Archaeologists from the UK working in the Channel Island of Jersey have found the remains of a 14,000 year old hunter-gatherer settlement offering great views over landscapes now drowned by the English Channel. (more…)
Berkeley Lab researchers help scientists determine the radiation risk of exploring an underwater aircraft carrier.
About 42 miles southwest of San Francisco and 2,600 feet underwater sits the U.S.S. Independence, a bombed-out relic from World War II. The aircraft carrier was a target ship in atomic weapon tests at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands after the war. Then, in 1951, it was loaded up with 55-gallon drums of low-level radioactive waste and scuttled just south of the Farallon National Wildlife Refuge off the California coast.(more…)
Should climate change trigger the upsurge in heat and rainfall that scientists predict, people may face a threat just as perilous and volatile as extreme weather — each other.
Researchers from Princeton University and the University of California-Berkeley report in the journal Science that even slight spikes in temperature and precipitation have greatly increased the risk of personal violence and social upheaval throughout human history. Projected onto an Earth that is expected to warm by 2 degrees Celsius by 2050, the authors suggest that more human conflict is a likely outcome of climate change. (more…)