SALT LAKE CITY — University of Utah researchers say an unusual sequence of earthquakes that happened in central Utah in 2018 and 2019 are a reminder of Utah’s old volcanoes in the area are active. Luckily, they say there’s no indication of an imminent eruption.
The research, which was first published in Geophysical Research Letters last month, centered around a pair of peculiar earthquake sequences in the Black Rock Desert near Fillmore. One of the central Utah earthquakes happened on Sept. 12, 2018, and the other happened on April 14, 2019. The quakes registered as 4.0 and 4.1 in magnitude, respectively, and produced several aftershocks.
The location of both earthquakes was the Black Rock Desert volcanic field that’s located in central Utah between I-15 and the Utah-Nevada state line. The volcanic area last erupted approximately 720 years ago, resulting in basalt cinder cones and flows by Ice Springs, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
In addition to the earthquakes being detected by the Utah Regional Seismic Network, they were captured by temporary seismic equipment that was being used less than 20 miles from the desert to monitor a geothermal well for a different project.
A team of researchers from the University of Utah, USGS and the University of Iowa went to work analyzing the data. The temporary equipment helped detect 35 aftershocks after the 2019 quake, which was nearly double what the normal system detected.
They found that the earthquake was 1½ miles below the surface, which is pretty shallow for earthquakes. For example, the 5.7 magnitude earthquake that rattled the Wasatch Front last year happened about 6 miles below the earth’s surface; the 2018 and 2019 central Utah earthquakes were unrelated to the Magna earthquake, Utah’s largest since 1992.
A map of the Black Rock Desert volcanic field. The orange triangles show the location of University of Utah Seismograph Stations and the black dots show the locations of Utah earthquakes. (Photo: University of Utah)
In addition, the earthquakes didn’t produce “shear waves,” which are common for earthquakes in Utah. The frequency of the seismic energy was also much lower than the typical Utah earthquakes, Maria Mesimeri, a postdoctoral research associate for University of Utah Seismograph Stations and the study’s lead author, said in a news release Tuesday.
“Because these earthquakes were so shallow, we could measure surface deformation (due to the quakes) using satellites, which is very unusual for earthquakes this small,” she said.
The data led researchers to believe that the earthquakes weren’t caused by colliding faults like most Utah earthquakes; rather, they said their research indicated these quakes were the result of ongoing activity in the volcanic field underneath the desert.
Mesimeri said it’s likely both earthquakes may have been caused by either magma or heated water that made its way closer to the surface and caused the earthquakes.
“Our findings suggest that the system is still active and that the earthquakes were probably the result of fluid-related movement in the general area,” she said. “The earthquakes could be the result of the fluid squeezing through rock or the result of deformation from fluid movement that stressed the surface faults.”
The good news, she added, is there is no reason to believe the recent earthquakes are warning signs of an imminent eruption. It just means it’s a location that researchers may want to pay attention to more intently.
Having dominated the planet’s surface for hundreds of millions of years, dinosaur diversity came to a dramatic conclusion some 66 million years ago at the hot end of an asteroid impact with what is today Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula.
It’s a theory so swollen with data that it’s hard to imagine any room for doubt remains that this is indeed what happened. Were it a cold case, it’d be rubber-stamped and filed under ‘Solved’ by now.
But scientists are a nitpicky bunch, and a tiny gap in the chain of evidence linking signs of a global apocalypse with the scene of the crime has been begging to be closed.
An international team of researchers collaborating on a study of material from the Yucatán Peninsula’s famous Chicxulub impact crater has finally matched the chemical signature of meteoritic dust within its rock with that of the geological boundary representing the dinosaur extinction event.
It appears to be a clear sign that the thin blanket of dust deposited on Earth’s crust 66 million years ago originated from an impact event at this very spot.
“We are now at the level of coincidence that geologically doesn’t happen without causation,” says geoscientist Sean Gulick from the University of Texas in the US.
Together with fellow geoscientist Joanna Morgan from Imperial College London, Gulick led an expedition in 2016 to retrieve a sample of shattered rock from more than half a kilometre into the crater’s peak ring.
Four different laboratories carried out measurements on the sample. The results not only help unite a major transition in the fossil record with the site, they also hint at a timeline that supports a rapid drop in dinosaur populations over as little as a decade or two.
“If you’re actually going to put a clock on extinction 66 million years ago, you could easily make an argument that it all happened within a couple of decades, which is basically how long it takes for everything to starve to death,” says Gulick.
Half a century ago, the question of why the diversity of fossils representing the Mesozoic era came to such an abrupt end in the geological record was an open one. Whatever was responsible for the sudden loss of 75 percent of life on Earth, it had to be relatively quick, and global.
Hypotheses of such cataclysmic violence were mostly centred on two possibilities – one emerging from underground as a surge of volcanic activity, the other from above in the form of a comet or asteroid strike radically disrupting global climate.
In 1980, American physicist Luis Alvarez and his son, a geologist named Walter, published a study on a thin layer of sediment dividing the dinosaur-populated Cretaceous period from the post-dinosaur world of the Palaeogene.
A defining characteristic of this millimetre- to centimetre-thick thin strip of sedimentary rock was an unusually high amount of the element iridium, a metal that isn’t found in abundance in Earth’s crust.
One place you will find plenty of iridium is in meteorites. So Alvarez and son’s discovery marked the first solid piece of evidence that something from space splattered its remains all over the planet at the time dinosaur biodiversity took a dive.
Coincidentally, the site of that colossal collision was the focus of ongoing research around the same time, though making a clear connection between the 180- to 200-kilometre-long (112- to 125-mile) scar at the southern edge of the Gulf of Mexico with the killer asteroid wouldn’t happen until the 1990s.
Since then, evidence in support of an asteroid impact has only grown stronger, with models going so far as to suggest the angle, as well as the location of the Chicxulub impact, played crucial roles in the magnitude of the extinction event.
Signs that a zone of intense geological activity in western India called the Deccan Traps was contributing vast amounts of greenhouse gases at the time meant the volcano hypothesis has never been entirely ruled out, at least as a possible contributing factor.
Whether this tectonic hotspot played any role in the famous extinction event, or even helped biodiversity recover from it after, is still up for debate.
What is no longer a point of serious discussion is whether the 12-kilometre-wide chunk of rock that struck off the coast of what is now Mexico roughly 66 million years ago is the same one that dusted the remains of countless dinosaurs.
“The circle is now finally complete,” says study leader Steven Goderis, a geochemist from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Belgium.
Ravnsborg struck and killed 55-year-old Joseph Boever on September 12. He initially told police he had hit a deer, but he discovered Boever’s body the following morning after returning to the scene of the collision.
“They’re Joe’s glasses, so that means his face came through your windshield,” one of the detectives told Ravnsborg during an interview that was released by the state on Tuesday, according to the Post.
“His face was in your windshield, Jason. Think about that,” a detective with the North Dakota Bureau of Criminal Investigation said to Ravnsborg, according to the Post, which said the official “denied seeing the pair of glasses inside his vehicle or on the man’s body.” The newspaper said the newly released interviews were recorded on September 14 and September 30.
Prosecutors in the state announced three misdemeanor charges against Ravnsborg last week, the Post said — charges that could result in up to 90 days in jail and $1,500 in damages if the state’s top law enforcement official is found guilty of all of them.
After the police interviews were released, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, a Republican, called on Ravnsborg to step down, writing in a tweet: “Now that the investigation has closed and charges have been filed, I believe the Attorney General should resign.”
“I have reviewed the material we are releasing, starting today, and I encourage others to review it as well,” she wrote.
But Ravnsborg does not plan to resign, according to Mike Deaver, his private spokesman, who told the Argus Leader that “at no time has this issue impeded his ability to do the work of the office.”
Last year, the state released a toxicology report stating that a blood sample given by Ravnsborg the day after the crash showed his blood alcohol content was 0%.
Officials also released last year the 911 call made by Ravnsborg the night of the crash in which he told dispatchers, “I hit something” that was in the middle of the road.
The dispatcher asked, “Are you injured at all, Jason?”
To which Ravnsborg responded, “I am not, but my car sure as hell is.”
Ravnsborg, a Republican, was elected South Dakota attorney general in 2018, according to his office’s website.
CNN’s Paul LeBlanc, Konstantin Toropin and Christina Maxouris contributed to this report.
One was a mother and grandmother there to pick up a gun she had ordered for protection.
Another was a firearms enthusiast working one of his two jobs. The third was there for target practice.
All of them were killed inside Jefferson Gun Outlet in Metairie on Saturday afternoon when an argument over a purported violation of a safety rule devolved into a shootout that sent Veronica Billiot, Herbert “Noah” Fischbach and Joshua Williams to the morgue and two others to the hospital with injuries, officials and loved ones said Sunday.
Details about those who were slain during the bloodshed at the gun shop and indoor shooting range at 1617 Airline Drive emerged a day later, as Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office investigators combed through surveillance video, ballistics evidence and witness statements to reconstruct what happened amid the carnage.
Veronica Billiot had gone into Jefferson Gun Outlet in Metairie on Saturday afternoon to pick up a gun she had ordered for protection when an …
Investigators are scrutinizing a key exchange. Williams, 27, brought a pistol with an extended magazine into the shop and argued with staff when they told him to unload his weapon to comply with a rule prohibiting patrons from having a loaded gun when not in a booth at the target range, multiple law enforcement sources told The Times-Picayune | New Orleans Advocate.
Detectives suspect things escalated so drastically that Williams — who had gone there to use the range, according to relatives — fired a warning round into the ceiling.
The sources said investigators believe Williams then fatally shot Fischbach, 47, the shop clerk. Williams and 59-year-old Billiot — who was there to collect a gun she had ordered ahead of time, according to her family — were then mortally wounded while armed employees and customers in the store began firing.
A 27-year-old New Orleans man sparked the gun battle that left him and two others dead inside of Jefferson Gun Outlet in Metairie on Saturday …
Williams died after running out to the parking lot, which investigators would later find was littered with spent gun cartridges. Billiot died just inside the front entrance of the store, whose glass front doors were shattered. Two other people were injured during the gunbattle and taken to the hospital, though their wounds were not thought to be life-threatening.
Jefferson Coroner Gerry Cvitanovich released the names of Williams, Fischbach and Billiot on Sunday morning. But little new information was available about who at the store fatally shot Williams and Billiot, with investigators still working to establish exactly which of the myriad weapons at the scene were discharged and whom they may have struck.
Whatever the case, three families spent Sunday grieving the devastation wrought by a bloodbath that within hours had made the national news.
Linda Billiot said all indications are that her older sister Veronica “had no clue whatsoever what was going on” when the argument involving Williams started.
“She was completely innocent,” Linda Billiot said during a telephone interview Sunday.
With her voice breaking at times, Linda Billiot remembered how Veronica Billiot stepped up to help raise her two younger sisters because their mother was not in the picture while they grew up in Algiers Point.
She made her living as the military housing property manager at Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base New Orleans in Belle Chasse, Linda Billiot said. Besides her sisters, Veronica Billiot had also raised three children and had six grandchildren.
Linda Billiot said Veronica Billiot’s son was horrified to hear of the quintuple shooting at Jefferson Gun Outlet, knowing his mom had gone there to pick up a weapon she had ordered for self-defense about the time the gunbattle had erupted. Soon, officials confirmed that his mom was among the dead, Linda Billiot said.
“It’s shocking — I’m not processing it,” Linda Billiot said. “I haven’t slept since I learned what happened.”
A 47-year-old gun and film special effects enthusiast and loving husband and father was among those killed Saturday during a shootout that eru…
The president of New Orleans Navy Housing and Patrician Management — Billiot’s employer — said she had “led a full and successful life both at home and work” and was “dedicated to her employees.”
“She served our company and the military families at Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base Belle Chasse for 15 years,” Patrician Management president Alex Lewis said in an emailed statement. “She was a tireless worker with a passion for excellence along with a deep respect for our military families.”
Fischbach’s widow remembered her husband as a devoted partner and father with ambitions to climb the film industry’s career ladder. He worked as a special effects specialist and an armorer, who supervises the proper and safe use of all weapons on a film set.
Because of coronavirus restrictions on the film industry, Fischbach had been spending more time working his other job at Jefferson Gun Outlet, said Nancy Fischbach, his wife of 14 years.
Yet he also made time to be a devoted husband, such as when he planned a day full of surprises such as wine, pastries and other treats for their recent anniversary.
“He was amazing,” Fischbach said of her husband, with whom she was raising a 13-year-old son, Ethan. “Words can’t describe the person he was. He was so genuine, so real, so true. He was my soulmate.”
Williams’ family, for their part, pushed back against statements that he was to blame for the violence at Jefferson Gun Outlet.
A screenshot of a Facebook post from a woman identifying herself as the mother of Joshua Williams, 27.
He went to the store with his brother and some children, a relative of Williams said Saturday. That relative, who declined to be named, doubted Williams would have shown up spoiling for a gun fight at a place he knew to be frequented by off-duty law enforcement officers and ex-military personnel.
Family members noted Williams has gone to other gun ranges in the region and never had a problem. Also, a woman on social media who said she was Williams’ mother posted a message on social media saying he didn’t go into the range shooting and that he was fired at by employees of the business.
“My son … was MURDERED,” wrote the woman, who identified herself as Trudy Edwards.
A knock on the front door of Williams’ home address went unanswered Sunday.
Jefferson Gun Outlet principal Michael Mayer jumped to the defense of Fischbach and his other employees on Sunday.
Mayer said he had to limit his comments because the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office and other officials are still conducting investigations, but he issued a statement accusing Williams of assailing his store’s employees after they asked him to unload his handgun.
“Our store was attacked by Joshua Williams,” Mayer’s statement said, in part. “One customer as well as one employee perished in the (ensuing) gun battle. Joshua Williams, the gunman, is also dead.”
‘Everybody’s strapped in there,’ customer says
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British archaeologists believe they have pinpointed the origins of the 5,000-year-old prehistoric Stonehenge ruin.
A team of scientists, led by University College London’s Mike Parker Pearson, reported in the journal Antiquity on Friday that they had unearthed a stone circle in Wales’ Preseli Hills that they believe had been dismantled and moved 175 miles to Salisbury Plain and reconfigured as Stonehenge.
MYSTERIOUS MONOLITH POPS UP NEAR TURKISH WORLD HERITAGE SITE
The “Waun Mawn” site — previously disregarded over the years — was found to have just four large bluestones left arranged in an arc. Pearson and his researchers uncovered evidence of an additional six holes that originally held a stone in 2018, giving rise to the theory that people had taken them as they migrated.
Upon measuring the diameter of the circular ditch at Waun Mawn, the group found that the ditches surrounding both sites shared identical diameters of about 360 feet across.
In this Tuesday Dec. 17, 2013 file photo, visitors take photographs of the world heritage site of Stonehenge, England. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant, File)
Waun Mawn — which appears to be Britain’s third-largest stone circle — and Stonehenge are the only two Neolithic monuments in Britain that conform to those specifications and examination of charcoal and sediment inside the holes suggested that Waun Mawn’s creation could be traced back to about 3,400 B.C.
In addition, the dimensions of the 43 bluestones at Stonehenge — many of which are buried — match the dimensions of the four at Waun Mawn and are the same type of rock as three of them.
One of the Stonehenge bluestones also has a cross-section that matches one of the gaps at Waun Mawn.
To further prove their connection, Pearson found that the entrance to both circles was aligned toward the midsummer solstice sunrise — though, the circle’s intended purpose remains shrouded in mystery.
Stonehenge was constructed in phases starting at around 3,000 B.C.
The Wiltshire county monument was built using both bluestones and newer and larger sarsen sandstones.
Previous research over the last few decades showed that while the sarsen stones were brought from just 15 miles away in Marlborough, the bluestone pillars had been extracted from the Preseli Hills.
In 2019, Pearson and his team provided evidence of the locations of two of the bluestone quarries, prompting them to look over Waun Mawn again.
Scientific analysis of human remains at Stonehenge indicated that some of them could have come from Wales, and further excavations are planned to try to understand more.
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Pearson hypothesized both that Stonehenge was made to commemorate the ancestors of those who built it and that Stonehenge’s first stage may have served to unite the people of southern Britain.
“Maybe most of the people migrated, taking their stones – their ancestral identities – with them, to start again in this other special place,” he said in a news release. “This extraordinary event may also have served to unite the peoples of east and west Britain.”
The family of Chloe Wiegand, a toddler who fatally plunged 150 feet to her death from an 11th-story window of Royal Caribbean’s Freedom of the Seas cruise ship, is seeking to sanction the cruise line.
The family alleges “spoiltation” of video footage of the incident that was requested by the plaintiffs and the U.S. Coast Guard.
A series of motions filed this week claim Royal Caribbean “knowingly and intentionally destroyed critical CCTV footage of the time leading up to the incident,” which was “fatal” to its defense and would have exonerated Chloe’s devastated grandfather, Indiana resident Salvatore Anello.
The filing claims the cruise line’s “clear intent to deprive the plaintiffs of this critical information” warrants “the imposition of the harshest sanctions, including entry of default judgment against Royal Caribbean.”
GRANDFATHER CHARGED IN TODDLER’S FATAL FALL FROM CRUISE SHIP AVOIDS JAIL TIME
On-board footage of the incident shows Anello alone on the deck with Chloe, who leads him toward the glass sides of the ships. Anello is then seen lifting the toddler up and sitting her down on a wooden handrail before she suddenly falls forward and disappears from view after trying to bang on the glass.
“All I know is I was trying to reach the glass and I know that we leaned over to try to have her reach the glass, at that point she slipped,’ Anello told CBS News in an interview. “Chloe being gone is the worst thing ever so I’m like, whatever, you know? There’s nothing worse that they could do to me than what’s already happened.”
Anello, 51, pleaded guilty to criminally negligent homicide in October in connection to Chloe’s death and was sentenced to three years of probation Monday by a judge in San Juan.
ROYAL CARIBBEAN WAITING ON CDC TO LAUNCH TEST SAILINGS, EXECUTIVE SAYS: ‘WE DONT HAVE DATES YET’
The family argues in the new filing that the incident was preventable due to the fact that Royal Caribbean knew that pool deck windows were a “fall hazard for small children,” that passengers were “sitting, standing and climbing on, over and across railings,” that parents “placed children on the railings and next to open windows” and that, even without being placed by adults, “children could still access the windows by climbing the furniture placed right next to the railings.”
“All of this was known because Royal Caribbean’s Guest Conduct Policy and crewmembers warned passengers of these dangers, and there were numerous incidents involving these hazardous circumstances, including one child’s near-fall incident merely two years before Chloe’s death,” the filing states. “However, Royal Caribbean chose to ignore those prior incidents and known hazards and consequently, this tragedy occurred. In the aftermath of this tragedy, Royal Caribbean’s strategy has become apparent.”
Among the evidence included in the new filings is a declaration from the boat’s former chief security officer, Elton Koopman, who said he “personally witnessed repeated incidents of fall hazards involving the pool deck windows.”
Koopman noted he “attended numerous safety meetings where such fall hazards were discussed, and he contributed in the effort to rectify the hazard by keeping the windows closed and warning passengers.”
ROYAL CARIBBEAN CLAIMS GRANDFATHER KNEW WINDOW WAS OPEN BEFORE TODDLER’S FATAL FALL
According to the filing, both the Wiegand family and the Coast Guard made requests for the closed-circuit television footage surrounding the time of the incident in order to determine who opened the windows and why, and whether it was a crew member who should have been aware of Koopman’s warnings.
However, the filing claims that Capt. Frank Martinsen of Royal Caribbean’s Freedom of the Seas “ignored the Coast Guard’s question as to whether there was CCTV showing who opened the window” as well as its “request to provide them CCTV footage of the windows being opened.”
The filing adds that the Freedom of the Seas has at least one camera that would have clearly shown who opened and closed the windows, but that Royal Caribbean “just did not want this information to come to light.”
“Instead, Royal Caribbean reviewed the footage requested, unilaterally determined it was not relevant, and retained only the 30 minutes of footage prior to the incident from the two cameras that captured the incident,” the filing continues. “Thereafter, Royal Caribbean knowingly and intentionally destroyed the remaining CCTV footage.”
The filing also states that Royal Caribbean admitted to receiving letters requesting the CCTV footage, but that it offers “no reasonable explanation” for its failure to preserve the footage.
“It is apparent that this critical evidence was destroyed in bad faith. The CCTV was destroyed because it was fatal to Royal Caribbean’s defense and would have exonerated Mr. Anello,” the filing continues. “The video likely shows that a crewmember opened the window and thus created the very condition that led to Chloe’s death. This is not a narrative that Royal Caribbean would allow. Only the harshest of sanctions can remedy the extreme prejudice suffered by the Wiegands.”
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The Wiegand family’s attorney, Michael Winkleman, said in a statement that they were “pleased that the criminal proceedings have finished and resulted in no jail time and no admission of facts for Chloe’s grandfather” and that there was “not a single piece of evidence to support the argument that Salvatore Anello was aware the window was open.”
“Instead, the evidence is clear that Mr. Anello made an honest mistake, but because of Royal Caribbean’s failure to take any steps to protect its youngest passengers, it turned into a fatal tragedy,” Winkleman said.
A spokesperson for Royal Caribbean did not immediately respond to FOX News’ request for comment.
An investigation by the World Health Organization in China on the origins of the coronavirus found that there might have been coronavirus cases in China two months earlier than originally identified.
The four-week investigation showed there were over 90 people in central China who were hospitalized for coronavirus symptoms two months before Dec. 8, 2019, the day China says the first coronavirus patient was found, the Wall Street Journal reported.
WHO wants China to test blood samples from a wider population from the fall of 2019 to confirm their theory, but Chinese authorities said they aren’t allowed to test them yet, WHO investigators told WSJ.
China officials did do antibody testing on some of the 90 patients that were found to have coronavirus symptoms last fall, but there were no antibodies found in them. However, WHO investigators think they just waited too long to test them and the antibodies subsided, WSJ says.
It is unclear how long antibodies survive in the body for the coronavirus as there is debate on whether they last a couple of weeks or a couple of months.
Blood samples and medical records have been checked, but there has been no evidence that the virus appeared before December of 2019, Liang Wannian, head of the coronavirus panel for China’s National Health Commission, said Tuesday,
More studies and blood samples will be required in order to determine if the coronavirus was around before December of 2019.
Artist impression of an exoplanet. Credit: ESA/ATG medialab, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
One of the properties that make a planet suitable for life is the presence of a weather system. Exoplanets are too far away to directly observe this, but astronomers can search for substances in the atmosphere that make a weather system possible. Researchers from SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research and the University of Groningen have now found evidence on exoplanet WASP-31b for chromium hydride, which at the corresponding temperature and pressure is on the boundary between liquid and gas. The study is published in Astronomy & Astrophysics.
While space probes scan the planets and moons around our Sun for extraterrestrial life, there are hundreds of billions of other stars in our galaxy, most of which probably also surrounded by planets. These so-called exoplanets are too far away to travel to, but we can study them with our telescopes. Although the spatial resolution is usually insufficient to make a picture of an exoplanet, astronomers can still get a lot of information from the fingerprints the atmosphere leaves behind in the light rays of the host star.
From those fingerprints—so-called transmission spectra—astronomers deduce which substances are in the atmosphere of an exoplanet. Those could one day give an indication of extraterrestrial life. Or they can show that there is a condition for life, such as a weather system. For the time being, however, this type of research is limited to giant planets close to their stars, so-called hot Jupiters. These planets are too hot to expect life, but they can already teach us a lot about how possible weather systems work. A research team from SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research and the University of Groningen has now found evidence for a substance at the boundary between liquid and gas. On Earth this is reminiscent of clouds and rain.
First author Marrick Braam and his colleagues found evidence in Hubble data for chromium hydride (CrH) in the atmosphere of exoplanet WASP-31b. This is a hot Jupiter with a temperature of about 1,200 °C in the twilight zone between day and night—the place where starlight travels through the atmosphere towards Earth. And that happens to be around the temperature at which chromium hydride transitions from liquid to gas at the corresponding pressure in the outer layers of the planet, similar to the conditions for water on Earth. “Chromium hydride could play a role in a possible weather system on this planet, with clouds and rain,” says Braam.
It is the first time that chromium hydride is found on a hot Jupiter and therefore at the right pressure and temperature. Braam: “We should add that we only found chromium hydride using the Hubble space telescope. We did not see it in the data from the ground telescope VLT. There are logical explanations for this, but we therefore use the term evidence instead of proof.”
When Hubble’s successor—the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)—is launched later this year, the team plans to use it for further investigation. “Hot Jupiters, including WASP-31b, always have the same side facing their host star,” says co-author and SRON Exoplanets program leader Michiel Min. “We therefore expect a day side with chromium hydride in gaseous form and a night side with liquid chromium hydride. According to theoretical models, the large temperature difference creates strong winds. We want to confirm that with observations.”
Co-author Floris van der Tak (SRON/UG) says, “With JWST we are looking for chromium hydride on ten planets with different temperatures, to better understand how the weather systems on those planets depend on the temperature.”
Astronomers see unexpected molecule in exoplanet atmosphere
More information:
Marrick Braam, Floris F. S. van der Tak, Katy L. Chubb, and Michiel Min, ‘Evidence for chromium hydride in the atmosphere of hot Jupiter WASP-31b’, Astronomy & Astrophysics, 2021.
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“This report provides the first direct evidence to date that COVID-19 infection impairs semen quality and male reproductive potential,” the study said.
However, experts not involved in the study were immediately skeptical about the report’s conclusion and urged caution in overgeneralizing the research findings.
“I need to raise a strong note of caution in their interpretation of this data. For example, the authors state that their data demonstrates that ‘COVID-19 infection causes significant impairments of male reproductive function’ yet it only actually shows an association,” said Allan Pacey, a professor of andrology at The University of Sheffield in South Yorkshire, United Kingdom, via email.
“Being ill from any virus such as flu can temporarily drop your sperm count (sometimes to zero) for a few weeks or months. This makes it difficult to work out how much of the reductions observed in this study were specific to COVID-19 rather than just from being ill,” said Dr. Channa Jayasena, a consultant in reproductive endocrinology and andrology at Imperial College London, in an email.
In addition, “it is important to note that there is no evidence of Covid-19 virus in the semen and that there is no evidence that virus can be transmitted via semen,” said Alison Murdoch, who heads Newcastle Fertility Centre at the International Centre forLife, Newcastle University in the UK, via email.
Small study of 84 men
The study age-matched 105 fertile men without Covid-19 to 84 fertile men diagnosed with the coronavirus and analyzed their semen at 10-day intervals for 60 days.
Compared to healthy men without Covid-19, the study found a significant increase in inflammation and oxidative stress in sperm cells belonging to men with Covid-19. Their sperm concentration, mobility and shape were also negatively impacted by the virus.
The differences grew with the severity of the sickness, the study found.
“These effects on sperm cells are associated with lower sperm quality and reduced fertility potential. Although these effects tended to improve over time, they remained significantly and abnormally higher in the COVID-19 patients, and the magnitude of these changes were also related to disease severity,” said lead researcher Behzad Hajizadeh Maleki, a doctoral student at Justus Liebig University Giessen, in Hesse, Germany, in a statement.
There were also much higher levels of ACE2 enzymatic activity in men with Covid, the study found. ACE2, or angiotensin-converting enzyme 2, is the protein that provides the entry point for the novel coronavirus to hook into and infect a wide range of human cells
However, it’s not surprising that Covid-19 might impact the male reproductive system because ACE2 receptors, or the “same receptors which the virus uses to gain access to the tissues of the lung, are also found in the testicles,” said Pacey, who is also editor in chief of the journal Human Fertility.
An ongoing concern
“Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, there has been an understandable (but theoretical) concern about whether this coronavirus might have a detrimental impact on the fertility of men who become infected,” Pacey said.
After reviewing some 14 studies published on the topic, Pacey said he concluded that “any measurable effect of coronavirus on male fertility was probably only slight and temporary.”
The findings of this study, he added, could be due to other factors, such as the use of medications to treat the virus, which the authors also acknowledged in the study.
“Therefore, all I see in this dataset are possible differences in the sperm quality between men who are sick with a febrile illness (fever)and those who were well. We already know that a febrile illness can impact on sperm production, regardless of what caused it,” Pacey said.
Sheena Lewis, a professor emeritus at Queen’s University Belfast in Ireland, shared similar thoughts via email: “My concerns are that the men with COVID had substantially higher body weight and were on a number of therapeutic treatments.
“We know that obesity alone reduces sperm quality. The COVID treatments may also have affected these men’s sperm quality, rather that COVID itself,” Lewis said.
“Thus, longer term studies are needed before the testes is considered to be a high-risk organ specific to Covid-19,” Newcastle’s Murdoch said.
75% of its orbit in the solar wind (yellow), which is blocked by the magnetosphere the rest of the time. Credit: E. Masongsong, UCLA EPSS, NASA GSFC SVS.” width=”800″ height=”496″/>
Artist’s depiction of the Moon in the magnetosphere, with “Earth wind” made up of flowing oxygen ions (gray) and hydrogen ions (bright blue), which can react with the lunar surface to create water. The Moon spends >75% of its orbit in the solar wind (yellow), which is blocked by the magnetosphere the rest of the time. Credit: E. Masongsong, UCLA EPSS, NASA GSFC SVS.
Before the Apollo era, the moon was thought to be dry as a desert due to the extreme temperatures and harshness of the space environment. Many studies have since discovered lunar water: ice in shadowed polar craters, water bound in volcanic rocks, and unexpected rusty iron deposits in the lunar soil. Despite these findings, there is still no true confirmation of the extent or origin of lunar surface water.
The prevailing theory is that positively charged hydrogen ions propelled by the solar wind bombard the lunar surface and spontaneously react to make water (as hydroxyl (OH–) and molecular (H2O)). However, a new multinational study published in Astrophysical Journal Letters proposes that solar wind may not be the only source of water-forming ions. The researchers show that particles from Earth can seed the moon with water, as well, implying that other planets could also contribute water to their satellites.
Water is far more prevalent in space than astronomers first thought, from the surface of Mars to Jupiter’s moons and Saturn’s rings, comets, asteroids and Pluto; it has even been detected in clouds far beyond our solar system. It was previously assumed that water was incorporated into these objects during the formation of the solar system, but there is growing evidence that water in space is far more dynamic. Though the solar wind is a likely source for lunar surface water, computer models predict that up to half of it should evaporate and disappear at high-latitude regions during the approximately three days of the full moon when it passes within Earth’s magnetosphere.
Surprisingly, the latest analysis of surface hydroxyl/water surface maps by the Chandrayaan-1 satellite’s Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) showed that lunar surface water does not disappear during this magnetosphere shielding period. Earth’s magnetic field was thought to block the solar wind from reaching the moon so that water could not be regenerated faster than it was lost, but the researchers found this was not the case.
By comparing a time series of water surface maps before, during and after the magnetosphere transit, the researchers argue that lunar water could be replenished by flows of magnetospheric ions, also known as “Earth wind.” The presence of these Earth-derived ions near the moon was confirmed by the Kaguya satellite, while THEMIS-ARTEMIS satellite observations were used to profile the distinctive features of ions in the solar wind versus those within the magnetosphere Earth wind.
Previous Kaguya satellite observations during the full moon detected high concentrations of oxygen isotopes that leaked out of Earth’s ozone layer and embedded in lunar soil, along with an abundance of hydrogen ions in our planet’s vast extended atmosphere, known as the exosphere. These combined flows of magnetosphere particles are fundamentally different from those in the solar wind. Thus, the latest detection of surface water in this study refutes the shielding hypothesis and instead suggest that the magnetosphere itself creates a “water bridge” that can replenish the moon.
The study employed a multidisciplinary team of experts from cosmochemistry, space physics and planetary geology to contextualize the data. Prior interpretations of surface water did not consider the effects of Earth ions and did not examine how surface water changed over time. The only surface maps and particle data available during a full moon in the magnetosphere were in winter and summer 2009, and it took the past several years to analyze and interpret the results. The analysis was especially difficult due to the scarce observations, which were required to compare the same lunar surface conditions over time and to control for temperature and surface composition.
In light of these findings, future studies of the solar wind and planetary winds can reveal more about the evolution of water in our solar system and the potential effects of solar and magnetosphere activity on other moons and planetary bodies. Expanding this research will require new satellites equipped with comprehensive hydroxyl/water mapping spectrometers, and particle sensors in orbit and on the lunar surface to fully confirm this mechanism. These tools can help to predict the best regions for future exploration, mining and eventual settlement on the moon. Practically, this research can influence the design of upcoming space missions to better safeguard humans and satellites from particle radiation hazards, and also improve computer models and laboratory experiments of water formation in space.
Water on the Moon: Research unveils its type and abundance – boosting exploration plans
More information:
Earth wind as a possible source of lunar surface hydration. arxiv.org/abs/1903.04095
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UCLA Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences
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First evidence that water can be created on the lunar surface by Earth’s magnetosphere (2021, January 28)
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