Solar Eclipse on Friday

Heavens above! It's the great eclipse: Next Friday morning, Britain will turn from day to night for the first time this century. Here's the Daily Mail guide to all you need to know.

• The Moon will pass between the Sun and the Earth in this landmark event
• It will cast a deep shadow over the planet's surface in a partial eclipse
• Unlike 1999 it will not be a total eclipse over Britain - that will happen over the North Atlantic and the spectacular event will finish over the North Pole
• 
  
• Eclipse glasses, a colander or a bucket of water can all be used to view it safely.
• The next similar eclipse will not take place over Britain until August, 2026

It will peak in Wells at 0927

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2994195/Next-Friday-morning-Britain-turn-day-night-time-century-great-eclipse.html#ixzz3UUDI6jcV 

Geoengineering

Scientists who study ideas to engineer the climate to mitigate global warming say we should be ready to deploy an armada of instrumentation when Earth has its next major volcanic eruption.

Data gathered in the high atmosphere would be invaluable in determining whether so-called "geoengineering" solutions had any merit at all.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-31476393

Why do Geysers erupt?

Like a hidden world of chutes and ladders, the loopy plumbing beneath geysers may explain what causes them to erupt, a new study finds. This finding could settle a long-standing debate over the workings of geysers.

Geysers erupt — sending steam and hot water hundreds of feet into the air, and often releasing a frightening screech and the stench of rotten eggs — because of a series of loops and side chambers hidden deep below the surface that allows water to boil first at the top and then cascade downward, the study found. 

For a nice video and further information:

http://www.livescience.com/49985-geysers-plumbing-eruption.html

Villarica eruption in Chile

One of the most active volcanoes in South America erupted early this morning, forcing thousands of nearby residents and tourists to flee. At 3am local time, the 9,400 foot volcano Villarrica erupted in southern Chile, emitting an enormous plume of smoke overhead and raining a firestorm of lava and ash down the sides of the crater. According to the Associated Press, Chile’s National Emergency Office issued a red alert and ordered the evacuation of people in the city of Pucon, a popular tourist destination which sits just below the volcano. Roughly 3,500 people have already evacuated.

Yesterday, the National Emergency Office issued an orange alert because of an increase in seismic activity.

Now there are two main concerns: The heat from the lava could melt the snow and ice on the sides of the volcano and cause mudslides, and noxious volcanic gases could permeate the air. 

For more information and video click here

GB Geology with Minecraft

Inspired by the Ordnance Survey (OS) which has produced real maps for Minecraft, BGS (British Geological Survey) has reproduced the 2D geology of mainland Great Britain and surrounding islands within the world of Minecraft. This map shows the OS map data on the surface and the rough position of real geology beneath, repeated down to the bedrock.

In reality the geology varies with depth, like cake layers, and BGS is working on representing the arrangement of the rocks and sediments in the form of a3D geological model. Watch this space!

For more information click here

Evolution 'favours bigger sea creatures'

The animals in the ocean have been getting bigger, on average, since the Cambrian period - and not by chance.

That is the finding of a huge new survey of marine life past and present, published in the journal Science.

It describes a pattern of increasing body size that cannot be explained by random "drift", but suggests bigger animals generally fare better at sea.

In the past 542 million years, the average size of a marine animal has gone up by a factor of 150.

It appears that the explosion of different life forms near the start of that time window eventually skewed decisively towards bulkier animals.

Measured by volume, today's tiniest sea critter is less than 10 times smaller than its Cambrian counterpart; both are minuscule, sub-millimetre crustaceans. But at the other end of the scale, the mighty blue whale is more than 100,000 times the size of the largest animal the Cambrian could offer: a trilobite less than half a metre long.

For more information click here

Ichthyosaurs

A fossil stored in a Doncaster museum for 30 years and thought to be a plaster copy has turned out to be a new species of ancient reptile.

A young palaeontologist working with the University of Manchester found the fossil in 2008, in the collections of Doncaster Museum and Art Gallery.

He realised it was the 189-million-year-old remains of an ichthyosaur - further study confirmed it to be a previously unknown species.

It was so well preserved he could determine the contents of its stomach, which were actually the hooks from the tentacles of squid.

It is not uncommon to find ichthyosaur fossils in England. The sharp-toothed marine reptiles swam in large numbers in the seas around Britain when the dinosaurs roamed.

Ichthyosaurs

• Often misidentified as "swimming dinosaurs", they first appeared in the early Triassic period (251 million to 199 million years ago)
• The name means fish-lizard, although the creature has been classified as a reptile since the mid-19th Century
• Its length ranged from 1m to 14m - although the average length was 2m to 3m (the Doncaster fossil is 1.5m)
• The creature was noted for its sharp, robust teeth.
• Ichthyosaurs became extinct before the dinosaurs, dying out in the early part of the late Cretaceous period (145.5 million to 65.5 million years ago)

This new species has now been named Ichthyosaurus anningae - in honour of Mary Anning, the British fossil-hunter who discovered the first ichthyosaur on the Dorset coast in about 1811.

Thanks to Tom Penhall for sending a link