Deepest Part of the Ocean

Deepest Part of the Ocean

-(Shocking Nature News)-

http://geology.com/records/deepest-part-of-the-ocean.shtml

Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench is the deepest point in Earth's oceans. The bottom there is 10,924 meters (35,840 feet) below sea level. If Mount Everest, the highest mountain on Earth, were placed at this location it would be covered by over one mile of water. The Challenger Deep is named after the British survey ship Challenger II, which discovered this deepest location in 1951. 

The Challenger Deep was first explored by Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh in the Trieste bathyscaphe in 1960. They reached a depth of 10,916 meters (35,814 feet). In 2009 researchers from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution completed the deepest dive by an unmanned robotic vehicle in the Challenger Deep. Their Nereus robotic vehicle reached a depth of 10,902 meters.

Why is the ocean so deep here?

The Mariana Trench is located at a convergent plate boundary. Here two converging lithospheric plates collide with one another. At this collision point, one of the plates descends into the mantle. At the line of contact between the two plates the downward flexure forms a trough known as an ocean trench. An example of an ocean trench is shown in the diagram below. 

Scientist Work to Make Livestock Happier

Scientists Work to Make Livestock Happier—Even if It Must Die
-(Shocking Nature News)-
http://www.world-science.net/othernews/101208_animals.htm

Sci­en­tists have em­barked on a new re­search pro­gram aimed at en­sur­ing farm an­i­mals live more hap­pi­ly—e­ven if they’re doomed to be killed and eat­en.

The aim is to en­hance an­i­mal well-be­ing when pos­si­ble, re­search­ers say, but the ben­e­fits are al­so meant to be redi­rected back to hu­mans. More con­tent an­i­mals are more pro­duc­tive, some sci­en­tists ar­gue: even in death, for ex­am­ple, hap­pi­er cows pro­duce tastier meat.

“With in­creased pub­lic con­cern about the wel­fare of an­i­mals, and con­sumers seek­ing ‘an­i­mal wel­fare-friendly’ prod­ucts, Aus­trali­a’s live­stock in­dus­tries are fo­cused on im­prov­ing farm­ing prac­tices to meet chang­ing ex­pecta­t­ions,” said re­searcher Car­o­line Lee of Aus­trali­a’s na­tional sci­ence agen­cy, the Com­mon­wealth Sci­en­tif­ic and In­dus­t­ri­al Re­search Or­ga­ni­sa­t­ion.


Lee and oth­ers at the agen­cy’s Live­stock In­dustries di­vi­sion are stu­dy­ing “sci­en­tific” meth­ods of as­sess­ing an­i­mals’ emo­tion­al state that go be­yond tra­di­tion­al, and lim­it­ed, tech­niques.

In a study pub­lished in the Sept. 10 on­line is­sue of the jour­nal Psy­choneu­roen­do­crin­ol­ogy, for in­stance, Lee and col­leagues re­ported on a tech­nique for as­sess­ing “pes­simistic” out­look in sheep. The an­i­mals were trained to ex­pect that ap­proach­ing a buck­et would lead ei­ther to a pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive event—a food re­ward, or the ap­pear­ance of a sheep dog—de­pend­ing on the buck­et’s loca­t­ion. Lat­er, buck­ets were placed in add­ition­al, “am­big­u­ous” loca­t­ions; the sheep were as­sessed re­gard­ing their con­fi­dence in ap­proach­ing the buck­et.

“The chal­lenge is to gain in­sights – in a sci­en­tif­ic­ally rig­or­ous way – in­to how an­i­mals’ minds work,” Lee said. Tra­di­tion­al meth­ods largely fo­cus on quan­ti­fy­ing bi­o­log­i­cal in­di­ca­tors of stress, she not­ed – for ex­am­ple, via blood tests that show changes in an­i­mals’ phys­i­ol­o­gy or im­mune sys­tems. Stud­ies of an­i­mal be­hav­iour have al­so been used to in­di­cate ob­vi­ous emo­tion­al states such as pain or dis­com­fort, or pref­er­ences for dif­fer­ent foods. But all of these stud­ies pro­vide rel­a­tively lim­it­ed in­forma­t­ion, Lee ar­gued.

“Un­til now the ma­jor gap in our abil­ity to as­sess an­i­mal wel­fare has been our ca­pacity to un­der­stand the emo­tion­al states of an­i­mals in dif­fer­ent farm­ing situa­t­ions, such as in in­ten­sive fin­ish­ing sys­tems or dur­ing droughts,” said Lee. Some of her re­search has al­so ex­am­ined sheeps’ re­sponses to, and po­ten­tial al­ter­na­tives to, mulesing—a prac­tice in which a piece of flesh is cut off the rump to pre­vent deadly mag­got in­festa­t­ions.

It’s “in­terna­t­ionally rec­og­nised that we must quanti­fy not only the bi­o­log­i­cal cost but al­so the emo­tion­al cost of an­i­mals used for pro­duc­tion of food and fi­bre,” Lee said. “This re­quires new meth­ods to bench­mark the wel­fare of an­i­mals in their on-farm en­vi­ron­ment.”

But for sci­en­tists in­volved in the re­search, the wel­fare of the an­i­mals them­selves is a mo­tiva­t­ion only up to a point.

Sci­ent­ist Drewe Fer­gu­son of the Live­stock In­dustries di­vi­sion told the Bris­bane, Australia-based Cour­i­er Mail news­pa­per that meat from un­hap­py cows is “dark, firm and dry in ap­pear­ance, with a tough tex­ture,’’ be­cause of low ac­id­ity lev­els. “It al­so has a re­duced shelf life be­cause of the bac­te­ri­al growth,’’ he added.

Picture taken from radenbeletz.com

Are Opossums Playing Dead?

Are Opossums Playing Dead?
-(Shocking Nature News)-

-http://juiciejulz.blogspot.com/2008/06/fun-nature-facts.html 

and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opossum -

When opossums are playing opossum, they are not "playing." They actually pass out from sheer terror.

Opossums have a remarkably robust immune system, and show partial or total immunity to the venom of rattlesnakes, cottonmouths, and other pit vipers.Opossums are about eight times less likely to carry rabies than wild dogs, and about one in eight hundred opossums are infected with this virus

Their unspecialized biology, flexible diet and reproductive strategy make them successful colonizers and survivors in diverse locations and conditions.

A baby opossum

When threatened or harmed, they will "play opossum", mimicking the appearance and smell of a sick or dead animal. When playing possum, the lips are drawn back, teeth are bared, saliva foams around the mouth, and a foul-smelling fluid is secreted from the anal glands. The physiological response is involuntary, rather than a conscious act. Their stiff, curled form can be prodded, turned over, and even carried away. The animal will regain consciousness after a period of minutes or hours and escape.

Picture taken from http://thundafunda.com/393/?level=picture&id=2528 and http://hiox.org/3790-north-american.php

Turtle Navigation for Nesting

How Do Marine Turtles Return to the Same Beach to Lay Their Eggs?
http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/turtle-navigation.html#cr
-(Shocking Nature News)-

Marine turtles almost always return to the same beach to lay their eggs. The egg-laying sites are often far from the feeding areas and the females cross several hundred kilometres of ocean with no visual landmarks. How do they manage to return to the same spot? A new study shows that the marine turtles use a relatively simple navigation system involving the earth’s magnetic field, and this allows them to return to the same egg-laying site without having the ability to correct for the deflection of ocean currents. This work, published in Current Biology and Marine Ecology Progress Series, should allow better conservation strategies for this endangered species. Every 4 years, on average, Indian Ocean green turtles (Chelonia mydas) travel hundreds of kilometres to specific egg-laying areas, where they will lay 4 to 6 successive clutches. To better understand the navigation process and the sensory channels involved in this long-distance oceanic travel, the researchers have conducted a multidisciplinary study, involving biology and physical oceanography, in two series of experiments. In the Mozambique Channel, between the east coast of Africa and Madagascar, on the beaches of the French Islands of Europa and Mayotte, they caught turtles at the beginning of their egg-laying cycle, so that the animals were strongly impelled to return to this area to complete their cycle.

After having Argos transmitters fitted to their shells in order to satellite track their return journey to the beach, the animals were released in open sea, several hundred kilometres from the egg-laying site.

The first experiment was to study the navigation system of the marine turtles and discover how they detect the ocean currents: are the turtles’ movements controlled by the currents or can they use them to their benefit? The study has shown that the marine turtles’ navigation system allows them to maintain their course towards the egg-laying site wherever they find themselves. It is almost as if they were equipped with a compass pointing towards the beach in question. So they can correct any deflection they are subject to: transport by boat, ocean currents… But, unlike human navigators, they are not able to correct for ocean drift in plotting their course. So the movements recorded by the satellite are a combination of deliberate action by the turtles and the effect of currents. So it appears that the turtles’ navigation system is relatively simple and may cause them to be wander at sea for long periods during adverse ocean conditions. One turtle released 250 km from its egg-laying site on Europa travelled more than 3 500 km in two months before returning there!

Green Turtles (Chelonia mydas)

In the second experiment, the researchers have studied the effect of the earth’s magnetic field on the turtles’ navigation system. They have shown, for the first time in natura, that marine turtles use the magnetic field of the earth to orientate themselves. When this field is disturbed by placing a powerful magnet on their heads, turtle navigation is not as good. But the fact that they can still return to their original egg-laying site shows that the geomagnetic field is not the only information source that they use. Researchers think the turtles may also use their sense of smell like certain sea birds or homing pigeons. This hypothesis remains to be proven…

This work should improve conservation strategies for marine turtles, an endangered, officially protected species, by providing a better understanding of how they manage these long migrations between egg-laying and feeding areas.

The study was conducted by Simon Benhamou of the Center for Functional and Evolutionary Ecology at Montpellier, France, together with other groups (CNRS, IRD, IFREMER, CEDTM2, University of Pisa).

Picture taken from www.seaturtlenet.com and http://anwo.com

Oil Spill "Devastation"

Oily Chick

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/07

-(Shocking Nature News)-

Photograph courtesy Gerrit Vyn, Cornell Lab of Ornithology

Oil from the Gulf of Mexico spill covers the breast of a royal tern chick recently hatched on Raccoon Island in a picture taken last week. Royal terns leave their nests within a day of hatching, which means the young birds may quickly encounter oil that's been washed ashore.

Part of Louisiana's Terrebonne Parish, the island is a protected sanctuary for breeding seabirds, including royal terns, sandwich terns, and brown pelicans.

(See also: "Gulf Oil Cleanup Crews Trample Nesting Birds.")

Ken Rosenberg, director of conservation science at the Cornell bird lab, told the Associated Press that the Gulf oil spill is "more insidious" than the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster, "because it is literally happening in waves, and it's happening over and over again as the birds are moving around."

World's Hottest Chile Pepper Discovered

 

World's Hottest Chile Pepper Discovered
-(Shocking Nature News)-
http://www.sciencedaily.com

Researchers at New Mexico State University recently discovered the world's hottest chile pepper. Bhut Jolokia, a variety of chile pepper originating in Assam, India, has earned Guiness World Records' recognition as the world's hottest chile pepper by blasting past the previous champion Red Savina.

In replicated tests of Scoville heat units (SHUs), Bhut Jolokia reached one million SHUs, almost double the SHUs of Red Savina, which measured a mere 577,000.

Dr. Paul Bosland, Director of the Chile Pepper Institute at New Mexico State University's Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences collected seeds of Bhut Jolokia while visiting India in 2001.

Bosland grew Bhut Jolokia plants under insect-proof cages for three years to produce enough seed to complete the required field tests.

"The name Bhut Jolokia translates as 'ghost chile,'" Bosland said, "I think it's because the chile is so hot, you give up the ghost when you eat it!"

Bosland added that the intense heat concentration of Bhut Jolokia could have significant impact on the food industry as an economical seasoning in packaged foods.

Picture taken from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071026162420.htm

Legendary Tazmanian Tiger

Legendary Tazmanian Tiger
-(Shocking Nature News)-

The Thylacine was the largest known carnivorous marsupial of modern times. It is commonly known as the Tasmanian Tiger (because of its striped back), the Tasmanian Wolf, and colloquially the Tassie (or Tazzy) Tiger or simply the Tiger. Native to continental Australia, Tasmania and New Guinea, it is thought to have become extinct in the 20th century. It was the last extant member of its genus, Thylacinus, although several related species have been found in the fossil record dating back to the early Miocene.

The Thylacine had become extremely rare or extinct on the Australian mainland before European settlement of the continent, but it survived on the island state of Tasmania along with several other endemic species, including the Tasmanian Devil. Intensive hunting encouraged by bounties is generally blamed for its extinction, but other contributory factors may have been disease, the introduction of dogs, and human encroachment into its habitat. Despite its official classification as extinct, sightings are still reported, though none proven.

In 1973, Gary and Liz Doyle shot ten seconds of 8mm film showing an unidentified animal running across a South Australia road. However, attempts to positively identify the creature as a thylacine have been impossible due to the poor quality of the film.In 1982 a researcher with the Tasmania Parks and Wildlife Service, Hans Naarding, observed what he believed to be a Thylacine for three minutes during the night at a site near Arthur River in northwestern Tasmania. The sighting led to an extensive year-long government-funded search.

In January 1995, a Parks and Wildlife officer reported observing a Thylacine in the Pyengana region of northeastern Tasmania in the early hours of the morning. Later searches revealed no trace of the animal.In 1997, it was reported that locals and missionaries near Mount Carstensz in Western New Guinea had sighted Thylacines. The locals had apparently known about them for many years but had not made an official report.

In February 2005 Klaus Emmerichs, a German tourist, claimed to have taken digital photographs of a Thylacine he saw near the Lake St Clair National Park, but the authenticity of the photographs has not been established.The photos were not published until April 2006, fourteen months after the sighting. The photographs, which showed only the back of the animal, were said by those who studied them to be inconclusive as evidence of the Thylacine's continued existence.

Picture and story from wikipedia.org

The Hottest Place on Earth

The Hottest Place on Earth
-(Shocking Nature News)-

The Afar Depression includes the Danakil Desert and the lowest point in Africa, Lake Asal (–155 meters or –500 ft). Dallol is also part of the Depression, one of the hottest places year-round anywhere on Earth.

The climate varies from around 25 °C (77 °F) during the rainy season (September–March) to 48 °C (118 °F) during the dry season (March–September). Only the Awash River flows into the depression, where it ends in a chain of lakes that increase in salinity.

Temperatures reached up to an all-time high of 64.4°C (148.0°F) in the 1930's. The area is one of the hottest places on earth, comparable with the Dasht-e Lut desert in Iran.

Article from wikipedia.org
Picture taken from http://farm5.static.flickr.com

Mekong Giant Catfish

Mekong Giant Catfish
From http://bizarrecreatures.blogspot.com
-(Shocking Nature News)-

Attaining an unconfirmed length of 3m (9+ft), the Mekong giant catfish grows extremely quickly, reaching a mass of 150 to 200kg in only six years.

The largest catch recorded in Thailand since record-keeping began in 1981, was a female measuring 2.7 m (roughly 9ft) in length and weighing 293 kg(646 lb). This specimen, caught in 2005, is widely recognized as the largest freshwater fish ever caught.

Harp for the Mist of Atacama

Harp for the Mist of Atacama
-(Shocking Nature News)-

In the Atacama desert in Chili, people sometimes "play" a mist harp. It is a kind of music harp, but it never used to play a song.

Atacama desert have a very low rain intensity, but this desert have a mist, being flown from Pasific Ocean. The mist contains some water ammount and people try to "trap" the water by using nylon line.

Only in one day, more than 10 liter of water can be collected from 1 meter square of line from the harp.

(Story translated freely from "Memperhatikan Cuaca" by David Suzuki).

Lowest Temperature on Earth

Lowest Temperature on Earth
-(Shocking Nature News)-
from wikipedia.org

The lowest temperature ever recorded in nature on Earth was −89.2°C (−128.6°F) recorded on Thursday, July 21, 1983 at Vostok Station. For comparison, this is 11 °C colder than subliming dry ice. The highest temperature ever recorded in Antarctica was 14.6°C (58.3°F) in two places, Hope Bay and Vanda Station, on January 5, 1974.

The mean annual temperature of the interior is −57°C (−70°F). The coast is warmer. Monthly means at McMurdo Station range from −28°C (−18.4°F) in August to −3°C (26.6°F) in January. At the South Pole, the highest temperature recorded was −14°C (7°F). Along the Antarctic Peninsula, temperatures as high as 15°C (59°F) have been recorded, though the summer temperature is usually around 2°C (36°F).

Severe low temperatures vary with latitude, elevation, and distance from the ocean. East Antarctica is colder than West Antarctica because of its higher elevation. The Antarctic Peninsula has the most moderate climate. Higher temperatures occur in January along the coast and average slightly below freezing.

Picture taken from http://academic.emporia.edu/aberjame/ice/lec11/vostok2.jpg

Which Animals and Plants are in the Most Danger?

http://factbooks.blogspot.com
-(Shocking Nature News)-

In this question, the ‘word’ danger does not refer to the danger to which individuals of any species may be subjected. Danger in this case means the danger to which a whole species is liable. In other words, species may be in danger of becoming extinct, and disappearing for ever from the face of the planet. Of course, we can tell from the fossil record that hundreds of species of animals and plants have come and gone throughout the span of life on Earth.

In the past, however, those species that have died out have done as a result of natural causes. The animals and plants that disappeared were those that were unable to adapt fast enough to changing conditions or were unable to compete with their rivals for the available food supplies. There are instance, however, such as that of the dinosaurs, in which it is not at all clear why they became extinct. Many dieas have been suggested, but none of them is wholly satisfactory.

For today’s wild life, there is another, more terrible threat to their existence – man. Man is endangering the lives of many species of animals and plants which are unable to adapt to the pressure of man’s increasing numbers and his changes to the natural environment. On the other hand, there are those species that have certainly benefited from man’s activities.

In Britain, for example, birds such as the black headed gull have increased in numbers quite dramatically in the last fifty years, adapting well to a semi-urban environment and feeding on man’s waste. Even the fox has been able to survive by adapting to become an urban scavenger in many large cities. Unfortunately, the lack of suitable foods has led to the foxes becoming deformed so that individual probably spends a great deal of their lives in considerable pain.

But man is threatening wild life in many ways. Firstly by his spread further and further into the rural areas, man is reducing the areas in which wild life can live. This also includes the effects of widespread farming where forests and heaths come under the plough and many kilometers of hedges are removed.

Secondly, man has hunted many animals to extinction. A good example of this is the destruction of the great auk during the last century or perhaps even more famous the death of the dodo. More recently the fate of many species of the giant sea mammals, whales, has been in the news, as their numbers fall to the more efficient whaler’s harpoon gun with its explosive harpoon. Pollution is also affecting the lives of many animals. Millions of sea birds die very unpleasant deaths as a result of their feathers becoming covered in sticky, black oil waste.

It is sometimes argued that if an animal or plant cannot survive man’s ravages, then this is just the course of evolution. Unfortunately, many beautiful and valuable species, on which man himself depends, may never be seen again.

Picture taken form http://desktoprating.com

Origin of Komodo Dragon Revealed

Origin of Komodo Dragon Revealed
Fossils in Australia Date from 300,000
to Roughly 4 million Years Ago
www.livescience.com
-(Shocking Nature News)-

Picture by Daniel Sprawson / ZSL

"This young Komodo dragon was born to a virgin mother at the London Zoo in 2005. Scientists now find that the world’s largest living lizard species, the Komodo dragon, most likely evolved in Australia and dispersed westward to its current home in Indonesia."

Scientists now find that the world’s largest living lizard species, the Komodo dragon, most likely evolved in Australia and dispersed westward to its current home in Indonesia.

In the past, researchers had suggested the Komodo dragon (Varanus komodoensis) developed from a smaller ancestor isolated on the Indonesian islands, evolving its large size as a response to lack of competition from other predators or as a specialist hunter of pygmy elephants known as Stegodon.

However, over the past three years, an international team of scientists unearthed numerous fossils from eastern Australia dated from 300,000 years ago to roughly 4 million years ago that they now know belong to the Komodo dragon.

"When we compared these fossils to the bones of present-day Komodo dragons, they were identical," said researcher Scott Hocknull, a vertebrate paleontologist at the Queensland Museum in Australia.

For the last 4 million years, Australia has been home to the world's largest lizards, including the 16-foot-long giant (5 meters) called Megalania, once the world's largest terrestrial lizard but which died out some 40,000 years ago.

"Now we can say Australia was also the birthplace of the three-meter (10 foot) Komodo dragon," Hocknull said.

The researchers said the ancestor of the Komodo dragon most likely evolved in Australia and spread westward, reaching the Indonesian island of Flores by 900,000 years ago. Comparisons between fossils and living Komodo dragons on Flores show that the lizard's body size has remained relatively stable since then.

Further support for this notion of dispersal from Australia comes from the island of Timor, located between Australia and Flores. Three fossil specimens from Timor represent a new, as yet unnamed species of giant monitor lizard, which was larger than the Komodo dragon, although smaller than Megalania. More specimens of this new giant lizard are needed before the species can be formally described.

"There are a lot of things we just simply don't know about this part of the world — Indonesia to Australia," Hocknull told LiveScience. "In recent years this region has thrown up remarkable discoveries — a new species of hominid, the 'Lost World' in New Guinea boasting dozens of new species having never met humans, and now an island chain of giant lizards, including the largest of them all, Megalania from Australia. However, they all went extinct, except the Komodo dragon. The big question now is why? The south-east Asian to Australian region is a hot-spot of new and exciting discoveries."

All these huge lizards were once common in Australasia for more than 3.8 million years, having evolved alongside large mammalian carnivores, such as Thylacoleo, the so-called 'marsupial lion.' The Komodo dragon is the last of these giants, but within the last 2,000 years, their populations have diminished severely, most likely due to humans, and they are now vulnerable to extinction, living now on just a few isolated islands in eastern Indonesia, between Java and Australia.

"Understanding the past history of a species is absolutely fundamental to determining its potential trajectory in the future, its responses to climate change, habitat change and extinction events," Hocknull said. "The Komodo dragon's fossil record shows that it is a resilient species — resilient to major climatic changes throughout its past, surviving extinction events which wiped out contemporary megafauna species."

One question that now pops up is why the Komodo dragon went extinct on Australia while surviving on a few isolated Indonesian isles. Hocknull noted that climate was an unlikely suspect, as "climate impacts species on islands just as much as a big continent like Australia. In Australia there is plenty of habitat which could be conducive to Komodo dragons. If you released them in Australia today they would probably do quite well."

Were humans involved? "We have no evidence for this because the youngest Komodo fossils in Australia are around 300,000 years old, well before humans arrived. So we don't know whether the Komodo dragons in Australia died out before humans arrived or after. So the jury will remain out on this question until a better fossil record is found."

Hocknull noted these islands of lizards are each, in a sense, individual experiments in evolution that shed light not only on the past of these lizards, but potentially also on the future of the world.

"It's a perfect place to see how life adapts and evolves in response to major environmental impacts, like sea level change, climatic changes, catastrophes — tsunamis and volcanic eruptions — plus each island has received modern humans at one time or another," he explained. "What were their impacts and how did species cope? This will be our Rosetta Stone when understanding how species will respond to future climate change."

The scientists will detail their findings on Sept. 30 in the journal PLoS ONE.
© 2009 LiveScience.com

Giant Black Scorpion

Giant Black Scorpion

http://bizarrecreatures.blogspot.com/2008

-(Shocking Nature News)-

The currently known largest scorpion. Like it’s namesake, it can be found in India. It can reach to almost 1 ft in length and can weigh to as much as 57 grams.

Found : Firm Place to Stand Outside Solar System

Found: Firm Place to Stand Outside Solar System
-(Shocking Nature News)-
From Yahoo News, 17 Sept 09

This image provided by the European Southern Observatory Wednesday Sept. 16, AP – This image provided by the European Southern Observatory Wednesday Sept. 16, 2009 shows an artist rendition …
By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer Seth Borenstein, Ap Science Writer


WASHINGTON – Astronomers have finally found a place outside our solar system where there's a firm place to stand — if only it weren't so broiling hot.

As scientists search the skies for life elsewhere, they have found more than 300 planets outside our solar system. But they all have been gas balls or can't be proven to be solid. Now a team of European astronomers has confirmed the first rocky extrasolar planet.

Scientists have long figured that if life begins on a planet, it needs a solid surface to rest on, so finding one elsewhere is a big deal.

"We basically live on a rock ourselves," said co-discoverer Artie Hatzes, director of the Thuringer observatory in Germany. "It's as close to something like the Earth that we've found so far. It's just a little too close to its sun."

So close that its surface temperature is more than 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit, too toasty to sustain life. It circles its star in just 20 hours, zipping around at 466,000 mph. By comparison, Mercury, the planet nearest our sun, completes its solar orbit in 88 days.

"It's hot, they're calling it the lava planet," Hatzes said.

This is a major discovery in the field of trying to find life elsewhere in the universe, said outside expert Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institution. It was the buzz of a conference on finding an Earth-like planet outside our solar system, held in Barcelona, Spain, where the discovery was presented Wednesday morning. The find is also being published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.

The planet is called Corot-7b. It was first discovered earlier this year. European scientists then watched it dozens of times to measure its density to prove that it is rocky like Earth. It's in our general neighborhood, circling a star in the winter sky about 500 light-years away. Each light-year is about 6 trillion miles.

Four planets in our solar system are rocky: Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars.

In addition, the planet is about as close to Earth in size as any other planet found outside our solar system. Its radius is only one-and-a-half times bigger than Earth's and it has a mass about five times the Earth's.

Now that another rocky planet has been found so close to its own star, it gives scientists more confidence that they'll find more Earth-like planets farther away, where the conditions could be more favorable to life, Boss said.

"The evidence is becoming overwhelming that we live in a crowded universe," Boss said.

Boy Finds Rare Pink Grasshopper

Boy Finds Rare Pink Grasshopper
By Lori Bongiorno
http://green.yahoo.com/blog/greenpicks/253/boy-finds-rare-pink-grasshopper.html

Daniel Tate, an English schoolboy, was looking for grasshoppers at a wildlife event he attended with his great-grandfather last week. But the 11-year old boy and his companions at Seaton Marshes Local Nature Reserve had no idea what a huge surprise they were in for.

Tate saw something pink that he thought was a flower. But when it jumped he knew it was a grasshopper.

It turns out that it was an adult female common green grasshopper that just happened to be born pink.

Experts aren't sure what caused this mutation. Grasshoppers of different colors, including pink, are unusual but not unheard of according to experts. What makes this particular grasshopper so rare is the intensity of the pink, according to Fraser Rush, a nature reserves officer in Britain.

Grasshoppers aren't the only insects that can be pink. Below are a few of nature's brightest examples:


Pink praying mantis
Praying mantis (Photo: Steve Roetz / Flickr)









Pink dragonfly
Dragonfly (Photo: Richard Giddins / Flickr)









Pink katydid
Katydid (Photo: Ric McArthur / Flickr)









Pink hummingbird moth
Hummingbird moth (Photo: Jody McNary / Flickr)









Pink grasshopper moth
Another grasshopper (Photo: Tim Parkinson / Flickr)









Most people find insects annoying, but they can certainly benefit people and the planet. Praying mantises, for example, eat ticks, mosquitoes, flies, beetles, and other pests. Fewer mosquitoes and ticks in your backyard translates into fewer applications of toxic bug repellents. Organic gardeners use praying mantises, common ladybugs, and other beneficial insects to control pests as an alternative to pesticides.

400 Year Old Clam Found

400 Year Old Clam Found - Oldest Animal Ever

-(Shocking Nature News)-

http://bizarrecreatures.blogspot.com

Can you imagine living for four centuries? A team of scientists from Bangor University's School of Ocean Sciences believe they have found an animal which did just that, a quahog clam, Arctica islandica, which was living and growing on the seabed in the cold waters off the north coast of Iceland for around 400 years- that is, until they killed it

Only after researchers cut through its shell, which made it more of an ex-clam, and counted its growth rings did they realize how old it had been — between 405 and 410 years old.

What is Biogas?

What Is Biogas?
-(Shocking Nature News)-

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Biogas is a mixture of carbon dioxide, methane and some other gases. It is produced by some kinds of microorganisms, usually when air or oxygen is absent. (The absence of oxygen is called “anaerobic conditions.”) Animals that eat a lot of plant material, particularly grazing animals such as cattle, produce large amounts of biogas.

The biogas is produced not by the cow or elephant, but by billions of microorganisms living in its digestive system. Biogas also develops in bogs and at the bottom of lakes, where decaying organic matter builds up under wet and anaerobic conditions.

Picture taken from www.gimmecorn.com

Frilled Shark

Frilled Shark
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It was only discovered in Japanese waters in the 19th century. On January 21, 2007 a specimen was found alive off the coast of Japan near the Awashima Marine Park in Shizuoka, southwest of Toyko.

The shark was captured but, being in poor health, died shortly afterwards.

Planet Orbits the Wrong Way

Planet Orbits the Wrong Way
-(Shocking Nature News)-

Planets orbit stars in the same direction that the stars rotate. They all do. Except one.

A newfound planet orbits the wrong way, backward compared to the rotation of its host star. Its discoverers think a near-collision may have created the retrograde orbit, as it is called.

The star and its planet, WASP-17, are about 1,000 light-years away. The setup was found by the UK's Wide Area Search for Planets (WASP) project in collaboration with Geneva Observatory. The discovery was announced today but has not yet been published in a journal.

"I would have to say this is one of the strangest planets we know about," said Sara Seager, an astrophysicist at MIT who was not involved in the discovery.

What's going on

A star forms when a cloud of gas and dust collapses. Whatever movement the cloud had becomes intensified as it condenses, determining the rotational direction of the star. How planets form is less certain. They are, however, known to develop out of the leftover, typically disk-shaped mass of gas and dust that swirls around a newborn star, so whatever direction that material is moving, which is the direction of the star's rotation, becomes the direction of the planet's orbit.

WASP-17 likely had a close encounter with a larger planet, and the gravitational interaction acted like a slingshot to put WASP-17 on its odd course, the astronomers figure.

"I think it's extremely exciting. It's fascinating that we can study orbits of planets so far away," Seager told SPACE.com. "There's always theory, but there's nothing like an observation to really prove it."

Cosmic collisions are not uncommon. Earth's moon was made when our planet collided with a Mars-sized object, astronomers think. And earlier this week NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope found evidence of two planets colliding around a distant, young star. Some moons in our solar system are on retrograde orbits, perhaps at least in some cases because they were flying through space alone and then captured; that's thought to be the case with Neptune's large moon Triton.

The find was made by graduate students David Anderson at Keele University and Amaury Triaud of the Geneva Observatory.

Bloated world

WASP-17 is about half the mass of Jupiter but bloated to twice its size. "This planet is only as dense as expanded polystyrene, 70 times less dense than the planet we're standing on," said professor Coel Hellier of Keele University.

The bloated planet can be explained by a highly elliptical orbit, which brings it close to the star and then far away. Like exaggerated tides on Earth, the tidal effects on WASP-17 heat and stretch the planet, the researchers suggest.

The tides are not a daily affair, however. "Instead it's creating a huge amount of friction on the inside of the planet and generating a lot of energy, which might be making the planet big and puffy," Seager said.

WASP-17 is the 17th extrasolar planet found by the WASP project, which monitors hundreds of thousands of stars, watching for small dips in their light when a planet transits in front of them. NASA's Kepler space observatory is using the same technique to search for Earth-like worlds.


Jeanna Bryner and Robert Roy Britt
SPACE.com Jeanna Bryner And Robert Roy Britt
space.com – Wed Aug 12, 11:21 am ET
Updated 11:05 a.m. ET
http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20090812/sc_space/newfoundplanetorbitsbackward