Hunt begins for ancient Antarctic ice—and clues to Earth's response to rising temperatures | Science science.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from science.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Earth 25 May 2021
Barbara Ferra Fotografia/Getty Images
Photographic memory is the ability to recall a past scene in detail with great accuracy – just like a photo. Although many people claim they have it, we still don’t have proof that photographic memory actually exists. However, there is a condition called Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory (HSAM) that allows people to recall past events in detail, along with the exact dates when they occurred. For example, they may be able to tell you what they ate for lunch on 1 May 1999 and what day of the week it was (Saturday). But HSAM has been identified in fewer than 100 people worldwide, and while their memories are exceptional, they still aren’t as reliable as photographs.
The material collected was found on Walnumfjellet, a peak in the Sør Rondane mountain range on the coast of Antarctica, about 4,000 km south of South Africa. This range of peaks reaches roughly 3,000 meters high, and the summits ice-free. Dating techniques show that the area the material came from has been exposed for at least 870,000 years.
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Spherules about the width of a human hair found on a mountain in Antarctica tell a story of a large impact from a 100-meter wide asteroid some 430,000 years ago. Credit: Scott Peterson / micro-meteorites.com
The debris pieces found are called
impactites, minerals made upon impact. They re spherules some 100 to 300 microns wide (a human hair is about 100 microns in diameter, or about a tenth of a millimeter). When I first saw them I thought they resembled tektites, dark glassy material blasted off the ground in a big impact. The huge energy and heat released upon impact melt soil into glass, which gets thrown into the air, cools, and
430,000 years ago a meteor exploded over Antarctica, leaving clues in the debris nationalgeographic.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from nationalgeographic.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Even as Texas and much of the central U.S. froze, many other regions of the world were warmer than average last month.
A brilliant 22° halo and sundogs at sunrise in Goodland, Kansas on February 16, 2021, shortly after a minimum temperature of -11°F (30 degrees below normal) was recorded. (Image credit: National Weather Service Goodland)
February 2021 was the 16th warmest February since global record keeping began in 1880, 0.65 degrees Celsius (1.17°F) above the 20th century average, NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, NCEI, reported March 12.
NASA rated the month as the 14th warmest February on record. The Japan Meteorological Agency has not yet released its February numbers. Minor differences in rankings often occur among various research groups, the result of different ways they handle data-sparse regions such as the Arctic.