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Gestein in Bewegung

By Guest PostJanuary 9, 2014Sciencealpen, alps gmbh, bergdorf elm, bergsturzschutt aus granitgneisen, bernhard fuegenschuh, christoph prager, diethard sanders, felsbewegungen, geologe albert heim, gestein in bewegung, schmiermittel, schweizer kanton glarus, tirol, uni innsbruck

Sie sind in Tirol allgegenwärtig und prägen nicht nur das Landschaftsbild der Alpen: Bergstürze als weit verbreitetes Phänomen in Gebirgsregionen werden an der Fakultät für Geo- und Atmosphärenwissenschaften unter der Leitung von Prof. Bernhard Fügenschuh seit Jahren hinsichtlich ihrer klimatischen Auswirkungen und geologischen Eigenschaften untersucht.

Das kleine im Schweizer Kanton Glarus gelegene Bergdorf Elm wurde am 11. September 1881 zum Schauplatz einer tragischen Naturkatastrophe. An einem Berghang lösten sich geschätzte 10 Millionen Kubikmeter Fels und rasten ähnlich einer Lawine mehrere Kilometer talwärts. Beinahe das ganze Dorf wurde zerstört, 115 Menschen starben. Der angesehene Schweizer Geologe Albert Heim reiste an den Ort des Geschehens, dokumentierte die Katastrophe und suchte nach Erklärungen. Wie konnten derartige Gesteinsmassen innerhalb kürzester Zeit Distanzen von mehreren Kilometern überwinden? „Dieser erste Versuch einer Analyse kann als Geburtsstunde der Bergsturz-Forschung angesehen werden“, sagt Diethard Sanders, Leiter des Instituts für Geologie der Uni Innsbruck. Die Untersuchung von Bergstürzen avancierte seit Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts somit zu einer eigenen Forschungsdisziplin. Der Geologe arbeitet gemeinsam mit Dr. Christoph Prager von der alpS GmbH (gegründet als Zentrum für Naturgefahren Management Innsbruck) intensiv an der Erforschung von Bergstürzen. Eine wissenschaftliche Auseinandersetzung mit dieser Thematik hat für die Wissenschaftler gesamtgesellschaftliche Relevanz: „Es ist uns ein großes Anliegen, dass gerade in von Gebirgen geprägten Gebieten wie Tirol ein besseres Verständnis von Bergstürzen, die zu großen Katastrophen führen können, angestrebt wird“, sind sich Sanders und Prager einig. (more…)

Stormy Stars? NASA’s Spitzer Probes Weather on Brown Dwarfs

By Guest PostJanuary 8, 2014Scienceatmosphere, brown dwarfs, daniel apai, davin flateau, earth, gravity, great red spot, jupiter, mark marley, NASA, other worlds, solar system, spitzer, stanimir metchev, stormy stars, thermal glow, undiscovered planet, university of arizona, weather

Swirling, stormy clouds may be ever-present on cool celestial orbs called brown dwarfs. New observations from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope suggest that most brown dwarfs are roiling with one or more planet-size storms akin to Jupiter’s “Great Red Spot.”

“As the brown dwarfs spin on their axis, the alternation of what we think are cloud-free and cloudy regions produces a periodic brightness variation that we can observe,” said Stanimir Metchev of the University of Western Ontario, Canada. “These are signs of patchiness in the cloud cover.” (more…)

When danger is in the eye of the beholder

By Guest PostJanuary 7, 2014Sciencebig wave surfing, dangerous sports, magnitude of threat, mental mechanism, risk seekers, risk seeking behavior

UCLA anthropologists study how, why we read into potential peril

They went boating alone without life vests and gave no thought to shimmying up very tall coconut trees.
(more…)

NASA’s Kepler Provides Insights on Enigmatic Planets

By Guest PostJanuary 7, 2014Sciencedoppler data, earth, exoplanet systems, Galaxy, gaseous, geoff marcy, gravitational tug, ji wei xie, kepler, kepler spacecraft, NASA, neptune, orbiting planet, rocky, solar system, transit timing variations, ttv, university of california, university of toronto

More than three-quarters of the planet candidates discovered by NASA’s Kepler spacecraft have sizes ranging from that of Earth to that of Neptune, which is nearly four times as big as Earth. Such planets dominate the galactic census but are not represented in our own solar system. Astronomers don’t know how they form or if they are made of rock, water or gas.

The Kepler team today reports on four years of ground-based follow-up observations targeting Kepler’s exoplanet systems at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Washington. These observations confirm the numerous Kepler discoveries are indeed planets and yield mass measurements of these enigmatic worlds that vary between Earth and Neptune in size. (more…)

Mine Landslide Triggered Quakes

By Guest PostJanuary 6, 2014Environment, Sciencebingham canyon mine, egypt, giza, great pyramids, gsa today, j mark hale, jeff moore, keith koper, kris pankow, landslide, magnitudes, mine landslide, North America, quake, richter magnitude, rio tinto kennecott, rock avalanche, salt lake city, seismic scale, tex kubacki, trigger, united states, university of utah, utah arizona border, utah copper mine, utah seismograph stations, zion canyon

Record-Breaking Slide Would Bury Central Park 66 Feet Deep

Last year’s gigantic landslide at a Utah copper mine probably was the biggest nonvolcanic slide in North America’s modern history, and included two rock avalanches that happened 90 minutes apart and surprisingly triggered 16 small earthquakes, University of Utah scientists discovered.

The landslide – which moved at an average of almost 70 mph and reached estimated speeds of at least 100 mph – left a deposit so large it “would cover New York’s Central Park with about 20 meters (66 feet) of debris,” the researchers report in the January 2014 cover study in the Geological Society of America magazine GSA Today. (more…)

White paper urges new approaches to assure access to scientific data

By Guest PostJanuary 5, 2014Scienceaccess, data archiving, digital data, george alter, icpsr, research data, scientific data, university of michigan, viability, white paper

ANN ARBOR — A newly released white paper calls for new approaches for preserving scientific data and sustainable funding of domain repositories—data archives with ties to specific scientific communities.

“Sustaining Domain Repositories for Digital Data: A White Paper” is the result of a meeting last summer that brought together representatives of 22 data repositories serving the social, natural and physical sciences. The meeting at the University of Michigan was organized by the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, part of the U-M Institute for Social Research. (more…)

SOFS Take to Water

By Guest PostJanuary 5, 2014Science2d honeycomb, aka chemistry, berkeley lab, chemical signals, DNA, double helix, emergence of nanotechnology, force, metal organic frameworks, mofs, molecule, non covalent bonds, saxs, sofs, solubility in water, supramolecular chemistry, supramolecular organic frameworks, van der waals, xin zhao, yi liu, zhan ting li

Researchers at Berkeley Lab’s Molecular Foundry Create First Soluble 2D Supramolecular Organic Frameworks

Supramolecular chemistry, aka chemistry beyond the molecule, in which molecules and molecular complexes are held together by non-covalent bonds, is just beginning to come into its own with the emergence of nanotechnology. Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are commanding much of the attention because of their appetite for greenhouse gases, but a new player has joined the field – supramolecular organic frameworks (SOFs). Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have unveiled the first two-dimensional SOFs that self-assemble in solution, an important breakthrough that holds implications for sensing and separation technologies, energy sciences, and, perhaps most importantly, biomimetics. (more…)

Decade-Old Rover Adventure Continues on Mars and Earth

By Guest PostJanuary 4, 2014Scienceancient environment, austin, bekah sosland, brett williams, columbia hills, earth, endeavour crater, Facebook, fredericksburg, high school teacher, image, john callas, jpl, mars, mars rovers, mars spacecraft, martian history, NASA, opportunity, red surface, rover adventure, rover project, spirit, Twitter, university of texas, water rich

Eighth graders didn’t have Facebook or Twitter to share news back then, in January 2004. Bekah Sosland, 14 at the time, learned about a NASA rover landing on Mars when the bouncing-ball video on the next morning’s Channel One news in her Fredericksburg, Texas, classroom caught her eye.

“I wasn’t particularly interested in space at the time,” she recalled last week inside the spacecraft operations facility where she now works at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “I remember I was talking with friends, and out of the corner of my eye I noticed this thing bouncing and rolling on a red surface. I watched as it stopped and opened up, and it had this rover inside.” (more…)

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