OUR PLASTIC PLANET
Watch scuba divers grab onto reef as swarm of underwater earthquakes rock Indonesia

Aspen Pflughoeft
Tue, November 14, 2023 

Screengrabs from @redoyjoy9999's TikTok video

A group of scuba divers captured the unexpected and stunning moment when an underwater earthquake erupted off the coast of Indonesia. Videos show the sand surging upward and the divers grabbing onto the reef.

The scuba divers were at a reef in the Banda Sea near Central Maluku on Nov. 8, according to a series of TikTok videos shared by @redoyjoy9999.

The first video, posted Nov. 11, shows the divers moving normally around the reef. A school of fish swim by the camera. Moments later, the camera jerks around. Several scuba divers are seen grabbing onto the reef as clouds of sand surge upward.

The videographer is also pushed upward. Down below, the reef is no longer visible and fully obscured by sand.

Indonesia’s Banda Sea was rocked by a 7.2 magnitude earthquake on Nov. 8, according to the country’s Meteorology Climatology and Geophysics Council. Seven sizable aftershocks followed, ranging from 5.0 to 6.8 in magnitude.

The shallow underwater earthquakes were caused by movement in the earth’s crust and felt by people on nearby islands, the council’s head told CNN Indonesia.

A second video shared by @redoyjoy9999 on Nov. 12 shows the reef after the earthquake. Divers can be seen surfacing or swimming around the cloud of sand.

“New fear unlocked,” a TikTok user commented.

A third video shared on Nov. 13 shows a close-up view of the reef as the earthquake happened. A large number of fish swim away from the corals quite suddenly. Sand surges upward from between the corals.

The camera moves suddenly and forcefully to the right, giving the impression that the diver was pulled by the water, the video shows.

“That’s significantly more terrifying than I was expecting,” another TikTok user commented on another version of the video posted later by Bruce Diving.

@redoyjoy9999 did not immediately respond to McClatchy News’ request for comment.

Central Maluku is about 1,600 miles northeast of Jakarta, the capital city.

Google Translate was used to translate the text of @redoyjoy9999’s TikTok videos, website from Indonesia’s Meteorology Climatology and Geophysics Council and article from CNN Indonesia.

VULCANOLOGY

'Time's finally up': Impending Iceland eruption is part of centuries-long volcanic pulse

Hannah Osborne
Tue, November 14, 2023 

Fagradalsfjall volcano in Iceland erupting at dusk


Iceland's potentially imminent eruption in the Reykjanes Peninsula is part of a 1,000-year cycle of volcanic activity that will likely cause eruptions for centuries, scientists say.

"Time's finally up," Edward W. Marshall, a researcher at the University of Iceland's Nordic Volcanological Center, told Live Science in an email. "We can get ready for another few hundred years of eruptions on the Reykjanes."

Seismic activity began increasing in the south of the peninsula in October, with hundreds of earthquakes recorded there each day. On Nov. 10, authorities evacuated the town of Grindavík, with experts warning an volcanic eruption could take place in just days.


Infographic showing the seismic activity that has hit Iceland in recent weeks

According to the Icelandic Met Office (IMO), a magma tunnel stretching 9.3 miles (15 kilometers) formed beneath the ground between Sundhnúkur in the north and Grindavík. The area affected also encompasses the Blue Lagoon geothermal spa — a tourist hotspot that attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors annually.

Magma in the tunnel — also known as a dike — appears to be rising to the surface, and there is a high risk of it breaking through. The greatest area of magma upwelling is currently close to Sundhnúkur, about 2 miles (3.5 km) northeast of Grindavík, according to the IMO. Researchers believe the amount of magma in the tunnel is "significantly more" than what was present during the eruptions at Fagradalsfjall, which sparked back to life in 2021 after more than 800 years of inactivity.

That 2021 eruption marked the start of a new cycle of volcanic activity on the Reykjanes Peninsula. Geological records show periods of inactivity last between 600 and 1,200 years, which is then followed by pulses of eruptions lasting between 200 and 500 years, Clive Oppenheimer, a professor of volcanology at the University of Cambridge in the U.K., told Live Science in an email.

"It looks like 2021 kicked off a new eruptive phase which might see the several fault zones crossing the [Reykjanes Peninsula] firing on and off for centuries," he said.

vehicles leaving the town of Grindavik, southwestern Iceland, during evacuation following earthquakes., with the sea in the background

The Reykjanes Peninsula sits above two tectonic plates that are being pulled apart. The strain that builds up is released in bursts as part of the cycle. "We are now in one of these pulses," David Pyle, a volcanologist and professor of Earth sciences at the University of Oxford, U.K, told Live Science in an email. "Each eruption releases just a bit more of the stored-up strain, and eventually, when all of that strain has been released, then the eruptions will stop."

It is currently unclear if an eruption will take place as a result of the magma tunnel. "These sorts of dikes are actually a tectonic, not a magmatic feature. In other words, the lava is filling a fracture, not forcing its way into the rock," Marshall said.

Should a fissure emerge, an eruption could last for several weeks. The large amount of magma involved compared with previous eruptions in the region could result in more lava flow at the surface, Oppenheimer said.

What happens next is a waiting game, Marshall said. "I predict — if an eruption occurs — that it will occur between a few days to threeish weeks. If it hasn't erupted in three weeks, I don't think it will happen. Cooling will begin to close the fractures."

Related:

Underwater volcanic eruption gives birth to new island in the Pacific

—California's supervolcano has a massive lid that causes swarms of earthquakes — and that's a good thing, scientists say

—Perilous expedition to uninhabited island in South Atlantic confirms existence of world's 8th lava lake

—Volcanoes like Kīlauea and Mauna Loa don't erupt like we thought they did, scientists discover

Where is the largest active volcano in the world?
Emilee Speck
Tue, November 14, 2023 


Hawaii's Mauna Loa is the largest active volcano on Earth, with the summit more than 10 miles above its base, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Located inside Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park, Mauna Loa makes up more than half of the Big Island, standing at 13,681 feet above sea level, according to the National Park.

About 30,000 feet of Mauna Loa starts from the bottom of the sea, about 1,000 feet taller than Mount Everest, the planet's highest mountain above sea level.

WHAT ARE THE 4 CLASSIC TYPES OF VOLCANOES?

Hawaii's Mauna Kea volcano is taller at 33,500 feet. However, Mauna Loa is much larger by volume, according to the USGS.

Map notes the locations of Mauna Loa, along with nearby sister volcano Kilauea.

Mauna Loa is so massive that the sea floor caves in another 5 miles from the weight of the volcano.

Including the most recent eruption in November 2022, Mauna Loa has erupted 34 times since its first well-documented eruption in 1843, according to the USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory.

The 12-day eruption in 2022 marked the first since 1984.

About two months before its last eruption, Mauna Loa began displaying increased seismic activity, one of the signs geologists look for when an eruption is imminent.

WHAT HAPPENS BEFORE A VOLCANO ERUPTS?

Since its 2022 eruption, Mauna Loa has been mostly quiet, according to the Hawaii Volcano Observatory, but remains active with increasing seismic activity as recently as October.

Only about 20 miles from Mauna Loa, Kīlauea is Hawaii's second-largest active volcano and most recently erupted in September.

Mauna Loa and Kīlauea are classic examples of shield volcanoes and are among the most active in the world.

This type of volcano is typically the largest on Earth and covers a broad swath of terrain.

Volcanologists say the great width of these volcanoes is a result of thin lava flows. Eruptions are not considered to be eruptive and usually rank low on the VEI. Threats from landslides and volcanic smog are usually significant for these types of volcanoes.

Original article source: Where is the largest active volcano in the world?

Can one volcano's eruption trigger an eruption at another volcano?

Emilee Speck
Mon, November 13, 2023 

When there is one volcano in a region, there can be several or many others nearby, but if one volcano erupts, can that trigger an eruption at a nearby volcano or hundreds of miles away?

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, it is difficult to determine if one eruption caused another.

Active volcanic regions, such as the Rabaul Caldera in Papua New Guinea and Iceland's Reykjanes volcanic region, sometimes have common magma reservoirs that can trigger unrest.

WHAT HAPPENS BEFORE A VOLCANO ERUPTS?

According to the USGS, the largest volcano eruption in the 20th century happened in 1912 when Alaska’s Novarupta volcano began spewing magma that came from a reservoir 6 miles away beneath Mount Katmai. Even though it was the source of the magma, Mount Katmai did not erupt.

There are also volcanoes near one another that do not share this magma system, like Hawaii's Kilauea volcano, only 20 miles from Mauna Loa, but the two have individual magma reservoirs, according to the USGS.

There are multiple ongoing active eruptions worldwide at one time, and between 60 and 70 eruptions a year.

Most recently, officials warned of an impending volcanic eruption in Grindavík, Iceland, where the town has been evacuated following thousands of earthquakes. At the same time, Italy's Mount Etna began spewing lava fountains in the sky in November, just months after its August eruption.

However, according to the USGS, no definitive evidence exists that one eruption can trigger another eruption from a different volcano system that is hundreds of miles away or even on a different continent.

WHAT ARE THE 4 CLASSIC TYPES OF VOLCANOES?

There are signs of an impending eruption, including earthquakes, ground deformation and changes in gas emissions. Still, geology experts say predicting an eruption is not an exact science.

There are some historical examples of simultaneous eruptions within about 6 miles, but the USGS said it's unclear if one eruption caused the other.

Russia's tallest volcano spews out 1,000-mile-long river of smoke after giant eruption, satellite images reveal

Harry Baker
Tue, November 14, 2023 

A dark cloud of smoke flows from a lava flow on a volcano

Eurasia's tallest volcano has violently erupted, throwing a 1,000-mile-long (1,600 kilometers) cloud of dust and ash into the air, new NASA satellite images show.

Klyuchevskoy, sometimes referred to as Klyuchevskaya Sopka, is an active stratovolcano in Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula, which is home to more than 300 other volcanos. Klyuchevskoy's peak stands at 15,584 feet (4,750 meters) above sea level, making it taller than any other volcano in Asia or Europe, according to the Kamchatka Volcanic Eruption Response Team (KVERT).

Klyuchevskoy has been continually erupting since mid-June. But on Nov. 1, a massive volcanic explosion released a torrent of smoke and ash, which reached a maximum height of 7.5 miles (12 km) above Earth's surface, according to NASA's Earth Observatory.

The smoke and ash plume prompted KVERT to temporarily raise the aviation alert level to red (the highest possible level), which grounded planes in the area. Several schools were also evacuated due to the increase in air pollution.

The Landsat 8 satellite, which is co-run by NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey, captured a striking false-color image of the eruption plume (shown above), in which the red lava plume and grey smoke stand out against the surrounding blue-colored clouds.

NASA's Aqua satellite also captured a wider true-color image of the plume (shown below), which shows that the river of smoke was around 1,000 miles long at the time. But the plume may have eventually stretched up to 1,400 miles (2,255 km) long, according to the Smithsonian Institution's Global Volcanism Program.

Related: The 12 biggest volcanic eruptions in recorded history

The outburst only lasted for a few days, and it now appears that Klyuchevskoy may have stopped erupting altogether, according to KVERT.

The Kamchatka Peninsula is part of the Pacific Ring of Fire — a 25,000-mile-long (40,200 km) tectonic belt that circumscribes the Pacific Ocean and contains around three-quarters of the world's active volcanos.

The Ring of Fire has also recently been active in other areas: On Oct. 30, an underwater volcanic eruption off the coast of the Japanese island Iwo Jima birthed a brand new tiny island of hardened magma, which can also be seen from space.

A satellite image of a large eruption plume stretching across Russia and the Pacific Ocean

While the trail of smoke and ash given off by Klyuchevskoy was enormous, it is still quite a way off some of the largest eruption plumes ever seen.

The tallest eruption plume in recorded history was the towering pillar of smoke, ash and water vapor from the eruption of Tonga's underwater volcano in January 2022, which rose to 35.4 miles (57 km) above sea level.

related stories

—Astronaut captures image of a glowering 'skull' lurking in a giant volcanic pit in the Sahara

—One of the world's most active volcanoes is spewing out weird rings of smoke

—Massive ancient lava flow seen from space looks like a giant black scar on the New Mexico desert

Following the Tonga eruption, scientists warned that the record amount of water vapor it released into the stratosphere could weaken the ozone layer. And in September this year, scientists partially attributed the eruption as the cause of an unusually large ozone hole above Antarctica.

However, Klyuchevskoy's latest eruption plume will likely have no real impact on the ozone layer because it contained much less water vapor and did not reach as high up in the atmosphere.

GEMOLOGY
De Beers Will Stockpile Unsold Diamonds After Prices Tumble

MONOPOLY CAPITALI$M

Mbongeni Mguni
Mon, November 13, 2023 



(Bloomberg) -- De Beers plans to stockpile unsold diamonds after the world’s biggest producer responded to plunging prices by allowing its buyers to refuse to purchase all the stones they’re contracted to buy.

“We build up stocks of those because we are confident that over time the diamond price will increase and we will be able to sell that supply into the growing demand that we believe will come,” Chief Executive Officer Al Cook said at a briefing in Gaborone.

The Diamond World Takes Radical Steps to Stop a Pricing Plunge

The industry had been one of the great winners of the global pandemic, as stuck-at-home shoppers turned to diamond jewelry and other luxury purchases. But as economies opened up, demand quickly cooled, leaving many in the trade holding excess stock, for which they’d paid too much.

What looked like a cool down quickly turned into a diamond slump. The US, by far the industry’s most important market, wobbled under rising inflationary pressure, while key growth market China was hit by a real estate crisis that sapped consumer confidence. To make things worse, the insurgent lab-grown diamond industry started making major gains in a couple of key segments.

De Beers’s decision to allow customers to refuse goods was the latest in a series of increasingly desperate moves across the industry to stem this year’s plunge in diamond prices. De Beers’s rival, Russian miner Alrosa PJSC, already canceled all its sales for two months, while the market in India — the dominant cutting and trading center — had halted imports.

Cook said the company will stick to its target of producing up to 33 million carats of rough diamonds in 2023, despite what its CEO called an “exceptionally difficult year,” where global forces had conspired to slow trading.

De Beers’s most recent diamond sale, held in October, was the smallest since the pandemic year of 2020. The unit of Anglo American Plc will also allow customers to refuse goods at its last sale of the year.

De Beers has a long history of managing diamond supply to the industry by stockpiling goods to prevent prices falling.

--With assistance from Thomas Biesheuvel.

Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek

Huge burial mound in Norway stumped archaeologists. Now they know what’s inside

Moira Ritter
Tue, November 14, 2023 

A group of archaeologists trekked along a grassy hill in Norway. Wielding a metal detector, the group was in search of anything that might tell them what’s beneath them, and how old it is.

The group wasn’t just searching any hill, though. They were atop Herlaugshaugen, a burial mound on the island of Leka believed to be the final resting place of the ancient King Herlaug.

What they expected to be a minor investigation turned into something much bigger when the metal detector dinged and archaeologists discovered large ship rivets, indicating the mound was likely concealing a ship grave, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology said in a Nov. 13 news release via Norwegian SciTech News.

Archaeologist Hanne Brynn holds the ship rivet. Photo from Geir Grønnesby via Norwegian University of Science and Technology University Museum

Now, researchers have determined that the nearly 200-foot-wide burial mound dates to much earlier than expected, around the year 700, the university said. The discovery marks the oldest known ship grave in the entirety of Scandinavia, placing the ship in a time known as the Merovingian period — and shifting experts’ entire timeline and understanding of ship building and maritime expertise.

A close-up photo shows the ship rivet. Photo from Geir Grønnesby via Norwegian University of Science and Technology University Museum

Until this discovery, experts have linked the development of ships to the beginning of the Viking age, archaeologist Geir Grønnesby said in the release. The newly discovered ship burial indicates that people were building large ships much earlier than previously understood.

The Merovingian period is named after the Frankish ruling lineage known as the Merovingians and spanned from about 550 until 800, according to the Great Norwegian Encyclopedia. The era was a period of significant change, including shifts in burial practices, language, style and weapons.


Corroded wood surrounding one of the ship’s nails. Photo from Geir Grønnesby via Norwegian University of Science and Technology University Museum

Experts said the burial mound also is evidence of wealth and power, which might have resulted from long-distance trade.

The mound, which is one of the largest burials of its kind in Norway, was first excavated in the 18th century, the university said. Early excavations revealed a wall structure, iron nails, a bronze cauldron, animal bones and a seated skeleton holding a sword. But by 1920, the artifacts had vanished.

Grønnesby said the team plans to continue researching the burial mound, specifically its possible connection to similar burials in Norway.

Leka is an island along the northern coast of Norway in Trøndelag county and about 500 miles north of Oslo.

Google Translate was used to translate the news release from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology

Top government official has an answer to the question of alien existenc

The head of the Pentagon's AARO answered the question: "Are aliens real?"

Ian Krietzberg
Nov 13, 2023 3:05 PM EST

The past few months have seen the release of reports on UFOs from both NASA and the Pentagon, in addition to whistleblower testimony before a U.S. Congressional committee in July. The gist of the situation, according to the whistleblowers, is that UFOs are real, they are numerous and they represent a threat to national security.

One of these whistleblowers, David Grusch, a former Air Force pilot and U.S. intelligence official, went even further, accusing the U.S. government of being in possession of crashed craft, complete with the "non-human biologic" bodies of their pilots.

Another whistleblower, former Navy pilot Ryan Graves, urged the government to take UFOs more seriously, saying: "If everyone could see the sensory and video data I witnessed, our national conversation would change."


Why one U.S. official hopes to discover evidence of alien activity

In the midst of these claims, the Pentagon's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) has maintained that there is "no credible evidence thus far of extraterrestrial activity, off-world technology or objects that defy the known laws of physics."

AARO said in an October report that the bulk of UFO sightings it is currently studying would likely "resolve to ordinary phenomena" with an increase in the quality of data, an area that both AARO and NASA are working on enhancing.

Still, the head of the office, Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, recently told Politico that discovering evidence of alien activity would be better than the alternative.

"The best thing that could come out of this job is to prove that there are aliens," Kirkpatrick said. "If we don’t prove it’s aliens, then what we’re finding is evidence of other people doing stuff in our backyard. And that’s not good.”

Kirkpatrick announced last week that, after 18 months in the position, he will be leaving AARO by the end of the year.


Scientists make an eye-opening announcement about recent alien evidence

In answer to the question "Are aliens real?" Kirkpatrick said that the level of the public conversation around a possible alien reality needs to change.

From a scientific perspective, he said, the community would agree that it is "statistically invalid to believe that there is not life out in the universe, as vast as the universe is."

"The probability, however, that that life is intelligent and that it has found Earth and that it has come to Earth and that it has repeatedly crashed in the United States is not very probable," he added.

Kirkpatrick said that the process of looking for signs of life in the wider universe begins very objectively, with sound scientific discourse. As that search moves into the solar system, the conversation, he said, turns into one of science fiction.

"And then as you get even closer to Earth, and you cross into Earth’s atmosphere, it becomes conspiracy theory," he said.



The bodies of two allegedly non-human mummies were shown during a Mexican Congressional hearing on UFOs in September.

Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

The public conversation, Kirkpatrick said, needs to move away from unfounded claims of government conspiracies and cover-ups and toward a place of scientific proof and scientific benchmarks.



"You have to have a hypothesis," he said. "You have to have measurables with that hypothesis, and then your data has to meet it. And you have to lay that out in a peer-reviewed journal so that you have something to pin it against."

Kirkpatrick said his office has investigated more than 30 whistleblower claims so far. But he noted that Grusch has "refused" to speak with AARO.

"If he has evidence," Kirkpatrick said, "I need to know what that is."

That UFO Whistleblower Apparently Refused Pentagon Interviews

Noor Al-Sibai
Mon, November 13, 2023 


Out of this World

That outlandish UFO whistleblower never came in to talk to the Pentagon's UFO office, the department's outgoing chief is claiming.

In a new interview with Politico, Sean Kirkpatrick, the outgoing head of the Pentagon's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), said that try as he might, he hasn't been able to talk to David Grusch, an Air Force veteran and former military intelligence official who has some pretty wild allegations about the government's knowledge of aliens.

"Grusch is a unique instance," Kirkpatrick said, "in that he has refused to come and share any of that information."

Over the summer, the whistleblower made headlines when he told Congress during its unprecedented UFO hearings that the United States has conducted a massive, decades-long coverup of its knowledge of extraterrestrial life and technology. In his testimony, Grusch went so far as to claim that the US government is in possession of said alien tech and has even reverse-engineered it for its own ends — which sounds more like something out of an "X-Files" episode from the 1990s than a front-page newspaper story.

He Said, He Said

Unsurprisingly, Kirkpatrick and other experts, including regretful space traveler William Shatner, shredded the whistleblower's sci-fi-esque claims — though in a hearing just before his resignation, the ex-AARO head did admit that Grusch's claims may contain some "events that really happened."

In spite of what sounds like significant interest, Kirkpatrick said that the AARO under his leadership was ultimately unable to get Grusch in for interviews about his claims.

"We still can’t get him to come in," the outgoing AARO director said. "We’re about to put out Volume One of the historical review, which I believe captures most all of the people that he’s spoken with, but I can’t say that 100 percent because I can’t hear what he thinks he has."

Grusch, for his part, told NewsNation before Kirkpatrick's resignation that the AARO had not reached out to him and was lying about their efforts.

"I have zero emails or calls from them," Grusch said. "That is a lie."

All the same, it seems like the whistleblower may be the one that got away from Kirkpatrick.

"If [Grusch] has evidence," the defense intelligence veteran told Politico, "I need to know what that is."

It looks like "Dr. K," as he was known to his team at the Department of Defense, won't be the one to get that information out of Grusch — and given the whistleblower's own stubborn posturing, it's unclear if anyone at the Pentagon will be able to, either.

More on UFOs: One in Five Professors Say They’ve Had a UFO Encounter, Survey Finds

Book Review: 'UFO' is a detailed look at the history of the search for the truth that's out there

ANDREW DeMILLO
Mon, November 13, 2023

This cover image released by Avid Reader Press shows "UFO: The Inside Story of the U.S. Government's Search for Alien Life Here - and Out There" by Garrett M. Graff.

 (Avid Reader via AP)

The truth may be out there, but making sense out of it isn't easy.

Discussion about unidentified flying objects has moved over the years from fodder for science fiction movies or jokes to the subject of congressional hearings. Garrett M. Graff's “UFO: The Inside Story of the U.S. Government's Search for Alien Life Here — and Out There” is the perfect guide for readers interested in learning how that discussion has evolved.

Graff offers an authoritative and objective look at the history of UFO sightings and research into the possibility of extraterrestrial life over the past 75 years.

It's a narrative as compelling as Graff's other works, including his history of Watergate, and requires the same skill that he's demonstrated in navigating government documents.

The deeply researched history traces the ways the government has struggled to wrap its arms around the questions raised by UFOs — or, as they're now known, “unidentified aerial phenomena” — sightings going back to the 1940s.

“It's not that the government knows something it doesn't want to tell us,” Graff writes at the outset of the book. “It's that the government is uncomfortable telling us it doesn't know anything at all.”

Graff profiles a sprawling cast of characters who have played a role in the search for UFOs and alien life over the years, from amateur ufologists to famed astronomer Carl Sagan to Blink-182 frontman Tom DeLonge.

They're all battling hoaxes and public skepticism and trying to overcome the lingering question first posed by physicist Enrico Fermi: if extraterrestrial life is prevalent, why don't we see more of it?

Graff highlights the advances in science that are made over the years in trying to answer that question, but also in showing just how vast and unknown the universe is.

The book shows how attitudes toward UFOs have changed over the years, not just by scientists and the government but also in popular culture. Those shifting attitudes have led to more openness about discussing sightings, and the national security implications of not knowing what they could be.

Graff is unlikely to convert firm skeptics, but he may at least convince them to keep an open mind the next time they read about UFOs or UAPs.

___

SPACE

Brightest flash ever disturbed Earth's atmosphere last year

Daniel Lawler
Tue, November 14, 2023 

An artist's impression of the powerful blast of gamma rays, caused by an explosion in the distant universe, that reached Earth on October 9 last year (Handout)

Last year the brightest flash of light ever seen in the night sky disturbed Earth's upper atmosphere in a way that has never before detected before, researchers said on Tuesday.

A massive burst of gamma rays from an enormous cosmic explosion around two billion light years away arrived at Earth on October 9, 2022, lighting up telescopes around the world.

Quickly nicknamed the "BOAT" -- for Brightest Of All Time -- the flash lasted just seven minutes but its afterglow was visible to amateur astronomers for seven hours.

The flash activated lightning detectors in India and triggered instruments that normally study explosions on the Sun called solar flares.

It also affected long wave radio communications in the lower ionosphere, a section of Earth's upper atmosphere around 60 to 350 kilometres (37 to 217 miles) above the surface.

The BOAT also affected the upper ionosphere -- the very first time a gamma-ray burst has been observed in this section of the atmosphere, a team of Italian and Chinese researchers said on Tuesday.

From 350 to 950 kilometres above Earth, near the edge of the space, the upper ionosphere is where radiation from the Sun turns into charged particles that form an important electric field.

Mirko Piersanti, a researcher at Italy's University of L'Aquila, told AFP that experts in this field had been debating for two decades whether gamma ray bursts could have any impact on the upper ionosphere.

"I think we finally answered the question," said Piersanti, the lead author of a new study in the journal Nature Communications.

The researchers were lucky that the Chinese–Italian CSES satellite, which has an electric field detector, "was exactly in the zone that was illuminated by the gamma-ray burst" 500 kilometres above Earth in the upper ionosphere, he said.

"We found a shape in the electric field that had never been observed before," Piersanti added.

"It is amazing," European Space Agency gamma-ray expert Erik Kuulkers said in a statement.

"We can see things that are happening in deep space but are also affecting Earth."

- Extinction threat? -

Piersanti said the research would help scientists understand the potential threat that other gamma-ray bursts could pose in the future.

The worst-case scenario would be if such a powerful blast came from much closer to home -- say, within our own Milky Way galaxy. That could "completely erase" Earth's ozone layer, he said.

This would expose everything on the surface to the full might of the Sun's ultraviolet radiation, potentially wiping out life on Earth.

There has previously been speculation that past gamma-ray bursts could have caused ancient mass extinction events.

But Piersanti emphasised that much remains unknown.

It is also possible that the ionosphere would absorb all the gamma rays and "nothing would happen" to those of us on the ground, he explained.

Last year's gamma-ray burst, officially called GRB 221009A, is believed to have been caused by either a massive dying star exploding into a supernova, or the birth of a black hole.

Given its immense power, it could also have been both -- a supernova explosion leading to the creation of a black hole.

The blast came from the direction of the constellation Sagitta and travelled an estimated 1.9 billion years to reach Earth.

It is now 2.4 billion light years away because of the expansion of the universe.

On average, more than one gamma-ray-burst reaches Earth every day.

But one with the brightness of the BOAT is estimated to come around once every 10,000 years.

dl/gil

James Webb Space Telescope finds 2 of the most distant galaxies ever seen
Keith Cooper
Tue, November 14, 2023 

A crowded galaxy field on a black background, with one large star dominating the image just right of center. Three areas are concentrated with larger white hazy blobs on the left, lower right, and upper right above the single star. Scattered between these areas are many smaller sources of light; some also have a hazy white glow, while many other are red or orange.

The second and fourth most distant galaxies ever seen have been spotted by the eagle eye of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), supporting the basic picture of galaxy formation as described by the Big Bang theory.

The discovery was made possible thanks to a huge helping hand from a massive gravitational lens in the form of the galaxy cluster known as Abell 2744, nicknamed Pandora's Cluster, which is located about 3.5 billion light-years away from us. The immense gravity of the cluster warps the very fabric of space-time sufficiently to magnify the light of more faraway galaxies.

Using the James Webb Space Telescope to search for early galaxies magnified by this cosmic lens, Bingjie Wang of the Penn State Eberly College of Science and member of the JWST UNCOVER (Ultradeep NIRSpec and NIRCam Observations before the Epoch of Reionization) team discovered two of the highest redshift galaxies ever seen.

Related: James Webb Space Telescope confirms 'Maisie's galaxy' is one of the earliest ever seen

Cosmological redshift is the stretching of light wavelengths, provoked by the continuous expansion of the universe. The more distant a galaxy is, the more the universe had expanded while that galaxy’s light traveled across space to reach us, and therefore, the more the wavelengths of that light are stretched. As wavelengths get stretched out in this manner, they go from tighter, blueish ones to redder ones, eventually falling into the invisible, infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum. Galaxies that existed just between 300 and 400 million years after the Big Bang have had their light stretched into those infrared wavelengths that can't be seen by humans, but can indeed be detected by the JWST’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and Near-Infrared Spectrometer (NIRSPec).

Wang and her team were able to identify the lensed images of two high-redshift galaxies. One, designated UNCOVER-z13 ("z" is shorthand for "redshift"), has a redshift of 13.079, confirming it to be the second most distant galaxy known. (The most distant confirmed galaxy is JADES-GS-z13-0, which was also discovered by the JWST in 2022 and has a redshift of 13.2.) We see UNCOVER-z13 as it existed just 330 million years after the Big Bang.

The other galaxy recently discovered, UNCOVER-z12, has a redshift of 12.393, placing it in fourth place in the all-time list of most distant galaxies. We see this realm as it was just 350 million years after the Big Bang.

composite image of pandora's cluster, with two close-up inset images

What marks the two UNCOVER galaxies out as different is their appearance. Other galaxies seen at similarly high redshifts seem to be point-like, indicating they are very small — just a few hundreds of light years across. The UNCOVER galaxies, on the other hand, have structure.

"Previously discovered galaxies at these distances … appear as a dot in our images," Wang said in a statement. "But one of ours appears elongated, almost like a peanut, and the other looks like a fluffy ball."

These galaxies are also bigger, with UNCOVER-z12 sporting an edge-on disk about 2,000 light years across, which is six times larger than other galaxies seen in this era.

"It is unclear if the difference in size is due to how the stars formed or what happened to them after they formed, but the diversity in the galaxy properties is really interesting," said Wang. "These early galaxies are expected to have formed out of similar materials, but already they are showing signs of being very different than one another."

Although the dichotomy in galaxy properties, even at this early stage in the universe, is eye-opening, both of the newfound realms have general characteristics that are strongly supportive of the Big Bang model. This model describes how, in the aftermath of our universe's creation, galaxies began life small before growing rapidly through mergers with other galaxies and gas clouds.

This growth, in turn, spurred more star formation, which ultimately increased the abundance and variety of elements contained within the young galaxies, introducing substances to them that are heavier than hydrogen and helium. The galaxies uncovered by UNCOVER — if you’ll pardon the pun — are young, small, have a low abundance of heavy elements and are actively forming stars, all of which supports "the whole paradigm of the Big Bang theory," Joel Leja, who is an assistant professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State University and a co-researcher on Wang’s team, said in the statement.

Interestingly, the JWST has the ability to see even higher redshift galaxies than UNCOVER-z13 and -z12, meaning they'd be even younger — but it didn’t detect any being lensed by the Pandora Cluster. "That could mean that galaxies just didn’t form before that time and that we’re not going to find anything farther away," said Leja. "Or it could mean we didn’t get lucky enough with our small window."

Astronomers will keep looking, using a multitude of lensing clusters to open up new windows into the deep universe in search of some of the first galaxies.

The discovery was reported on Monday (Nov. 13) in Astrophysical Journal Letters.

JWST spots two of the most distant galaxies astronomers have ever seen
Laura Baisas
Tue, November 14, 2023 

UNCOVER z-13 and UNCOVER z-12 are the second and fourth most distant galaxy ever observed. The James Webb Space Telescope’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) helped confirm their existence within Pandora’s Cluster (Abell 2744). They are shown here as near-infrared wavelengths of light that have been translated to visible-light colors.

A team using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has observed two of the most distant galaxies astronomers have ever seen. At close to 33 billion light years away from Earth, these distant regions can offer insight into how the universe’s earliest galaxies may have formed. The findings are detailed in a study published November 13 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The galaxies UNCOVER z-13 and UNCOVER z-12 are the second and fourth most distant galaxies ever observed and are located in a region called Pandora’s Cluster (Abell 2744). The two galaxies are among the 60,000 sources of light in Pandora’s Cluster that were captured in some of the first deep field images the JWST took in 2022. This region of space was selected for this kind of imaging due to its location behind several galaxy clusters. The light creates a natural magnification effect called gravitational lensing. This happens when the gravitational pull of the clusters’ combined mass warps the space-time around it. It then magnifies any light that passes nearby and offers a larger view behind the clusters.

Other galaxies confirmed at this distance generally appear in images as red dots. However, these new galaxies are larger and look more like a peanut and a fluffy ball, according to the team.

“Very little is known about the early universe, and the only way to learn about that time and to test our theories of early galaxy formation and growth is with these very distant galaxies,” study co-author and astronomer Bingjie Wang from Penn State University said in a statement. “Prior to our analysis, we knew of only three galaxies confirmed at around this extreme distance. Studying these new galaxies and their properties has revealed the diversity of galaxies in the early universe and how much there is to be learned from them.”

Wang is also a member of the JWST UNCOVER (Ultradeep NIRSpec and NIRCam ObserVations before the Epoch of Reionization) team that conducted this research. UNCOVER’s early goal is to obtain highly detailed images of the region around Pandora’s Cluster using JWST.

Since the light that is emitted from these galaxies had to travel for so long to reach Earth, it offers a window into the universe's past. The team estimates that the light JWST detected was emitted by the two galaxies when the universe was about 330 million years old and that it traveled for about 13.4 billion light years to reach the space telescopes.

However, the galaxies are currently closer to 33 billion light years away from Earth because of the expansion of the universe over this period of time.

“The light from these galaxies is ancient, about three times older than the Earth,” study co-author, Penn State astronomer, and UNCOVER member Joel Leja said in a statement. “These early galaxies are like beacons, with light bursting through the very thin hydrogen gas that made up the early universe. It is only by their light that we can begin to understand the exotic physics that governed the galaxy near the cosmic dawn.”

[Related: JWST takes a jab at the mystery of the universe’s expansion rate.]

The two galaxies are also considerably bigger than the three galaxies previously located at these extreme distances. While our Milky Way galaxy is roughly 100,000 light years across, galaxies in the early universe are believed to have been very compressed. A galaxy of 2,000 light years across like one of ones the team imaged came as a surprise.

“Previously discovered galaxies at these distances are point sources—they appear as a dot in our images,” Wang said. “But one of ours appears elongated, almost like a peanut, and the other looks like a fluffy ball. It is unclear if the difference in size is due to how the stars formed or what happened to them after they formed, but the diversity in the galaxy properties is really interesting. These early galaxies are expected to have formed out of similar materials, but already they are showing signs of being very different than one another.”

To make inferences about these early galaxies, the team used detailed models. They believed that in addition to being young (by space standards), the two galaxies also had few metals in their composition, and were growing rapidly and actively forming stars.

“The first elements were forged in the cores of early stars through the process of fusion,” Leja said. “It makes sense that these early galaxies don’t have heavy elements like metals because they were some of the first factories to build those heavy elements. And, of course, they would have to be young and star-forming to be the first galaxies, but confirming these properties is an important basic test of our models and helps confirm the whole paradigm of the Big Bang theory.”

Astronomers will continue to use lensing clusters and the instruments aboard the JWST to continue to peel back the timeline of some of the universe’s first galaxies.

NASA 'Pauses' Mars Sample Return to Get a Grip on the Mission
Passant Rabie
Tue, November 14, 2023 

An illustration of the spacecraft fleet designed to retrieve samples from Mars.

NASA is pulling back from its Mars Sample Return program (MSR) in order to develop a revised way of bringing the Martian rocks back to Earth after its original plan was deemed unrealistic.

During a meeting of the Planetary Science Advisory Committee on Monday, NASA officials announced that the space agency is pausing work on MSR in response to a recent report that called out the mission’s mounting costs and delays, Space Policy Online reported. Last week, three NASA centers involved in the MSR program were directed to begin “ramping back” on activities related to the mission, according to Sandra Connelly, deputy associate administrator for science at NASA.

“We’re pausing the program in fiscal year 2024 while we go off and consider how best to understand and then incorporate how we’re going to change the program and respond to the IRB’s findings,” Jeff Gramling, MSR program director at NASA, is quoted in Space Policy Online as saying during the meeting on Monday. “It’s not just about the architecture, it’s about how do we position the program for long term success and that may mean looking at organizational complexity, internal communications, and how we’re structured to achieve this mission.”

The Sample Return mission involves a group of robots, landers, and orbiters working on and off Mars. NASA’s Perseverance rover is currently collecting rocky samples before stowing them away for a Sample Retrieval Lander to load them up onto a small rocket, from which they will be launched towards another spacecraft in orbit around Mars that is designed to drop them off at Earth in the mid 2030s.

One of the alternative options outlined in the report suggest launching the lander and the orbiter on separate dates, while another suggestion would hand off the responsibility of the orbit entirely to the European Space Agency (NASA’s partner on the mission). During a meeting in late October, Gramling also suggested reducing the quantity of samples returned from Mars, which would result in a smaller container built to house the samples and, therefore, a smaller spacecraft assigned to bring them back to Earth. A smaller spacecraft could reduce cost and complexity for the overall architecture, according to Gramling.

Despite its complex nature, NASA will likely not give up on its Martian sample retrieval mission as it makes up a great portion of the space agency’s plans to send its astronauts to the Red Planet in the 2030s. It also holds significant value in terms of providing important information regarding whether Mars could have hosted some form of life during its ancient past, answering the ultimate question of whether life exists beyond Earth.

It just might take us a little while longer to have those answers as the mission seemingly still has a long way to go before it can drop off the other worldly samples on our planet.

Pentagon Awards Lockheed Martin $33.7 Million for Nuclear Spacecraft Project
Passant Rabie
Mon, November 13, 2023 

An artistic rendering of a space nuclear reactor system designed to produce high-power electricity.

An artistic rendering of a space nuclear reactor system designed to produce high-power electricity.

Lockheed Martin is at the early stages of developing a nuclear propulsion system to power a spacecraft through the depths of the cosmos.

Under a $33.7 million contract from the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), Lockheed Martin announced that it was in the “preliminary design review stage” of the Joint Emergent Technology Supplying On-Orbit Nuclear (JETSON) program. The Air Force is asking the company to “mature high-power nuclear electric power and propulsion technologies and spacecraft design,” according to a Lockheed statement.

The Maryland based company is one of three companies awarded contracts by the Air Force in late September to develop nuclear powered vehicles for spaceflight, the two others being Intuitive Machines and Westinghouse Government Services. Lockheed Martin received the largest portion of the funding by far, with $16.9 million going towards Westinghouse and $9.4 million awarded to Intuitive Machines. All three contracts extend through December 2025.

Lockheed Martin is also developing a nuclear-powered rocket intended for long-distance space travel as part of a collaboration between NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which was announced in July. The rocket is scheduled for a test flight in 2027, and is an integral part of NASA’s plans to send a crewed mission to Mars. Meanwhile, the JETSON nuclear-powered propulsion system could go into critical design review level, the company stated.

 Gizmodo

Warner Bros. Reverses Course on ‘Coyote vs. Acme' After Filmmakers Rebel

Story by Aaron Couch •  Hollywood Reporter



With Road Runner-like speed, Warner Bros. Discovery has reversed its decision to bury Coyote vs. Acme.

The studio will now allow director Dave Green to shop his live-action/animation hybrid movie to other potential buyers instead of shelving the project for a tax write off, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed. Amazon is said to be a contender in the mix, with screenings for potential buyers taking place this month. Puck was first to report the news on the reversal

The move comes days after the The Hollywood Reporter broke the news that Coyote vs. Acme would become Warners third already-shot film to get shelved after previously nixing nearly completed projects Batgirl and Scoob! Holiday Haunt in August 2022.

After Batgirl and Scoob! were dumped, a group of filmmakers with business at the studio started a text chain - a support group of sorts - to share their hopes and their anxieties, as well as encouragement and tips for navigating the studio. The one question all of them had: What was going on with their movies?

The Coyote cancelation roiled the creative community perhaps even harder than Batgirl and Scoob!, because those had been positioned as a one-off change in strategy, never to happen again. According to sources, after the Coyote vs. Acme news broke last week, several filmmakers instructed reps to cancel meetings they had on the books with Warners. But now that Coyote may ultimately find a new home, these filmmakers are taking a wait-and-see approach.


Related video: Warner Bros. Scraps John Cena's 'Coyote vs. Acme' Film | THR News Video (Hollywood Reporter)   View on Watch


Unlike the other films Warners canceled, Coyote vs. Acme was fully completed and had tested multiple times in the 90s. (Best picture winner Argo, both Deadpool movies, and the first The Conjuring are among features that likewise tested in the 90s.) According to sources who have seen the film - which stars Will Forte, John Cena and Lana Condor - Coyote vs. Acme is a popcorn-style crowd-pleaser.

"Coyote vs. Acme is a great movie," tweeted writer-director BenDavid Grabinski, who worked with Green on Happily. "The best of its kind since [Who Framed] Roger Rabbit … The leads are super likable. It's beautifully shot. The animation is great. The ending makes everyone f****** cry. I thought the goal of this business was to make hit movies?"

After Batgirl was shelved, a narrative emerged that the film was axed because it wasn't very good. "Our job is to protect the DC brand, and that's what we're going to do," Warner Bros. Discovery CEO Zaslav declared during 2022 investor's call days after the cancelation. Peter Safran, who became the co-head of DC Studios after Batgirl was shelved, said the team behind the film was talented, but that Batgirl "was not releasable" in remarks to press in January

Green's industry friends mobilized to prevent that kind of messaging from tainting the reputation of Coyote vs. Acme. There is still a planned "funeral screening" this week on the Warners lot, according to sources, though "funeral" is no longer an apt term for a project that may very well find new life.

"I don't know how you see the movie and then go, ‘That couldn't happen to me,'" says Brian Duffield, the filmmaker behind the sleeper Hulu hit No One Will Save You. Duffield was not involved in Coyote vs. Acme, but is friends with Green and gave notes on the film.

Part of Duffield's frustration, he says, was that Green did everything that was asked of him: he delivered the film, which sources say cost $72 million, on budget. He hit the right test scores. He even moved away from his friends and family to London for 18 months to save the studio money on post-production costs. All this, only to see his film get run off a cliff.

Duffield believes that Coyote can make money - certainly more than the tax write-off.

"I think Coyote is really similar to Barbie in a lot of ways," says Duffield. "They are playing with iconography in a really fun, popcorn kind of way."

Veteran film executives acknowledge that shelving a film for a tax-writeoff - and to avoid distribution and marketing costs - can make an earnings quarter look better, but it can be short-sighted for a studio in the business of building franchises and a slate.

The decision followed the industry taking a hard turn from a streaming boom golden age that saw studios shelling out unprecedented billions on content, particularly titles related to a familiar IP like Coyote vs. Acme. Some saw Warners' bottom-line ruthlessness as less of a new way of mistreating talent than a return to how Hollywood used to be.

"The idea that there was a little window there where a lot of people got to try a lot of stuff they wouldn't have gotten to try in normal circumstances, that's the anomaly," one top writer-producer said. "The kind of red tooth and claw version of [conducting business], the nastiness - I think that's the norm."

Still, it's easy to imagine that if an in-demand creative has an all-things-being-equal choice of going with Warners or another studio in the future, that Zaslav's aggressive tax strategies could give real pause - even with the reversal. Zaslav previously reversed an unpopular decision - the gutting of TCM - after an outcry from creatives including Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese and Paul Thomas Anderson.

Interestingly, the plot of Coyote vs. Acme follows the speechless, ever-determined Wile E. Coyote as he teams up with a lawyer (Forte) to fight the big ACME corporation. Just like in the cartoons, Coyote buys ACME devices to try and kill Road Runner, but they never work properly, and often abruptly explode. The third shelved Warners movie, in other words, is the story of an underdog taking on a heartless company whose executives don't realize there can be real consequences to making their products blow up in your face.

-Pamela McClintock contributed to this story.

DESANTISLAND

Disney says it has $40 billion economic impact in Florida as it battles DeSantis in court

MIKE SCHNEIDER
November 14, 2023 

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — Disney on Tuesday released a study showing its economic impact in Florida at $40.3 billion as it battles Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and his appointees over their takeover of the district that governs the entertainment company's massive resort in central Florida.

Disney accounted for 263,000 jobs in Florida, more than three times the actual workforce at Walt Disney World, according to the study conducted by Oxford Economics and commissioned by Disney, covering fiscal year 2022. Besides direct employment and spending, the study attributed the company’s multibillion-dollar impact to indirect influences, such as supply chain and employees’ spending.

The jobs include Disney employees as well as jobs supported by visitor spending off Disney World property. In central Florida, Disney directly accounts for 1 in 8 jobs, and for every direct job at Disney World, another 1.7 jobs are supported across Florida, Oxford Economics said.

The time period in the study is before the takeover earlier this year of Disney World's governing district by DeSantis and his appointees after Disney publicly opposed a state law banning classroom lessons on sexual orientation and gender identity in early grades. The law was championed by DeSantis, who is running for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.

Disney officials in the past year have said the company plans to invest an additional $17 billion over the next decade in central Florida, including potentially adding another 13,000 jobs. However, the company has shown a willingness to pull back investing in the Sunshine State. Earlier this year, Disney scrapped plans to relocate 2,000 employees from Southern California to work in digital technology, finance and product development, an investment estimated at $1 billion

Disney World already has four theme parks, more than 25 hotels, two water parks and a shopping and dining district on 25,000 acres (10,117 hectares) outside Orlando, Florida.

Disney is battling DeSantis and his appointees in federal and state courts over the takeover of what was formally called the Reedy Creek Improvement District but was renamed the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District after DeSantis appointees gained control. The district was created by the Florida Legislature in 1967 to handle municipal services like firefighting, road repairs and waste hauling, and it was controlled by Disney supporters until earlier this year.

Before control of the district changed hands from Disney allies to DeSantis appointees, the Disney supporters on its board signed agreements with Disney shifting control over design and construction at Disney World to the company. The new DeSantis appointees said the “eleventh-hour deals” neutered their powers, and the district sued the company in state court in Orlando to have the contracts voided. Disney has filed counterclaims, which include asking the state court to declare the agreements valid and enforceable.

Disney also has sued DeSantis, a state agency and DeSantis appointees on the district's board in federal court in Tallahassee, saying the company's free speech rights were violated when the governor and Republican lawmakers targeted it for expressing opposition to the law dubbed “Don't Say Gay” by its critics.

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Follow Mike Schneider on X, formerly known as Twitter: @MikeSchneiderAP.