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Scientists Helped Design NASA Mission Concept to Search for Life on Europa

By Guest PostAugust 8, 2013ScienceAntarctica, austin, britney schmidt, chemical composition, don blankenship, europa, europa clipper mission, future, galileo mission, global ocean, ice shell, icy moon, institute for geophysics, jpl, jupiter, krista soderlund, nasa lander mission, nasa mission concept, reddish freckles, robert pappalardo, robotic lander, sasha haagensen, search for life, seismometer, solar system, stone aerospace, surface of europa, ted stryk, thera macula, university of texas

AUSTIN, Texas — Scientists at the University of Texas at Austin’s Institute for Geophysics helped develop a blueprint for a possible future NASA lander mission to Europa, an icy moon of Jupiter that has a global ocean covered by an ice shell. Europa’s large reservoir of liquid water has long enchanted planetary scientists with the possibility of harboring life. Many experts believe it to be the most likely place in our solar system besides Earth to host life today. The proposed mission is designed to assess the moon’s habitability by studying its surface composition, ice shell, ocean and geology.

Don Blankenship, senior research scientist at the institute, is part of the science definition team commissioned by NASA to draft the report, which appears in the August 2013 issue of Astrobiology. Blankenship and two colleagues — Krista Soderlund, postdoctoral fellow at the institute; and Britney Schmidt, formerly a postdoctoral fellow at the institute, now assistant professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology — developed a part of the mission scenario that would use sound waves to study the moon’s icy shell, deep ocean and possible shallow lakes. (more…)

Sea level rise: New iceberg theory points to areas at risk of rapid disintegration

By Guest PostAugust 6, 2013Environmentantarctic ocean, Antarctica, catastrophic breakup, catastrophic disintegration, coast, diverse calving patterns, glacier geometry, greenland, helheim glacier, ice shelf, iceberg calving, jakobshavn glacier, jeremy bassis, larsen b, new iceberg theory, new model, physics, pine island glacier, rapid disintegration, risk, sea-level rise, thwaites, university of michigan

ANN ARBOR — In events that could exacerbate sea level rise over the coming decades, stretches of ice on the coasts of Antarctica and Greenland are at risk of rapidly cracking apart and falling into the ocean, according to new iceberg calving simulations from the University of Michigan.

“If this starts to happen and we’re right, we might be closer to the higher end of sea level rise estimates for the next 100 years,” said Jeremy Bassis, assistant professor of atmospheric, oceanic and space sciences at the U-M College of Engineering, and first author of a paper on the new model published in the current issue of Nature Geoscience. (more…)

The New Face of Mining: Women Carving Out a Place in Surging Industry

By Guest PostMay 28, 2013Economy, Generalalabama, Antarctica, assessment, barb filas, barrick in nevada, bree mcmaster, brute force image, Chile, coal mines, earth, Economy, environmental impact, exploration, female engineers, female mine manager, geological engineering, girl scouts, global mining firm, illinois, job, knight piesold, mary poulton, metallurgy, mine sites, mining, new face, rita riggs, ruby barickman, san xavier, skilled workers, society for mining, student mine, underground, us schools, vicki seppala, women, work environment, x chromosomes

The UA department of mining and geological engineering, one of only 14 U.S. schools offering mining engineering degrees and only a handful with its own student mine, is dedicated to helping fill the industry pipeline, and that includes ensuring female engineers continue to gain ground in a surging industry.

They roam the remotest corners of the world, scale the highest mountains and descend deep into the Earth.

They go places few women have ever gone. They are not afraid of getting dirty, or of much else for that matter, certainly not adversity or a good challenge. And they know, better than most, how and when to take a joke. (more…)

Studying meteorites may reveal Mars’ secrets of life

By Guest PostMay 24, 2013Scienceage old question, alterations, Antarctica, billion years ago, data from meteorites, earth, geochemical processes, mars, michael velbel, michigan state university, miller range, mineralogical studies, mystery, nakhlite meteorite, rover data, secrets of life, solar system, studying meteorites

In an effort to determine if conditions were ever right on Mars to sustain life, a team of scientists, including a Michigan State University professor, has examined a meteorite that formed on the red planet more than a billion years ago.

And although this team’s work is not specifically solving the mystery, it is laying the groundwork for future researchers to answer this age-old question. (more…)

Recent Antarctic climate, glacier changes at the ‘upper bound’ of normal

By Guest PostMay 15, 2013Environmentantarctic glaciers, antarctic peninsula, antarctic warming, Antarctica, climate change, dark layer, eric steig, glaciers, global warming, human caused warming, ice core, ice sheet divide, icy continent, isotope oxygen 18, oxygen 16, qinghua ding, rapid ice loss, sea-level rise, south america, temperature, tropical pacific ocean, university of washington, upper bound, volcanic ash, west antarctic

In the last few decades, glaciers at the edge of the icy continent of Antarctica have been thinning, and research has shown the rate of thinning has accelerated and contributed significantly to sea level rise.

New ice core research suggests that, while the changes are dramatic, they cannot be attributed with confidence to human-caused global warming, said Eric Steig, a University of Washington professor of Earth and space sciences. (more…)

What Happened to Dinosaurs’ Predecessors After Earth’s Largest Extinction 252 Million Years Ago?

By Guest PostMay 4, 2013Scienceadam huttenlocker, africa, after the extinction, Antarctica, asilisaurus, australia, biogeographic patterns, brandon peecook, christian sidor, daril vilhena, dinosaurs in tanzania, dinosaurs predecessors, earliest dinosaur, earth, expeditions to antarctica, fossil hunting expeditions, fossil record, four legged animals, h richard lane, India, karoo, ken angielczyk, largest extinction, linda tsuji, mass extinction, museum fossils, national science foundation, nyasasaurus parringtoni, paleontologist, pig sized dicynodon, predecessors to dinosaurs, roger smith, sebastien steyer, snapshots, South Africa, south america, southern pangea, southwest russia, species distributions, sterling nesbitt, university of washington, unorthodox places, zambia, zambian basins

Fossil-hunting expeditions to Tanzania, Zambia and Antarctica provide new insights

Predecessors to dinosaurs missed the race to fill habitats emptied when nine out of 10 species disappeared during Earth’s largest mass extinction 252 million years ago.

Or did they?

That thinking was based on fossil records from sites in South Africa and southwest Russia.

It turns out, however, that scientists may have been looking in the wrong places. (more…)

‘A better path’ toward projecting, planning for rising seas on a warmer Earth

By Guest PostApril 30, 2013Environment21st century, Antarctica, basins, behavior, christopher little, climate change, climate change policy, coastal planning, computer algorithms, continental ice sheets, geosciences, greenland, ice sheet dynamics, ipcc, massive ice sheets, methodology, michael oppenheimer, monte carlo simulations, nathan urban, Nature, polar ice sheets, princeton university, projection, risk tolerance, sea level, sea level change, sparse data, upper bounds

More useful projections of sea level are possible despite substantial uncertainty about the future behavior of massive ice sheets, according to Princeton University researchers.

In two recent papers in the journals Nature Climate Change and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the researchers present a probabilistic assessment of the Antarctic contribution to 21st-century sea-level change. Their methodology folds observed changes and models of different complexity into unified projections that can be updated with new information. This approach provides a consistent means to integrate the potential contribution of both continental ice sheets — Greenland and Antarctica — into sea-level rise projections. (more…)

‘Nuisance’ Data Lead to Surprising Star-Birth Discovery

By Guest PostMarch 15, 2013Sciencealma, Antarctica, atacama, atacama desert, baby picture, Chile, cosmic microwave background, early universe, earth, electromagnetic spectrum, history, joaquin vieira, john carlstrom, large millimeter array, northern hemisphere, nuisance data, population, radio galaxies, sky, south pole telescope, star birth discovery, star forming galaxies, sub millimeter wavelengths, universe, university of chicago

When a batch of bright cosmic objects first appeared in maps in 2008 made with data from the South Pole Telescope, astronomers at the University of Chicago’s Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics regarded it only as an unavoidable nuisance.

The light sources interfered with efforts to measure more precisely the cosmic microwave background—the afterglow of the big bang. But the astronomers soon realized that they had made a rare find in South Pole Telescope’s large survey of the sky. The spectra of some of the bright objects, which is the rainbow of light they emit, were inconsistent with what astronomers expected from the well-known population of radio galaxies. (more…)

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