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Large volume of water locked in rock below Asia
Posted on Wednesday, February 28, 2007 @ 10:32 am by Dave Schumaker
An interesting article from National Geographic notes that seismic studies of the Earth’s interior have discovered a large amount of water trapped within rock below the Asian continent.
While the title of the National Geographic article makes me cringe (Huge Underground “Ocean” Found Beneath Asia), it does raise some interesting points in terms of plate tectonics and the subduction of ocean crust. It seems to makes sense that the ocean crust has a higher water content than other rocks and that these show up in the mantle after they have already been subducted.
Map courtesy of Washington University in St. Louis
This map shows an interesting distribution of the water logged rock though. I would expect to see a similar distribution beneath the Andes Mountains of South America, but there isn’t much that shows up in that area.
Scientists to try and plug Indonesian mud volcano
Posted on Wednesday, February 28, 2007 @ 9:42 am by Dave Schumaker
For the last nine months, a mud volcano in Indonesia has erupted the equivalent of a million barrels of mud a day and left 15,000 people homeless after exploratory drilling by a gas company pierced an underground chamber containing hydrogen sulfide.
This week, scientists attempted to plug the mud volcano with up to 1,500 giant concrete spheres that weigh nearly 500 pounds. After initially dropping a chain of these spheres into the volcano, the scientists have temporarily halted the project after the initial set of concrete descended to a depth of 1 km, twice as deep as expected.
Dinosaurs “invented” the biplane?
Posted on Wednesday, February 28, 2007 @ 9:24 am by Dave Schumaker
This New Scientist article from last month raises an interesting question on whether or not dinosaurs “invented” the technology that was used in biplanes, 125 million years before man first took to the sky.
Fossilized remains uncovered in China from Microraptor gui show that this four limbed, feathered organism may have glided through the air with 2 sets of parallel wings.
Some scientists remain unconvinced that the Microraptor glided through the air this way however. Sankar Chatterjee of Texas Tech University says that gliding this way would be “aerodynamically inefficient and that Microraptor’s legs could not be splayed sideways.”
More information:
Wikipedia - Microraptor