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Mysterious Sky Sounds Baffled Early Explorers Too


weirdaustralia
Mon, 20 Feb 2012 22:32 UTC
meteors
© n/a
Mysterious sky sounds have been heard right across the world in recent times, reaching an apparent crescendo as we tentatively step into the much-anticipated, and often feared, year of 2012. Are these unknown sounds from the heavens a portent of doom from an impending apocalypse? Are they the result of top secret weather manipulation technology or electromagnetic weaponry? Or are their origins more mundane, such as the simple misidentification of everyday modern machinery?

Well, perhaps the answer to the enigma is none of these, as it appears our early explorers were similarly baffled by such strange sounds seemingly emanating from clear night skies.

Accounts from early explorers and settlers of hearing strange sounds of unknown origins in our skies were published in Phenomenal Sounds in the Interior of Australia - Are They Terrestrial or Atmospherical? - a pamphlet by Mr T. Gill from a report of the deliberations of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science, held in Melbourne in December 1913.
'"I am somewhat diffident in submitting to the geographical section of this association the following particulars, chiefly obtained from explorers' journals and personally from explorers and old bushmen who have traversed the interior of Australia," Gill wrote. "I do not presume to offer any explanation as to the cause of the phenomena reported here, but humbly submit the reports and opinions of various travellers on the mysterious sounds which are of frequent occurrence in certain localities, and which bewilder all who have heard them."
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Bizarro Earth

US: Mystery Grows As More Livestock Dies In Maury County


Disclose.tv
Thu, 23 Feb 2012 18:01 UTC
Horse
© News Channel5.com

Tennessee -- Horses are dying and now cattle as well and detectives in Maury County have been at a loss to explain how or why it is happening. First, seven seemingly healthy horses turned up dead last week at a Hampshire farm in Maury County. The state performed a necropsy and released the results.

"They ruled that it's undetermined. The cause of death cannot be determined at this time. It is a mystery. We don't know what happened," said Detective Terry Chandler with the Maury County Sheriff's Department.

Now Detective Chandler is investigating more deaths: Two dead cows at a farm across from the one where the seven horses were found. And he's consulting with police looking into more mysterious horse deaths in Dickson and Giles county.

Chandler said there is no evidence anyone is intentionally harming the animals.

He said they have not ruled out the possibility the livestock died from eating contaminated hay or a poison plant. It's possible the toxins were not detected by the state testing.
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Bizarro Earth

Satellite Captures Enormous 90-mile-wide Storm That's UNDERWATER


Daily Mail, UK
Tue, 21 Feb 2012 16:25 UTC
A Nasa satellite has provided jaw-dropping pictures of a huge 'storm' brewing under the sea.

The swirling mass of water - which measures a whopping 93 miles wide - has been spotted off the coast of South Africa by the Terra satellite on December 26.

But there's no need to alert international shipping, or worry about the poor fish that might find themselves in an endless washing cycle - the body of water poses no threat.

Underwater Storm
© Caters News Agency
Stunning image: The 90-mile-wide whirlpool, spotted off the coast of South Africa by Nasa's Terra satellite, looks deadly but it more likely to create life by lifting nutrients from the ocean floor.
Indeed, it is more likely to create life by sucking nutrients from the bed and bringing them to the surface.

The sea storms - which are better known as eddies - form bizarre whirl shaped shapes deep beneath the ocean's surface.

This counter-clockwise eddy is thought to have peeled off from the Agulhas Current, which flows along the southeastern coast of Africa and around the tip of South Africa.
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Bizarro Earth

Japan quake studies suggest harder jolt to US Pacific Northwest possible

Sandi Doughton
SeattleTimes.com
Thu, 23 Feb 2012 14:31 UTC
Image
© Nevada Seismological Laboratory, University of Nevada, Reno
The red dots represent aftershocks from the Japan quake, which roughly trace the area that shook hardest there. Superimposed on a map of the Northwest, the result shows where the strongest ground motion is likely to strike during the next quake on the Cascadia subduction zone, the underwater fault marked by the black line. The green line is the relative location of Japan's subduction zone.
Studies of last year's giant Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan suggest that shaking from a Cascadia megaquake could be stronger than expected along the coasts of Washington, Oregon and British Columbia, researchers reported Sunday at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Scientists are still unraveling last year's giant Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan, and some of what they're finding doesn't bode well for the Pacific Northwest.

Detailed analyses of the way the Earth warped along the Japanese coast suggest that shaking from a Cascadia megaquake could be stronger than expected along the coasts of Washington, Oregon and British Columbia, researchers reported Sunday at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

"The Cascadia subduction zone can be seen as a mirror image of the Tohoku area," said John Anderson, of the University of Nevada.

Anderson compiled ground-motion data from the Japan quake and overlaid it on a map of the Pacific Northwest, which has a similar fault - called a subduction zone - lying offshore.
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Sun

Icelandic Volcano Fimmvörðuháls Erupts During Aurora Borealis

Juliette Dawson
LongIslandPress.com
Wed, 22 Feb 2012 09:58 UTC
A photographer from Britain, James Appleton, has captured breath-taking pictures from Iceland, reports The Huffington Post. He captured both magma and northern lights in one shot. He stood just a few yards from an erupting volcano in order to take the pictures and they just might be one of nature's most amazing sights.
Image
© James Appleton
James was willing to go within a few hundred feet of an erupting volcano after working alongside vulcanologists in Iceland, and found out about Fimmvörðuháls who from his Icelandic friend. He explained, "She informed me of the eruption, and I knew immediately I had to try and get out to see it."

Not only did James have to deal with the harsh flames of the volcano, but he also had to face the frozen temperatures of a harsh Icelandic winter in order to take his remarkable pictures. "The closest I got was probably only a few hundred meters away," said James.
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Bizarro Earth

US: Hawaii scientists monitor earthquake swarm near Kilauea volcano


BigIslandVideoNews.com
Wed, 22 Feb 2012 09:42 UTC
Image
© USGS
48 small quakes and counting on the Big Island as of Wednesday morning

Scientists at the USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory are keeping an eye on a swarm of small earthquakes around the active Kilauea volcano. In its morning status report, HVO wrote that there "is an ongoing seismic swarm just northwest of the summit."

From the Wednesday status report, updated at 7:29 HST:
A swarm of shallow earthquakes started after midnight last night about 5 km (3 mi) northwest of Halema'uma'u Crater that was ongoing as of this posting. Forty-eight earthquakes were strong enough to be located beneath Kilauea: 39 quakes within the swarm so far at a maximum rate of 6/hr (including a preliminary magnitude-3.4 quake at 6:56 am), two deep quakes beneath the southwest rift zone, two beneath the southeast summit caldera, one within the upper east rift zone, four on south flank faults. Seismic tremor levels were low and dropped slightly during deflation.
Most of the quakes have been in the magnitude 2.0 vicinity, but a few reached over 3.0.
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Cloud Lightning

US: Hurricane Force Wind Gusts Rock Colorado


WeatherChannel.com
Thu, 23 Feb 2012 08:23 UTC
Strong winds and blowing snow are wreaking havoc in Denver. This morning, Interstate 70 from Vail to the Eisenhower Tunnel closed due to heavy snow. There's no estimated reopening time. Strong gusts Wednesday delayed flights arriving in Denver for part of the day, downed power lines and trees, and fueled two wildland fires in Boulder County.

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Fish

Oceans' Sad Future: A Sea of Small Fish

Katharine Gammon
OurAmazingPlanet
Wed, 22 Feb 2012 16:46 UTC
Ocean Fishes
© Nereus Project

Vancouver, British Columbia - Villy Christensen summed it up in a sentence: "Say goodbye to the big fish in the ocean, and say hello to the small fish."

Christensen, a professor at the University of British Columbia and director of the new Nereus program that aims to predict the future of the world's oceans, had good reason to give a warning so dire.

First, the good news. He says that there are still a lot of fish in the sea: There is about 2 billion tons of fish biomass in the ocean, which works out to about 661 pounds (300 kilograms) per person on the planet. Even better, the total biomass in the ocean is staying relatively consistent.

The bad news? The balance in the type of fish has shifted. Big fish in the ocean, like grouper and cod, have experienced a 55 percent decline in last 40 years. In their place are small, oily fish such as myctophids.

The fish that remain are fish humans aren't so interested in catching or eating, Christensen explained here at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. "Half the world's fish are small, in the open oceans and not exploitable."
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Cloud Lightning

ENASA Satellite Finds Earth's Clouds are Getting Lower

Alan Buis and Pauline Curtis
PhysOrg
Wed, 22 Feb 2012 10:21 UTC
image of clouds
© NASA/JPL-Caltech
This image of clouds over the southern Indian Ocean was acquired on July 23, 2007 by one of the backward (northward)-viewing cameras of the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) instrument on NASA's polar-orbiting Terra spacecraft.
Earth's clouds got a little lower -- about one percent on average -- during the first decade of this century, finds a new NASA-funded university study based on NASA satellite data. The results have potential implications for future global climate.

Scientists at the University of Auckland in New Zealand analyzed the first 10 years of global cloud-top height measurements (from March 2000 to February 2010) from the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) instrument on NASA's Terra spacecraft. The study, published recently in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, revealed an overall trend of decreasing cloud height. Global average cloud height declined by around one percent over the decade, or by around 100 to 130 feet (30 to 40 meters). Most of the reduction was due to fewer clouds occurring at very high altitudes.

Lead researcher Roger Davies said that while the record is too short to be definitive, it provides a hint that something quite important might be going on. Longer-term monitoring will be required to determine the significance of the observation for global temperatures.
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Cloud Lightning

NASA's Terra satellite snaps giant storm under sea off coast of South Africa


News.com.AU
Wed, 22 Feb 2012 10:04 UTC
Image
© NASA
The storm is actually an eddy. A 150km wide eddy.
A giant storm is brewing under the sea off the coast of South Africa.

Snapped on December 26 by NASA's Terra satellite, the recently released image shows the incredible huge swirl of water estimated to stretch nearly 150km across.

It looks like it could swallow a moderately sized island nation, but the "storm" is actually just a harmless eddy, also known as a "current ring".

This one has formed off the Agulhas Current which flows around the southeastern coast and tip of South Africa.

And rather than suck unwitting life down to the ocean's murky depths, the anticlockwise swirl is more likely to bring nutrients up to the surface, according to the Daily Mail.

Still, it's a great pic, even though it's not exactly the Terra satellite's main mission.

NASA launched Terra back in 2003 as part of a multinational effort to monitor the spread of pollution around the Earth through a 15-year lifecycle.
      Read More...
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