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‘Spiderbots’ inside Mount St Helens may detect impending volcanic eruption

August 15, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, August 15 (ANI): NASA scientists have placed about a dozen monitoring ‘spiderbots’ inside the volcanic crater in Mount St Helens in the US, which are high-tech devices that can detect an impending eruption.

Mount St. Helens is one of the most active volcanoes in the US. Its most devastating eruption in 1980, and the most recent seen here in 2004.

According to a report in National Geographic News, about a dozen so-called Spiders were placed on Mount St. Helens in July.

The pods, designed to go where no human can, were lowered by helicopter inside and around the volcano center.

“We can detect the differences between snow falling off of a branch, an animal running by, wind, a thunderstorm and the very subtle signatures of magma moving at depth, perhaps even kilometers beneath the surface of the earth,” said Steve Chien, Principal Scientist, Autonomous Systems, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory .

The pods form a virtual wireless network and communicate with each other and a NASA satellite called Earth Observing-1, or EO-1.

Each pod contains a seismometer, a GPS receiver, an infrared sounder to sense explosions, and a lightning detector.

According to Chien, “They have the ability to recognize different kinds of events such as seismic events, earthquakes, that are basically indications that something is happening at the volcano.”

“In the context of volcano monitoring, we want to have the best educated guess to make decisions that will save life and properties,” said Sharon Kedar, Geophysicist, NASA /Jet Propulsion Laboratoy.

NASA would like to someday use this same technology on the surface of Mars to study atmospheric events like dust storms, which are mini-tornadoes, as well as seismic activity. (ANI)

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Giant volcanic eruption 260 mln yrs ago may have caused global mass extinction

May 29, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, May 29 (ANI): Scientists at the University of Leeds in the UK have uncovered a previously unknown giant volcanic eruption that led to global mass extinction 260 million years ago.

The eruption in the Emeishan province of south-west China unleashed around half a million cubic kilometers of lava, covering an area 5 times the size of Wales, and wiping out marine life around the world.

Unusually, scientists were able to pinpoint the exact timing of the eruption and directly link it to a mass extinction event in the study.

This is because the eruptions occurred in a shallow sea, meaning that the lava appears today as a distinctive layer of igneous rock sandwiched between layers of sedimentary rock containing easily datable fossilized marine life.

The layer of fossilized rock directly after the eruption shows mass extinction of different life forms, clearly linking the onset of the eruptions with a major environmental catastrophe.

The global effect of the eruption is also due to the proximity of the volcano to a shallow sea.

The collision of fast flowing lava with shallow sea water caused a violent explosion at the start of the eruptions – throwing huge quantities of sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere.

“When fast flowing, low viscosity magma meets shallow sea, it’s like throwing water into a chip pan – there’s spectacular explosion producing gigantic clouds of steam,” explained Professor Paul Wignall, a paleontologist at the University of Leeds.

The injection of sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere would have lead to massive cloud formation spreading around the world, which cooled the planet and ultimately resulted in a torrent of acid rain.

Scientists estimate from the fossil record that the environmental disaster happened at the start of the eruption.

“The abrupt extinction of marine life we can clearly see in the fossil record firmly links giant volcanic eruptions with global environmental catastrophe, a correlation that has often been controversial,” said Professor Wignall. (ANI)

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Magma pulses may reveal Earth’s ‘heartbeat’

May 21, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, May 21 (ANI): Evidence from Hawaii and Iceland has indicated that the Earth may literally have a heartbeat, in the sense that the planet’s core may be dispatching simultaneous plumes of magma towards the surface every 15 million years or so.

According to a report in New Scientist, if the hypothesis is true, it would revolutionize our ideas of what’s happening far below our feet.

Rolf Mjelde of the University of Bergen and Jan Inge Faleide of the University of Oslo, both in Norway, used seismological data to measure the thickness of Earth’s crust between Iceland and Greenland.

Iceland is on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, where magma wells up to form fresh crust.

The measurements allowed Mjelde and Faleide to infer the past flow of magma in the plume generally thought to rise beneath Iceland.

When this plume is strong, it thickens the crust that it forms at the surface.

They found that the crust has thickened roughly every 15 million years, suggesting the plume pulses at around that frequency.

Regular pulsing of plumes is not a new idea, but when the pair compared their results with similar pulsing in Hawaii, which also sits on a plume, they found a surprising correlation.

Data collected by Emily Van Ark and Jian Lin of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Massachusetts, suggests that Hawaii’s plume pulses have coincided with Iceland’s.

“These two are on very different parts of the Earth, so I don’t think the synchrony could be related to something in the mantle,” said Mjelde. “It must relate to the core somehow. I can’t see any other possibility,” he added.

This would mean that the Earth’s core periodically heats up the overlying mantle, generating synchronized plumes that rise to the surface at widely separated spots.

“If correct, it would be a significant alteration from our current thoughts,” said Rhodri Davies of Imperial College London.

Most geologists who believe that mantle plumes exist think that pulsing can be explained by processes in the mantle alone, such as magma build-up in regions of different viscosity.

“A new way of thinking would be needed,” said Mjelde. (ANI)

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Revealing origin and evolution of planet Mercury

May 3, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, May 1 (ANI): Scientists, using multispectral images obtained from the Messenger spacecraft, are trying to reveal the origin and evolution of the planet Mercury.

Mercury’s interior is thought to generally resemble that of the Earth and Mars. However, Mercury’s core is anomalously large leading to it sometimes being called the iron planet.

With its ancient craters and smooth plains both covered in a fine-grained gray soil (or regolith), the surface of Mercury superficially resembles the surface of the Moon.

Unlike Earth’s crust, which is constantly changing and evolving due to processes such as plate tectonics, the crust is relatively static on the Moon and Mercury.

The bulk of Mercury’s crust formed long ago and preserves a record of early events that shaped it and the subsequent forces that modified it.

“Mercury’s surface tells us something fundamental about how the planet formed and evolved,” said Brett Denevi, a postdoctoral research associate in the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University.

“Some of the little evidence that we had prior to MESSENGER seemed to indicate that the composition of Mercury’s crust was similar to that of the Moon, leading to the presumption that it had formed in the same manner, with any volcanism that may have occurred being only a secondary component,” she said.

While the highlands on the Moon are thought to have formed as the result of a global magma ocean, where less dense minerals floated to the surface to form the crust, evidence now points to a mercurian crust that formed in a manner more similar to the crust of Mars than to that of the Moon.

Denevi’s research confirms that volcanism on Mercury was widespread, visible across nearly the entire planet, and that much of the crust may have formed in repeated volcanic eruptions.

Denevi, the lead author on the paper, processed and analyzed the images and spectra.

To help determine how much of Mercury’s surface was comprised of smooth plains, she constructed maps by observing overlapping and abutting relations of different landforms.

Denevi also compared spectra of Earth and lunar rocks and soils to constrain the maximum amounts of iron- and titanium-bearing minerals that could be on the surface.

Through mapping of the major geologic terrain types, Denevi and her colleagues distinguished three major terrain types on Mercury: smooth plains, intermediate terrain and low-reflectance material (LRM).

“Of the three, smooth plains are a key terrain type,” she said. “The smooth plains cover approximately 40 percent of the surface, and the majority is probably of volcanic origin,” she added. (ANI)

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Indian origin scientist finds active African volcano to have most fluid lava in world

March 15, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, March 15 (ANI): A geochemist of Indian origin has determined that an active African volcano possesses the most fluid lava in the world, which points toward its source being a mantle plume that is in complete pristine condition.

The lava composition indicates that a mantle plume-an upwelling of intense heat from near the core of the Earth-may be bubbling to life beneath Nyiragongo, an active African volcano, in the emocratic Republic of the Congo.

“This is the most fluid lava anyone has seen in the world,” said Asish Basu, professor of earth science at the University of Rochester, the geochemist who conducted the research.

“It’s unlike anything coming out of any other volcano. We believe we’re seeing the beginning of a plume that is pushing up the entire area and contributing to volcanism and earthquakes,” he added.

Basu analyzed the lava, which resides in the world’s largest lava lake-more than 600 feet wide inside the summit of Nyiragongo-and found that the isotopic compositions of neodymium and strontium are identical to ancient asteroids.

“This suggests that the lava is coming from a place deep inside the Earth where the source of molten rock is in its pristine condition,” said Basu.

“Because the Earth’s crust is undergoing constant change via tectonic motion, weathering, and resurfacing, its chemical composition has been dramatically altered over its 4-billion-year lifespan, but the Nyiragongo magma source in the deep mantle has not,” he added.

That magma source is thought to retain some of the solar system’s original make-up of elements, and this is what Basu and his colleagues believe they have detected in Nyiragongo’s lava lake.

Scientists believe mantle plumes can last hundreds of millions of years, and that their heat can create phenomena such as Yellowstone National Park or the string of Hawaiian Islands.

According to Basu, Nyiragongo’s frequent eruptions may be the birthing pains of a similar plume and the possible beginning of new large-scale geological formations in the region.

Basu said that other well known features of the region also point toward the idea of a growing plume.

“This is a very troubled region of the world, and we hope to be able to help better understand the conditions under which the people of that area must live,” said Basu.

Nyiragongo last erupted in 2002, sending its super-fluid lava down its slopes at more than 60 miles per hour toward the nearby town of Goma, destroying 4,500 buildings and leaving 120,000 homeless. (ANI)

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Scientists unveil first gravity map of moon’s far side

February 16, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, Feb 16 (ANI): The first detailed map of the gravity fields on the Moon’s far side has shown that craters there are different than those on the near side, which could reveal more about the Moon as it was billions of years ago, when magma flowed across its surface.

According to a report in New Scientist, the new gravity map was collected by the Japanese lunar satellite Kaguya, which released two small probes into orbit around the Moon in 2007.

The motions of the three spacecraft, which are sensitive to variations in the Moon’s gravity field, were measured by tracking their radio signals.

Crucially, while the main Kaguya spacecraft was on the far side of the Moon and therefore out of direct contact with Earth, one of the small probes relayed its signals to Earth.

The resulting map, which is the first detailed one completed of the Moon’s far side, shows that craters on the far side have a markedly different gravity signature from those on the side that always faces Earth.

That suggests that billions of years ago, there might have been large differences in the temperature or thickness of the Moon’s two halves.

“It’s fabulous new data,” said Walter Kiefer, a planetary geophysicist with the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas, who was not part of the study. “We haven’t been able to get a good look at the far side until now,” he added.

Most of the large craters on the Moon formed more than 3.8 billion years ago. These were partly filled in by magma that flowed on the surface before the Moon cooled and its geological activity died down.

But, a number of craters also seem to have been filled in from below.

Researchers believe material from the mantle also rose up in craters, since these are sites where impacts had thinned the Moon’s crust.

The new Kaguya measurements reveal some craters on the far side that seem to have been filled only with mantle.

These craters have higher-than-normal gravity at the centre, surrounded by a thick ring of low gravity that closely matches the original low elevation of the crater.

It is not yet clear what these new crater measurements suggest about the early Moon.

In order for these structures to survive, the lunar far side must have been too cool and stiff to allow the mantle at the craters’ centres to smooth out much over time, according to team leader Noriyuki Namiki, of Japan’s Kyushu University.

“The surface had to be very rigid to support these structures,” Namiki said. (ANI)

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India and Asia collided millions of years ago to create rift in Siberian lake

February 12, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, Feb 12 (ANI): Scientists have determined that the geological collision between India and Asia millions of years ago created the area around Lake Baikal in Siberia.

That is the conclusion reached by two Danish researchers from the University of Copenhagen, Professor Hans Thybo and Dr. Christoffer Nielsen, after many seismic examinations, including blowing up tons of dynamite, and five years work of analyzing the data.

In the middle of Siberia lies the 2000km long Baikal Rift Zone, where, over the last 35 million years, a gigantic crack in the Earth’s crust has developed.

In the middle of this rift zone lies the world’s deepest lake, Lake Baikal, which is almost 1700m deep and contains 20 percent of the world’s freshwater.

Due to Lake Baikal’s isolated location, far from the world’s oceans, the microbial and animal life found here has undergone a unique evolution over the last 30 million years.

The Baikal Rift Zone, or fracture zone, is also special because it is located 3000km away from the nearest tectonic plate boundary.

Therefore, it has been difficult, until now, to explain the origin of the Baikal Rift Zone using commonly accepted geological premises and methods.

However, Prof. Hans Thybo and Dr. Christoffer Nielsen, in collaboration with Eastern European colleagues, have succeeded in uncovering what happened, and what is still happening, under the surface of one of the most special and distinctive areas on Earth.

More than that; the results from the experiment in Siberia have lead to a new understanding of, and model for, the formation of and activity in rift zones, which are found in locations around the globe, including between the continents.

In Siberia, the Danish research team lead a seismic experiment known as BEST (Baikal Explosion Seismic Transects) carried out around Lake Baikal.

The experiment included setting off of tons of dynamite so the scientists could follow the sound waves from the explosion as they travelled through the ground, using them to determine the structure of the Earth’s crust and the upper mantle and thus gain an understanding of the processes driving the rift zone’s development.

The results from Lake Baikal show that the 40-50km wide crack in the Earth’s crust is around 10km deep.

All previous models of rift processes have assumed that the bottom of the Earth’s crust would have a corresponding bulge.

However, to the researchers’ great surprise, it turned out that the bottom of the crust is flat across Lake Baikal.

The two scientists explain this phenomenon by a greater thinning of the crust than expected but at the same time also by an intrusion of magma into the bottom part of the crust layer. (ANI)

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Life may exist in Mars’ biggest volcano

February 11, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, Feb 11 (ANI): A new study has suggested that Olympus Mons, the biggest volcano on Mars, could shelter some sort of life form.

Rising three times higher than Mount Everest, Olympus Mons was active at least 40 million years ago, and perhaps more recently.

Magma may still be close enough to the surface to support heat-loving bacteria like those found near hydrothermal vents on Earth.

But, bacteria likely need water to live in, too.

Now, according to a report in Discovery News, Patrick McGovern and Julia Morgan think they may have found it, locked in thick layers of clay-rich sediments beneath the mountain.

Spreading out over an area about the size of Arizona, Olympus Mons’ massive lava flows are bunched up in the southeast, and stretched out in the northwest.

In a detailed computer simulation of the volcano, the researchers found the volcano would only assume its oblong shape if the erupted lava piled on top of layers of weak, water-laden sediments.

Scientists aren’t certain how old Olympus Mons is, but it’s likely that its first eruptions were billions of years ago.

If so, it could have formed in a time when Mars was much warmer and wetter, and trapped a large reservoir beneath it.

Whether or not that reservoir is still warm – and whether is contains life – remains a tantalizing uncertainty. No heat signatures have yet been detected from satellites orbiting the planet, but their instruments can’t penetrate into the subsurface.

“If we were to go there and shove a probe a meter below the surface, you’d get a very different picture of heat flow,” said Brian Hynek of the University of Colorado at Boulder, suggesting the mountain is probably still warm.

Though the blackest depths of a volcano might not seem like the best place to go alien-hunting, life on Earth has been found subsisting two miles down in the crust, and a mile beneath the ocean floor.

“So finding life a mile or so below Olympus Mons’ lava flows is well within the realm of possibility,” Hynek said.

The flows may even act as a kind of insulating blanket, keeping water and heat in, and Mars’ cold, corrosive surface conditions out.

“It’s the natural place I’d go first on an astrobiological expedition to Mars, given that it’s the place where volcanism is strongest and youngest on the planet,” McGovern said. (ANI)

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