Laboratory Equipment

‘Sea Stalactites’ Provide Origin of Life Clues

Life on Earth may have originated not in warm tropical seas, but with weird tubes of ice — sometimes called “sea stalactites” — that grow downward into cold seawater near the Earth’s poles, scientists are reporting. Their article on these “brinicles” appears in ACS’ journal Langmuir.

Bruno Escribano and colleagues explain that scientists know surprisingly little about brinicles, which are hollow tubes of ice that can grow to several yards in length around streamers of cold seawater under pack ice. That’s because brinicles are difficult to study. The scientists set out to gather more information on the topic with an analysis of the growth process of brinicles.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/04/sea-stalactites-provide-origin-life-clues

Arctic Sea Ice Has Record-Small Footprint

Arctic sea ice has never looked so thin. In the past decade, melting has sped up, shrinking the area where ice floats above the Arctic Ocean to fractions of its previous size and leaving chunks of frozen seawater uncomfortably slender. Recent research confirmed that the extent of Arctic sea ice in September 2012 was the smallest on record.

Thick slabs of sea ice built up over time – called multiyear ice – were once a more common sight. Only decades ago, it covered up to 60 percent of the Arctic, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), in Boulder, Co. Now, due to a warming climate, much of that multiyear ice has thawed, leaving about 30 percent of the Arctic Ocean shielded by this old ice at the end of this past summer.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/04/arctic-sea-ice-has-record-small-footprint

New Information About ‘Snowball Earth’ Period

It is rather difficult to imagine, but approximately 635 million years ago, ice may have covered a vast portion of our planet in an event called “Snowball Earth.” According to the Snowball Earth hypothesis, the massive ice age that occurred before animal life appeared, when Earth’s landmasses were most likely clustered near the equator, precipitated relatively rapid changes in atmospheric conditions and a subsequent greenhouse heat wave. This particular period of extensive glaciation and subsequent climate changes might have supplied the cataclysmic event that gave rise to modern levels of atmospheric oxygen, paving the way for the rise of animals and the diversification of life during the later Cambrian explosion.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/03/new-information-about-snowball-earth-period

‘Local’ Help Aids Greenland Sea Level Research

David Holland, a professor in NYU’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, has been studying changes in the sea level off the coast of Greenland for years. His work involves collecting data on glacier formation, then developing computer models to project future global sea level change due to melting ice. But many areas are hard to reach, historically complicating monitoring efforts.

In 2009, Holland and his colleagues contemplated ways to overcome these limitations. Aqqalu Rosing-Asvid, a senior scientist in the Department of Birds and Mammals at the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources, suggested that the researchers call in some additional local help — ringed seals, who populate the area. Rosing-Asvid recommended tagging seals in the fjords of Greenland that Holland was trying to study.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/01/local-help-aids-greenland-sea-level-research

Greenland’s Ice Shows History of Atmospheric Acidity

Research has shown a decrease in levels of the isotope nitrogen-15 in core samples from Greenland ice starting around the time of the Industrial Revolution. The decrease has been attributed to a corresponding increase in nitrates associated with the burning of fossil fuels.

However, new Univ. of Washington research suggests that the decline in nitrogen-15 is more directly related to increased acidity in the atmosphere. The increased acidity can be traced to sulfur dioxide, which in the atmosphere is transformed to sulfuric acid, says Lei Geng, a UW research associate in atmospheric sciences. Following the Industrial Revolution, sulfur dioxide emissions increased steadily because of coal burning.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2012/12/greenland%E2%80%99s-ice-shows-history-atmospheric-acidity

Wildfires Darken Greenland Snowpack, Increase Ice Melt

Satellite observations have revealed the first direct evidence of smoke from Arctic wildfires drifting over the Greenland ice sheet, tarnishing the ice with soot and making it more likely to melt under the sun.

At the American Geophysical Union meeting this week, an Ohio State Univ. researcher presented images from NASA’s Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation (CALIPSO) satellite, which captured smoke from Arctic fires billowing out over Greenland during the summer of 2012.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2012/12/wildfires-darken-greenland-snowpack-increase-ice-melt

Hot Mercury May Have Ice Water

Mercury, the smallest and innermost planet in our solar system, revolves around the sun in a mere 88 days, making a tight orbit that keeps the planet incredibly toasty. Surface temperatures on Mercury can reach a blistering 800 F — hot enough to liquefy lead.

Now researchers from NASA, MIT, the Univ. of California at Los Angeles and elsewhere have discovered evidence that the scorching planet may harbor pockets of water ice, along with organic material, in several permanently shadowed craters near Mercury’s north pole.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2012/11/hot-mercury-may-have-ice-water

Vigorous Organisms Discovered in Antarctic Brine

Where there’s water there’s life – even in brine beneath 60 feet of Antarctic ice, in permanent darkness and subzero temperatures.

While Lake Vida, located in the northernmost of the McMurdo Dry Valleys of East Antarctica, will never be a vacation destination, it is home to some newly discovered hearty microbes. In the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, Nathaniel Ostrom, Michigan State Univ. zoologist, has co-authored “Microbial Life at -13 C in the Brine of an Ice-Sealed Antarctic Lake.”

Ostrom was part of a team that discovered an ancient thriving colony, which is estimated to have been isolated for more than 2,800 years. They live in a brine of more than 20 percent salinity that has high concentrations of ammonia, nitrogen, sulfur and supersaturated nitrous oxide ­– the highest ever measured in a natural aquatic environment.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2012/11/vigorous-organisms-discovered-antarctic-brine

Data Measures Antarctic Ice More Accurately

New data that more accurately measures the rate of ice melt could help scientists better understand how Antarctica is changing in the light of global warming.

The rate of global sea level change is reasonably well-established but understanding the different sources of this rise is more challenging. Using re-calibrated scales that are able to “weigh” ice sheets from space to a greater degree of accuracy than ever before, the international team led by Newcastle Univ. has discovered that Antarctica overall is contributing much less to the substantial sea-level rise than originally thought. Instead, the large amount of water flowing away from West Antarctica through ice-melt has been partly cancelled out by the volume of water falling onto the continent in the form of snow, suggesting some past studies have overestimated Antarctica’s contribution to fast-rising sea levels.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2012/10/data-measures-antarctic-ice-more-accurately

Moon Crater Has 5 to 10 Percent Icy Material

Small patches of ice could make up at most five to ten percent of material in walls of Shackleton crater.

Scientists using the Mini-RF radar on NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) have estimated the maximum amount of ice likely to be found inside a permanently shadowed lunar crater located near the moon’s South Pole. As much as five to ten percent of material, by weight, could be patchy ice, according to the team of researchers led by Bradley Thomson at Boston Univ.’s Center for Remote Sensing.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2012/08/moon-crater-has-5-10-percent-icy-material

Images Show Greenland’s Ever Shifting Ice

Despite the current and rapid melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet, it remains far from certain just when we will have reached a point when scientists will be able to predict its disappearance. Recent research conducted by the Univ. of Copenhagen in conjunction with the Technical Univ. of Denmark (DTU) and the Danish National Survey and Cadastre (KMS) and Aarhus Univ. in collaboration with an international team of scientists reports that this is not the first time in recent history that the ice sheet has been in retreat and then stabilized again. The researchers’ results have just been published in Science.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/videos/2012/08/images-show-greenland%E2%80%99s-ever-shifting-ice

Nature Causes Up to a Third of Arctic Ice Loss

Natural climate variations could explain up to 30 percent of the loss in Arctic sea ice since the 1970s, scientists have found.

Sea ice coverage at the North Pole has shrunk dramatically over the past 40 years. The ice is now more than a third smaller each September following the summer melt than it was in the 1970s. This affects wildlife, while potentially opening up new northern sea routes and controversial opportunities for oil and gas exploration.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news-Natural-Cycle-Causes-a-Third-of-Ice-Loss-in-Arctic-073012.aspx

Subsurface Water, Ice May Be Cause of Mars’ Pits

Investigating extremely detailed images of Mars produced by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera – the largest-ever carried on a deep space mission – researchers from The Univ. of Western Ontario have discovered further evidence linking subsurface volatiles, such as water or ice, to previously recognized — but thought to be rare — pits, which commonly arise on the floors of Martian impact craters.

Livio Tornabene, an adjunct research professor in Western’s Department of Earth Sciences and an investigator at the Centre for Planetary Science and Exploration (CPSX), says deciphering the origin of these pits assists planetary geologists like he and Gordon Osinski, CPSX acting director, in understanding how impact craters affect the hydrological and climatic history of Mars.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news-Subsurface-Water-Ice-May-Be-Cause-of-Mars-Pits-073012.aspx