Thursday, October 07, 2010
Sun ‘behaving strangely,’ study shows
Published: October 7, 2010
London, England (CNN) — A new study has shed light on the sun’s impact on the Earth’s climate, confounding current thinking about solar cycles and how they influence temperatures on Earth.
Previously scientists had thought that radiation reaching the Earth rises and falls in line with the Sun’s activity, which during the 11-year solar cycle goes though periods of low and high activity.
But research by Imperial College, London and the University of Colorado in the U.S. examining solar radiation levels from 2004 to 2007 — a period of declining solar activity — revealed that levels of visible radiation reaching the Earth actually increased during the period.
Using data collected by NASA’s SORCE (SOlar Radiation and Climate Experiment) satellite, which launched in 2003, the scientists were able to scrutinize the full solar spectrum — x-ray, ultraviolet (UV), visible (VR), near-infrared, and total solar radiation — and compare it to earlier, less comprehensive data.
Joanna Haigh, leader author of the study published in the journal Nature told CNN: “What the data has shown, rather unexpectedly, is that the decline in ultra-violet radiation is much larger than anticipated. But more surprisingly the visible radiation actually increased as solar activity was declining.”
Haigh, a professor of atmospheric physics, says that UV radiation is mostly absorbed in the stratosphere but visible radiation gets through to the earth’s surface. The observed increase in VR, despite declining solar activity, may have caused small rises in temperature.
But, as Haigh points out, the research, which covers a short period, comes with some caveats.
“The sun has been behaving very strangely. Its magnetic activity is lower than it has been for several hundred years, perhaps. And so the fact that it’s doing strange things in its spectrum is perhaps not that unexpected,” she said.
It’s also just starting to come out of a very long period (two years) of minimum activity, she says.
As the Sun’s activity starts to increase, “it will also be very, very interesting to see if the visible radiation starts to decline,” Haigh says.
#########################################
― what’s its name and where was it found?
Arunachal Pradesh is a state in the far northeast corner of India. It shares a border with Burma, Bhutan, and China. In the state there’s a district called East Kameng, a community of villages that have had few interactions with the outside world. And in that community, there are several thousand people who speak a language called Aka.
Within the community of Aka speakers, however, there’s an even smaller community who speak a language that until very recently was unknown to the scientific world.
It’s called Koro. Only 800 to 1200 people speak the language.
Koro is not a dialect of Aka. It is entirely its own language.
Koro belongs to the Tibeto-Burman language family, which is a collection of 400 languages used by people across Asia.
The Koro “discovery” was made by two National Geographic fellows, who traveled to the remote villages on a hunch that it was an area of great language diversity. They have yet to uncover how old the language is. They are also unsure about how it developed.
The opportunity for research is closing. It’s believed that Koro could soon be extinct. Few people who are under the age of 20 speak the language. Young people are choosing to communicate in Hindi, the predominant language of North India.
########################################
What’s the real name of this rare creature that was recently captured?
When one of the world’s rarest mammals makes an appearance, a number of equally exotic words tend to follow. This wild, extraordinary creature hasn’t been photographed since 1999. However, reports emerged this week that a small village in Laos captured one. Sadly, it died several days later.
The “Asian unicorn” nickname isn’t exactly fitting since the animal is double horned. And, unlike the unicorn, the saola is no myth.
(The mythical unicorn is typically depicted with a single horn in the center of its forehead. The word comes from the Latin unus, which means “one,” and cornu, which means “horn.” The ancient Greeks thought that the fierce unicorn was a handful to capture, but that it would docilely lay its head in a virgin’s lap if presented with the opportunity.)
Saola means “spindle-horned.” It is also known as the Vu Quang ox, the Vu Quang bovid, and by its Latin name, Pseudoryx nghetinhensis
The incredibly reclusive beast is called saht-supahp by Hmong natives. The term comes from Lao and means “the polite animal.”
(Somewhere between the fantasy of the unicorn and the real-life sadness of the saola is the phenomenon of the chupacabra.
The saola wasn’t even known to scientists until 1992 when the bovine was first spotted in a nature reserve in Vietnam. You can see a photo of one here.
It is listed as critically endangered by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. It’s unknown how many are in existence; the number could be in the hundreds or even down to just a dozen. Only 11 have been recorded alive.
The saola can be compared to cattle, nyala, kudu, and elands. It has similarities to an oryx, which typically have long, straight upright or swept-back horns.
*****************************************************
Blessings! -Missygirl*
Subscribe to Posts [Atom]
