26 Aug 1883: Krakatau Erupts!
Filed under Environment, Science
Krakatau was definitely one of the few things that fascinated me as a kid. The extent of its destructive power, the effect to the world, etc. was just out the box.
And thankfully, Wired has done a very nice writeup on this sleeping giant. I know this sounds bad, but I hope to see the Krakatau come alive one day!
Flashback, to 1883
Krakatau (aka Krakatoa) had been rumbling and sending up puffs of ash since May 1883. The eruption turned deadly on the afternoon of Aug. 26, with the first explosion coming at 1 p.m. A column of black ash soon rose 17 miles into the sky above the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra.
The earth around and under the volcano continued to move, sending a tsunami out around 5 p.m. Others would follow.
Explosions continued at night, and lightning jumped between the ash column and the island. St. Elmo’s Fire played on a ship’s yardarms and rigging 25 miles away, ash fell on its deck, and explosions deafened its crew.
Just after 10 a.m. on the morning of Aug. 27 came the final, cataclysmic explosion with 26 times the power of the biggest H-bomb test. As Krakatau’s underground magma chamber emptied, the sea rushed in, at first sucking ships toward it in an inbound current. Then the 2,600-foot-high volcanic cone collapsed into the center, leaving little of the island above water and sending out a truly colossal tsunami.
The effects?
Hundred-foot tidal waves (up to 130 feet in some places) scoured nearby coasts, obliterating hundreds of villages and taking more than 36,000 lives. Much reduced, the sea wave swept past the Cape of Good Hope into the Atlantic Ocean and even caused a measurable ripple in the English Channel.
The noise was heard at Alice Springs in the middle of Australia. Four hours after the massive explosion, 3,000 miles away on the island of Rodrigues in the western Indian Ocean, it was recorded as the “roar of heavy guns.” The sound was audible over 1/13 the surface of the globe, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. The shock wave registered on a barometer in London.
The final eruption also threw pumice an estimated 34 to 50 miles into the sky. Dust fell more than 3,000 miles away 10 days later. Islands of pumice floated on the oceans for months. Sulfur in the ash reacted with atmospheric ozone to scatter sunlight, causing vivid red sunsets around the world. Global temperatures dropped, and climate disruptions lasted five years.
[Extracted from Wired.com. Image shows Anak Krakatau exploding in 2007]
Tags: Anak Krakatau, Krakatau, Krakatoa, volcano
Optical Illusions!
Filed under Science, Youtube/Vimeo/Videos
I love optical illusions, and I’ve always been fascinated by the mechanics of vision, so sharing this video goes without saying.
Apparently, this technique of animation has been known for a long time, but it’s still pretty cool.
You might also want to check out on how it is all done.
Tags: mechanics of vision, optical illusions, optics, video illusions
The story of the Mega Shark
Filed under Animals, Entertainment, Science, Visual Graphics & Images
Well this post actually relates to a B-rated movie called Mega Shark Vs. Giant Octopus. It’s so hilariously anti-physics so many people were once involved in discussing about it.
The interesting part: the Mega Shark takes down a commercial jetliner that is cruising over the middle of the ocean.
So Taubman over at Stivo made this Infographic alongside his post. Quite interesting, worth the time reading (including the critical comments from readers).
Tags: Mega Shark Vs. Giant Octopus
Hubble Celebrates 20 Years
As the Hubble Space Telescope achieves the major milestone of two decades on orbit this year, NASA and the Space Telescope Science Institute, or STScI, in Baltimore are celebrating Hubble’s journey of exploration with a stunning new picture and several online educational activities. There are also opportunities for people to explore galaxies as armchair scientists and send personal greetings to Hubble for posterity.
NASA is releasing a new Hubble photo of a small portion of one of the largest known star-birth regions in the galaxy, the Carina Nebula. Three light-year-tall towers of cool hydrogen laced with dust rise from the wall of the nebula. The scene is reminiscent of Hubble’s classic “Pillars of Creation” photo from 1995, but even more striking.
This picture here, one of the latest new Hubble photos, is of a small portion of one of the largest seen star-birth regions in the galaxy, the Carina Nebula.
Tags: Hubble Space Telescope, NASA
Evil Neptune: It May Have Eaten a Planet and Stolen its Moon
Filed under Science
NEPTUNE may have polished off a super-Earth that once roamed the outer solar system and stolen its moon to boot. The brutal deed could explain mysterious heat radiating from the icy planet and the odd orbit of its moon Triton.
Neptune’s own existence was a puzzle until recently. The dusty cloud that gave birth to the planets probably thinned out further from the sun. With building material so scarce, it is hard to understand how Uranus and Neptune, the two outermost planets, managed to get so big.
But what if they formed closer in? In 2005, a team of scientists proposed that the giant planets shifted positions in an early upheaval. In this scenario, Uranus and Neptune formed much closer to the sun and migrated outwards, possibly swapping places in the process.
Turning Water into Marbles, Possible?
Filed under Science, Youtube/Vimeo/Videos
Well this is a famous hoax, but it’s still very cool. Do check it out!
Tags: water hoax, water marbles
Flu and Infections: Vitamin D Deficiency
Filed under Foods, Health, Science
A new study led by researchers at the University of Copenhagen has confirmed that vitamin D plays an important role in activating immune defenses against infectious diseases like flu.
Vitamin D deficiency has already been linked to a wide spectrum of diseases including heart disease, cancer, diabetes, depression, autoimmune disease and many others.
In the case of flu fighting, Dr. John Cannell and his colleagues have reported that vitamin D helps produce antibacterial peptides that help protect against flu. That is why in winter people are prone to becoming vitamin D deficiency and getting infected with flu viruses.
Dr. Cannell, a vitamin D expert and director of Vitamin D Council, says in his newsletter sent last year that two physicians, one in Wisconsin and the other in Georgia reported to him that few of their patients/residents who maintained a high level of serum vitamin d acquired swine flu last year while many of other patients and medical workers who did not take vitamin D to maintain high vitamin D levels got swine flu and other flu viruses.
Dinosaur Extinction Cause Confirmed: Space Impact
An international panel of experts has strongly endorsed evidence that a space impact was behind the mass extinction event that killed off the dinosaurs.
They reached the consensus after conducting the most wide-ranging analysis yet of the evidence. Writing in Science journal, they rule out alternative theories such as large-scale volcanism.
A panel of 41 international experts reviewed 20 years’ worth of research to determine the cause of the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) mass extinction, around 65 million years ago.
The extinction wiped out more than half of all species on the planet, including the dinosaurs, bird-like pterosaurs and large marine reptiles, clearing the way for mammals to become the dominant species on Earth. Their review of the evidence shows that the extinction was caused by a massive asteroid or comet smashing into Earth at Chicxulub on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula.
When the 10km-15km space rock struck the Yucatan, the explosive energy released was equivalent to 100 trillion tonnes of TNT – over a billion times more explosive than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The huge crater that remains from the event is some 180km in diameter and surrounded by a circular fault about 240km in diameter.
Extracted from BBC
Tags: dinosaur extinction
67 Million-Year-Old Snake Fossil Found Eating Baby Dinosaurs
Scientists have found a 67 million-year-old fossil of a snake coiled around dinosaur eggs and a hatchling. This is the first evidence of snakes eating dinosaurs.
“It’s a stunning, once-in-a-lifetime find,” said paleontologist Paul Sereno of the University of Chicago, who was not involved in the study. “We’ve caught one of the rarest moments in the fossil record, which is prey and predator, together.”
Geologist Dhanajay Mohabey of the Indian Geological Survey first unearthed the fossil 26 years ago in a rocky, limestone outcropping in the northwestern Indian village of Dholi Dungri. He thought all the bones at the site were those of dinosaur hatchlings.
The newly discovered species of snake, Sanajeh indicus, measures about 11.5 feet long. The hatchlings, part of a group called titanosaurs, measured about a foot and a half long. Titanosaurs were the largest animal to ever walk on land, with adults that could reach up to 100 feet long.
Unlike modern snakes, S. indicus lacked jaw joints that allowed it to open its mouth incredibly wide, so it relied on its large overall body size to prey on the fledgling dinosaurs. Luckily for the snake, the titanosaur hatchlings had soft skeletons that “may have been somewhat collapsible, so you can fold their ribs up a bit and get them in your mouth,” Wilson said.
Cool eh?
Source: Wired
Tags: snake eats dinosaur, snake fossil
Al Gore wishes global warming weren’t real!
Filed under Environment, Science
Former vice president Al Gore, the target of ridicule by climate skeptics this winter, says he wishes global warming were an “illusion.”
Former vice president Al Gore has long warned of the dangers of global warming. He spoke about them during the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December.
Unfortunately, its dangers are real, despite mistakes by a leading United Nations climate-science panel, Gore writes Sunday in The New York Times. “The overwhelming consensus on global warming remains unchanged,” he says, adding:
In fact, the crisis is still growing because we are continuing to dump 90 million tons of global-warming pollution every 24 hours into the atmosphere — as if it were an open sewer.
Climate skeptics, citing recent snowfall in parts of the East Coast, have mocked Gore. Tycoon Donald Trump says Gore should be stripped of his Nobel Peace Prize for warning about climate change. “It’s going to keep snowing in D.C. until Al Gore cries “uncle,”" Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., wrote on Twitter.
Gore says global data show the last January was the second-hottest since surface temperatures were first measured 130 years ago and the last 10 years were the hottest decade since modern records have been kept. He says these rising temperatures have increased evaporation from the oceans, putting more moisture into the atmosphere and thus heavier rain and snow in some areas.
The IPCC, which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Gore for a report that called climate change “unequivocal” and “very likely” caused by human activity, announced Saturday that it will seek independent review of its major reports.
Gore says U.S. industry also needs to back a climate bill, but he likens its reluctance to Big Tobacco’s decades-long fight against regulation:
Over the years, as the science has become clearer and clearer, some industries and companies whose business plans are dependent on unrestrained pollution of the atmospheric commons have become ever more entrenched. They are ferociously fighting against the mildest regulation — just as tobacco companies blocked constraints on the marketing of cigarettes for four decades after science confirmed the link of cigarettes to diseases of the lung and the heart.
Tags: Al Gore, global warming
