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US

Power outages affect thousands as more ice hits

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Austin braces for its second day of the winter storm, with more ice expected than previously. Causing road conditions to worsen and thousands to lose power early Wednesday morning.

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Forecasters expect more significant ice accumulation today throughout the Austin metro region and the Hill Country, causing already dangerous roads to become even more treacherous.

Thousands of Austinites lost power early Wednesday morning, as a result of the ice causing various problems, such as tree limbs falling on power lines. The number of customers without power continues to rise, with over 100,000 reported by Austin Energy as of 7:40 a.m.

Austin Fire said they’ve responded to over 75 calls related to arcing wires and that multiple stations have also lost power.

Here’s what we know about road conditions, today’s forecast and power outages:

Winter storm warning for Austin:Here’s what you need to worry about

9:45 a.m.: Heavier round of ice is over

This storm’s most significant round of freezing rain that hit the Austin metro area Wednesday morning has moved out of the region, according to the National Weather Service.

There’s still a chance of freezing drizzle and rain, which could turn to just a cold rain or sleet mix as temperatures are expected to get just above freezing Wednesday afternoon. However, the wintry weather mix could return Wednesday evening with more chances possible for freezing rain going into early Thursday morning.

Temperatures are expected to hover above freezing Thursday morning and move into the 40s by the afternoon. There’s a light chance of rain throughout the day also.

The winter storm warning is still scheduled to end at 6 a.m. on Thursday.

Austin Energy says power will be restored ‘quickly’

Austin Energy spokesperson Matt Mitchell said crews are dispatched and working to restore power as quickly as possible. He added that each outage is unique, and some repairs will take longer than others, especially as treacherous road conditions make it harder to navigate the city. Temperatures could get above freezing for a few hours Wednesday afternoon, which he said will help crews get outages fixed faster.

The utility company tweeted that outages are widespread and some customers could see outages for 12 to 24 hours.

Ice can cause tree limbs and other vegetation to freeze, snap and fall on power lines, resulting in mass outages.

If you do lose power, follow this advice from Mitchell: don’t panic, stay inside, keep all windows and doors closed, unplug major appliances and heaters, layer up, grab some blankets and wait for the power to be restored.

In addition, do not use stoves, ovens or portable grills to heat your home, as it can cause carbon monoxide poisoning that can result in hospitalization or death. If you have a generator, be sure it’s in a well-ventilated area before using it.

More:What you can do to stay safe, warm during an outage

While many in the region may be having flashbacks to Winter Storm Uri which caused massive power outages for days, this storm is not predicted to be that bad, and Mitchell said power will be restored as the weather warms over the next 24 hours.

“We as utility understand those memories are still very fresh,” Mitchell said. “This is not that. Our crews are in place, we are executing a plan, and we will safely and quickly restore power.”

Power outages across Central Texas

Austin Energy reports large numbers of power outages affecting up to 80,000 customers at one point early Wednesday morning. The company tweeted that the extreme weather, mainly the ice, is leading to power outages and that crews are dispatched and working to get the power back on.

Thousands of Pedernales Electric Cooperative customers in Central Texas and the Hill Country are also without power.

8:45 a.m.: Oncor reports 16,127 customers in Williamson County, 6,446 in Travis County and 1,054 in Bastrop County are without power.

8:10 a.m.: 125,000 customers are without power, as 422 active outages cause nearly 24% of Austin Energy customers to lose power. Meanwhile, nearly 3,100 Pedernales customers in Williamson and western Travis County are without power.

7:40 a.m.: 21% of Austin Energy customers are without power as a result of 367 outages, affecting over 113,000. Nearly 11,000 Pedernales customers and over 240,000 across the state are also without power.

6:36 a.m.: 294 active outages resulting in nearly 85,000 Austin Energy customers to be without power. Across the region, over 6,000 Pedernales customers are without power, while 197,000 in the state don’t have power.

6:00 a.m.: The number of Austin Energy customers without power continues to increase, as 204 outages are causing nearly 67,000 customers to be without power.

5:50 a.m.: Across Texas, about 161,500 customers are without power.

5:43 a.m.: Over 56,000 Austin Energy customers are without power due to nearly 190 outages across the region affecting 89% of customers.

5:43 a.m.: Nearly 2,900 Pedernales customers from Round Rock to Kyle to San Marcos to Dripping Springs are without power.

Weather tips:Here’s how to stay out of the emergency room during this winter storm

Austin’s Wednesday forecast

The Austin metro area and neighboring Hill Country will see a heavier round of freezing rain and ice starting Wednesday morning and moving throughout the day into early Thursday morning, according to the National Weather Service.

While Austin could see temperatures get up to 33 degrees for a few hours in the afternoon, the wind chill will cause it to actually feel like it’s in the mid-20s.

The Austin region could see anywhere an additional 0.1 to 0.25 inches of ice Wednesday. There is a chance the ice could turn to rain during the afternoon moving into the evening, however, forecasters expect the freezing rain will continue again during the evening and into early Thursday morning.

Freezing rain is predicted to end by about 3 a.m. Thursday, turning to a cold rain that will last up until nearly noon on Thursday. Temperatures are expected to stay in the 30s Thursday morning and will likely rise into the 40s by the afternoon.

Road conditions across Austin

Officials continue to discourage drivers from hitting the roads unless absolutely necessary, as road conditions will remain treacherous Wednesday.

The Texas Department of Transportation’s highway conditions map shows that all major highways have ice reported on them. TxDot officials said crews are working to clear roadways, but that conditions are still dangerous and people should stay off the roads.

City officials urge residents to stay off the roads. Austin first responders were called to nearly 300 traffic collisions as a result of the ice on Tuesday and dozens of falls.

6:27 a.m.: All lanes are blocked at the 183A toll and SH-45 toll.

Weather updates:Winter weather cancellations, closures, delays in Austin area

Austin airport cancellations, delays

7:55 a.m.: Airlines have canceled 202 flights, while 18 are delayed.

5:32 a.m.: There are over 180 flights canceled out of Austin-Bergstrom and 11 delays, according to Flight Aware.

Austin school districts cancellations

Nearly all school districts, including Austin ISD, canceled classes and extracurricular activities today

Winter weather:Austin-area high school athletic events postponed



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US

Winter ice storm: Millions across the South and central US brace as officials urge staying off roads

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CNN
 — 

A winter storm bringing the triple threat of ice, sleet and snow Tuesday to parts of the South and central US has prompted officials to close roads and schools as they urge people to avoid traveling in dangerous conditions.

About 38 million people from Texas and Oklahoma to as far east as Kentucky and West Virginia are under various forms of winter weather alerts, including those warning of dangerous ice accumulations forecast to make roads a nightmare.

“In addition to potentially hazardous travel conditions, this amount of ice will lead to tree damage and power outages across the hardest-hit regions,” the National Weather Service warned in its forecast Monday.

In Texas, residents in cities including Dallas, San Antonio and Austin can expect icy roads as well as some sleet Tuesday, when heavy rain and flash flooding are also possible in the eastern parts of the state.

Amid such conditions, the governor has requested the state’s emergency management division to increase its resources so it can be ready to respond through Thursday.

The storm has also led several school districts in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and Austin to close Tuesday, and more than 400 flights departing from Texas airports have been cancelled. Multiple roadways in Texas have been shut down due to ice accumulation, according to the state’s transportation department.

As ice began forming on roads in Little Rock, Arkansas, the governor declared a state of emergency Monday and activated the winter weather support teams of the state’s National Guard to be prepared in helping police in their response to the storm.

“I encourage Arkansans who are experiencing winter weather to avoid travel if possible and heed the warnings of local officials,” Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders said on Twitter.

The emergency order directs $250,000 toward discretionary use by the head of the state’s Division of Emergency Management to provide funding for program and administrative costs, the order stated.

“The real enemy is going to be that ice,” said Dave Parker, a spokesperson for the Arkansas Department of Transportation. “This could potentially be a pretty dangerous situation.”

Parker added that majority of the state is expected to be impacted, and the state is treating most major roads.

By late Monday, ice had already spread across grounds in Memphis, Tennessee, and Louisville, Kentucky, as well as Texas, where at least a few car crashes were reported in Austin with no injuries.

The storm is poised to produce a mix of wintry precipitation ranging from rain and sleet to ice and it will hit areas in the southern and central regions in waves through Wednesday.

And while the forecast shows there will be periods of reprieve over the next two days, roads will likely remain dangerously slick throughout the storm as temperatures remain low.

Indeed, Tuesday is expected to be the toughest day for driving as Texas bridges and roads become icy, according to the weather service’s Fort Worth office.

“More widespread freezing rain/sleet is expected Tuesday and Wednesday morning, with worsening travel impacts during this time,” the local weather agency said.

Significant icing of about half of an inch is expected on roads in Austin, San Angelo and Dallas while San Antonio may see up to a tenth of an inch of ice.

Meantime, Texas’ primary electricity provider, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, told CNN it will be able to meet residents’ demand as temperatures plummet.

“We expect sufficient generation to meet forecasted demand and are continuing to monitor forecasts, this week. We are not asking for Conservation at this time. We are informing the public that IF they are experience an outage to reach out to their local power provider,” the agency said in an email.

Elsewhere in the South, up to a half of an inch of ice could glaze roads in Memphis, Tennessee. In the state’s Dyer County, icy conditions led officials to shut down the I-155 bridge, according to the highway patrol.

Meanwhile, Little Rock in Arkansas is forecast to see multiple rounds of ice that could amass up to half an inch.

In neighboring Oklahoma, residents in Oklahoma City are under a winter weather advisory through Wednesday afternoon, with the expectation of seeing up to two tenths of an inch of ice.

Icing up to two-tenths of an inch could be seen in Louisville, Kentucky, while Charleston, West Virginia, can see sleet up to an inch and ice up to a tenth of an inch.



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Sports

Bobby Hull, hockey’s ‘Golden Jet’ of the ice, dies at 84

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Bobby Hull, a longtime Chicago Black Hawks winger nicknamed the “Golden Jet,” whose speed, high-velocity shots and showmanship made him one of the most popular hockey players of all time, has died at age 84.

The team, which now goes by the single word Blackhawks, announced the death on Twitter but did not release further information.

“Hull was the Canadian Superman,” author Gare Joyce wrote of the Ontario-born athlete in “The Devil and Bobby Hull,” a 2011 book chronicling Mr. Hull’s life before and after allegations of spousal abuse and racism tainted his public persona.

A flashy and marketable player who scored goals in bunches, Mr. Hull was one of the NHL’s biggest stars during the Original Six era, when the NHL had only six teams in Chicago, Boston, Detroit, Montreal, New York and Toronto.

Mr. Hull’s up-ice rushes brought fans to their feet, as he scored 50 or more goals in a season five times while turning a relatively new shooting style — the slap shot — into an offensive weapon. He was on the cover of Sports Illustrated five times, then unprecedented for a hockey player and a nod of mainstream approval to the sport itself.

He passed his skills on to one of his sons, hockey Hall-of-Famer Brett Hull, who scored even more goals than his father. Mr. Hull’s brother Dennis, nicknamed the “Silver Jet,” also played with him in Chicago for many years.

In 1961, Mr. Hull and teammate Stan Mikita helped end the Montreal Canadiens’ record run of five consecutive Stanley Cups, and then defeated Gordie Howe’s Detroit Red Wings, 4 games to 2, to give Chicago its first championship in 23 years. The team wouldn’t win another title until 2010.

“Back then I thought I’d have a bunch of these,” Mr. Hull told Joyce of his only Stanley Cup victory, at age 22.

Mr. Hull packed NHL arenas during his 15 NHL seasons with Chicago. He led the league in goal scoring seven times, a record that lasted 50 years before Washington Capitals winger Alex Ovechkin bested it in 2019. He led the NHL in points three times, and was an NHL first-team all-star 10 times.

In 1968, Mr. Hull felt that his popularity didn’t match his compensation, so he protested by retiring in an attempt to get more money. The Black Hawks called his bluff and, without better options, Mr. Hull returned to the team with a prorated salary. He was fined and had to issue a public apology for missing part of the season.

This was the beginning of the end for Mr. Hull in Chicago but also the start of an era where superstar athletes made millions of dollars.

“The name of the game now is money,” Mr. Hull told Sports Illustrated in 1972 as he negotiated with an upstart hockey league, the World Hockey Association, that would give him what he wanted.

With much fanfare, including a large, cardboard check, Mr. Hull signed as a player-coach with the Winnipeg Jets for $1.75 million over 10 years, plus a $1 million signing bonus — far more than he had been making in the NHL. Other NHL players, such as Howe, also fled to the WHA.

In the WHA, Mr. Hull won championships and scoring titles, but the success came at a steep cost. Team Canada didn’t allow anyone other than NHL players to participate in the 1972 Summit Series against the Soviets.

“I wanted to play more than anything else. But those big NHL heads decided to pay me back,” Mr. Hull later told the Associated Press. The rules soon changed, and Mr. Hull was able to play in the 1974 Summit Series. (The U.S.S.R. won, 4-1-3.)

Late in his career, after the NHL bought the WHA, Mr. Hull was traded to the Hartford Whalers, where he briefly played with Howe.

Unlike other star players of the time who remained associated with hockey after hanging up their skates, Mr. Hull was a virtual castoff, having a strained relationship with the Black Hawks over the pay dispute. He was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1983, but he left the sport behind, spending his days farming and raising cattle in Ontario.

Robert Marvin Hull Jr. was born in Port Anne, Ontario, on Jan. 3, 1939. He was the fifth child of 11 and the oldest son. His father, a cement company foreman and farmer, encouraged his sons to play hockey.

Mr. Hull played football at St. Catharines High School while playing hockey for the St. Catharines Teepees, a team in the junior Ontario Hockey Association, the highest amateur league in Canada. Showing exemplary skill on the ice at a young age, Mr. Hull dropped out of high school and signed with the Black Hawks.

Mr. Hull remained for years a beloved figure in hockey, often signing autographs hours after games and doing charitable work. But off-ice incidents painted a darker picture of the one-time Lady Byng trophy winner, an NHL award given for “gentlemanly conduct.”

He was married at least three times, and two of his wives accused him of physical abuse. Some of his children said he was an absentee father and drank to excess. In 1987, after a domestic dispute with his wife Deborah, he pleaded guilty to assaulting a police officer who had been called to the scene. He was fined $150 and six months of court supervision.

In 1998 he allegedly ranted to a Russian newspaper about Adolf Hitler having some “good ideas.” Asked in the same interview if he was racist, Mr. Hull reportedly said: “I don’t give a damn. I’m not running for any political office.”

Mr. Hull later insisted that the Moscow Times reporter had misquoted him.

“I am deeply offended by the false statements attributed to me with respect to Adolf Hitler and the black community in the United States,” he wrote in a statement. He reportedly filed lawsuits against the Moscow Times, which stood by its reporting, and the Toronto Sun for reprinting the interview. Those lawsuits were resolved out of court, his attorney Tim Danson said.

In 2002, ESPN aired a “SportsCentury” profile that chronicled these incidents and also allegations of domestic abuse. One of his ex-wives, figure skater Joanne McKay, the mother of five of his children, including Brett, accused Mr. Hull of once beating her with a steel-heeled shoe.

His daughter Michelle Hull became a lawyer who works with battered women, a career choice she said resulted from witnessing Mr. Hull’s treatment of her mother, Joanne.

Nevertheless, the Blackhawks summoned back the two-time NHL MVP in 2007 to make him a team ambassador and installed life-size bronze statues of him and Mikita outside United Center, where the Blackhawks play. (The Black Hawks amended the spelling of the team name to Blackhawks in 1986.)

“If I had to do it over, I’d probably do more drinking,” Mr. Hull joked in the book “When the Final Buzzer Sounds: NHL Greats Share Their Stories of Hardship and Triumph,” published in 2000.

He then added: “What I meant is that I’d do more thinking! Write that! Then again, thinking can get you into just as much trouble as anything else.”

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Sports

Madison Chock, Evan Bates win age record-breaking U.S. ice dance title

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SAN JOSE, California – They have both begun the new Olympic cycle as the undisputed national leaders in their figure skating disciplines, cementing that status with U.S. titles Saturday – the fourth for ice dancers Madison Chock and Evan Bates, the second for the pairs’ team of Alexa Knierim and Brandon Frazier.

At this point, their respective paths to the 2026 Winter Games seem free and clear of challengers.

The question for the dancers and the pair is how far down that road they intend to go.

“I don’t know what the next four years will hold,” Chock said. “But we’re committed to each other and our goals, and we’ll decide when the time comes.”

Chock, 30, and Bates, 33, engaged to be married in the summer of 2024, have been at this a long time. And their trophy case is packed to the gills, with the only gaps a world title and an individual Olympic medal.

They have competed together at the senior level in the U.S. Championships for 12 seasons, winning medals at the last 11. They have been to nine world championships, winning three medals, and three Olympics (four for Bates), winning a yet-to-be-awarded team medal last year in Beijing.

(The unresolved doping case involving Russian skater Kamila Valiyeva has delayed the awarding of the 2022 team event medals. Maybe it will become a wedding present for Chock and Bates. Or a fifth anniversary present…)

FIGURE SKATING NATIONALS: Full Scores | Broadcast Schedule

Until this year, Chock and Bates had faced formidable rivals on the national scene – 2014 Olympic champions Meryl Davis and Charlie White; 2018 Olympic bronze medalists Maia Shibutani and Alex Shibutani; and 2022 Olympic bronze medalists Madison Hubbell and Zachary Donohue, with whom Chock and Bates traded gold medals over the previous four seasons. All have retired from competition.

Saturday, they cruised to the gold medal by 22.29 points over Caroline Green and Michael Parsons, the largest ice dance victory margin at nationals since 2006. In a discipline where established hierarchy weighs heavily, Chock and Bates find themselves in the unfamiliar position of being on a metaphorical easy street to the top step of the U.S. podium.

“We – at least I – felt nervous today,” Bates said. “We (still) felt compelled to skate well. The lack of maybe the Hubbell-Donohue back and forth did not mitigate the specialness today.”

Knierim, 31, and Frazier, 30, have similar longevity at nationals, even if they did not team up until 2020, taking the U.S. title in their first season together.

Knierim skated at seven nationals with her husband, Chris, winning three titles, Frazier at seven with Haven Denney, winning once.

Knierim and Frazier had expected to retire after last season, when they missed nationals because Frazier contracted Covid but went on to place sixth at the Olympics and unexpectedly became the first U.S. team to win a pairs’ world title since 1979. Their experiences on the Stars on Ice Tour led them to reconsider.

“It made sense on our timeline to move on,” Knierim told me in September. “We had done everything we could in two years.

“Yet it felt like it could be sad or disappointing to end a really talented career together so soon. Being on tour had opened our eyes to how in synch and unified we were on the ice. So there was a little bit of curiosity, a feeling of ‘What else are we capable of?’”

Their personal circumstances have changed during the course of this season. Chris Knierim starts work Thursday as skating director of a rink in the Chicago suburbs, and the Knierims recently bought a house in that area.

Knierim and Frazier have been training at a rink in Irvine, California. Should they decide to continue as competitors after this season, it would almost certainly entail a move to Chicago for Frazier.

Knierim insisted her house purchase was not an indication of what her plans with Frazier are.

“Right now, we are staying the course, based in Irvine through the world championships (in late March),” Knierim said before winning her fifth U.S. title.

“We do have some changes ahead of us. But I’d hate to jump ahead and say yes or no to next season. We learned that last season.”

Frazier spoke Saturday of reflecting throughout this season about their personal journeys and their partnership, the kind of reflection that often accompanies doing something for the last time.

“We just are trying to soak it in as if it could be your last, but the future is unknown,” Frazier said.

Knierim and Frazier prevailed Saturday with the largest winning margin, 31.11 points, in the 18 years that the International Judging System has been used at nationals.

They saved several points due to her quick thinking.

After Frazier put his hand to the ice on the triple toe loop that was to open a triple-double-double-jump combination, Knierim saw that her partner was going to follow with only a single jump and followed suit. It led to the delightful oddity of side-by-side single toe loops.

Nicely executed ones, too.

Philip Hersh, who has covered figure skating at every Winter Olympics since 1980, is a special contributor to NBCSports.com.

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Science

James Webb Space Telescope discovers ice at ringed asteroid Chariklo

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The most comprehensive plans need a sprinkle of luck, even in space.

In October 2022, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST or Webb) watched as Chariklo, a tiny ringed asteroid, eclipsed a star. This event, called an occultation, marked a first for Webb. At the month’s end, Webb turned toward Chariklo again and notched another victory: For the first time, astronomers analyzing the telescope’s data spotted clear signs of water ice, the presence of which was only hinted at until now. These observations will guide astronomers to better understand the nature and behavior of tiny bodies in the outer reaches of our solar system.

But the two feats almost did not happen.

Related: Asteroid Chariklo Has Rings: Images of a Space Rock Oddity (Gallery)

Although it is the largest of its kind, Chariklo is still too small and too far for even the mighty Webb to photograph directly. Instead, astronomers decided to study it through occultation, which is an indirect but powerful method to study small bodies like Chariklo. But the team did not know if and when a star — without which an occultation would not occur — would fall into Webb’s field of view. This made Chariklo part of Webb’s target of opportunity (opens in new tab) program: If the asteroid happened to cross in front of a star, the program would allow astronomers to temporarily interrupt the telescope’s schedule to observe the event.

The team calculated only a 50% chance that Webb would spot a star bright enough with an interesting object like Chariklo crossing in front. After its launch in 2021, as Webb went through routine course corrections to hold it steady in its parking spot in space, the team continued predicting and revising its list of possible occultations. Late last year, astronomers ended up on the favorable side of that 50% when they discovered “by remarkable good luck” that Chariklo was on track to occult a star that also fell into Webb’s view.

“This was the first stellar occultation attempted with Webb,” the team wrote in a NASA statement (opens in new tab) published Wednesday (Jan. 25). “A lot of hard work went into identifying and refining the predictions for this unusual event.”

On Oct. 18, 2022, Chariklo and its system of two rings crossed in front of a star. Using Webb’s near-infrared camera (NIRCam), astronomers monitored the star’s brightness for an hour. Resulting data showed two dips in the star’s brightness as expected: When the asteroid’s rings first hid the star as the eclipse began, and again when the last of its rings wrapped up the occultation.

“The shadows produced by Chariklo’s rings were clearly detected,” the team wrote in the statement, “demonstrating a new way of using Webb to explore solar system objects.”

Read more: How the James Webb Space Telescope works in pictures

Graphic showing the dimming effects of Chariklo’s rings on a background star. (Image credit: IMAGE: NASA, ESA, CSA, Leah Hustak (STScI) SCIENCE: Pablo Santos-Sanz (IAA-CSIC), Nicolás Morales (IAA-CSIC), Bruno Morgado (UFRJ, ON/MCTI, LIneA))

Objects like Chariklo are called centaurs, thanks to their hybrid nature. (Centaurs are mythological horse-human hybrids.) They look like asteroids but behave like comets — complete with visible tails. Their home, an unstable orbit between Jupiter and Neptune, hosts thousands of centaurs of varying shapes and sizes. As interesting as they are, their small size and vast distance make them difficult to study. The composition of even the biggest centaur, Chariklo — which is still tiny at just 160 miles (250 km) in diameter and distant at a whooping 2 billion miles (3.2 billion km) from us — is poorly understood. Also, past research hinted at water ice somewhere in Chariklo’s system, but had yet to conclusively detect it.

In this latest research, astronomers pointed Webb at Chariklo again. This time, they used the telescope’s Near-infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) instrument to measure the sunlight reflected by Chariklo and its two rings. The resulting spectrum showed three absorption bands of water ice, marking the first clear indication of crystalline ice.

The presence of crystalline ice likely indicates that Chariklo is subject to constant bombardment, according to Dean Hines, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Maryland. “Because high-energy particles transform ice from crystalline into amorphous states, detection of crystalline ice indicates that the Chariklo system experiences continuous micro-collisions that either expose pristine material or trigger crystallization processes,” Hines said in NASA’s statement.

Read more: Centaurs Rising: NASA Eyes Missions to Weird Asteroid-Comet Hybrids

Reflectance spectrum of the double-ringed centaur 10199 Chariklo, captured by Webb’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) on Oct. 31, 2022. This spectrum shows clear evidence for crystalline water ice on Chariklo’s surface.  (Image credit: IMAGE: NASA, ESA, CSA, Leah Hustak (STScI) SCIENCE: Noemí Pinilla-Alonso (FSI/UCF), Ian Wong (STScI), Javier Licandro (IAC))

Astronomers have gotten one step closer to studying the Chariklo system, but there is still much that remains unknown about the centaur. The spectrum analyzed in the latest research includes information about the system as a whole, but at the moment, it is difficult to distinguish the data between Chariklo and its two rings.

For example, although astronomers spotted the first clear signs for crystalline water ice, they do not yet know for sure where in the asteroid’s system the ice is present. In the coming months, researchers hope to use Webb’s high sensitivity to dig up individual features of Chariklo and its two rings, Pablo Santos-Sanz, an astronomer at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía in Spain who took part in this research, said in the statement.

“We hope [to] gain insight into why this small body even has rings at all, and perhaps detect new fainter rings,” Santos-Sanz said.

Follow Sharmila Kuthunur on Twitter @Sharmilakg (opens in new tab).  Follow us @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab), or on Facebook (opens in new tab) and Instagram (opens in new tab). 



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Science

Webb Peers Into Frozen Heart of Molecular Cloud – Unveils Dark Side of Pre-Stellar Ice Chemistry

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An international team of astronomers has reported the discovery of diverse ices in the darkest regions of a cold molecular cloud measured to date by studying this region. This result allows astronomers to examine the simple icy molecules that will be incorporated into future exoplanets, while opening a new window on the origin of more complex molecules that are the first step in the creation of the building blocks of life. Credit: Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, Science: Fengwu Sun (Steward Observatory), Zak Smith (The Open University), IceAge ERS Team, Image Processing: M. Zamani (ESA/Webb)

Webb has identified frozen forms of a wide range of molecules, including carbon dioxide, ammonia, and methane.

The discovery of diverse ices in the darkest regions of a cold molecular cloud measured to date has been announced by an international team of astronomers using

This image by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) features the central region of the Chamaeleon I dark molecular cloud, which resides 630 light years away. The cold, wispy cloud material (blue, center) is illuminated in the infrared by the glow of the young, outflowing protostar Ced 110 IRS 4 (orange, upper left). The light from numerous background stars, seen as orange dots behind the cloud, can be used to detect ices in the cloud, which absorb the starlight passing through them. Credit: Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, Science: Fengwu Sun (Steward Observatory), Zak Smith (The Open University), IceAge ERS Team, Image Processing: M. Zamani (ESA/Webb)

James Webb Space Telescope Unveils Dark Side of Pre-stellar Ice Chemistry

If you want to build a habitable planet, ices are a vital ingredient because they are the main source of several key elements — namely carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and sulfur (referred to here as CHONS). These elements are important ingredients in both planetary atmospheres and molecules like sugars, alcohols, and simple

“Our results provide insights into the initial, dark chemistry stage of the formation of ice on the interstellar dust grains that will grow into the centimeter-sized pebbles from which planets form in disks,” said Melissa McClure, an astronomer at Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands, who is the principal investigator of the observing program and lead author of the paper describing this result. “These observations open a new window on the formation pathways for the simple and complex molecules that are needed to make the building blocks of life.”

An annotated version of the image above. The two background stars used in this study, NIR38 and J110621 are denoted on the image in white. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, and M. Zamani (ESA/Webb); Science: F. Sun (Steward Observatory), Z. Smith (Open University), and the Ice Age ERS Team

In addition to the identified molecules, the team found evidence for molecules more complex than methanol, and, although they didn’t definitively attribute these signals to specific molecules, this proves for the first time that complex molecules form in the icy depths of molecular clouds before stars are born.

“Our identification of complex organic molecules, like methanol and potentially ethanol, also suggests that the many star and planetary systems developing in this particular cloud will inherit molecules in a fairly advanced chemical state,” added Will Rocha, an astronomer at Leiden Observatory who contributed to this discovery. “This could mean that the presence of precursors to prebiotic molecules in planetary systems is a common result of star formation, rather than a unique feature of our own solar system.”

By detecting the sulfur-bearing ice carbonyl sulfide, the researchers were able to estimate the amount of sulfur embedded in icy pre-stellar dust grains for the first time. While the amount measured is larger than previously observed, it is still less than the total amount expected to be present in this cloud, based on its density. This is true for the other CHONS elements as well. A key challenge for astronomers is understanding where these elements are hiding: in ices, soot-like materials, or rocks. The amount of CHONS in each type of material determines how much of these elements end up in

“The fact that we haven’t seen all of the CHONS that we expect may indicate that they are locked up in more rocky or sooty materials that we cannot measure,” explained McClure. “This could allow a greater diversity in the bulk composition of terrestrial planets.

Astronomers have taken an inventory of the most deeply embedded ices in a cold molecular cloud to date. They used light from a background star, named NIR38, to illuminate the dark cloud called Chamaeleon I. Ices within the cloud absorbed certain wavelengths of infrared light, leaving spectral fingerprints called absorption lines. These lines indicate which substances are present within the molecular cloud.
These graphs show spectral data from three of the James Webb Space Telescope’s instruments. In addition to simple ices like water, the science team was able to identify frozen forms of a wide range of molecules, from carbon dioxide, ammonia, and methane, to the simplest complex organic molecule, methanol.
In addition to the identified molecules, the team found evidence for molecules more complex than methanol (indicated in the lower-right panel). Although they didn’t definitively attribute these signals to specific molecules, this proves for the first time that complex molecules form in the icy depths of molecular clouds before stars are born.
The upper panels and lower-left panel all show the background star’s brightness versus wavelength. A lower brightness indicates absorption by ices and other materials in the molecular cloud. The lower-right panel displays the optical depth, which is essentially a logarithmic measure of how much light from the background star gets absorbed by the ices in the cloud. It is used to highlight weaker spectral features of less abundant varieties of ice.
Credit: Illustration: NASA, ESA, CSA, Joseph Olmsted (STScI), Science: Klaus Pontoppidan (STScI), Nicolas M. Crouzet (LEI), Zak Smith (The Open University), Melissa McClure (Leiden Observatory)

Chemical characterization of the ices was accomplished by studying how starlight from beyond the molecular cloud was absorbed by icy molecules within the cloud at specific infrared wavelengths visible to Webb. This process leaves behind chemical fingerprints known as absorption lines which can be compared with laboratory data to identify which ices are present in the molecular cloud. In this study, the team targeted ices buried in a particularly cold, dense, and difficult-to-investigate region of the Chamaeleon I molecular cloud, a region roughly 500 light-years from Earth that is currently in the process of forming dozens of young stars.

“We simply couldn’t have observed these ices without Webb,” elaborated Klaus Pontoppidan, Webb project scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, who was involved in this research. “The ices show up as dips against a continuum of background starlight. In regions that are this cold and dense, much of the light from the background star is blocked, and Webb’s exquisite sensitivity was necessary to detect the starlight and therefore identify the ices in the molecular cloud.”

This research forms part of the Ice Age project, one of Webb’s 13 Early Release Science programs. These observations are designed to showcase Webb’s observing capabilities and to allow the astronomical community to learn how to get the best from its instruments. The Ice Age team has already planned further observations, and hopes to trace out the journey of ices from their formation through to the assemblage of icy comets.

“This is just the first in a series of spectral snapshots that we will obtain to see how the ices evolve from their initial synthesis to the comet-forming regions of protoplanetary disks,” concluded McClure. “This will tell us which mixture of ices — and therefore which elements — can eventually be delivered to the surfaces of terrestrial exoplanets or incorporated into the atmospheres of giant gas or ice planets.”

These results were published in the January 23 issue of Nature Astronomy.

Notes

  1. A molecular cloud is a vast interstellar cloud of gas and dust in which molecules can form, such as hydrogen and carbon monoxide. Cold, dense clumps in molecular clouds with higher densities than their surroundings can be the sites of star formation if these clumps collapse to form protostars.

Reference: “An Ice Age JWST inventory of dense molecular cloud ices” by M. K. McClure, W. R. M. Rocha, K. M. Pontoppidan, N. Crouzet, L. E. U. Chu, E. Dartois, T. Lamberts, J. A. Noble, Y. J. Pendleton, G. Perotti, D. Qasim, M. G. Rachid, Z. L. Smith, Fengwu Sun, Tracy L. Beck, A. C. A. Boogert, W. A. Brown, P. Caselli, S. B. Charnley, Herma M. Cuppen, H. Dickinson, M. N. Drozdovskaya, E. Egami, J. Erkal, H. Fraser, R. T. Garrod, D. Harsono, S. Ioppolo, I. Jiménez-Serra, M. Jin, J. K. Jørgensen, L. E. Kristensen, D. C. Lis, M. R. S. McCoustra, Brett A. McGuire, G. J. Melnick, Karin I. Öberg, M. E. Palumbo, T. Shimonishi, J. A. Sturm, E. F. van Dishoeck and H. Linnartz, 23 January 2023, Nature Astronomy.
DOI: 10.1038/s41550-022-01875-w

The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb will solve mysteries in our solar system, look beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probe the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency.



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Science

How to See the ‘Green Comet’ Everyone’s Talking About

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Deep in the Stone Age, when Neanderthals still lived alongside Homo sapiens, our ancestors might have been agog at a green light in the night sky. Now, that light—C/2022 E3 (ZTF) (more familiarly, the Green Comet)—is back.

The Green Comet’s highly elliptical orbit means it will take a long time for it to swing past Earth again—about 50,000 years, to be specific. And that’s if it repeats its 50,000-year sojourn, which it may not.

Astronomers discovered the comet in March 2022 using the Samuel Oschin robotic telescope at the Zwicky Transient Facility. It passed perihelion (when it is closest to the Sun) on January 12.

Observers in the U.S. can see the comet now through early February, potentially with the naked eye if you’re in a dark viewing area, but your chances will be better using binoculars or a telescope. The best time to see the comet is in the predawn hours, according to NASA.

The comet will make its closest approach to our planet on February 2. The closest approach will take it about 0.29 AU (about 27 million miles) from Earth, according to EarthSky.

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Currently, the comet is toward the constellation Boötes and near Hercules, EarthSky reports. (If you’re having trouble finding the comet’s position, you can consult a handy interactive sky chart.) The comet’s location makes it difficult for observers in the Southern Hemisphere to see. From its current location in the night sky, its projected path charts it past Ursa Minor (the Little Dipper), with it passing by Camelopardis at the time of its closest approach.

Comets glow thanks to a combination of their chemical composition and sunlight. Comets that pass near the Sun are illuminated and warmed by its energy, causing molecules on their surface to evaporate and fluoresce. Comet heads glow green when they contain cyanogen or diatomic carbon, according to NASA.

The Green Comet may get as bright as magnitude 5 by the time it’s closest to Earth, according to EarthSky. The lower the number, the brighter the object. The full Moon’s apparent magnitude is about -11, and the faintest objects seen by the Hubble Space Telescope are about magnitude 30, according to Brittanica. The dimmest stars that our naked eye can see are about magnitude 6.

While the comet may reach a brightness of magnitude 5, it’ll probably be helpful to use a pair of binoculars or a telescope if you’re having difficulty spotting the object on a clear night.

The incoming space rock is not the only recent green comet; in 2018, the comet 46P/Wirtanen was bright enough for observers to see with the naked eye, and in 2021, the Comet Leonard glowed green as the ice-ball made its cosmic trajectory.

So keep your eyes up on the clear nights to come. If you see something with a faint green glow, it’s probably our newest cosmic visitor.

More: Mega Comet Arriving From the Oort Cloud Is 85 Miles Wide

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Sports

Penguins’ P.O. Joseph, Sens’ Mathieu Joseph leave ice together

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Penguins defenseman P.O. Joseph and older brother Mathieu Joseph, a forward for the Senators, lived out a childhood dream when they played each other for the first time in the NHL on Friday night in Pittsburgh.

Neither player recorded a point in Pittsburgh’s 4-1 win, but they did enter the box score together when they drew coincidental high-stick penalties while their parents, Frantzi Joseph and France Taillon, watched from the stands.

P.O. Joseph sheepishly admitted his brother probably didn’t deserve a penalty, admitting he may have accidentally high-sticked himself.

“I don’t know if they thought this is going to be funny or something that we’re both going to get a penalty at the same time,” Mathieu Joseph said. “But stuff happens. I’m sure my parents had a good laugh about it, but I didn’t think it was funny.”

Their parents certainly did have a good laugh, as captured by video after it happened.

It’s not the first time two brothers have received penalties in the same game.

In 1997, Keith and Wayne Primeau got into a fight with each other in a Buffalo Sabres-Hartford Whalers game in Connecticut and went to the box.

And in 1992, Brent and Rich Sutter each got unsportsmanlike conducts in the second period and then roughing penalties against each other in the third during a Chicago Blackhawks-St. Louis Blues matchup.

Information from ESPN Stats & Information and The Associated Press was used in this report.



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Science

‘This is bad, bad news … for all of us.’ New study tracks Greenland’s ice thaw rates.

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The coldest and highest parts of the Greenland ice sheet, nearly two miles above sea level in many locations, are warming rapidly and showing changes that are unprecedented in at least a millennium, scientists reported Wednesday.

That’s the finding from research that extracted multiple 100-foot or longer cores of ice from atop the world’s second-largest ice sheet. The samples allowed the researchers to construct a new temperature record based on the oxygen bubbles stored inside them, which reflect the temperatures at the time when the ice was originally laid down.

“We find the 2001-2011 decade the warmest of the whole period of 1,000 years,” said Maria Hörhold, the study’s lead author and a scientist at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven, Germany.

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And since warming has only continued since that time, the finding is probably an underestimate of how much the climate in the high-altitude areas of northern and central Greenland has changed. That is bad news for the planet’s coastlines, because it suggests a long-term process of melting is being set in motion that could ultimately deliver some significant, if hard to quantify, fraction of Greenland’s total mass into the oceans. Overall, Greenland contains enough ice to raise sea levels by more than 20 feet.

The study stitched together temperature records revealed by ice cores drilled in 2011 and 2012 with records contained in older and longer cores that reflect temperatures over the ice sheet a millennium ago. The youngest ice contained in these older cores was from 1995, meaning they could not say much about temperatures in the present day.

The work also found that compared with the 20th century as a whole, this part of Greenland, the enormous north-central region, is now 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer, and that the rate of melting and water loss from the ice sheet — which raises sea levels — has increased in tandem with these changes.

The research was published in the journal Nature on Wednesday by Hörhold and a group of researchers at the Alfred Wegener Institute, the Neils Bohr Institute in Denmark, and the University of Bremen in Germany.

The new research “pushes back the instrument record 1,000 years using data from within Greenland that shows unprecedented warming in the recent period,” said Isabella Velicogna, a glaciologist at the University of California at Irvine who was not involved in the research.

“This is not changing what we already knew about the warming signal in Greenland, the increase in melt and accelerated flow of ice into the ocean, and that this will be challenging to slow down,” Velicogna said. “Still, it adds momentum to the seriousness of the situation. This is bad, bad news for Greenland and for all of us.”

Scientists have posited that if the air over Greenland becomes warm enough, a feedback loop would ensue: The ice sheet’s melting would cause it to slump to a lower altitude, which would naturally expose it to warmer air, which would cause more melting and slumping, and so forth.

That this north-central part of Greenland is now 1.5 degrees Celsius warmer than it was in the 1900s does not necessarily mean the ice sheet has reached this feared “tipping point,” however.

Recent research has suggested that Greenland’s dangerous threshold lies at about 1.5 degrees Celsius or higher of planetary warming — but that is a different figure than the ice sheet’s regional warming. When the globe reaches 1.5C of warming on average, which could happen as soon as the 2030s, Greenland’s warming will likely be even higher than that — and higher than it is now.

Researchers consulted by The Washington Post also highlighted that the northern region of Greenland, where these temperatures have been recorded, is known for other reasons to have the potential to trigger large sea-level rise.

“We should be concerned about north Greenland warming because that region has a dozen sleeping giants in the form of wide tidewater glaciers and an ice stream … that awakened will ramp up Greenland sea level contribution,” said Jason Box, a scientist with the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland.

Box published research last year suggesting that in the present climate, Greenland is already destined to lose an amount of ice equivalent to nearly a foot of sea-level rise. This committed sea-level rise will only get worse as temperatures continue to warm.

The concern is focused on the Northeast Greenland Ice Stream, which channels a major portion — 12 percent — of the ice sheet toward the sea. It’s essentially a massive slow-moving river that terminates in several very large glaciers that spill into the Greenland Sea. It is already getting thinner, and the glaciers at its endpoint have lost mass — one of them, the Zachariae Isstrom, has also lost its frozen shelf that once extended over the ocean.

Recent research has also demonstrated that in past warm periods within the relatively recent history of the Earth (i.e., the last 50,000 years or so), this part of Greenland has often held less ice than it does today. In other words, the ice stream might extend farther outward from the center of Greenland than can be sustained at current temperatures, and be strongly prone to moving backward and giving up a lot of ice.

“Paleoclimate and modeling studies suggest that northeast Greenland is especially vulnerable to climate warming,” said Beata Csatho, an ice sheet expert at the University at Buffalo.

In the same year when the researchers were drilling the ice cores on which the current work is based — 2012 — something striking happened in Greenland. That summer, in July, vast portions of the ice sheet saw surface-melt conditions, including in the cold and very high-elevation locations where the research took place.

“It was the first year it has been observed that you have melting in these elevations,” said Hörhold. “And now it continues.”

correction

An earlier version of this article stated that the Neils Bohr Institute is in Germany. It is in Denmark.

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Science

Runaway W. Antarctic ice sheet collapse not ‘inevitable’: study

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The runaway collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet — which would trigger catastrophic sea level rise — is not “inevitable”, scientists said Monday following research that tracked the region’s recent response to climate change.

As global temperatures rise, there is mounting concern that warming could trigger so-called tipping points that set off irreversible melting of the world’s massive ice sheets and ultimately lift oceans enough to drastically redraw the world map.

New research published Monday suggests a complex interaction of factors affecting the melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, which is home to the enormous and unstable Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers — nicknamed the “Doomsday glacier” — that together could raise global sea levels by more than three metres (10 feet).

Using satellite imagery as well as ocean and climate records between 2003 and 2015, an international team of researchers found that while the West Antarctic Ice Sheet continued to retreat, the pace of ice loss slowed across a vulnerable region of the coastline.

Their study, published in the journal Nature Communications, concluded that this slowdown was caused by changes in ocean temperatures that were caused by offshore winds, with pronounced differences in the impact depending on the region.

Researchers said that this raises questions about how rising temperatures will affect the Antarctic, with ocean and atmospheric conditions playing a key role.

“That means that ice-sheet collapse is not inevitable,” said co-author Professor Eric Steig from the University of Washington in Seattle.

“It depends on how climate changes over the next few decades, which we could influence in a positive way by reducing greenhouse gas emissions.”

The researchers observed that while in one region, in the Bellingshausen Sea, the pace of ice retreat accelerated after 2003, it slowed in the Amundsen Sea.

– ‘Blink of an eye’ –

They concluded that this was down to changes in the strength and direction of offshore surface winds, which can change the ocean currents and disturb the layer of cold water around Antarctica and flush relatively warmer water towards the ice.

Both the North and South pole regions have warmed by roughly three degrees Celsius compared to late 19th-century levels, nearly three times the global average.

Scientists are increasingly concerned that the Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers have reached a “tipping point” that could see irreversible melting irrespective of cuts to greenhouse gas emissions.

Anders Levermann, a climate scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research who was not connected to the latest study, welcomed the approach of bringing together multiple observations and records, although the study period was “the blink of an eye in ice terms”.

“I think we still have to live and plan and do our sea level projections and coastal planning with a hypothesis that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is destabilised and we will get three and a half meters of sea level rise just from this area of the planet alone,” he said, adding however that this would happen “over centuries to millennia”.

The United Nation’s science advisory panel for climate change, the IPCC, has forecast that oceans will rise up to a metre by the end of the century, and even more after that.

Hundreds of millions of people live within a few metres of sea level.

While cutting planet-warming emissions is seen as the first and most important way to halt the melting of the West Antarctic ice sheet, scientists have also come up with an array of hi-tech suggestions for saving the gargantuan ice shelf and staving off.

Levermann has researched ideas including using snow cannons to pump trillions of tons of ice back on top of the frozen region.

Other suggestions have included constructing Eiffel Tower-sized columns on the seabed to prop it up from below, and a 100m-tall, 100-kilometre-long berm to block warm water flowing underneath.

klm/mh/ea

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