http://phys.org/ en-us Phys.org internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. Reporting this week in the journal Nature, an international team of scientists led by British Antarctic Survey (BAS) has established that warm ocean currents are the dominant cause of recent ice loss from Antarctica. New techniques have been used to differentiate, for the first time, between the two known causes of melting ice shelves - warm ocean currents attacking the underside, and warm air melting from above. This finding brings scientists a step closer to providing reliable projections of future sea-level rise. http://phys.org/news254577590.html Space & Earth Wed, 25 Apr 2012 13:00:12 EST news254577590 The European Space Agency said Thursday it had lost contact with Envisat, the biggest Earth-monitoring satellite in history. http://phys.org/news253449371.html Space & Earth Thu, 12 Apr 2012 11:36:18 EST news253449371 (Phys.org) -- The swirling flows of Earth's perpetually changing ocean come to life in a new NASA scientific visualization that captures the movement of tens of thousands of ocean currents. http://phys.org/news253268054.html Space & Earth Tue, 10 Apr 2012 09:14:27 EST news253268054 (PhysOrg.com) -- An international research team is reporting the results of a research cruise they organized to study the amount, spread, and impacts of radiation released into the ocean from the tsunami-crippled reactors in Fukushima, Japan. The group of 17 researchers and technicians from eight institutions spent 15 days at sea in June 2011 studying ocean currents, and sampling water and marine organisms up to the edge of the exclusion zone around the reactors. http://phys.org/news252585802.html Space & Earth Mon, 02 Apr 2012 15:00:01 EST news252585802 (PhysOrg.com) -- Ever since the island of Madagascar was first visited by people, some two thousand years ago, there has been speculation about the unique plants and animals that live on the world’s fourth largest island; one where roughly ninety percent of the wildlife is found nowhere else. For many years, it was believed they came to be there during the time when the island was still physically connected to Africa, but that reasoning has fallen by the wayside as it has been shown that the island separated some 88 million years ago, while most of the animals that live there didn’t arrive till just 60 million years ago, forcing evolutionary scientists to search for other explanations. Now new evidence by an international group of researchers is proposing that the animals got there by floating on rafts during a time when prevailing currents would have made the journey more plausible. They have published a paper on their ideas in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. http://phys.org/news251454044.html Biology Tue, 20 Mar 2012 09:21:08 EST news251454044 Forming a unique part of the animal kingdom, corals have built the only living entity visible from space; the Great Barrier Reef. Scientists from the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) have recently discovered a previously unknown reproductive strategy in corals, adding another dimension to our understanding of their complex life cycles. http://phys.org/news249830650.html Biology Thu, 01 Mar 2012 14:00:08 EST news249830650 Planet Earth is now due for another ice age when glaciers will form and sea levels drop up to 120m. But don't get your woollies out just yet. "Any moment now" in geological speak means give or take a few hundreds of years or more. http://phys.org/news249763996.html Space & Earth Wed, 29 Feb 2012 18:53:21 EST news249763996 (AP) -- Refrigerators, TVs and other debris dragged into sea when a massive earthquake hit Japan last March, causing tsunamis as high as 130 feet to crash ashore, could show up in remote atolls north of Hawaii as soon as this winter, with other pieces reaching parts of the West Coast in 2013 and 2014, experts say. http://phys.org/news249625827.html Space & Earth Tue, 28 Feb 2012 04:32:18 EST news249625827 The International Telecommunication Union (ITU), charged by the United Nations with coordinating global radio spectrum use, recently came to an agreement that will foster improvements in ocean radar technology, which may eventually allow near real-time detection and tracking of tsunamis and prediction of the likely paths of oil spills, ocean debris and persons lost at sea. http://phys.org/news249123608.html Space & Earth Wed, 22 Feb 2012 09:00:16 EST news249123608 (AP) -- Radioactive contamination from the Fukushima power plant disaster has been detected as far as almost 400 miles off Japan in the Pacific Ocean, with water showing readings of up to 1,000 times more than prior levels, scientists reported Tuesday. http://phys.org/news249063105.html Space & Earth Tue, 21 Feb 2012 16:11:54 EST news249063105 (PhysOrg.com) -- Most people probably didn’t notice it, but back in 2009, the Earth spun around on its axis a tiny bit faster than usual, making for some slightly shorter days. It only happened for a couple of weeks and during that time, the days were only shortened by 0.1 milliseconds, but still, the whole idea seems a bit unsettling. This speed-up apparently came about due to ocean currents surrounding Antarctica suddenly slowing down for reasons that aren’t wholly clear. Researchers from NASA’s JPL, in conjunction with colleagues from the Institute of Earth Physics in France, spotted the phenomenon and after looking into it, have published their results in Geophysical Research Letters. http://phys.org/news248347427.html Space & Earth Mon, 13 Feb 2012 10:00:01 EST news248347427 Oceanographers have identified a series of ocean hotspots around the world generated by strengthening wind systems that have driven oceanic currents, including the East Australian Current, polewards beyond their known boundaries. http://phys.org/news247140790.html Space & Earth Mon, 30 Jan 2012 10:13:28 EST news247140790 British scientists have discovered an enormous dome of fresh water in the western Arctic Ocean. They think it may result from strong Arctic winds accelerating a great clockwise ocean circulation called the Beaufort Gyre, causing the sea surface to bulge upwards. http://phys.org/news246526036.html Space & Earth Mon, 23 Jan 2012 07:27:29 EST news246526036 An iceberg nearly 100 kilometres (60 miles) long was Wednesday preventing tourist ships from reaching Antarctica to mark the centenary of Australian explorer Douglas Mawson's epic polar voyage. http://phys.org/news243664503.html Space & Earth Wed, 21 Dec 2011 04:35:22 EST news243664503 In its age-old war to keep back the sea, low-lying Netherlands has dumped sand onto a surface larger than 200 football fields just off the coast -- and will wait for nature to do the rest. http://phys.org/news243577177.html Space & Earth Tue, 20 Dec 2011 04:19:56 EST news243577177 At just a few centimeters long, hatchling loggerhead turtles may seem powerless to resist being swept around the Atlantic Ocean by powerful currents. http://phys.org/news242037216.html Biology Fri, 02 Dec 2011 09:40:01 EST news242037216 Plunge in CO2 put the freeze on AntarcticaAtmospheric carbon dioxide levels plunged by 40% before and during the formation of the Antarctic ice sheet 34 million years ago, according to a new study. The finding helps solve a long-standing scientific puzzle and confirms the power of CO2 to dramatically alter global climate. http://phys.org/news241970220.html Space & Earth Thu, 01 Dec 2011 14:00:08 EST news241970220 Most of the radioactive fallout from the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear plant dropped into the ocean and began circling the planet, Japanese researchers said Thursday. http://phys.org/news240724437.html Space & Earth Thu, 17 Nov 2011 03:54:05 EST news240724437 France's nuclear monitor said on Thursday that the amount of caesium 137 that leaked into the Pacific from the Fukushima disaster was the greatest single nuclear contamination of the sea ever seen. http://phys.org/news238932811.html Space & Earth Thu, 27 Oct 2011 11:13:48 EST news238932811 (PhysOrg.com) -- Baby fish may be able to resist ocean currents and influence how and where they move, says a Victoria University researcher, although he is yet to work out how they do it. http://phys.org/news238141217.html Biology Tue, 18 Oct 2011 07:20:24 EST news238141217 Not long ago, geologically speaking, a now-vanished lake covered a huge expanse of today's Canadian prairie. As big as Hudson Bay, the lake was fed by melting glaciers as they receded at the end of the last ice age. At its largest, Glacial Lake Agassiz, as it is known, covered most of the Canadian province of Manitoba, plus a good part of western Ontario. A southern arm straddled the Minnesota-North Dakota border. http://phys.org/news237050210.html Space & Earth Wed, 05 Oct 2011 16:17:00 EST news237050210 The tsunami that devastated Japan on March 11 was picked up by high-frequency radar in California and Japan as it swept toward their coasts, according to U.S. and Japanese scientists. This is the first time that a tsunami has been observed by radar, raising the possibility of new early warning systems. http://phys.org/news232722378.html Space & Earth Tue, 16 Aug 2011 14:06:27 EST news232722378 Carbon Explorer floats follow ocean currents, yo-yoing back and forth in the first kilometer below the surface of the sea, then resurfacing to report their data and receive new instructions via satellite. Since the early 2000s a dozen Carbon Explorers have produced detailed information on the carbon cycle in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Southern Oceans – information that would be unaffordable and in some cases impossible to obtain from shipboard. http://phys.org/news231498525.html Space & Earth Tue, 02 Aug 2011 10:09:12 EST news231498525 A new artificial surface inspired by floating seeds, which could provide an alternative to the toxic paints currently used to prevent fouling on ship hulls, has been developed by German scientists. http://phys.org/news228966978.html Chemistry Mon, 04 Jul 2011 02:56:39 EST news228966978 Stronger ocean currents beneath West Antarctica's Pine Island Glacier Ice Shelf are eroding the ice from below, speeding the melting of the glacier as a whole, according to a new study in Nature Geoscience. A growing cavity beneath the ice shelf has allowed more warm water to melt the ice, the researchers say—a process that feeds back into the ongoing rise in global sea levels. The glacier is currently sliding into the sea at a clip of four kilometers (2.5 miles) a year, while its ice shelf is melting at about 80 cubic kilometers a year - 50 percent faster than it was in the early 1990s - the paper estimates. http://phys.org/news228324328.html Space & Earth Sun, 26 Jun 2011 16:25:45 EST news228324328 Indonesia said Friday it would consider rehabilitating captive dolphins before releasing them into the wild, after animal welfare activists criticised a plan to dump them directly into the sea. http://phys.org/news227532220.html Biology Fri, 17 Jun 2011 12:23:52 EST news227532220 (PhysOrg.com) -- Along the West Coast of the United States, a network of antennas is sending radio waves out to sea 24 hours a day and capturing real-time data about the ocean's currents. http://phys.org/news227521371.html Space & Earth Fri, 17 Jun 2011 09:23:35 EST news227521371 (PhysOrg.com) -- When NASA's Aquarius mission launches this week, its radiometer instruments will take a "skin" reading of the oceans' salt content at the surface. From these data of salinity in the top 0.4 inch (1 centimeter) of the ocean surface, Aquarius will create weekly and monthly maps of ocean surface salinity all over the globe for at least three years. To better understand what's driving changes and fluctuations in salinity -- and how those changes relate to an acceleration of the global water cycle and climate change -- scientists will go deeper. http://phys.org/news226749164.html Space & Earth Wed, 08 Jun 2011 10:53:01 EST news226749164 A network of high-frequency radar systems designed for mapping ocean surface currents now provides detail of coastal ocean dynamics along the U.S. West Coast never before available. http://phys.org/news225536585.html Space & Earth Wed, 25 May 2011 10:03:33 EST news225536585 A team of scientists from the University of Sheffield and Bangor University have used a computer climate model to study how freshwater entering the oceans at the end of the penultimate Ice Age 140,000 years ago affected the parts of the ocean currents that control climate. http://phys.org/news225536079.html Space & Earth Wed, 25 May 2011 09:55:28 EST news225536079