dinosaurs

Many predicted that dinosaurs became extinct around 65 million years ago. Till today, no one really knows the real reason of the extinction of dinosaurs but since then, there were many theories going around on the possible reasons of what stopped their species. The many theories people think are possible, but not back up with solid proof are due to asteroid, brain functions, catepillars, greenhouse gases, hitting asteroids, ozones, stress and supernova.

However, most scientists believe that it was due to the collision of asteroids sending dust and dirty water to the atmosphere that led to the end of bearing of dinosaurs.




reference: http://dsc.discovery.com/dinosaurs/prehistoric.html

New Planet Discovered: First Spotted Outside Our Galaxy

A painting of an exoplanet (right of center) that, like HIP 13044b, orbits an older sunlike star.

A new planet was discovered orbiting a bloated red star.

Since the mid-1990s astronomers have been adding to the list of known exoplanets. Almost 500 exoplanets found so far all formed in our home galaxy, the Milky Way.

(exoplanets: planets that exist outside our solar system.)

The newfound planet "likely formed when the star was not yet a part of the Milky Way. It's traveled with the star all this time," said study leader Johny Setiawan, an astronomer at the Max-Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany.

Astronomers think stars and their planets are made from the same initial building blocks, so if a star has few metals, the disk of material that surrounded the star when it was young—and from which its planets are born—was also metal-poor.

Even though gas giants are made of mostly hydrogen and helium, astronomers think the planets still require an initial core of heavy elements to attract lighter gases and grow.

Alan Boss, a planet-formation theorist at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C., said HIP 13044b is "big news," because it's such an anomaly in terms of its origins.

"This object ... is unlikely to have formed by the conventional mechanism of first building a massive core of rock and ice and then pulling on enough gas to form a true gas giant planet," said Boss, who was not part of the study team.

Study leader Setiawan agrees: "Now we have this finding, and it suggests maybe there are other mechanisms of planet formation around metal-poor stars that we don't know about."

reference: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/11/101118-science-space-new-planet-discovered-outside-galaxy/

Nitrous Oxide – Nothing to Laugh About

Also known as laughing gas, nitrous oxide seems less funny since scientists branded it as the third most important greenhouse gas emitted through human activities.


A woman sprays fertilizer on her field in Nakornsawan, Thailand. Fertilizers are the single most important source for man-made nitrous oxide emissions (Photo: Reuters)


Contribution to Human-Induced Climate Change: 7 percent

Global Warming Potential (100 years): 298 times stronger than CO2


Like most other greenhouse gases, nitrous oxide is neither toxic nor destructive but a fundamental part of the mechanisms that keep our planet healthy and green. Produced by digesting bacteria, nitrous oxides are part of the nitrogen cycle, one of the most important chemical reactions on Earth.


Nitrogen is the chemical basis for proteins and DNA; plants need it for photosynthesis and growth. While the gas is the most abundant element of our atmosphere, it cannot be used. Higher organisms have to rely on tiny bacteria to turn it into ammonia or nitrates. Once a plant dies, other bacteria feed on the leftovers and turn nitrates back into gases like nitrous oxide or nitrogen.


This benevolent cycle went on for millions of years until chemists and farmers realized that nitrogen fertilizers greatly increase crop yields. Since then, more and more nitrogen has been added to the cycle. Farmers around the globe use more than 70 million tons of nitrogen fertilizers annually. According to a study conducted by Nobel prize-winning chemist Paul Crutzen in 2007, some 3 to 5 percent of this nitrogen is converted directly into nitrous oxide, twice the amount previously thought.


Fertilizer application will increase with a growing world population. Over the next three decades food production will need to increase by about 60 percent, estimates the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization. In the same period, nitrous oxide emissions could double, especially in developing countries.

Developing more effective ways of adding nitrogen to the soil will be a key challenge. Today, fertilizers are often washed away by rain into lakes and seas where algae feed on them, bloom uncontrollably, and starve the water of oxygen. Every summer, nitrogen-rich river flow from the Mississippi River creates a “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico the size of Massachusetts.


reference: http://knowledge.allianz.com/en/globalissues/climate_change/global_warming_basics/nitrous_oxide_greenhouse_gas_profile.html

Greenhouse Gases: Lifegivers and Lifetakers

Greenhouse gases heat up our planet tremendously for decades. They are part of Earth's atmosphere and trap warmth emitted by the sun, thus heating Earth. It is this process – the greenhouse effect – that makes life on the planet possible.

Natural greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide have always been in the atmosphere. Without them, the world’s average surface temperature would be a chilly -18 degrees Celsius. Thanks to the greenhouse effect, however, we enjoy an average temperature of 14 degrees.

Throughout Earth’s history, temperatures have varied greatly, mostly depending on the concentration of greenhouses gases in the atmosphere. All signs now suggest that a major temperature change is happening again, but this time humanity is the cause. Read our gas profiles and learn more about the causes of climate change and how we can reduce them.

What is global warming?

Global Warming is defined as the increase of the average temperature on Earth. As the Earth is getting hotter, disasters like hurricanes, droughts and floods are getting more frequent.

Over the last 100 years, the average air temperature near the Earth’s surface has risen by a little less than 1 degree Celsius or 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit. Doesn't seem that much, does it? Yet it is responsible for the conspicuous increase in storms, floods and raging forest fires we have seen in recent years, say scientists.

Their data show that an increase of one degree Celsius makes the Earth warmer now than it has been for at least a thousand years.The top 11 warmest years on record have all been in the last 13 years, said NASA in 2007, and the first half of 2010 has already gone down in history as the hottest ever recorded.

Projections from the UN climate change body the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) say that global surface temperature will probably rise a further 1.1 to 6.4 degrees Celsius (2.0 to 11.5 degrees Fahrenheit) during the 21st century. The huge range of estimates is due to the amazing complexity of our Earth’s climate system and the uncertainty about whether mankind will fight this warming or continue with business-as-usual.

A certain degree of warming is unavoidable even if we managed to reduce our burden on the climate immediately. Oceans, for example, act as huge heat repositories that follow changes in air temperature with a time lag of decades or even hundreds of years. Melting ice caps reflect less sunlight than previously, so our planet absorbs more and more heat.

Exactly how these changes will influence the warming trend is unclear. All we know for certain is that it’s going to be warmer and that human greenhouse gas emissions are an important reason for this.


Are climate change and global warming one and the same?

In a nutshell: global warming is the cause, climate change is the effect.


Scientists often prefer to speak about climate change instead of global warming, because higher global temperatures don’t necessarily mean that it will be warmer at any given time at every location on Earth.

Warming is strongest at the Earth's Poles, the Arctic and the Antarctic, and will continue to be so. In recent years, fall air temperatures have been at a record 9 degrees Fahrenheit (5 degrees Celsius) above normal in the Arctic, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.



But changing wind patterns could mean that a warming Arctic, for example, leads to colder winters in continental Europe. Regional climates will change as well, but in very different ways. Some regions like parts of Northern Europe or West Africa will probably get wetter, while other regions like the Mediterranean or Central Africa will most likely receive less rainfall

But it is not just about how much the Earth is warming, it is also about how fast it is warming. There have always been natural climate changes – Ice Ages and the warm intermediate times between them – but those evolved over periods of 50,000 to 100,000 years.

In the past, climate change was triggered by changes in the sun’s energy output, the changing position of continental plates, or the rotating axis of the Earth itself. Many plants and animals were able to adapt to these slowly changing climates. Even humans have changed their habitat according to the comings and goings of glaciers.

All these so-called natural forcings, however, have been ruled out for the warming visible in the last 30 years. Since 1980, temperatures have risen faster than ever before, as far as scientists can ascertain.

This radical change is leading towards a sudden loss of biodiversity, a dwindling number and variety of plants and animals. Many species simply won’t be able to adapt fast enough. According to the most recent UN assessment, 20 to 30 percent of the Earth's plant and animal species face extinction if the world warms by between 1.5 and 2.5 degrees Celsius.

Even for humans, climate change won’t be a smooth transition to a warmer world, warns the Tipping Points Report by Allianz and WWF. Twelve regions around the world could be especially affected by abrupt changes, among them the North Pole, the Amazon rainforest, and California.

All these facts lead scientists to infer that the global warming we now experience is not a natural occurrence and that it is not brought on by natural causes. Humanity’s industrial emissions are responsible, they say.

REFERENCE:http://knowledge.allianz.com/en/globalissues/climate_change/global_warming_basics/global_warming_definition.html

Natural disasters

Research on natural disasters in Indonesia during October 2010.

Natural disasters in Indonesia
1)Mount Merapi volcano, on Indonesia’s island of Java, erupted around 5:00 p.m. on Tuesday, October 26. Death toll = at least 38. Cause: Seismic activity (Merapi is an active volcano)
2)Undersea earthquake triggered to tsunami in the west of Sumatra, Mentawai Islands on Monday, October 25, 2010.
A 7.7 magnitude earthquake struck just 21 kilometers off Mentawai Island sending a massive tidal wave washing over the island and penetrating inland as far as 2 kilometers in some areas.
Five days after the incident the death toll had surpassed 500 with hundreds more gravely injured or missing and feared dead

Mount Merapi eruption was predicted:
Lava from Mount Merapi in Central Java began flowing down the Gendol River over the weekend, signaling an eruption could be imminent, a geologist said on Sunday (http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/news/mount-merapis-swelling-signals-huge-eruption-scientists-warn/403039)