The Fort Worth Fire Department said they were on scene of a 100-car pileup with “multiple people trapped.”
Storyful
NEW YORK – A winter storm dropped ice and snow along a 1,500-mile swath of land Thursday from central Texas through southern New Jersey, triggering widespread power outages and deadly pileups on treacherous highways.
In Fort Worth, Texas, where roads were slick and icy, a 70-vehicle pileup led to five deaths and multiple injuries on I-35 Thursday morning, the Police Department said.
Farther south, in Austin, more than two dozen vehicles were involved in a pileup on an icy road, and one person was injured, emergency officials said. “This cannot be overstated today,” the National Weather Service in Austin tweeted Thursday morning. “PLEASE, DO NOT TRAVEL in the Hill Country and northern I-35 corridor. Conditions will continue to deteriorate as elevated roadways ice over first, followed by other roads.”
The storm that’s likely to affect millions moved into parts of Arkansas and Kentucky overnight and Thursday morning. It could bring up to half an inch of ice accumulation in some areas, the weather service said.
“A mixture of sleet and freezing rain is forecast to gradually come to an end today, but not before leaving a long swath of damaging ice accumulations,” the weather service said.
The Ozarks to the I-64 corridor in eastern Kentucky could see a quarter-inch of ice, according to the weather service.
“This amount of ice will likely lead to hazardous travel conditions, power outages and scattered tree damage,” the weather service said in a forecast.
In the Fort Worth crash, Mike Drivdahl, a public information officer for the Fire Department, told USA TODAY that first responders had to rescue multiple people from their vehicles using hydraulic tools. In addition to the fatalities, injuries ranged from minor to critical, and some people were transported to area hospitals.
The incident occurred around a toll lane separated by a concrete barrier that created a “funnel type of effect,” Drivdahl said.
“I’m sure it’s going to come down to a chain reaction kind of event,” he said. Sand and ice melt were needed to make the roads safe for first responders trying to access the scene of the crash, he said.
CLOSE
Arctic air brings very cold temperatures and the threat for snow and ice into the Ohio Valley and into the mid-Atlantic through late this week.
Accuweather
More than 57,000 customers in Kentucky and 43,000 in West Virginia were without power Thursday afternoon, according to tracking website PowerOutage.us.
Through Friday, the storm is forecast to bring light snow to the Ohio Valley and Central Appalachians to the Mid-Atlantic, which could see 2 to 6 inches, according to the weather service.
More freezing rain is possible Friday for the central Appalachians and parts of Virginia and northern North Carolina, the weather service said.
“Accidents and icy conditions could potentially shut down portions of highways for an extended period,” AccuWeather senior meteorologist Paul Walker said.
In Kentucky, the severe weather resulted in schools, COVID-19 vaccination sites and state offices closing. Louisville’s MetroSafe reported 10 crashes from 5 to 7 a.m. Thursday, including a wreck on I-64 that resulted in injuries. Wednesday saw 70 crashes from 1 to 10 p.m., including 17 with injuries.
Memphis woke up Thursday morning with a fresh blanket of ice slush on the roads and sagging tree limbs heavy with a sheath of frozen precipitation. Wednesday evening into Thursday morning, there was a rare appearance of “thunder ice,” or a thunderstorm with freezing rain or ice.
Amid light snow Wednesday evening, an airplane with nearly 80 passengers slid off the runway at Pittsburgh International Airport, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported. There were no injuries.
A light dusting of snow that fell overnight blanketed cars and sidewalks in New York City on Thursday morning.
The weather service said gusty winds could cause damage Thursday into Friday, and bitterly cold temperatures are expected into the weekend.
In Dallas, that cold air blast could lead to the Texas city’s first snowfall of the season Sunday, AccuWeather said.
“Anytime you get an Arctic air mass into Texas, you always have to worry about snow and ice because, at some point, warmer air is going to try to return. And when warmer air collides with that colder air, you get clouds and precipitation,” AccuWeather chief on-air meteorologist Bernie Rayno said.
The Pacific Northwest was also expected to see “impactful winter weather” through Saturday, the weather service said.
“A low-pressure system is forecast to enter southern Oregon this evening while simultaneously interacting with very cold air draining into the region. This combination may lead to not only heavy snow across the typical mountainous locations, but in the lowlands as well,” the forecast said.
Seattle and Portland could see some snow: AccuWeather predicted 1-3 inches in both cities.
Contributing: Billy Kobin, Louisville Courier-Journal; Micaela A. Watts, Memphis Commercial Appeal; The Associated Press
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Take our mittened hand and let Polygon’s Winter Games package for 2021 guide you through the playground of wintertime games — what’s great, what’s not, and what exciting features await you in the games coming out in February and March.
Winter means different things to different people around the world, but I grew up in Ohio and Kentucky. So for me, winter means riding sleds down huge hills, making snow angels, and staying home from school seemingly once a week due to snow days. Snow and ice defined my childhood when it came to winter, but video games may be the only experience of wintry weather for many people around the world.
Snow and ice are fascinating tools when it comes to game design; they have so many uses! A blizzard can obscure a character’s vision, adding tension to a scene. Ice may make a level slippery, so players have to adjust how they navigate the world. The cold may also sap energy, making it an environmental threat.
Or, maybe talented artists put some snow in a scene just because it’s pretty. There are no wrong answers here, outside of how ice was used in Ecco the Dolphin. That was wrong.
So with that, I’d like to present the 10 essential games that feature ice and/or snow in fascinating, noteworthy, or even just aesthetically pleasing ways. This includes examples in which snow actually ruined the game, or at least a chunk of it, in a way that became noteworthy.
If your favorite snow level isn’t on this list, let me know what it is in the comments; I’m always on the lookout for better powder in my entertainment.
Metal Gear Solid
Image: Konami Computer Entertainment Japan/Konami via Polygon
There have been plenty of games with snow or ice before 1998’s Metal Gear Solid — anyone who has suffered through a slippery level in an NES-era game will tell you that — but Hideo Kojima & co. were one of the first teams to use snow in a way that didn’t just look good or change how long it took your character to stop. The snow in Metal Gear Solid actually impacted the stealth mechanics, which seems like an obvious addition these days, but felt like a huge jump forward in game design at the time.
Making footprints in the snow would give the guards a way to track you, even if seeing those marks didn’t necessarily set off an alarm by itself. This could be a weakness, since you had to make sure the guards couldn’t follow your footprints right to you, but you could also use it as a way to control their movement, getting them out of the way or just removing any guesswork from where they might go next.
It’s a downside that could be turned to your advantage, and it was one of the fun little design innovations that helped make Metal Gear Solid one of the best-loved games of the PlayStation era. Snow: It can straight-up kill you if you’re not careful.
Red Dead Redemption 2
Image: Rockstar Games
Red Dead Redemption 2 tells a long, twisting story about a changing world that may not have much room for professional outlaws anymore. And that story begins in the snow.
But it’s not just any snow. The game’s opening scenes introduce us to a gang on the run after a job goes poorly, and a blizzard is yet another obstacle in their path. While the rest of Red Dead Redemption 2 features a temperature mechanic that forces you to dress appropriately if you’re going to adventure out in the cold, these moments are content to let the beautifully realized frigid environment speak for itself.
The characters are miserable and desperate, and the snow effects go a long way toward selling that reality. It’s handled so well I felt like I needed to get a coat to keep playing.
Every single Hoth level
Image: 20th Century Fox
George Lucas treated planets in Star Wars as if each one had a single biome, or at least made sure the important scenes from each location had a strong central idea. Which is why you have huge redwood trees on the moon of Endor — it’s a forest moon, as Admiral Ackbar helpfully tells us. Meanwhile, Hoth is a frozen hell where tauntauns freeze before they reach the first marker. It’s never quite explained what that means, or how far away the markers are, but it’s serious.
Hoth is apparently nothing but ice and snow as a planet, and the developers of Star Wars video games used to put a Hoth level in just about every game.
There’s a Hoth level in the NES Empire Strikes Back title.
And a Hoth level in Shadows of the Empire.
Hoth level in Rebel Assault? Of course!
A Hoth level in Rogue Squadron.
And a Hoth level in Rogue Squadron 2.
And a Hoth Level in the first Battlefront.
Battlefront 2? Oh yeah, there was a Hoth level.
This isn’t even scratching the surface. There are more Hoth levels than I’d care to count, but I can’t blame anyone for going back there one more time when making a Star Wars game. Everything about the Battle of Hoth was visually arresting, from the opening moments in the trench cut into the snow, to the first glimpse of the AT-ATs, to Luke Skywalker figuring out how to take them down with a tow cable. It’s perfect for games, and developers still don’t seem to be finished with trying to do it a little better.
Snow-bowling
Image: Ferry Halim
Ferry Halim created a classic website of calming, beautiful games called Orisinal back in 2000, and it was one of the best places to find games with nonviolent themes and soothing music. It was magical, but the death of Flash means that the games can no longer be played, although some still exist as iOS apps.
This is currently the only tweet on the Orisinal account:
It’s the end of 2020 and also the end of Flash Player. I still remember making my first Flash game, “Apple Season”. Good times.
— Orisinal (@OrisinalGames) December 31, 2020
While the overall tone of Orisinal was peaceful and harmonious, Snow-bowling was oddly mean-spirited. There were happy people ice skating in front of you, and your challenge was to hit them with huge snowballs, thus ruining their day. And that’s it! Hit the contented skaters with your snowballs, see how many points you can get, and be mean for no reason while being surrounded by serenity. It was a weird tonal shift for the site, but I’ll never forget it.
Lost Planet
Lost Planet was released in 2006, and it’s one of those rare third-person action games with solid production values that isn’t tied to any existing properties. The hero is a worker on a colonized planet called E.D.N. III, which is in the throes of a brutal ice age. It’s filled with creatures called Akrid that carry their own orange, glowing radiant energy, which is used almost like oil is in our time: It’s how just about everything that moves gets power. You kill the bugs, you get the energy, you stay alive.
Since people are no match for the giant, killer Akrid, Lost Planet introduces powered armor — guess what powers it — to even the odds a little bit. The story takes some bizarre twists and time jumps, but the fundamental design of the game shows the power of using cold well. You’re constantly losing energy when you’re out in the world, which keeps you from ever forgetting that you’re in a hostile environment that doesn’t give a shit about you or your survival. And the white of the game’s environments provides a wonderful contrast to the glowing red and orange of the Akrid.
The things that are supposed to be cold in the game look cold, and the things that are supposed to be hot look hot. Making everything temperature-based allowed Capcom to use a color palette that’s instantly understandable to just about anyone who plays it.
Lost Planet wasn’t a perfect game, but it proved there was still plenty of life left in the idea of using snow and ice as the primary environment for your game.
SkiFree
SkiFree was first released in 1991 as part of Microsoft Entertainment Pack 3, or at least, that’s what Wikipedia tells me. The reality is that I remember SkiFree just kinda being everywhere when I was growing up, including on school computers. These were the days when any game you found on a computer in class was a big deal, and every moment of SkiFree was seared into the brains of people who grew up around this time.
The point was simple: You use the arrow keys to ski down a hill, taking jumps, avoiding obstacles, and going as fast as possible. You can kinda win, I guess, in that at some point a mutant yeti eats you. I guess there’s just no way to survive a run? The creator of the game published this wonderful and breezy history of it, including his favorite piece of fan mail:
Date: Sun, 11 Feb 1996 11:28:22 -0400
Subject: ski free!
If this is the correct person, please tell me why the stupid fucking monster
comes out from nowhere and eats my main guy before he gets to the bottom of
the hill. Nothing personal, but this is Sunday morning & I really did not
like the idea of getting eaten by the monster this early. What I am really
trying to say is fix the program or stop making games for the likes of me,
who can’t win. Actually, you ruined my day. Have a nice one,
THE WOODMAN
Anyway, you can play it again for yourself. It’s good for about five minutes’ worth of nostalgia before you realize you’re not a kid anymore and you probably have access to just about any game you want on any device because you’re an adult and the teachers can’t tell you to stop wasting time on computer games over and over, even though those “silly games” are the only thing getting you through most days.
It’s fine. School was fine.
Gears 5
Image: The Coalition/Xbox Game Studios
One of the best things about AAA games is that with teams that big, and budgets that huge, features that may get pushed aside in smaller games are sometimes given much more care and attention. Such is the case with the ice cracking effect in Gears 5, which you can use to drop enemies down into the freezing water, killing them, before you get to watch the ice re-form. It looks, sounds, and feels amazing, and is another case of a developer using ice’s core characteristics as a mechanic.
“This kind of feature, that is both a visual and gameplay focus, hits almost every discipline on our team,” campaign design director Matt Searcy told Polygon in an interview. “Design, animation, VFX, audio, and programmers are all involved in realizing the ice effect from the earliest gameplay prototype to the finished polished state.”
All that work, just for some cracking ice. It seems like a small thing, but when I started thinking about the use of ice and snow in games, this came into my head first. Sometimes it really is those little details that turn a good game into a great one.
SSX Tricky
SSX Tricky was basically SkiFree, but with snowboards instead of skis, and David Arquette instead of a yeti. So, basically, everything was upgraded.
The subsequent sequels kinda drove the series into the ground, but for two wonderful games, ending with Tricky, SSX just couldn’t be beat when it came to snow sports games of any kind. It was that good.
I mean heck, remember when the PlayStation 2 launched in the U.S. and the original SSX was pretty much the only good game for it? Which wasn’t even much of a problem, because buying a PS2 just for SSX would have been a fine investment in your future.
Rise of the Tomb Raider
Image: Crystal Dynamics/Square Enix
It may be a little strange to have your snow effects be one of the larger draws of your game outside of the franchise itself, but 2016’s Rise of the Tomb Raider featured some of the best snow effects to date, and they still stand up when measured against newer games.
“This isn’t sarcastic, I’m actually floored by the snow,” one Steam commenter stated. “It’s the best I have ever seen. Being in PA and just going through that massive blizzard, it’s uncanny how they nailed it, from the way you walk in deep snow, to the trail you leave, even the powder that blows up in the wind as you walk.”
Like with Gears 5, snow this good doesn’t just happen — it takes a whole lot of time and effort. Even if the snow effects worked on their own, the designers also had to make sure that Lara Croft interacted with the snow in a way that felt real. No one walks on or through snow the same way they walk across anything else, and that presents its own challenges.
“Another challenge was Lara’s surroundings never affecting her. Lara could move through the world with ease, oblivious to what she was interacting with,” Mike Oliver, technical art director on Rise of the Tomb Raider, said in a blog post about the technology. “We rectified this by dynamically adjusting her movement rate and animation based on the depth of the deformation. Lara would now slow down and struggle through deep snow, grounding her in a believable world.”
Ecco the Dolphin
Spelunky creator Derek Yu explained the appeal of ice levels as a designer during a recent interview with Kotaku, and the points he made hint at where Ecco the Dolphin went so wrong with its Ice Zone:
And I have to be honest: I kind of feel like a lot of game designers add ice levels not particularly because they really like the slippery ice, but more because snowy, icy places—it’s just kind of a major biome in real life. I think it also brings with it a lot of colors we don’t often see in other biomes, and those are things we think about.
So to include it is to include a kind of variety that, in a way, is sort of hard to pass up, because it’s right there. People have certain expectations tied to it. Players implicitly understand what an ice-based world kind of means. You’re getting those expectations, those colors, those feelings for free. So I wouldn’t say that designers include them for the ice. I’d say the ice is maybe more of, like, sort of a side thing that just happens to come with the snowy or icy biome, which is the more interesting part for designers.
Ecco’s Ice Zone narrows the game’s experience to a series of thin passages, and likewise limits the places where you can leave or enter the water. It’s like someone made a bet that no one could make something as bad as a water level and an ice level combined, and then someone else won that bet by creating Ice Zone.
Just in case this wasn’t horrible enough, the zone is choked with enemies, which gave me similar claustrophobia to the water level from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on NES, with its ridiculous difficulty and lethal environment that required precise movements.
Ice Zone doesn’t take too long to finish if you know exactly what to do, which is a blessing, but it does remove just about everything that made Ecco the Dolphin such an enchanting game.
Which is probably the best lesson we can end this list on: If your ice level, or your snow effect, doesn’t serve some kind of practical purpose — if there isn’t a good “why” for it — it’s probably best to leave it out.
The opposite can be said for David Arquette, but that’s a completely different discussion.
Enlarge / While we know of locations with ice on Mars, not all of them are in places we’d want to land.
Over the past couple decades, plans to go to Mars or return to the Moon for longer stays have gradually moved away from sci-fi tinged “what if” scenarios and shifted to something that resembles actual planning. And those plans invariably include extracting water from local ice deposits. This water would help support any astronauts during their stay, cutting down on the weight we’d have to shift out of Earth orbit. But it could also be a source of hydrogen that helps power the astronaut’s return trip to Earth.
That obviously means we want to land where the water is. On the Moon, this has meant focusing on the lunar poles, where deep craters create permanent shadows that can hold ice at temperatures where it’s stable. On Mars, the situation is considerably more complicated. In response to some NASA pilot funding, a team of scientists set up the SWIM projectM, for Subsurface Water Ice Mapping on Mars, to analyze the data. The project has now published a progress report showing a lot of ice deposits in areas we might want to land.
No poles, please
Whether or not water ice is stable on the Moon is determined entirely by sunlight exposure. As long as the Sun is never visible in a location, ice can survive. Mars is substantially more complicated, with an atmosphere that distributes heat and makes the temperature extremes far more moderate, plus orbital wobbles that ensure seasonal changes in temperature.
Mars does have polar ice, but the number of these deposits changes with the seasons (and a lot of it is frozen carbon dioxide). Further from the poles, there’s a region where temperatures would allow water ice to be stable, should it form there. But that region’s still far from the equator, which means more extreme cold and less solar energy for any photovoltaic equipment we might bring with us. Ideally, it would be nice to find some ice in temperate regions, and some reports have suggested locations where it might reside.
The SWIM team decided to take a far more comprehensive approach, using data from multiple instruments to try to establish a degree of confidence in the presence of water. To do so, the team developed its own ice scoring system.
That data comes from a number of instruments we’ve put in orbit above Mars. These include a neutron counter (neutrons scatter differently in ice than in rock) and two forms of radar that register the presence and depth of ice deposits. In addition, water tends to transmit heat poorly, so measurements of thermal flux can be indicative of its presence. Finally, by comparing them to glacial features on Earth, we can infer the presence of ice sheets from photographs of the terrain.
The authors created a scale for each of these five measurements that ranged from -1 (ice extremely unlikely) to 1 (ice almost certainly present). They then averaged the five, creating an overall score for the possible presence of ice. This allowed some methods to compensate for the shortcomings of others. For example, neutron scattering is extremely sensitive but could be blocked by a layer of dust less than a half-meter thick. Radar is less sensitive but can pick up material much further below the surface.
Given the researchers’ averaging technique, having one decisive reading would create a score of 0.2 if all the others methods were ambiguous. A score of 0.5 would mean that at least three of the methods strongly indicated the likely presence of water.
Go north, but not too far north
The first survey, reported here, has analyzed Mars’ northern hemisphere, from the equator up to 60º in latitude. There’s a small region along the east-west axis that’s not included, but otherwise, the data includes most of the area where we might reasonably expect to land. Adding to the appeal, the area includes a lot of open plains with suitable terrain for dropping something out of orbit.
To an extent, the data is consistent with what we already had suspected. Modeling of temperature profiles had identified the northern areas within this region as likely to be able to support ice, and the readings go up as you move north. An examination of some of the regions that the mapping project identified show that impacts in the area tend to expose ice (all 13 of the ice-exposing impacts that the researcher looked at were within one pixel of an area scored as likely to contain ice). Finally, a few of the areas identified by the mapping correspond to regions where the geography had already been interpreted as indicating a glacial history.
But the key finding is that some apparently ice-rich areas are further south than we’d have predicted based on temperature modeling alone. There were areas that scored above 0.5 at about 35º north of the martian equator, well into Mars’ relatively temperate zones (for comparison, it’s roughly where you’d find Morocco on Earth). One of the strongest signals is in an area called Arcadia Planitia, a very flat region covered by recent volcanic flows.
The team will presumably move on to the southern hemisphere next. And that’s going to be critical. While it’s great that we have a potential site well into the mid-latitudes of Mars, any landings there are going to be focused on the scientific case for exploring the area. Having multiple promising sites will give us the chance to pick and choose based on something beyond water availability.
Changes in Mars’ geography always attract significant scientific and even public attention. A hope for signs of liquid water (and therefore life) is likely one of the primary driving forces behind this interest.
One particularly striking changing feature is the Recurring Slope Lineae (RSL) originally found by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).
Now, scientists at the SETI Institute have a modified theory for where those RSLs might develop – a combination of water ice and salt just under the Martian surface.
According to the SETI team, led by Senior Research Scientist Janice Bishop, there is a two-step process going on that creates these RSLs.
First, underground water ice must mix with a combination of chlorine salts and sulfates to create a type of slurry that destabilizes the regolith in the area.
Then, the dry wind and dust storms of Mars take over, blowing the destabilized material into new patterns across the Martian surface.
Krupac Crater also shows RSL development. (NASA/JPL/University of Arizona)
This is not the first time that researchers have suggested that chlorine salts might be involved in the creation of RSL. As with much good science, this theory has now been fleshed out more through data gathered in both field and lab experiments.
Unfortunately, the field experiments were not able to be carried out on Mars itself (at least not yet).
However, there are several places on our home planet that are considered “Mars analogs”, including the Dead Sea in Israel, Salar de Pajonales in the Atacama Desert, and the Dry Valleys in Antarctica.
The SETI team collected data at some of those locations and noted that surface destabilization has already been observed when salt interacted with gypsum, a type of sulfate.
For this project, the team collected data in the Dry Valleys, where the soil geology and temperature are remarkably similar to those found on Mars by the Phoenix lander and MRO.
Fieldwork was then followed by lab work, as the team subjected Mars analog regolith to tests using colored indicators that would show how the regolith simulant would react when subjects to the same kind of chemical reactions that were taking place in Antarctica.
All this data collecting resulted in a geological model involving sulfates, chlorides, and water that can account for the appearance of the RSLs seen on Mars’ surface.
The model also has implications of the habitability of sub-surface Mars and how the presence of this slurry might affect any biosphere the red planet might have.
Until there are some further on-site tests this model will be hard to prove, but there are plenty of those planned for Mars in the near future.
This article was originally published by Universe Today. Read the original article.
The NASA InSight mission has helped researchers determine that the planet experiences Marsquakes, making it seismically active.
And then there is the mystery of Recurring Slope Lineae, known as RSL, that have intrigued scientists for years. These RSL are a form of landslide on Mars, but no one knows what causes them, said Janice Bishop, author of a new study on the phenomena.
“We see them from orbit by the dark streaks they produce on the ground and they tend to always occur on sun-facing slopes, which led geologists to think they were related to melting ice early on,” said Bishop, senior research scientist at the SETI Institute in California.
“The interesting thing is that they increase over months following dust storms and then fade away, and they appear to form repeatedly in the same regions. Also, a large number of these are forming in the equatorial part of Mars, where there is very little ice.”
Any ice in these regions would have to be in tiny frozen particles that exist between grains of soil below the surface.
These puzzling landslides have never been seen up close by a rover or lander, and until they can be investigated by a robotic explorer, scientists are using lab experiments and Martian analogs on Earth to try and understand them.
Some of the strange environments on Earth that are similar to that of Mars include the Atacama desert in Chile, parts of Antarctica and even the Dead Sea. These places show that surface collapse and landslides occur when salt interacts with sulfates or water underground.
“Antarctica and the Atacama are excellent analogs for Mars because they are ultra dry environments,” Bishop said. “Antarctica has the added benefit that it is super cold. Parts of Antarctica including Beacon Valley are actually on par with Mars for temperature and aridity.”
While water may have once been plentiful on the Martian surface billions of years ago, when the planet was warmer and still retained most of its atmosphere, the current surface of Mars is a freezing cold and barren landscape.
What lies beneath
However, Mars missions and imaging by orbiters have revealed that frozen salty water is below the surface — and that water could be driving activity that appears on the Martian surface, like the landslides.
Bishop and her colleagues collected samples from some similar environments on Earth, including Wright Valley in Antarctica, to test how salts and melting ice underground could cause chemical reactions that trigger these seasonal landslides on Mars. The researchers wanted to test if processes observed in places like Antarctica, where salty sediments can have an effect on surface soil, could be happening on Mars.
The scientists modeled the briny water beneath the surface of Mars in a lab by taking the collected soil samples and exposing them to water and chlorine salts and sulfates — all of which could exist beneath the Martian surface. This experiment resulted in the creation of thin, moving films of slushy water.
To model Martian temperatures where ice exists beneath the surface at the planet’s mid-latitudes, the researchers found slushy ice formed near negative 58 degrees Fahrenheit and a slow, gradual melting of the ice between negative 40 degrees Fahrenheit and negative 4 degrees Fahrenheit.
These temperatures may sound cold, but on Mars, they’re actually considered to be slightly warmer temperatures found near the equator — which could support briny water beneath the surface in the Martian spring and summer.
If this subsurface brine on Mars expands and contracts over time on Mars, it could weaken the surface and cause sinkholes, ground collapse and landslides.
Previously, scientists believed that flows of liquid debris or dry grainy material could be causing the landslides, but neither completely matched up with what scientists saw in the RSL.
However, if ice is melting just beneath the surface, that change would also alter the surface itself. The Martian surface is also at the mercy of wind and seasonal dust storms, which could also play a part in this phenomenon.
“During my fieldwork at Salar de Pajonales, a dry salt bed in Northern Chile, I have observed numerous examples of the action of salts on the local geology. It’s gratifying to find that it could play a role in shaping Mars as well,” said study coauthor Nancy Hinman, a professor of geosciences at the University of Montana, in a statement.
The study published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances.
Chemical activity
“If our hypothesis is correct, then RSL could be indicators for salts on Mars and for near-surface active chemistry,” Bishop said. “Most of us Mars scientists have considered modern Mars as a cold and dry and dormant place, shaped mostly by dust storms. This is certainly true of the surface, but our work shows that the subsurface could be much more chemically active than realized before.”
Bishop noted that this underground process that could result in landslides on the surface would be a slow and limited one.
While this brine would be too salty to support life, the experiments in the study support the idea that this subsurface liquid water can actually move around the salt and mineral grains. If that’s the case, water on Mars 4 billion years ago could have filtered down into the subsurface as a type of permafrost soil. This ice could have thawed and refrozen over time.
“It could be that more of this early water on Mars persisted longer than we realized below the surface,” Bishop said. “If true, this could indicate that the subsurface of Mars was habitable longer than the surface environment. It is difficult to estimate how long, but perhaps liquid water was present around soil grains below the surface until 3 or 2 billion years ago or even more recently.”
Previous research has also suggested that the most habitable part of Mars actually lies beneath its surface.
Future robotic explorers, like the European Space Agency’s Rosalind Franklin rover scheduled to launch in 2022, can drill beneath the surface and investigate what’s going on.
“Once we send rovers to Mars that can drill down into the surface, I think we will see signs of salt reactions below the surface — especially if we investigate some of the equatorial regions where RSL are occurring,” Bishop said.
Scientists boring more than a mile deep into Antarctic ice have unearthed a mineral that’s rarely seen on Earth but found in abundance on Mars, Science Magazine reported.
The yellow-brown mineral, called jarosite, requires both water and acidic conditions to form, according to NASA — conditions that are hard to find now on the Red Planet. Nonetheless, after the Opportunity rover first discovered jarosite on Mars in 2004, the mineral turned up in several Martian locations, leaving scientists to wonder how the mineral became so common, Science reported.
Some theorized that, when ice covered the planet billions of years ago, dust containing the required minerals — iron, sulfate and potassium — may have been trapped inside.
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The planet we live on is a remarkable place. But have you ever wondered how or why these things occur? How the Earth was made? How we predict the weather? How fossils form? What causes earthquakes or which animals glow in the dark? “Incredible Earth” reveals answers to these questions and more on a thrilling journey through everything you need to know about our world — and with gorgeous photography and insightful diagrams along the way!View Deal
“Mars is such a dusty place — everything is covered in dust,” study author Giovanni Baccolo, a geologist at the University of Milan-Bicocca, told Science. But while ice could have provided the wet environment needed for acidic dust to transform into jarosite, scientists have never actually seen dust and ice chemically reacting to form the mineral.
But the discovery of jarosite particles locked in Antarctica’s ice may support the theory, the researchers reported in a paper published Jan. 19 in the journal Nature Communications.
Related: 7 most Mars-like places on Earth
On Earth, jarosite is a rare mineral that crops up in mining waste exposed to air and rain, Science reported. It can also form near the vents of volcanoes, according to NASA. Baccolo and his colleagues never expected to find the mineral in Antarctica, he told Science; but when the team pulled a roughly mile-long (1,620 meters) ice core from the ground, they found trace particles of jarosite, smaller than grains of sand, buried in the deepest layers of the ice.
After examining the particles with an electron microscope, the team deduced that the jarosite had formed in pockets within the ice. This finding hints that the mineral formed in the same way on Mars, although on the Red Planet, jarosite appears in “meters-thick deposits,” not as a few sparse grains, Megan Elwood Madden, a geochemist at The University of Oklahoma who was not involved with the research, told Science.
These ultra-thick slabs of jarosite may have formed on Mars because the Red Planet is far dustier than Antarctica, providing more raw material to form jarosite, Baccolo noted. “This is just the first step in linking deep Antarctic ice with the Martian environment,” he said.
You can read more about the discovery at Science Magazine.
The yellow-brown mineral was detected with X-ray absorption testing and electron microscopy in samples found below 1000 metres depth
In detail, the researchers believe their discovery backs a theory that suggested that Mars may have been covered by an ice blanket billions of years ago and that this coverage had dust blowing into it, thus, leading to the formation of jarosite in ice pockets.
In Antarctica, the team led by Giovanni Baccolo from the University of Milano-Bicocca detected the yellow-brown mineral with X-ray absorption testing and electron microscopy in samples found below 1000 metres depth.
Jarosite was adhering to residual silica-rich particles, which have been identified in the Talos Dome ice core and interpreted as products of weathering involving aeolian dust and acidic atmospheric aerosols.
“The progressive increase of ice metamorphism and re-crystallization with depth, favours the relocation and concentration of dust and the formation of acidic brines in isolated environments, allowing chemical reactions and mineral neo-formation to occur,” their paper reads. “This is the first described englacial diagenetic mechanism occurring in deep Antarctic ice and supports the ice-weathering model for jarosite formation on Mars.”
Even though their findings back the model, they still have to come up with a solid explanation as to why Antarctica contains small amounts of jarosite while on the red planet the mineral is found in large slabs.
All over the world the rate of ice melt is accelerating with climate change, on land and in water, in the northern hemisphere and the southern hemisphere.
Since 1994, satellite imagery has revealed over 28 trillion tonnes of ice have melted in Greenland and Antarctica, as well as the Arctic and Southern Oceans.
Together, the loss amounts to a 100-metre thick sheet of ice roughly the size of the United Kingdom. Meltwater from Arctic sea ice and the Antarctic ice sheet make up half of that mass.
“The ice sheets are now following the worst-case climate warming scenarios set out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,” says Thomas Slater who studies land and ice altimetry at the University of Leeds.
“Sea-level rise on this scale will have very serious impacts on coastal communities this century.”
It’s exactly what scientists have been warning us about for decades, and the reality is finally upon us with no signs of slowing down.
Over the course of the 23-year-long study period, researchers saw close to a 60 percent increase in the rate of global ice loss.
(Planetary Visions/ESA/NASA)
Above: According to the European Space Agency (ESA), “one trillion tonnes of ice can be thought of as a cube of ice measuring 10x10x10 kilometres”. In this illustration, that ice cube, which the ESA says would be taller than Mount Everest, towers over New York City.
Just last year, floating ice cover in the Arctic Ocean hit its lowest extent since 1979 when satellite recordings began, and Antarctica experienced a melt event unlike anything experts had seen before.
The loss of Earth’s ice is clearly speeding up and with horrifying results. As atmospheric temperatures continue to rise and ocean temperatures follow, melting sea ice and mountain glaciers across the globe are succumbing to climate change.
Satellite observations reveal glaciers are some of the hardest hit by climate change, especially those in Greenland, Alaska, and the southern Andes. Despite the fact that glaciers make up only 1 percent of Earth’s total ice volume, researchers found they contributed almost a quarter of all global ice loss.
Between 1994 and 2017, satellite observations reveal 6.1 trillion tonnes of ice melted from mountain glaciers, 3.8 trillion tonnes were lost from the Greenland ice sheet, and 2.5 trillion tonnes disappeared from the Antarctic ice sheet.
Overall, that’s 35 millimetres (1.4 inches) of sea level rise, and while southern ice has proved more resilient, it too is beginning to crumble.
Since 2012, the rate of ice loss in Antarctica has tripled when compared to the previous two decades, and this is mostly due to widespread glacier melt and thinning ice shelves.
Rising atmospheric temperatures have also begun to take their toll on floating ice, causing the oldest and thickest slabs to break up. While this type of melt doesn’t directly contribute to sea level rise that doesn’t mean it isn’t a threat.
“One of the key roles of Arctic sea ice is to reflect solar radiation back into space which helps keep the Arctic cool,” explains Isobel Lawrence, who specialises in remote sensing of sea ice at the University of Leeds.
“As the sea ice shrinks, more solar energy is being absorbed by the oceans and atmosphere, causing the Arctic to warm faster than anywhere else on the planet. Not only is this speeding up sea ice melt, it’s also exacerbating the melting of glaciers and ice sheets which causes sea levels to rise.”
For every centimetre of sea level rise, experts predict a million people are in danger of being displaced. What’s more, mountain glaciers are a critical source of freshwater for many local communities.
As the data rolls in, what scientists feared most is looking all the more likely.
If things continue in the same vein, some think there’s a chance the Arctic could be virtually free of ice by 2035.
Other studies show Greenland’s melting ice has already passed the point of no return.
Down south, more than half the ice shelves holding up the Antarctic ice sheet are on the brink of buckling.
Everywhere we look, the cryosphere is facing catastrophe.
Tonight: In advance of the weekend storm the sky becomes cloudy and the wind will increase from the southeast. Some gusts could be near 30 mph. Low temperatures drop into the low and mid-20s.
Saturday: Wintry mix (rain/freezing/sleet/snow) moves into eastern Iowa late in the morning. The best chance of snow is north with the best chance of rain in the south. Everyone between will have sleet and freezing rain. Ice accumulation could be up to 0.10” During the evening all of the precipitation will turn to snow. Highs are in the low 30s with a gusty east wind to 35 mph. Where it is snowing, blowing snow will reduce visibilities. Roads will be slippery once the precipitation begins and through Sunday morning.
Saturday Night: Snow continues through the night and it remains windy. Blowing and drifting snow is expected with winds gusting from the northeast at 35 mph. Low temperatures in the upper 20s.
Sunday: Light snow in the morning tapers off by midday. Highs warm to near 30. The wind is a little lighter but still breezy so blowing snow will be an issue…mainly in the morning.
Monday: Partly cloudy with a light wind and highs near 30.
Fungi-like microfossil dating back 635 MILLION years is found in China and may have helped Earth recover from catastrophic ice age by stimulating marine bio-productivity
The oldest terrestrial fossil was found in China that dates back 635 million years
This fungi-like microorganism is believed to help Earth recover from an ice age
Experts say it worked with other terrestrial microbes to in the recovery
Together they accelerated chemical weather and deliveredvphosphorus to oceans that stimulated marine bioproductivity
By Stacy Liberatore For Dailymail.com
Published: | Updated:
It was previously believed that fungi emerged some 240 million years ago, but a new discovery has rewritten the timeline for when the spore-producing organisms first colonized Earth.
An international team of scientists uncovered a 635-million-year-old fungi-like microfossil – making it the oldest terrestrial fossil on record – in cavities within rocks of South China.
Researchers say it evolved during the Ediacaran period, when the planet was coming out of a catastrophic ice age and the microorganism may have played a key role in its recovery.
Together with other terrestrial microbes, the fungi-like organism had the ability to accelerate chemical weather and deliver phosphorus to oceans that stimulated marine bioproductivity.
An international team of scientists uncovered a 635-million-year-old fungi-like microfossil – making it the oldest terrestrial fossil on record – in cavities within rocks of South China
The fossil was discovered within well-studied sedimentary dolostone rocks of the lowermost Doushantuo Formation in South China by scientists from Virginia Tech, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guizhou Education University, and University of Cincinnati.
Tian Gan, a visiting Ph.D. student in the Xiao lab, said: ‘It was an accidental discovery.’
‘At that moment, we realized that this could be the fossil that scientists have been looking for a long time.
‘If our interpretation is correct, it will be helpful for understanding the paleoclimate change and early life evolution.’
The fossil was discovered within well-studied sedimentary dolostone rocks of the lowermost Doushantuo Formation in South China
The preserved fossil boasts multiple orders of branches, curved filaments (pictured) and ladder-like branching systems
The preserved fossil boasts multiple orders of branches, curved filaments and ladder-like branching systems.
When the ice age struck the planet, it froze ocean surfaces to a depth of more than a mile and the environment was so harsh that no organism could survive.
Earth did recover and produced a biosphere that was larger and more complex than before, which has been a mystery to scientists – but the new fossil may final solve the puzzle.
Researchers believe the fungi-like microorganism and others like it help recondition the environment and did so using their formidable digestive system.
Fungi have digestive systems capable of cycling vital nutrient and can chemically break down rocks and other tough matter using enzymes secreted into the environment – all of which can then be recycled and exported into the ocean.
‘Fungi have a mutualistic relationship with the roots of plants, which helps them mobilize minerals, such as phosphorus,’ said Gan.
Fungi have digestive systems capable of cycling vital nutrient and can chemically break down rocks and other tough matter using enzymes secreted into the environment – all of which can then be recycled and exported into the ocean (Pictured is a computer image of the fossil)
‘Because of their connection to terrestrial plants and important nutritional cycles, terrestrial fungi have a driving influence on biochemical weathering, the global biogeochemical cycle, and ecological interactions.’
Previous work has suggested that terrestrial plants and fungi formed a symbiotic relationship around 400 million years ago, but the new fossil rewrites the timeline to 635 million years ago.
Shuhai Xiao, a professor of geosciences with the Virginia Tech College of Science, said: ‘The question used to be: ‘Were there fungi in the terrestrial realm before the rise of terrestrial plants.’
‘And I think our study suggests yes. Our fungus-like fossil is 240 million years older than the previous record. This is, thus far, the oldest record of terrestrial fungi.’
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