Mars days) to complete up to five tests. Flight managers will assess the results of each test and then send instructions for the next.

My hope is that if it completes the flight-test program, the team will extend the program.

CraigD · Apr 11, 2021

Sky-high AMD Ryzen 9 5950X prices provide an unsettlingly discouraging snapshot for PC builders of the effects of the 2021 global chip shortage

(Image source: AMD/various - edited)

A timely reminder has been shared of how the current global chip famine has affected processor prices, in this case specifically for the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X. While retailers who have tried to stay close to MSRP are invariably out of stock, those with Ryzen 9 5950X CPUs to sell are mostly setting astronomical price tags for the Zen 3 powerhouse.

Those looking to snag a 16-core, 32-thread AMD Ryzen 9 5950X for a reasonable price will already be aware of how difficult a task that has become. The 2021 global chip shortage, caused by a combination of the coronavirus pandemic, companies shifting to a work from home strategy, and previously unpredictable rocketing demand, has led to much-wanted PC parts, especially high-end units like the Ryzen 9 5950X CPU and GeForce RTX 3090 GPU, being sold at greatly inflated prices.

Read on...

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Sky-h...f-the-2021-global-chip-shortage.531579.0.html

koolishman · Apr 11, 2021

Mars swung between humid and arid conditions before it dried up

Ancient Mars fluctuated between arid and humid periods, before taking on its current dry state.

This conclusion comes from the study of high-resolution images captured by a telescope on the Curiosity rover, which landed on Mars in 2012. The images reveal details of the geology of Mount Sharp, a 6-kilometre-high mountain at the centre of Gale crater.

“It’s kind of the first time that we have details on outcrops on Mars that are important because they are very ancient rocks,” says William Rapin at the Research Institute in Astrophysics and Planetology in France, who studied the images with his colleagues in the US. “They are more than 3.5 billion years old, and from this critical time when Mars still had water, but was in the process of a huge climate transition that we know occurred on Mars globally.”

Moving up the mountain, the horizontal layers of rock become increasingly younger. The layers near the bottom of Mount Sharp carry geological features that suggest they formed in an ancient lake present in Gale crater. But above, the rocks have features suggesting they formed in an ancient dune field in a desert-like environment. Even higher up, there are more geological changes back to wetter conditions and then back to dry conditions.

koolishman · Apr 11, 2021

Artificial nervous system senses light and learns to catch like humans

A simple artificial nervous system is able to mimic the way humans respond to light and learn to perform basic tasks. The principle could be used to create more useful robots and prostheses.

Humans, when confronted by external stimuli such as heat or light, can react rapidly and automatically – think about how your hand withdraws from a hot surface, or how your leg flicks up when tapped on the knee. These are unconscious responses. But conscious responses, such as catching a ball, must be honed by repeated stimulation.

Researchers at three universities in South Korea have developed an artificial system capable of simulating a conscious response to external stimuli. It consists of a photodiode – which converts light into an electrical signal, a transistor acting as a mechanical synapse, an artificial neuron circuit, which acts as the system’s brain, and a robotic hand.

When the photodiode detects light, it sends an electrical signal through the transistor that the light is on. That signal is carried to the artificial neuron circuit. There, the message is received, and that circuit then learns how to respond to the signal, sending a command to a robotic hand it controls.

At the same time as the light is turned on, starting the whole process off at the photodiode, a ball is dropped from above the hand. The idea is for the contraption to learn how to cup the hand quickly enough to catch the ball.

https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/7/15/eabe3996

koolishman · Apr 11, 2021

Fossil Friday: microbes discovered deep underground remain virtually unchanged since 175 million years ago

New research has identified what’s very likely the tiniest living fossils so far — a group of microbes that feed off radioactive decay.

The team, led by the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, an independent, non-profit oceanography research institute, reports that the microbes have been frozen, evolutionary-speaking, for millions of years. Finding such a case could upturn our current understanding of how microbes evolve and why, and could potentially help guide biotechnology applications in the future (since you want these to not evolve/change over time).

The microbe species is known as Candidatus Desulforudis audaxviator, and was first discovered in 2008 by a group of researchers led by Tullis Onstott, a co-author on the new study. They live in a gold mine in South Africa almost two miles beneath the surface, swimming merrily in the water-filled cavities inside the rock walls. They feed on chemical products formed by natural radioactive decay processes in minerals at the site, creating a completely independent ecosystem that doesn’t even rely on sunlight to function.

Given their very peculiar living arrangement, the team understandably wanted to know how the microbes evolved to where they are today. They checked other underground samples recovered from around the world and found the species in Siberia, California, and in several other mines in South Africa. Each of these environments was chemically different, the team explains, which spurred them to look for differences among the populations at each site. These groups were obviously separated, and have likely been separate for millions of years, and every one of them had unique conditions they lived in — which would make you think they evolved their own unique quirks.

“We wanted to use that information to understand how they evolved and what kind of environmental conditions lead to what kind of genetic adaptations,” said Bigelow Laboratory Senior Research Scientist Ramunas Stepanauskas, the corresponding author on the paper and Becraft’s postdoctoral advisor.

“We thought of the microbes as though they were inhabitants of isolated islands, like the finches that Darwin studied in the Galapagos.”

So they analyzed the genetic code of 126 individuals retrieved at sites on three different continents — and they were flabbergasted to find that all of them were almost completely identical.

CraigD · Apr 11, 2021

Is that a UFO?! There’s probably an explanation

If an alien spaceship were to appear in Earth’s sky, it’s likely it’d be seen first by those who spend a lot of time gazing upwards: astronomers. But professional and amateur astronomers don’t usually observe any Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs). Because they know what sorts of objects appear in both the daytime and nighttime sky, they’re able to identify most sightings fairly quickly, no matter how strange they may appear.

On the other hand, members of the general public do report UFOs. During the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020, for example, there’s been an increase in perceived UFO sightings in many countries. Many have been attributed to most people’s relative inexperience with interpreting cell phone camera shots. Lens flares – internal reflections within the camera – are often the culprit. In 2020, the bump-up in UFO reports is also an indication that people have had more time to observe the sky. That’s a trend we hope continues.

Most Unidentified Flying Objects aren’t actually unidentified. Here’s a list of phenomena, either natural or human-made, that people often mistake for UFOs.

https://earthsky.org/space/if-its-not-a-ufo-what-is-it

koolishman · Apr 11, 2021

Bumblebees Can Fly Higher Than Mount Everest, Scientists Find (2014)

Talk about a high-altitude buzz. Bumblebees may be capable of scaling Earth’s tallest peaks, flying higher than Mount Everest, according to new research.

It’s difficult for most insects and birds to fly at extremely high altitudes where the air is thin and oxygen is scarce. Flapping wings push against the air to generate lift, and the thinner the air, the less force those wings can produce.

Yet bumblebees are abundant in high alpine regions. Researchers have long wondered how these tiny flyers were able to navigate the challenges of high-altitude flight—and just how high bumblebees could go. (See intimate portraits of bees.)

“We wondered if these challenges—the reduced air density and oxygen—would limit how high bees can fly,” said Michael Dillon, a scientist at the University of Wyoming in Laramie who recently spent time with colleagues capturing bumblebees at 10,660 feet (3,250 meters) above sea level in China.

“The answer seems to be a resounding no,” he said. “They’re capable of flying very, very high.”

Dillon and his team of researchers found that the bees they collected could fly at air pressure equivalents exceeding 24,275 feet (7,400 meters) above sea level, equivalent to some of the lower peaks in Nepal’s Annapurna mountain range. Two bumblebees were able to fly at more than 29,525 feet (9,000 meters)—higher than Mount Everest.

“We were shocked at how high they could fly,” Dillon said.

koolishman · Apr 11, 2021

A Fungus Causes Cicadas to Mate Like Crazy, Even After Their Butts Fall Off

Now, scientists think they have uncovered chemical mechanisms that drive this buggy horror story. According to a new study in the journal Fungal Ecology, a team of researchers reveal that certain species of Massospora produce psychoactive compounds as they infect their unfortunate victims.

Fungi and other animal parasites often take control of their hosts’ behavior; it’s a good way to increase transmission of the disease. Sometimes, insect-infecting fungi cause critters to ascend to the top of plants before they die, “which facilitates post-mortem dissemination of spores later emitted from their mummified carcasses,” the study authors write. What happens with the cicadas is less frequently seen: They spread Massospora fungi while they are still alive.

After they get infected, the cicadas’ abdomens may eventually slough off, revealing a white fungal “plug” that sprinkles its spores when the host flies around or mates. And boy, do infected cicadas mate a lot. Males will try to copulate not only with females, but also other males. Not even losing parts of their bodies, including their genitals, slows the lusty cicadas down.

koolishman · Apr 11, 2021

Video: Influence of color on heat absorption

The Influence Of Color On Heat Absorption GIF by bedgarter | Gfycat

koolishman · Apr 11, 2021

How spinifex grasses got their ring shapes

Scientists say they may have solved a longstanding mystery of how Australia’s iconic spinifex got its distinctive ring shape. It seems the grasses die off in the middle due to a build-up of pathogenic soil microbes.

“People generally think about the beneficial effects of soil microbes, which can help plants access water and nutrients,” says Angela Moles from the University of New South Wales, senior author of a paper published in the Australian Journal of Botany.

“However, there are lots of pathogenic microbes in soil too.”

Spinifex (Triodia spp) grows in arid and semi-arid zones, covering nearly a fifth of the continent, and plays important ecological, cultural and economic roles.

The shrub-like grasses provide habitat and food for lizards, birds and small mammals, for instance, and fuel wildfires that help regenerate the landscape. Indigenous Australians have traditionally used them for tool making, medicine, food and fibre and pastoralists use them for grazing.

CraigD · Apr 11, 2021

koolishman said:
How spinifex grasses got their ring shapes

Scientists say they may have solved a longstanding mystery of how Australia’s iconic spinifex got its distinctive ring shape. It seems the grasses die off in the middle due to a build-up of pathogenic soil microbes.

“People generally think about the beneficial effects of soil microbes, which can help plants access water and nutrients,” says Angela Moles from the University of New South Wales, senior author of a paper published in the Australian Journal of Botany.

“However, there are lots of pathogenic microbes in soil too.”

Spinifex (Triodia spp) grows in arid and semi-arid zones, covering nearly a fifth of the continent, and plays important ecological, cultural and economic roles.

The shrub-like grasses provide habitat and food for lizards, birds and small mammals, for instance, and fuel wildfires that help regenerate the landscape. Indigenous Australians have traditionally used them for tool making, medicine, food and fibre and pastoralists use them for grazing.

I had always assumed it was because of natural die-off with new shoots seeking to minimize resource conflict with their peers, or plant cooperation.

koolishman · Apr 11, 2021

Chinese company releases ‘robot dog army’ video, makes people think about the end of humanity

CraigD · Apr 11, 2021

Making sense of conspiracy theorists as the world gets more bizarre

It is 20 years since Jon Ronson wrote Them, his eye-popping investigation into conspiracy theorists. Now, in a world awash with tales of paedophile elites and puppet masters, is he any closer to understanding it all?

... With David Icke and Alex Jones the movement had found its stars. So now all it needed was a better distribution system. Unfortunately the one it got turned out to massively exacerbate our proclivity for paranoia and black-and-white thinking – social media algorithms.

https://www.theguardian.com/society...racy-theorists-as-the-world-gets-more-bizarre

CraigD · Apr 11, 2021

Soyuz MS-18 crew launches to space station 60 years after first human spaceflight

The trio's Soyuz is named after Yuri Gagarin, the first person in space.
A three-person crew embarked for the International Space Station on Friday (April 9), launching just three days shy of the 60th anniversary of the first human spaceflight.

Cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Pyotr Dubrov of Russia's state space corporation Roscosmos and NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei lifted off aboard Russia's Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft for a three-hour, two-orbit rendezvous with the space station. The Soyuz took flight at 3:42 a.m. EDT (0742 GMT or 12:42 p.m. local time) from Site 31/6 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, near where cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin made history by becoming the first person to fly into space on April 12, 1961.

https://www.space.com/three-astronauts-launch-space-station-april-2021

CraigD · Apr 11, 2021

Yuri Gagarin: 60th anniversary of the first manned spaceflight

Yuri Gagarin
Soviet cosmonaut
Time in space: 1 hour, 48 minutes

Iurii Alekseyevich Gagarin (9 March 1934 – 27 March 1968) was a Russian pilot and cosmonaut who became the first human to journey into outer space, achieving a major milestone in the Space Race; his capsule, Vostok 1, completed one orbit of Earth on 12 April 1961. Gagarin became an international celebrity and was awarded many medals and titles, including Hero of the Soviet Union, his nation's highest honour
.

Vostok 1 was Gagarin's only spaceflight but he served as the backup crew to the Soyuz 1 mission, which ended in a fatal crash, killing his friend and fellow cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov. Fearing for his life, Soviet officials permanently banned Gagarin from further spaceflights. After completing training at the Zhukovsky Air Force Engineering Academy on 17 February 1968, he was allowed to fly regular aircraft. Gagarin died five weeks later when the MiG-15 training jet he was piloting with his flight instructor Vladimir Seryogin crashed near the town of Kirzhach.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Gagarin

koolishman · Apr 12, 2021

If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich? Turns out it’s just chance.

The most successful people are not the most talented, just the luckiest, a new computer model of wealth creation confirms. Taking that into account can maximize return on many kinds of investment.

The distribution of wealth follows a well-known pattern sometimes called an 80:20 rule: 80 percent of the wealth is owned by 20 percent of the people. Indeed, a report last year concluded that just eight men had a total wealth equivalent to that of the world’s poorest 3.8 billion people.

This seems to occur in all societies at all scales. It is a well-studied pattern called a power law that crops up in a wide range of social phenomena. But the distribution of wealth is among the most controversial because of the issues it raises about fairness and merit. Why should so few people have so much wealth?

And yet when it comes to the rewards for this work, some people do have billions of times more wealth than other people. What’s more, numerous studies have shown that the wealthiest people are generally not the most talented by other measures.

What factors, then, determine how individuals become wealthy? Could it be that chance plays a bigger role than anybody expected? And how can these factors, whatever they are, be exploited to make the world a better and fairer place?

Today we get an answer thanks to the work of Alessandro Pluchino at the University of Catania in Italy and a couple of colleagues. These guys have created a computer model of human talent and the way people use it to exploit opportunities in life. The model allows the team to study the role of chance in this process.

The results are something of an eye-opener. Their simulations accurately reproduce the wealth distribution in the real world. But the wealthiest individuals are not the most talented (although they must have a certain level of talent). They are the luckiest. And this has significant implications for the way societies can optimize the returns they get for investments in everything from business to science.

koolishman · Apr 12, 2021

An on-off switch for gene editing

Over the past decade, the CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing system has revolutionized genetic engineering, allowing scientists to make targeted changes to organisms’ DNA. While the system could potentially be useful in treating a variety of diseases, CRISPR-Cas9 editing involves cutting DNA strands, leading to permanent changes to the cell’s genetic material.

Now, in a paper published online in Cell on April 9, researchers describe a new gene editing technology called CRISPRoff that allows researchers to control gene expression with high specificity while leaving the sequence of the DNA unchanged. Designed by Whitehead Institute Member Jonathan Weissman, University of California San Francisco assistant professor Luke Gilbert, Weissman lab postdoc James Nuñez and collaborators, the method is stable enough to be inherited through hundreds of cell divisions, and is also fully reversible.

That’s where the researchers saw an opportunity for a different kind of gene editor — one that didn’t alter the DNA sequences themselves, but changed the way they were read in the cell.

This sort of modification is what scientists call “epigenetic” — genes may be silenced or activated based on chemical changes to the DNA strand. Problems with a cell’s epigenetics are responsible for many human diseases such as Fragile X syndrome and various cancers, and can be passed down through generations.

Epigenetic gene silencing often works through methylation — the addition of chemical tags to to certain places in the DNA strand — which causes the DNA to become inaccessible to RNA polymerase, the enzyme which reads the genetic information in the DNA sequence into messenger RNA transcripts, which can ultimately be the blueprints for proteins.

https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(21)00353-6

koolishman · Apr 12, 2021

Sickle cell disease: scientists are developing a game-changing treatment

From bone marrow transplants, gene therapy and medications inducing a plethora of side effects, current treatment options for those with sickle cell disease, an inherited red blood cell disorder, are few – and often risky.

However, this soon might change. Presenting their findings to the American Chemical Society, researchers are now developing a new drug that could address the root cause of sickle cell disease.

Triggered by a faulty gene, sickle cell disease causes haemoglobin (a protein in red blood cells that carries oxygen) to take on a rigid, sickle-like shape.

As well as meaning less oxygen gets transported around the body, the disease causes red blood cells to die quickly, leading to anaemia.

As these defective sickle cells can get stuck in blood vessels, those with the disease – an estimated 14,000 people in the UK (or 1 in 4,600 people) – are at high risk of stroke, heart disease and kidney failure.

koolishman · Apr 12, 2021

Women who experience more stress around the time of conception are twice as likely to give birth to a girl

Scientists from the University of Granada have analysed the levels of cortisol (a steroid hormone that is released in response to stress) in the hair of pregnant women in the period spanning from before conception to week 9 of their pregnancy, to determine whether there was any link to the sex of the baby

A total of 108 women participated in the research from the first weeks of pregnancy to delivery, having recorded their stress levels before, during, and after conception (via the concentration of cortisol in hair) and performed different psychological tests

A study carried out by scientists from the University of Granada (UGR) has revealed that women who experience stress both before becoming pregnant and during conception are almost twice as likely to have a girl as a boy.

Researchers from the Mind, Brain and Behaviour Research Centre (CIMCYC), the Department of Pharmacology (Faculty of Pharmacy), and the Faculty of Psychology have analysed the levels of cortisol (a steroid hormone that is released in response to stress) in the hair of pregnant women in the period spanning from before conception to week 9 of pregnancy, to determine whether there was any link with the sex of the baby.

A total of 108 women were monitored from the first weeks of pregnancy through to delivery, to record their stress levels before, during, and after conception via the concentration of cortisol in their hair and various psychological tests. The measurement of cortisol in hair samples taken approximately in week 8–10 of pregnancy showed the concentration of cortisol in the pregnant woman for the previous three months (one month per centimetre of hair growth), meaning that it covered the period preceding and after conception. Subsequently, the UGR scientists recorded different variables relating to the birth and the sex of the baby.

koolishman · Apr 12, 2021

koolishman said:
Raindrops also keep fallin' on exoplanets

Researchers found that raindrops are remarkably similar across different planetary environments, even planets as drastically different as Earth and Jupiter. Understanding the behavior of raindrops on other planets is key to not only revealing the ancient climate on planets like Mars but identifying potentially habitable planets outside our solar system.

One day, humankind may step foot on another habitable planet. That planet may look very different from Earth, but one thing will feel familiar -- the rain.

In a recent paper, Harvard researchers found that raindrops are remarkably similar across different planetary environments, even planets as drastically different as Earth and Jupiter. Understanding the behavior of raindrops on other planets is key to not only revealing the ancient climate on planets like Mars but identifying potentially habitable planets outside our solar system.

"The lifecycle of clouds is really important when we think about planet habitability," said Kaitlyn Loftus, a graduate student in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and lead author of the paper. "But clouds and precipitation are really complicated and too complex to model completely. We're looking for simpler ways to understand how clouds evolve, and a first step is whether cloud droplets evaporate in the atmosphere or make it to the surface as rain."

"The humble raindrop is a vital component of the precipitation cycle for all planets," said Robin Wordsworth, Associate Professor of Environmental Science and Engineering at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and senior author of the paper. "If we understand how individual raindrops behave, we can better represent rainfall in complex climate models."

https://www.sciencealert.com/this-graph-shows-what-raindrops-would-be-like-on-other-worlds

koolishman · Apr 12, 2021

How a shocking environmental disaster was uncovered off the California coast after 70 years

Just 10 miles off the coast of Los Angeles lurks an environmental disaster over 70 years in the making, which few have ever heard about. That is, until now, thanks to the research of a University of California marine scientist named David Valentine.

Working with little more than rumors and a hunch, curiosity guided him 3,000 feet below the ocean's surface. A few hours of research time and an autonomous robotic submersible unearthed what had been hidden since the 1940s: countless barrels of toxic waste, laced with DDT, littering the ocean floor in between Long Beach and Catalina Island.

The fact that his underwater camera spotted dozens of decaying barrels immediately in what is otherwise a barren, desert-like sea floor, Valentine says, is evidence that the number of barrels is likely immense. Although the exact number is still unknown, a historical account estimates it may be as many as a half a million.

koolishman · Apr 12, 2021

Aquatic Ecosystems Source of Half of Global Methane Emissions

Atmospheric methane has tripled since pre-industrial times. It traps heat far more effectively than carbon dioxide and accounts for 25% of atmospheric warming to date.

And much of that methane is coming from aquatic ecosystems, with human activities contributing to the emissions levels, a new paper published in Nature Geoscience has found.

The global contribution and importance of aquatic ecosystems as methane emitters has been underestimated, says Judith Rosentreter, postdoctoral associate at the Yale School of the Environment (YSE) who led the study with a team of 14 researchers worldwide.

The study authors reviewed methane fluxes from 15 major natural, human-made, and human-impacted aquatic ecosystems and wetlands, including inland, coastal, and oceanic systems. They found that when methane emissions are combined from these aquatic ecosystems, they are potentially a larger source of methane than direct anthropogenic methane sources, such as agriculture or fossil fuel combustion. Aquatic ecosystems and wetlands contribute at least as much as half of the total methane emissions budget.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-021-00715-2

koolishman · Apr 12, 2021

NASA detects rare 'double quasar' in ancient corner of the universe

In a new study, astronomers used NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to peer 10 billion years into the cosmic past, where they detected two gargantuan quasars on the verge of colliding. Sitting at the centers of their respective galaxies, these hungry quasars have less than 10,000 light-years of breathing room between them, putting them far closer to each other than Earth's sun is to the center of the Milky Way (about 26,000 light-years away).

To ground-based telescopes, the quasar neighbors look like a single object — and one day, thanks to the unstoppable collision of their home galaxies, they will become one.

This is not the first double quasar that astronomers have ever detected; according to the study authors, more than 100 have been discovered to date. However, the ancient pair of blazing lights is by far the oldest double quasar in the known universe. And in fact, it's not alone; in the same study, published April 1 in the journal Nature Astronomy, the researchers reported the detection of a second double quasar — also dating to 10 billion years ago.

koolishman · Apr 12, 2021

Europe's oldest map, a stone slab, unearthed in France

A 4,000-year-old stone slab, first discovered over a century ago in France, may be the oldest known map in Europe, according to a new study.

The Saint-Bélec Slab dates back to the early Bronze Age (2150-1600 B.C.) and was first discovered in 1900 in a prehistoric burial ground in Finistère, Brittany. It made up one of the walls of a cist, a stone box that housed the bodies of the dead. The slab was likely made before it was reused in the burial towards the end of the early Bronze Age (1900-1640 B.C.), according to a statement.

At the time of the discovery, the broken slab, which is 12.7 feet (3.9 meters) long, was moved to a private museum, and France's Museum of National Antiquities acquired it in 1924. It was then stored in a French castle, where it gathered dust until it was re-discovered in the castle's cellar in 2014. But only recently are researchers beginning to understand the interesting story behind this prehistoric slab.

koolishman · Apr 12, 2021

Over a third of Antarctic ice shelf could collapse as climate change warms the Earth

Over a third of the Antarctic ice shelf is at risk of collapsing as Earth continues to warm.

In a new study, scientists at the University of Reading have found that as climate change continues, if Earth's global temperature rises to 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit (4 degrees Celsius) above pre-industrial levels, about 193,000 square miles (500,000 square kilometers) of the Antarctic ice shelves could collapse into the sea. Ice shelves are permanent floating slabs of ice attached to coastline, and the collapse of these shelves could significantly raise global sea levels, the researchers suggest.

"Ice shelves are important buffers preventing glaciers on land from flowing freely into the ocean and contributing to sea level rise. When they collapse, it's like a giant cork being removed from a bottle, allowing unimaginable amounts of water from glaciers to pour into the sea," lead study author Ella Gilbert, a research scientist in the University of Reading's Department of Meteorologysaid in a statement.

https://www.reading.ac.uk/news-and-events/releases/PR855740.aspx

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