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The Science Thread

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Astronomers watching a distant galaxy were stunned to see a black hole wake up like a hibernating bear, look around for a snack, then swallow a giant planetary structure that happened to venture too close.The phenomenon was spotted in NGC 4845, a galaxy located 47 million light-years from Earth, by the European Space Agency's INTEGRAL space observatory.

Astronomers from NASA then confirmed the discovery with the Swift space telescope, as did Japan using its MAXI X-ray monitor aboard the International Space Station.

It marks the first time astronomers have watched a black hole devour a sub-stellar object.

More here:
http://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/astronomers-watch-as-distant-black-hole-roars-to-life-devours-planetary-structure-1.1225606
 
The Hubble telescope captures what is being dubbed as "the comet of the century":

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2013/04/29/tech-hubble-comet-ison.html

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Attention all mathematicians!  Forgot the birds, think of the bees!

Seems as though a mathematical way solved the age-old mystery of how and why bees choose to make their honeycomb hexagon-shaped.  Maybe the bees are mathematicians, too!

http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2013/05/13/183704091/what-is-it-about-bees-and-hexagons
 
What is killing our Killer Whales?  Could climate change be the culprit?

Many things, in fact...

The necropsies have shown that the orcas absorb extremely high loads of man-made toxins, suffer from infectious diseases and, in the case of fish-eating populations, depend primarily on severely depleted salmon stocks.

The necropsy list has increased data collection. Over the last two decades, an average of 10 killer whales a year have been discovered stranded across the entire North Pacific Ocean, and necropsies have jumped from about one in 50 to one in three.

?Because killer whales are apex predators and flagship conservation species, strandings are sad events,? he said. ?But this study confirms that if we make every effort to understand why the strandings occurred, we will ultimately improve the fate of the species.?

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/study-of-killer-whale-deaths-reveals-more-about-their-lives/article12467641/
 
Solar storms, solar tornadoes...NASA warns of potential calamitous weather patterns for Earth....

http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/06/13/nasa-chief-warns-of-solar-tornado-season-as-storms-dance-across-the-sun/
 
Just when you thought otherwise...what's really polluting our Great Lakes...

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/geekquinox/great-lakes-polluted-facial-scrub-microbeads-135239606.html...

 
New data from Greenland ice cores suggest North America may have suffered a large cosmic impact about 12,900 years ago.

The climate flip has previously been linked to the demise of the North American "Clovis" people.

The data seem to back the idea that an impact tipped the climate into a colder phase, a point of current debate.

Rapid climate change occurred 12,900 years ago, and it is proposed that this is associated with the extinction of large mammals - such as the mammoth, widespread wildfires and rapid changes in atmospheric and ocean circulation.

...

A 100-fold spike in platinum concentration occurs in ice that is around 12,890 years old, at the same moment that rapid cooling of the climate is indicated from oxygen isotope measurements. This coincides with the start of a climatic period called the "Younger Dryas".

The Younger Dryas started and finished abruptly, and is one of a number of shorter periods of climate change that appear to have occurred since the last glacial maximum of 20,000 years ago.

Each end of the Younger Dryas period may have involved very rapid changes in temperature as the climate system reached a tipping point, with suggestions that dramatic changes in temperature occurred over as short as timescale as a decade or so.
Click to expand...

I've posted previously about the Younger Dryas Boundary Theory, this is another bullet in that gun.

An aside, having seen the recent Chelyabinsk air burst, maybe they never will be able to lock down an impact site if it was a series of similar events in North America, so far there is evidence of impact but not a true crater ( Tungaska is probably a better example but not as topical or sexy )
 
The incredible social memory of certain mammals -- in this case, dolphins.  It supercedes  even that of elephants & monkeys, who harbour good social memory.  Very interesting.  Read on...

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2013/08/06/us-sci-dolphin-memory.html


 
"The Breathing Earth"

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Click here:
http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2013/08/14/mesmerizing-gifs-of-breathing-earth/
 
(We) were all once Martians??!!  It's possible.  Read on...

http://www.nationalpost.com/m/wp/news/blog.html?b=news.nationalpost.com/2013/08/29/life-may-have-developed-on-mars-not-earth-scientist-says
 
Beware the Blob...

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/10304954/Endangered-blobfish-is-voted-ugliest-animal.html
 
hockeyfan1 said:
(We) were all once Martians??!!  It's possible.  Read on...

http://www.nationalpost.com/m/wp/news/blog.html?b=news.nationalpost.com/2013/08/29/life-may-have-developed-on-mars-not-earth-scientist-says
Click to expand...

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Global warming, greenhouse gas emissions & the threat to humanity...how the earth's atmosphere has been damaged over the centuries and why the trend will continue (for centuries to come)...

As world temperatures and sea levels rise, the effects of global warming will be felt most acutely in Canada and other countries far from the equator, says a Canadian researcher and co-ordinating author of the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

A Canadian scientist and co-ordinating author of the IPCC report says it?s the clearest evidence yet that global warming is occurring ? and that humans are the main cause.

?Evidence for a warming climate is getting stronger and stronger, and the evidence of the influence of human activities on that climate change is getting stronger and stronger,? said Gregory Flato, an Environment Canada scientist and manager of the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis.

"...climate change and warming in particular is amplified ? that is, it?s larger ? at high latitudes. So warming over Canada is larger than the warming that has been experienced [worldwide] and it is projected to continue that way. That warming over Canada will continue to be more rapid than the global [average] warming," ...

...30-page synopsis of its report on the physical science of climate change:

1. The situation is man-made ? and dire
2. Weather will get more extreme
3. It will take centuries to fix,at least
4. Much is still unknown or uncertain

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/technology/science/climate-change-will-be-felt-strongly-in-countries-such-as-canada-researcher-says/article14588012/
 
"Dire... extreme... centuries to fix.... but all of that's uncertain."  I don't know about you, but I'm thinking that point #4 is probably the most salient.  How many failures can the climate alarmists suffer with their models and prognostications before we take what they say with a grain of salt?
 
KGB said:
"Dire... extreme... centuries to fix.... but all of that's uncertain."  I don't know about you, but I'm thinking that point #4 is probably the most salient.  How many failures can the climate alarmists suffer with their models and prognostications before we take what they say with a grain of salt?
Click to expand...

It's a simple chemical process. If you dump billions of tons of pollutants and CO2 in the air then you are changing the chemical makeup of the atmosphere. How is this hard to understand?

Even if it doesn't lead to global warming (which it does it most certainly leads to smog and unclean air. Personally I'm not interested in living in a world that looks like Blade Runner.

As for uncertainty - there's always a degree of uncertainty in science. I guess we might as well throw out the theory of gravity as well,  because there's a level of uncertainty.
 
Bender said:
KGB said:
"Dire... extreme... centuries to fix.... but all of that's uncertain."  I don't know about you, but I'm thinking that point #4 is probably the most salient.  How many failures can the climate alarmists suffer with their models and prognostications before we take what they say with a grain of salt?
Click to expand...

It's a simple chemical process. If you dump billions of tons of pollutants and CO2 in the air then you are changing the chemical makeup of the atmosphere. How is this hard to understand?

Even if it doesn't lead to global warming (which it does it most certainly leads to smog and unclean air. Personally I'm not interested in living in a world that looks like Blade Runner.

As for uncertainty - there's always a degree of uncertainty in science. I guess we might as well throw out the theory of gravity as well,  because there's a level of uncertainty.
Click to expand...

This hits the nail on the head of my opinion on it, too.
 
the reason why there is uncertainty is because this is all an insanely complex system...but from what we know ..which of course is limited ..but here's the issue i have..the people saying this is going to be a problem have spent their lives understanding what they can of this stuff ....the people saying this isn't an issue ...aren't educated on it at all...  so while i don't think science can ever offer certainty..especially in regards to a future event ..and in such a complex system ..i still feel like their "guess" (obviously more than a guess)  is better then the guy on the street who just says..."look there's snow...where's your global warming now."
 
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