(Source: buttons00)
(Source: mehbil)
Oceans Acidifying Fastest in 300 Million Years
Oceans absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, changing their pH and endangering marine life. Photograph: Justin Borucki/Image Source
The Earth’s oceans may be acidifying faster than at any point during the last 300 million years due to industrial emissions, endangering marine life from oysters and reefs to sea-going salmon, researchers said.
The scientists found surging levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere forced down the pH of the ocean by 0.1 unit in the last century, 10 times faster than the closest historical comparison from 56 million years ago, New York’s Columbia University, which led the research, said yesterday in a statement. The seas absorb CO2 from the atmosphere, forming carbonic acid. The lower the pH level in the seas, the more acidic they are.
Past instances of ocean acidification have been linked with mass extinctions of marine creatures so the current one could also threaten important species, according to Baerbel Hoenisch, the paleoceanographer at Columbia who was lead author of the paper that appeared in the journal Science.
“If industrial carbon emissions continue at the current pace, we may lose organisms we care about — coral reefs, oysters, salmon,” Hoenisch said.
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Major Martian Volcanoes from MOLA - Olympus Mons
Two views of Olympus Mons, shown as topography draped over a Viking image mosaic. MOLA’s (Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter) regional topography has shown that this volcano sits off to the west of the main Tharsis rise rather than on its western flank. The topography also clearly shows the relationship between the volcano’s scarp and massive aureole deposit that was produced by flank collapse. The vertical exaggeration is 10:1.
Credit: NASA/MOLA Science Team
(via dunefield)
Astrophysicist deGrasse Tyson schools former GM exec Lutz on climate change
Popular astrophysicist –and director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History– Neil deGrasse Tyson schooled former vice-chairman of General Motors Bob Lutz on the reality of climate change during Friday night’s edition of Real Time with Bill Maher.
After being baited by Maher on the subject of global warming, the unfortunately-named Lutz insisted that climate change was a “total crock of shit.”
As one would expect, deGrasse Tyson countered his argument with facts.
“You take all the scientists who author these papers, get them to pool their money and invest in companies that would benefit from global warming. And take all the people who are in denial of global warming, take all their money and invest in companies that would presume there is no global warming. And I would predict… you will all go broke in the next 50 years,” deGrasse Tyson said.
(Source: anticapitalist)
Please, please, please, please be a rocky planet! It’s such a shame there’s a lot of uncertainty of this planet.
(Source: fuckyeah-space)
Will People Alive Today Have The Opportunity To Upload Their Consciousness To A New Robotic Body?
At the recent Global Future 2045 International Congress held in Moscow, 31-year-old media mogul Dmitry Itskov told attendees how he plans to create exactly that kind of immortality, first by creating a robot controlled by the human brain, then by actually transplanting a human brain into a humanoid robot, and then by replacing the surgical transplant with a method for simply uploading a person’s consciousness into a surrogate ‘bot. He thinks he can get beyond the first phase—to transplanting a working brain into a robot—in just ten years, putting him on course to achieve his ultimate goal—human consciousness completely disembodied and placed within a holographic host—within 30 years time.
