Tag Archives: Scientists

Science

NASA’s “Perseverance” team led by women and minority scientists

Leave a comment

The Guardian

‘It’s a toxic blend’: where the kids are warned not to swallow the bath water

Predominantly Latino towns in California like East Orosi face huge obstacles getting clean drinking water A woman fills up drinking water containers from a kiosk in Orosi. Photograph: Max Whittaker/The Guardian An invisible line splits the rural road of Avenue 416 in California’s Tulare county, at the point where the nut trees stretch east toward the towering Sierra Nevada mountains in the distance. On one side of the line, residents have clean water. On the other side, they do not. On the other side lies East Orosi, an unincorporated community of about 700 where children grow up learning to never open their eyes or mouths while they shower. They know that what comes out of their faucets may harm them, and parents warn they must not swallow when they brush their teeth. They spend their lives sustaining themselves on bottled water while just one mile down Avenue 416, the same children they go to school with in the community of Orosi can drink from their taps freely and bathe without a second thought. East Orosi is one of many predominantly Latino communities that suffer from contaminated drinking water that has exceeded federal limits set by the Environmental Protection Agency, according to an extensive investigation by the Guardian. Systems serving Latino communities have twice as many strikes against them for drinking water violations as the national average, according to our analysis of more than 140,000 public water systems in the US and county-level demographic data. This is an issue that affects 5.25m people across California, according to the Environmental Working Group, in largely small rural communities like East Orosi where there are fewer customers to charge for more advanced water filtration systems. A neighborhood in East Orosi, California in January. Photograph: Max Whittaker/The Guardian Maria Orozco, 30, doesn’t remember a time when she felt she could safely drink water from the faucet. When she was five, her mother began noticing residue when she boiled water. Then one day, a neighbor came to see her mother, frightened and desperate: her five-year-old son had developed a rash all over his body. The doctors told them it was just a rash, though the mothers believed it had to be something more. Now a mother in East Orosi herself, Orozco is constantly concerned about watching over her daughters, seven-year-old Sheila and nine-year-old Viviana. For Orozco, bath time cannot be the gentle, fun-splashing experience that so many mothers get to share with their children; for her and the other parents of East Orosi, it’s a matter of their children’s health. “They’re kids, they don’t listen,” Orozco said. “They open their mouths and I tell them to spit it out. They spit it out but sometimes they try to swallow. I tell them they have to stop playing around.” Orozco tries to put on a brave face for her family, but she is worried. Recently, her daughters’ hair started falling out in the shower, more than usual. Her hair has begun falling out too. “It’s like a knot in your stomach,” she said, of this constant worry over the water and her family’s health. “It’s like a knot in your stomach and someone is putting a lot of pressure on it.” Maria Orozco in her home with her young daughters and niece, holding a photo of her mother, who died advocating for clean water. Photograph: Reyna Rodriguez Symptoms from water contamination are wide-ranging, and it is difficult to prove that a particular chemical or substance might cause a specific illness. In East Orosi, the main concern is nitrate levels that exceed the standard set by the EPA. Since 2015, the town’s water system has exceeded the federal legal limit for nitrates 15 times. Nitrates make oxygen less available to the body. It’s an issue prevalent in the Central Valley, California’s breadbasket, where big agriculture reigns. Orchards and lush orange groves surround Orosi, where many work in the fields, planting and harvesting the fruit. Dairies line the road to Visalia, the closest city, the whiff of manure sharp at certain junctures. The majority of residents of the Central Valley rely on groundwater for home use, drilling below ground into aquifers rather than sourcing from reservoirs. Advocates in the region believe that the fertilizer runoff and manure from all the large-scale farming operations and dairies have contaminated the groundwater. More than 90% of nitrates in all drinking water comes from agriculture, said Anne Schechinger, a senior economic analyst with the Environmental Working Group. The biggest health risk when it comes to drinking nitrate-tainted water is to infants and pregnant women Nitrates can affect hemoglobin, the molecules that help move oxygen in the body, resulting in something called “blue baby syndrome,” when an infant’s skin turns blue. Nitrate contamination has also been linked to thyroid disease which can cause fatigue, weight gain and hair loss. Too much exposure to nitrates can cause difficult breathing, nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, dehydration, dizziness, weakness and convulsions. Newer studies have shown that drinking water with lower nitrate levels than the federal threshold can still increase risks of colorectal cancer in adults. “The EPA’s limit is really not protecting people enough, is what we believe,” Schechinger said. Though nitrates are the primary concern in East Orosi, water advocates in the area are also anxious about other contaminants. “The Central Valley produces a variety of food from grapes, almonds, apricots, blueberries and we also create a variety of blended, toxic water,” said Susana de Anda, executive director of the Community Water Center. “Our groundwater is a toxic blend of nitrates, arsenic, 123TCP, chromium. Unfortunately, it’s not just nitrates.” The East Orosi Community Service District did not return requests for comment. Felipe Gonzalez poses for a portrait. Photograph: Max Whittaker/The Guardian The California state water board has documented violations with East Orosi’s water dating back to 2003, but residents remember it beginning earlier than that. Orozco believes it’s been at least 25 years. Felipe Gonzalez, 65, who has lived in East Orosi for 30 years, remembers the water was fine when he first moved there. Then the water in the ornate fountain in his front yard began growing algae and mold. When he washed his car, the water would leave a strange residue behind. Eventually, officials with the water district contacted them and told them they could no longer drink from their taps. Through the years, he and his family learned to make do on bottled water, using what they now pay nearly $70 a month for only showers, watering the plants and dishes. His adult son with developmental disabilities cannot understand that he needs to close his eyes and mouth when he bathes, and has since had a series of eyes issues that they have no way of proving is connected to contaminated water exposure. When his youngest granddaughter visits from Orosi, she cannot understand why she cannot play in the fountain. “You get tired of the challenges,” Gonzalez said. “I and the others feel like losing hope that this will ever be resolved and they will change the water. So, we can only get used to the idea and learn to live like this.” Some areas, like East Orosi, are worse affected than others, just given the geography, said Community Water Center solutions manager Ryan Jensen. The closer a community is to the Sierra Nevada mountains, the shallower the aquifer and the water less diluted. The west well that provides drinking water to East Orosi. Photograph: Max Whittaker/The Guardian East Orosi has just two wells serving its community, while Orosi has five for its community of 8,770. The cost of getting a water filtration system advanced enough to clean East Orosi’s water – a cost that would be pushed on to the consumers – would be far too much for a community so small that it takes just five minutes to drive around the entire perimeter. Holding the agriculture industry accountable for its role in polluting the groundwater is a complicated and lofty endeavor. Elizabeth Lopez, 17, who moved to East Orosi a year ago, is fed up with having to keep driving into Orosi or Cutler to refill their five-gallon jugs of water. But like so many others in East Orosi, her mother works in the fields. Her father works at a dairy. The very industry that is impacting their water is also keeping a roof over their heads. Clean water advocates believe the solution lies in consolidation. In 2015, the Community Water Center helped pass legislation that gave the state water board authority to force one community water system to join with a smaller community’s water system. Orosi would take on East Orosi. It seemed like the perfect answer. East Orosi and Orosi were already one community, with their children going to the same schools and their residents shopping in the same shops. Advocates have identified a spot for a new well in Orosi to serve the new customers, and all that would be left is the installation of piping down three-quarters of a mile of highway down Avenue 416. In the process, they could even connect a stretch of households that were using contaminated private wells to the new consolidated public water system, Jensen said. The farmworking Lopez family outside their home in East Orosi. Photograph: Max Whittaker/The Guardian But it appears that Orosi doesn’t want to consolidate, according to local officials and advocates working on the issue. The state water resources control board first ordered a voluntary consolidation with the Orosi Public Utilities District in July 2018. More than two years later, the state board ordered a mandatory consolidation, with the requirement that the two systems merge by the end of 2024. It’s not a matter of community rivalry, or neighbors hating neighbors. “East Orosi, those residents are our neighbors, they’re our relatives, they’re the students that also attend Orosi high school and Orosi elementary school,” said local lawmaker Eddie Valero, who grew up in Orosi. “They are a part of our community and I would say if you would ask someone in Orosi, ‘Hey, do you want to give people in East Orosi water from our piping system?’ Overwhelmingly, they would say yes.” But in California – and in the Central Valley, especially – water is more precious than gold. It is the lifeline of the valley, a necessary resource for the $50bn agriculture industry that keeps the region afloat. Water means jobs, it means food on the table, it means the ability to pay next month’s rent. The 2015 drought that choked the state still haunts the Central Valley, with political billboards of “Save California’s Water” dotting its main freeways and political ads about Democrats wasting California’s water blaring on its radio stations. “It’s a scarcity mentality that causes communities that are doing all right to be hesitant to help out other communities,” Jensen said. “On a larger scale, it’s not a problem unique just to Orosi. The city of the city of Tulare didn’t want to connect with Matheny Tract. Up and down the Central Valley, there’s these stories of small communities that would like to be connected to a larger community but the larger community is resistant.” An orchard in East Orosi. Nitrate contamination has made the town’s drinking water unsafe. Photograph: Max Whittaker/The Guardian In an email, Mose Diaz, an attorney for Orosi Public Utility District (OPUD), denied that the board of directors was against consolidation. OPUD had been working to negotiate a voluntary consolidation before the state water board “hastily issued a forced consolidation order,” Diaz said. He did not respond to questions about why a 2017 engineering report prepared for the East Orosi Community Services District stated that OPUD was “opposed to consolidation of EOCSD and OPUD” and had “directed its staff not to furnish information” regarding connections to Orosi well sites. Diaz also made a point to state that the state water board’s mandatory consolidation order was “based on the erroneous premise that the EOCSD’s groundwater wells exceed the State’s maximum contaminant level” of 10 milligrams per liter. Indeed, for the last four quarters, East Orosi’s water just barely tested within standards: 9.2 and 9.5 milligrams in 2019 and the first quarter of 2020, and then exactly 10 for two more quarters in 2020. Asked if he would recommend that the children Orosi drink this water – or, if he would allow his own children to drink this water – he did not respond. With nitrates, it’s also important to note that it’s not uncommon for levels to fluctuate because of rainfall or drought, especially in a region with a long history of contamination like East Orosi, Jensen said. Local advocates are anticipating a legal battle. Diaz said he thought that the state water board exceeded its legal authority in issuing the mandatory order. For the residents of East Orosi, this would only further prolong a process that has already taken too long. Maria Orozco, the young East Orosi mother, grew up going to meetings with her mother, Maria Elena Orozco, who made the issue of getting clean water to their community her passion in life. Her mother died in 2018, unable to see her dream fulfilled. Orozco broke down in tears when she talked about her mother, and the thought that someone could fight so hard and still, after all this time, their home would not have clean water. “Every time we’d go to the water meetings, she would talk right there and tell us our dream was to have clean water, so our kids would have clean water, and our grandkids,” Orozco said. “I want my mom’s dream to come true.”

Read original article here

Science

This Photo of Venus Shocked Scientists. Here’s Why.

Leave a comment

The photo is part of a surprising twist involving a probe’s camera.

Fly By Photograph

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe got the souvenir of a lifetime during its trip to study the Sun last year. 

The probe snapped this stunning photo of Venus on July 11, 2020, according to NASA. The photo showcases amazing details of the Venusian surface from 7,693 miles away—but one particular detail in it, released by NASA this week, has scientists excited.

Careless WISPR

The probe used its onboard Wide-field Imager (WISPR) to capture the photo. Though the instrument was designed to capture images of the sun’s corona, NASA was also able to use it to capture thermal information about the planet—something they didn’t know the instrument could do. 

“WISPR is tailored and tested for visible light observations,” explains Angelos Vourlidas, WISPR project scientist from Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. “We expected to see clouds, but the camera peered right through the surface.”

In the center of the planet, you can see a dark area identified as Aphrodite Terra, which is the largest highland area on Venus. The reason it’s darker is because it’s 85 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than the surrounding area. That indicates that WISPR is able to capture thermal data along with light data.  

“Either way, some exciting science opportunities await us,” Vourlidas adds.

Sun Bound

Though the probe’s photo was a welcome surprise to researchers, Parker’s actual goal is to study the Sun. That’s why it’s speeding by Venus for a gravity assist seven times, as part of its seven-year mission. 

The above photo was taken during its third fly-by of the planet. The probe more recently passed by Venus on February 20 on its next approach to the Sun.

Maybe a year from now we’ll get another mind-blowing photo of the Venusian surface. For now, we’ll just have to settle for all the insane images from Mars Perseverance in the meantime.

READ MORE: Parker Solar Probe Offers Stunning View of Venus [NASA]

More on Venus: MIT Scientists Suggest LIfe Could Thrive in the Clouds of Venus

Read original article here

Science

This new photo of Venus surprised NASA scientists

Leave a comment

And news this week out of NASA only solidifies my stance.

MORE SCARY SPACE NEWS: An asteroid the size of the Golden Gate Bridge will pass by Earth in March

The space organization shared a new photo that NASA’s Parker Solar Probe captured of Venus while the probe was using the planet’s gravity to whip itself toward its final destination: The Sun.

The black and white image was taken from 7,693 miles away from Venus. To the the lay person it looks pretty cool: There’s a planet and stars and perhaps some sort of movement taking place. But, honestly, I’ve seen better, especially over these last few weeks.

According NASA, though, the image is full of surprises. As Space.com put it, Venus “looks nothing like what scientists expected to see.”

What?!

In a statement released this week, NASA scientists explained that the camera on-board the Parker Solar Probe, known as the Wide-field Imager for Parker Solar Probe (or WISPR), captured an image of a bright rim around the edge of the planet that may be nightglow and the planet’s Aphrodite Terra, the largest highland region on the Venusian surface, which is known to be about 85 degrees cooler than its surroundings.

The is exciting and all, but according to NASA, they were only expecting to see some clouds.


GETTING THERE: We need to get to the moon by 2024. Will this rocket be able to take us there?

This means that either the WISPR device that we shot up into space doesn’t actually work the way we thought it would. Instead of just capturing visible light, the images suggest that the camera may also be able to pick up near-infrared wavelengths of light, which could allow scientists to conduct further research on dust around the Sun and in the solar system. 
 
Or—and this is where I get a little freaked out—it could mean that changes are happening in the normally thick, cloudy Venusian atmosphere that Earthlings were not yet aware of.

“Either way,” Angelos Vourlidas, the scientist who helped develop WISPR, said, “some exciting science opportunities await us.”

My thoughts exactly.

The latest photos were from the probe’s July 2020 flyby of Venus. The probe passed the planet again earlier this month, on February 20, and the WISPR team planned to capture more images to draw a conclusion from. Still, it won’t be until the end of April before the images make it back to Earth.

See, there’s another thing I don’t care for about space: Really slow upload speeds.

Read original article here

Science

‘Harbor Seal Rock’ on Mars and other new sights intrigue Perseverance rover scientists

Leave a comment

This wind-carved “Harbor Seal Rock,” seen in the first 360-degree panorama taken by the Mastcam-Z instrument on NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover, shows just how much detail is captured by the camera system. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/ASU)

NASA’s Perseverance rover has landed in a rich scientific hunting ground, if its first good look around is any guide.

The car-sized Perseverance landed on the floor of Jezero Crater on Feb. 18, kicking off an ambitious surface mission that will hunt for signs of ancient Mars life and collect samples for future return to Earth, among other tasks.

Perseverance is not yet ready to dive into that science work; the mission team is still conducting health and status checks on its various instruments and subsystems. But the six-wheeled robot recently used its Mastcam-Z camera suite to capture a high-definition, 360-degree panorama of its surroundings, and that first taste has the mission team intrigued.

Live updates: NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover mission

For example, the zoomable panorama revealed a dark stone that the team has dubbed “Harbor Seal Rock,” Mastcam-Z principal investigator Jim Bell, of Arizona State University’s School of Earth and Space Exploration, said during a webcast discussion of the photo on Thursday (Feb. 25).

The Martian wind probably carved Harbor Seal Rock into its curious shape over the eons, Bell said. He also pointed out patches that showed evidence of much faster-acting erosion — spots where the thrusters on Perseverance’s “sky crane” descent stage blew away Mars’ blanket of red dust on Feb. 18, exposing the surfaces of small rocks. 

One such patch harbors a group of light-colored, heavily pitted stones that have caught mission scientists’ eyes.

“Are these volcanic rocks? Are these carbonate rocks? Are these something else? Do they have coatings on them?” Bell said. “We don’t know — we don’t have any chemical data or mineral data on them yet — but, boy, they’re certainly interesting, and part of the story about what’s going on here is going to be told when we get more detailed information on these rocks and some of the other materials in this area.”

This is one of the key jobs of Mastcam-Z and Perseverance’s other cameras, Bell said — to spot interesting features that Perseverance can study in more detail with its spectrometers and other science instruments.

The 28-mile-wide (45 kilometers) Jezero Crater harbored a deep lake and a river delta billions of years ago. Deltas are good at preserving signs of life here on Earth, so the Perseverance team is eager for the rover to study and sample the remnants of that feature within Jezero. And the delta is visible in the Mastcam-Z panorama; the cliffs that mark its edge are about 1.2 miles (2 kilometers) from Perseverance’s landing site, Bell said.

The ridgeline that’s visible beyond the delta cliffs in the Mastcam-Z panorama is Jezero Crater’s rim, he added.

The recently unveiled photo is just the beginning, of course. For starters, it’s the lowest-resolution panorama the Mastcam-Z team will construct. Bell said that similar shots that are three times sharper will be assembled after Perseverance switches over to its surface-optimized software, a four-day process that’s already underway.

And we haven’t gotten the slightest taste of Perseverance’s science discoveries yet. That work will take a while to get going, because the mission team’s first big task after getting the rover up and running is to conduct test flights of the 4-lb. (1.8 kilograms) Mars Helicopter Ingenuity, which rode to the Red Planet on Perseverance’s belly.

Ingenuity’s pioneering sorties — the first rotorcraft flights on a world beyond Earth — will likely take place this spring, and science and sampling are expected to begin in earnest in the summer, mission team members have said.

Mike Wall is the author of “Out There” (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook. 

Read original article here

Science

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe surprises scientists with wild image of Venus

Leave a comment

Venus aglow, amid the stars. The dark region on the surface is known as Aphrodite Terra. 


NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Naval Research Laboratory/Guillermo Stenborg and Brendan Gallagher

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, a diminutive spacecraft designed to “touch the sun,” nabbed wild new images of the hellacious planet  Venus in a recent flyby, surprising scientists and offering new opportunities for science.

While flying past Venus, the probe captured photos of a bright rim of light around the planet, NASA said Wednesday. Researchers said this rim is night glow, or, “light emitted by oxygen atoms high in the atmosphere that recombine into molecules in the nightside.”

The image, captured by the Wide-field Imager for Parker Solar Probe (WISPR), also show’s Venus‘ biggest highland region, a spot called Aphrodite Terra. In the image above, it’s the dark section in the middle. 

“WISPR is tailored and tested for visible light observations. We expected to see clouds, but the camera peered right through to the surface,” said Angelos Vourlidas, WISPR project scientist from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. This could mean that WISPR is capable of capturing near infrared light. The team is wondering if it can be used to study dust not only around the sun, but within the inner solar system

The Parker Solar Probe is on a seven-year mission to study solar wind, but uses Venus’ gravity to get closer to the sun. The probe is the fastest human-made object and closest object to the sun we’ve ever constructed and it uses the Venus flybys to increase its speed and tighten its orbit. 

The last flyby occurred on Feb. 20, 2021, which will help the probe’s speed increase to 147 kilometers per second. That means it could get from Yankee Stadium in New York to Philadelphia in the blink of an eye. 

Follow CNET’s 2021 Space Calendar to stay up to date with all the latest space news this year. You can even add it to your own Google Calendar.    

Read original article here

Science

Pompeii: Scientists use lasers to remove stains on 2,000-year-old fresco in the House of the Ceii

Leave a comment

A stunning fresco in the garden of Pompeii’s Casa dei Ceii (House of the Ceii) has been painstakingly laser-cleaned and touched up with new paint by expert restorers.

The artwork — of hunting scenes — was painted in the so-called ‘Third’ or ‘Ornate’ Pompeii style, which was popular around 20–10 BC and featured vibrant colours.

In 79 AD, however, the house and the rest of the Pompeii was submerged beneath pyroclastic flows of searing gas and volcanic matter from the eruption of Vesuvius.

Poor maintenance since the house was dug up in 1913–14 saw the hunting fresco and others deteriorate, particularly at the bottom, which is more vulnerable to humidity.

The main section of the fresco depicts a lion pursuing a bull, a leopard pouncing on sheep and a wild boar charging towards some deer. 

Scroll down for videos 

A stunning fresco in the garden of Pompeii’s Casa dei Ceii (House of the Ceii) has been painstakingly laser-cleaned and touched up with fresh paint by expert restorers

 The main section of the fresco depicts a lion pursuing a bull, a leopard pouncing on sheep and a wild boar charging towards some deer. Pictured, the art is touched up near the bull’s hooves

In 79 AD, the House of the Ceii and the rest of the Pompeii was submerged beneath pyroclastic flows of searing gas and volcanic matter from the eruption of Vesuvius — as depicted in the English painter John Martin’s 1821 work ‘Destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum’, pictured

Frescos commonly adorned the perimeter walls of Pompeiian gardens and were intended to evoke an atmosphere — often one of tranquillity — while also creating the illusion that the area was larger than in reality, much as we use mirrors today.

‘What makes this fresco so special is that it is complete — something which is rare for such a large fresco at Pompeii,’ site director Massimo Osanna told The Times.

Alongside the hunting imagery of the now restored fresco, with its wild animals, the side walls of the garden featured Egyptian-themed landscapes, with beasts of the Nile delta like crocodiles and hippopotamuses hunted by with African pygmies and a ship shown transporting amphorae.

Experts believe the owner of the town house, or ‘domus’, had a connection or fascination with Egypt and potentially also the cult of Isis, that of the wife of the Egyptian god of the afterlife, which was popular in Pompeii in its final years.

In fact, the residence has been associated with one Lucius Ceius Secundus, a magistrate — based on an electoral inscription found on the building’s exterior — and it is after him that it takes its name, ‘Casa dei Ceii’.

The property, which stood for some two centuries before the eruption, is one of the rare examples of a domus in the somewhat severe style of the late Samnite period of the second century BC.

The house’s front façade sports an imitation ‘opus quadratum’ (cut stone block) design in white stucco and a high entranceway set between two rectangular pilasters capped with cube-shaped capitals. 

Casa dei Ceii’s footprint covered some 3,100 square feet (288 sq. m) and contained an unusual tetrastyle (four-pillared) atrium and a rainwater-collecting impluvium basin in a Grecian style, one rare for Pompeii, lined with cut amphora fragments.

The artwork — of hunting scenes — was painted in the so-called ‘Third’ or ‘Ornate’ Pompeii style, which was popular around 20–10 BC and featured vibrant colours, as pictured

The property, which stood for some two centuries before the eruption, is one of the rare examples of a domus in the somewhat severe style of the late Samnite period of the second century BC. The house’s front façade sports an imitation ‘opus quadratum’ (cut stone block) design in white stucco and a high entranceway set between two rectangular pilasters capped with cube-shaped capitals, as pictured

Other rooms found inside the property included a triclinium, where lunch would have been taken, two storage rooms, a tablinum which the master of the house would have used as an office and reception room and a kitchen with latrine.

An upper floor, which partially collapsed during the eruption, would have been used by the household servants and appeared to be in the process of being renovated or constructed at the time of the catastrophe.

The garden on whose back wall was adorned by the hunting fresco, meanwhile, featured a canal and two fountains, one of a nymph and the other a sphynx.

During the excavation of the townhouse, archaeologists found the skeleton of a turtle preserved in the garden.

The recent restoration work saw the paint film of much of the fresco — particularly a section featuring botanical decoration — carefully cleaned with a special laser. Experts also carefully retouched the paint in areas of the fresco that had been abraded over time, as well as instigating protective measures to help prevent the future infiltration of rainwater

Frescos commonly adorned the perimeter walls of Pompeiian gardens and were intended to evoke an atmosphere — often one of tranquillity — while also creating the illusion that the area was larger than in reality, much as we use mirrors today. Pictured, part of the hunting fresco (left) and a painting from a nearby wall of birds and vegetation (right)

‘What makes this fresco so special is that it is complete — something which is rare for such a large fresco at Pompeii,’ site director Massimo Osanna told The Times

The recent restoration work saw the paint film of much of the fresco — particularly a section featuring botanical decoration — carefully cleaned with a special laser.

Experts also carefully retouched the paint in areas of the fresco that had been abraded over time, 

Protective measures have also been taken to help prevent the future infiltration of rainwater that could damage the artwork.

The garden on whose back wall was adorned by the hunting fresco, meanwhile, featured a canal and two fountains, one of a nymph and the other a sphynx. During the excavation of the townhouse, experts found the skeleton of a turtle in the garden. Pictured, the fresco’s leopard

Alongside the hunting imagery of the now restored fresco, with its wild animals, the side walls of the garden featured Egyptian-themed landscapes, with beasts of the Nile delta like crocodiles and hippopotamuses hunted by with African pygmies (left) and a ship shown transporting amphorae. Pictured, right: two figures depicted on one of the garden’s walls

Experts believe the owner of the town house, or ‘domus’, had a connection or fascination with Egypt and perhaps the cult of Isis, that of the wife of the Egyptian god of the afterlife, which was popular in Pompeii in its final years. Pictured: the bull on the bottom right of the fresco

 Casa dei Ceii’s footprint covered some 3,100 square feet (288 sq. m) and contained an unusual tetrastyle (four-pillared) atrium and a rainwater-collecting impluvium basin in a Grecian style, one rare for Pompeii, lined with cut amphora fragments

The residence containing the fresco has been associated with one Lucius Ceius Secundus, a magistrate — based on an electoral inscription found on the building’s exterior — and it is after him that it takes its name, ‘Casa dei Ceii’

WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT VESUVIUS AND THE DESTRUCTION OF POMPEII?

What happened?  

Mount Vesuvius erupted in the year AD 79, burying the cities of Pompeii, Oplontis, and Stabiae under ashes and rock fragments, and the city of Herculaneum under a mudflow.  

Mount Vesuvius, on the west coast of Italy, is the only active volcano in continental Europe and is thought to be one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world.  

Every single resident died instantly when the southern Italian town was hit by a 500°C pyroclastic hot surge.

Pyroclastic flows are a dense collection of hot gas and volcanic materials that flow down the side of an erupting volcano at high speed.

They are more dangerous than lava because they travel faster, at speeds of around 450mph (700 km/h), and at temperatures of 1,000°C.

An administrator and poet called Pliny the younger watched the disaster unfold from a distance. 

Letters describing what he saw were found in the 16th century.  

His writing suggests that the eruption caught the residents of Pompeii unaware.

Mount Vesuvius erupted in the year AD 79, burying the cities of Pompeii, Oplontis, and Stabiae under ashes and rock fragments, and the city of Herculaneum under a mudflow

He said that a column of smoke ‘like an umbrella pine’ rose from the volcano and made the towns around it as black as night.

People ran for their lives with torches, screaming and some wept as rain of ash and pumice fell for several hours.  

While the eruption lasted for around 24 hours, the first pyroclastic surges began at midnight, causing the volcano’s column to collapse.

An avalanche of hot ash, rock and poisonous gas rushed down the side of the volcano at 124mph (199kph), burying victims and remnants of everyday life.  

Hundreds of refugees sheltering in the vaulted arcades at the seaside in Herculaneum, clutching their jewellery and money, were killed instantly.

The Orto dei fuggiaschi (The garden of the Fugitives) shows the 13 bodies of victims who were buried by the ashes as they attempted to flee Pompeii during the 79 AD eruption of the Vesuvius volcano

As people fled Pompeii or hid in their homes, their bodies were covered by blankets of the surge.

While Pliny did not estimate how many people died, the event was said to be ‘exceptional’ and the number of deaths is thought to exceed 10,000.

What have they found?

This event ended the life of the cities but at the same time preserved them until rediscovery by archaeologists nearly 1700 years later.

The excavation of Pompeii, the industrial hub of the region and Herculaneum, a small beach resort, has given unparalleled insight into Roman life.

Archaeologists are continually uncovering more from the ash-covered city.

In May archaeologists uncovered an alleyway of grand houses, with balconies left mostly intact and still in their original hues.

A plaster cast of a dog, from the House of Orpheus, Pompeii, AD 79. Around 30,000 people are believed to have died in the chaos, with bodies still being discovered to this day

Some of the balconies even had amphorae – the conical-shaped terra cotta vases that were used to hold wine and oil in ancient Roman times.

The discovery has been hailed as a ‘complete novelty’ – and the Italian Culture Ministry hopes they can be restored and opened to the public.

Upper stores have seldom been found among the ruins of the ancient town, which was destroyed by an eruption of Vesuvius volcano and buried under up to six metres of ash and volcanic rubble.

Around 30,000 people are believed to have died in the chaos, with bodies still being discovered to this day. 

Read original article here

Science

Scientists May Have Just Solved The Long-Standing Mystery of Earth’s ‘Missing Ice’

Leave a comment

It should be simple. When temperatures on Earth get hotter, huge amounts of water ice trapped in giant glaciers begin to thaw, releasing water into the oceans, and causing sea levels to rise. It’s the story of our lives.

 

By contrast, when global temperatures plummet, which happens during ice ages, sea levels proceed to drop, as water content retreats from the ocean, freezing once more in huge inland ice sheets.

This epic, ongoing cycle of ice ebb and flow – the transitions from glacials to interglacials – has been occurring since time immemorial. But there’s a problem.

For years now, scientists tracking these cycles have suggested there’s a “missing ice” problem: a mysterious discrepancy between very low sea levels roughly 20,000 years ago, and the volume of ice stored in glaciers at the same time.

Ice surface elevation, 20,000 years ago. (Evan Gowan/Alfred Wegener Institute)

At its heart, the problem is this. During the peak of Earth’s last ice age – the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), which ended approximately 20,000 years ago – sea level is thought to have been about 130 metres (427 ft) lower than it is today, based on ancient coral sediment evidence.

But modelling suggests ice volume in glaciers at this point in time wasn’t great enough to explain such a low sea level. So how can we explain this ‘missing’ ice?

 

In a new study led by geophysicist Evan Gowan from the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany, researchers appear to have found a solution.

With a new reconstruction called PaleoMIST 1.0, the researchers were able to model the evolution of global ice sheets way into the past, much farther back than even the LGM.

“It looks like we’ve found a new way to reconstruct the past as far back as 80,000 years,” Gowan says.

The results of the model suggest the anomaly in our data isn’t a case of missing ice, but rather mistaken inferences about how low the sea level actually fell during the LGM.

According to PaleoMIST 1.0’s ice physics model, the sea level dropped no more than 116 metres below where the waves lap today, with ice volume (being fully accounted for) clocking in somewhere around 42.2 × 106 km3.

“We, therefore, find no basis for the missing ice problem, as our LGM reconstruction is compatible with existing sea-level constraints,” the researchers explain in their study.

According to the team, the misdirection of the missing ice argument stems from a couple of factors – firstly, over-reliance on far-field indicators (coral sediment evidence from locations elsewhere in the world), which may not accurately represent global average sea levels as we once thought they did.

 

Another issue is a long-established but seemingly flawed method used to estimate glacier masses, oxygen isotope ratio cycles – which appears to produce discrepancies when reconciling sea-level height and glacier masses as far back as the LGM, at least.

“The isotope model has been used widely for years to determine the volume of ice in glaciers up to many millions of years before our time,” says one of the team, geophysicist Paolo Stocchi from the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research.

“Our work now raises doubts about the reliability of this method.”

While the missing ice mystery appears to be solved, the researchers don’t expect theirs will be the last word on this topic.

After all, their own solution’s incompatibility with oxygen isotope ratio cycle-based reconstructions has, in a way, “created a new missing ice problem”, the team admits.

Whether and how that new uncertainty can be resolved is a challenge for another day, in future research that may yield even clearer glimpses of ice sheet evolution in the distant past.

The findings are reported in Nature Communications.

 

Read original article here

Science

Scientists stumble on a meteor smashing into Jupiter

Leave a comment

This color-enhanced image shows a NASA Juno view of Jupiter in late 2020.


NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS; image processing by Tanya Oleksuik

Researchers using NASA’s Juno spacecraft to check out Jupiter’s auroras say they got lucky last spring and caught a very bright meteoroid explosion in the process.

Such impacts aren’t rare for Jupiter, since it’s the largest planet in the solar system with some seriously powerful gravity to boot.

“However, they are so short-lived that it is relatively unusual to see them,” the Southwest Research Institute’s Rohini Giles said in a statement. “You have to be lucky to be pointing a telescope at Jupiter at exactly the right time.”

Giles is lead author of a paper published this month in Geophysical Research Letters.

Amateur astronomers have used Earth-based telescopes to spot six impacts on the giant planet in the past decade, including a pretty dramatic one in 2019. But Giles and colleagues had a distinct advantage using Juno hanging out by Jupiter itself.

“This bright flash stood out in the data, as it had very different spectral characteristics than the UV emissions from Jupiter’s auroras,” Giles explained.

SwRI scientists studied the area imaged by Juno’s UVS instrument on April 10, 2020, and determined that a large meteoroid had exploded in a bright fireball in Jupiter’s upper atmosphere. The UVS swath includes a segment of Jupiter’s northern auroral oval, appearing purely in green, representing hydrogen emissions. In contrast, the bright spot (see enlargement) appears mostly yellow, indicating significant emissions at longer wavelengths.


SWRI

By looking at the brightness and other data from the flash, the team estimates it came from a space rock with a mass of between 550 and 3,300 pounds (249 to 1,497 kilograms) impacting the jovian atmosphere at an altitude about 140 miles (225 kilometers) above the top of Jupiter’s clouds.

Things slamming into Jupiter can be a pretty big deal. The biggest smackdown ever seen on the planet was the impact from Comet Shoemaker Levy 9 in 1994, which was widely studied.

“Impacts from asteroids and comets can have a significant impact on the planet’s stratospheric chemistry — 15 years after the impact, comet Shoemaker Levy 9 was still responsible for 95 percent of the stratospheric water on Jupiter,” Giles said. “Continuing to observe impacts and estimating the overall impact rates is therefore an important element of understanding the planet’s composition.”

Follow CNET’s 2021 Space Calendar to stay up to date with all the latest space news this year. You can even add it to your own Google Calendar.  

Read original article here

Science

Scientists Have Grown Microbes on Actual Rock Bits From Mars

Leave a comment

Rock from Mars is a rare and precious resource here on Earth. So far, the only samples we have are chunks of meteorite, dislodged from the red planet and travelling through the Solar System until they smack into Earth.

 

A small piece of this invaluable stuff has just been put to a fascinating use: Scientists ground up a small piece of the Martian Black Beauty meteorite, and used it to grow extremophile microbes.

This not only demonstrates that life could actually exist in real Martian conditions, it provides astrobiologists with new biosignatures they could use to look for signs of ancient life in the crust of Mars.

“Black Beauty is among the rarest substances on Earth, it is a unique Martian breccia formed by various pieces of Martian crust (some of them are dated at 4.42 ± 0.07 billion years) and ejected millions [of] years ago from the Martian surface,” said astrobiologist Tetyana Milojevic of the University of Vienna in Austria.

“We had to choose a pretty bold approach of crushing a few grams of precious Martian rock to recreate the possible look of Mars’ earliest and simplest life form.”

If ancient life existed on Mars, then of all the life on Earth, it’s most likely to resemble an extremophile. These are organisms that live in conditions we once thought too hostile to support life, such as subzero, super-salty lakes in Antarctica, or volcanic geothermal springs, or Earth’s lower crust, deep beneath the seafloor.

 

On ancient Mars, billions of years ago, we are fairly certain that the atmosphere was thick and rich in carbon dioxide. We have a sample of some of the rock that made up the Martian crust when the planet was just a baby.

Here on Earth, organisms that can fix carbon dioxide and convert inorganic compounds (such as minerals) into energy are known as chemolithotrophs, so that is what the research team looked into as the sort of organism that might have lived on Mars.

“We can assume that life forms similar to chemolithotrophs existed there in the early years of the red planet,” Milojevic said.

The microbe they selected was Metallosphaera sedula, a thermoacidophilic Archaean found in hot, acidic volcanic springs. This was placed on the Martian mineral in a bioreactor that was carefully heated, and gassed with air and carbon dioxide. The team used microscopy to observe the growth of cells.

Grow they did indeed – and the Black Beauty groundmass left behind allowed the scientists to observe how the microbe used and transformed the material in order to build cells, leaving behind biomineral deposits. They used scanning transmission electron microscopy to study these deposits down to the atomic scale.

 

“Grown on Martian crustal material, the microbe formed a robust mineral capsule comprised [sic] of complexed iron, manganese and aluminum phosphates,” Milojevic said.

“Apart from the massive encrustation of the cell surface, we have observed intracellular formation of crystalline deposits of a very complex nature (Fe, Mn oxides, mixed Mn silicates). These are distinguishable unique features of growth on the Noachian Martian breccia, which we did not observe previously when cultivating this microbe on terrestrial mineral sources and a stony chondritic meteorite.”

This could provide some invaluable data in the search for ancient life on Mars. The Perseverance rover, which last week arrived on the red planet, will be looking specifically for just such biosigns. Now astrobiologists know what the M. sedula crystalline deposits look like, they might find it easier to identify potentially similar things in Percy’s samples.

The research also highlights how important it is to use real Martian samples to conduct such studies, the researchers said. Although we have simulated Mars regolith available, and Martian meteorites are rare, we can gain invaluable insight from using the real thing.

Part of Perseverance’s mission is to collect samples of Martian rock to be returned to Earth, hopefully within the next decade. Scientists will surely be clamouring for the dust, but we have no doubt at all that some will be earmarked for extremophile research.

“Astrobiology research on Black Beauty and other similar ‘Flowers of the Universe’ can deliver priceless knowledge for the analysis of returned Mars samples in order to assess their potential biogenicity,” Milojevic said.

The research has been published in Communications Earth & Environment.

 

Read original article here

Science

Scientists Discover ‘Ingredients For Life’ in 3.5 Billion-Year-Old Rocks in Australia

Leave a comment

Researchers have discovered organic molecules trapped in incredibly ancient rock formations in Australia, revealing what they say is the first detailed evidence of early chemical ingredients that could have underpinned Earth’s primeval microbial life-forms.

 

The discovery, made in the 3.5-billion-year-old Dresser Formation of Western Australia’s Pilbara Craton, adds to a significant body of research pointing to ancient life in this part of the world – which represents one of only two pristine, exposed deposits of land on Earth dating back to the Archean Eon.

In recent years, the hydrothermal rock of the Dresser Formation has turned up repeated signals of what looks to be the earliest known life on land, with scientists discovering “definitive evidence” of microbial biosignatures dating back to 3.5 billion years ago.

Now, in a new study, researchers in Germany have identified traces of specific chemistry that could have enabled such primordial organisms to exist, finding biologically relevant organic molecules contained inside barite deposits, a mineral formed through various processes, including hydrothermal phenomena.

“In the field, the barites are directly associated with fossilised microbial mats, and they smell like rotten eggs when freshly scratched,” explains geobiologist Helge Mißbach from the University of Cologne in Germany.

“Thus, we suspected that they contained organic material that might have served as nutrients for early microbial life.”

Barite rock from the Dresser Formation. (Helge Mißbach)

While scientists have long hypothesised about how organic molecules could act as substrates for primeval microbes and their metabolic processes, direct evidence has to date proven largely elusive.

To investigate, Mißbach and fellow researchers examined inclusions within barites from the Dresser Formation, with the chemically stable mineral capable of preserving fluids and gases inside the rock for billions of years.

 

Using a range of techniques to analyse the barite samples – including gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, microthermometry, and stable isotope analysis, the researchers found what they describe as an “intriguing diversity of organic molecules with known or inferred metabolic relevance”.

Among these were the organic compounds acetic acid and methanethiol, in addition to numerous gases, including hydrogen sulfide, that could have had biotic or abiotic origins.

(Mißbach et al., Nature Communications, 2021)

Above: The Barite rock, indicating close association to stromatolites.

While it may be impossible to be sure of the precise links, the close proximity of these inclusions within the barite rock and adjacent organic accretions called stromatolites suggests that the ancient chemicals, once carried inside hydrothermal fluids, may have influenced primeval microbial communities.

“Indeed, many compounds discovered in the barite-hosted fluid inclusions … would have provided ideal substrates for the sulfur-based and methanogenic microbes previously proposed as players in the Dresser environment,” the researchers write in their study.

In addition to chemicals that may have acted as nutrients or substrates, other compounds found within the inclusions may have served as ‘building blocks’ for various carbon-based chemical reactions – processes that could have kickstarted microbial metabolism, by producing energy sources, such as lipids, that could be broken down by life-forms.

“In other words, essential ingredients of methyl thioacetate, a proposed critical agent in the emergence of life, were available in the Dresser environments,” the team explains.

“They might have conveyed the building blocks for chemoautotrophic carbon fixation and, thus, anabolic uptake of carbon into biomass.”

The findings are reported in Nature Communications.

 

Read original article here