NASA Shrimp
Last November, NASA had a pleasant surprise, while they were drilling a hole in the Antarctic Ice, performing an experiment on inhospitable living conditions. After drilling a hole of 600 feet in the Antarctic ice shelf, NASA had lowered a cable into the hole, with a camera attached. At a depth of 600 feet, when they broke through the Ice Shelf, a small shrimp hovered through the view of the camera. The footage of the shrimp, with the Latin name Lyssianasid amphipod, was released to YouTube on March 16, 2010.
In the 2:14 minute long video, the viewer is treated with an backwards view, facing the surface (which is only a black hole, because of the distance). One can see the rope, which the camera is hanging on, and the contours of the hole, with a regular chopped surface, from the drill. After some ten seconds, an orange creature swims into view, from the right-top corner. The creature swims around, and can be easily identified as a shrimp when it examines the rope. The shrimp leasurely swims around, before swimming out of view again. At that point, the camera is lowered through the hole again, showing the exit point under the ice shelf, where the shrimp is seen once again, before descending further down.
According to reports, the shrimp wasn't the only discovery made, as also a tentacle, presumably belonging to a jellyfish was found and retrieved. The discovery of the shrimp and tentacle has sparked discussion of ...
updated 2010-07-17 16:34:18
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Hurricane Season 2009
The 2009 Hurricane season was the least active of the last decade with only 3 of the 9 tropical storms turning into hurricanes.
One likely reason for this slow season is El Nino. The El Niño is an unusually warm flow of water that can form off the Northweast coast of South America. This can cause the Jet Stream to shift southward which can create wind shear, upper level winds that can slow the development of a hurricane.
updated 2010-07-17 10:18:07
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Oil Spill Side Effects
Animal species and ecosystems are at risk over the long term when oil spills occur. Studies from the residual effects of the Exxon Valdez oil spill have revealed that oil does not break down as quickly and in the ways that scientists thought. It takes decades for oil to break down, not years. Even more alarming, "oil’s compounds, especially polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons — carcinogenic molecules that attach to fat, and refuse to break down in water — are toxic at levels hundreds, even thousands of times lower than was previously believed". http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/03/valdezlegacy/#ixzz0tb4M11Qa So, the potentially cancer causing components of the oil do not break down over time in water, and are even harmful in very small amounts.
