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First Evidence Of Under-Ice Volcanoes In Antarctica
Posted by
Zonk
on Mon Jan 21, 2008 04:18 AM
from the a-touch-extreme dept.
from the a-touch-extreme dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The first evidence of a volcanic eruption from beneath Antarctica's ice sheet has been discovered by members of the British Antarctic Survey. The volcano on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet began erupting some 2,000 years ago and remains active to this day. Using airborne ice-sounding radar, scientists discovered a layer of ash produced by a 'subglacial' volcano. It extends across an area larger than Wales."
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And here (Score:5, Funny)
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You missed a part of TA. (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:You missed a part of TA. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yarr, it be an average, I'm sure you've heard of them. Oh yes, and 0.2mm is a pretty big number, rather easy to measure.
Parent
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Extolling the virtues of 21th century technology has got to be up there as one of the most retarded things ever said on Slashdot.
Larger than a whale? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Larger than a whale? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
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Remember, when working with imperial units, it's important to keep this distinction in mind: a keg of beer is half a barrel, but not just any barrel.
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That would be a pretty big volcano - remember, elephants are larger than the moon! [ytmnd.com]
(yes, I know it's a hoax, but it's still pretty funny)
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Volcanos elsewhere... (Score:5, Funny)
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How long? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:How long? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
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And has been for 2000 years, according to the summary. Why would it only begin melting in modern times, if the volcano is the cause ?
Nah, but spreading lies - about climate change, about Iraq, and who knows what else - for personal gain sure is.
It's January and there isn't any snow on the ground; in fact it's raining water. It's been like this year
Re:How long? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah with all that data we have colected by scientists during the days of the Roman Empire makes it easy to see those long term ice melting trends.....
Now for proper insults and arguments when you saying raining all the time, you haven't identified where you from. I'm assuming Europe. I've only spent a real amount of time in England, Norway, and Cyprus so my knowledge of weather is limited to those places.
England does nothing but piss rain and rarely ever gets cold enough for snow, so you can hardly blame that on the US.
Norwary rarely get's warm enough for anything but snow (I've only been there during the winter, froze my ass off.) so you can't be from there.
Cyprus was nice and warm, and if that is what the world is going to be like after global warming then let's go for a drive in my SUV to go buy stuff that has alot of plastic packaging.
The more I travel the more I realize that people are full of it, and can hardly lay all the worlds problems at the US's feet. I haven't seen anything in Europe that impresses me of your Green life style.
You don't have any better driving habits than in the US. The only reasons you drive less (as in distance not in frequency, is your sky high taxes, shitty roads, and that you are willing to live shoulder to shoulder in town with barely any parking, is the only reason you guys drive small cars.
Mild winters and summers also let's you off the hook for cooling and heating bills and the fact that you guys are willing to again be gouged by the utility companys. I can see why you use less. I'm still paying twice as much here in the UK (without AC) than I did while living in the California desert(with AC) which supposedly is supposed to be in the middle of a power crisis and having raised rates drastically in the last few years.
Now the only point I'll conceed to you is the war in Iraq is pretty much a waste of time. The money would have been better spent buying everyone Priuses and solar panels for their homes and a nice candygram telling the Middle East to go fuck their mothers.
Of course if we want to look at who has really caused all the problems in the Middle East and just about every other corner of the world all we have to do is take a look European history book. 400 years of European global policies and Empire building has made a real mess of things. The US has hardly had enough time to be blamed for much of it, but man does everyone scream bloody murder when we try to clean it up.
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The truly sad thing is even with all the criminal behavior by the companies the prices are still a alot less in the States than I've found in the various places in Europe I've lived. In the States they have to be sneaky to rip us off, in Europe it's written right into the government regulations to rip people off.
I'm looking forward to heading back
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And it erupted in 325BC, according to the article.
I dunno about global warming, but I suspect that time traveling volcanoes will be a bigger problem. :p
(Oh, and kudos to the editor or writer who (presumably) dropped the "more than" before "2000 years". Without your sloppy skills, the previous joke would not be possible.)
Oh well, screw global warming (Score:5, Interesting)
It's funny, Here in Denmark, we here alot about the potential consequences of global warming, about the millions of refugees it will create.
Noone ever mentions that we'll probably be some of those refugees, Our tallest hill, has a height below 170,9 metres, or 560,6 feet above sealevel.
Time for me to buy that land in south america.
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We loves those Danish girls, oh yeah.
i read somewhere (Score:3, Interesting)
i don't know the rate, but perhaps the rising seawater and the rising land should counteract each other in scandinavia
i'm not really being that serious, just trying to bring some good cheer to you gloomy nords
then it's time for the danish to stop (Score:3, Funny)
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I wouldn't worry too much; another poster posted a quote that the sea level is rising 0.2mm/year. At that rate, your tallest hill has 850 thousand years before it'll go under.
Two scenarios are more likely: one is that Denmark will become more temperate, with less brutal winters. The other is that the Gulf Stream will be interrupted, there won't be any more warn water sent up into the northern Atlantic, and Denmark will become the southern end of a new glacier/ice cap.
Either way, you'll keep your head ab
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Nope, TFA said this was CONTRIBUTING a fifth of a centimetre to the rise in sea levels.
If I give five quid / Euros / dollars to a charity, that doesn't mean the charity has ONLY received five whatevers.
Do you all see?
For a technical-based forum, we certainly have a lot of people moving their fingers in tune to their beliefs before engaging brain first.
Why South America? (Score:2)
Re:Oh well, screw global warming (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
And the debate continues (Score:2, Interesting)
From TFA:
Co-author Professor David Vaughan (BAS) says,"This eruption occurred close to Pine Island Glacier on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. The flow of this glacier towards the coast has speeded up in recent decades and it may be possible that heat from the volcano has caused some of that acceleration. However, it cannot explain the more widespread thinning of West Antarctic glaciers that together are contributing nearly 0.2mm per year to sea-level
"Alien" life? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's more than a possibility. (Score:3, Informative)
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/02/19/1319228&from=rss [slashdot.org]
"Exploration of lake hidden beneath Antarctica's ice sheet begins"
http://www.physorg.com/news119682885.html [physorg.com]
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Area conversion... (Score:5, Funny)
Actually, given that they've located an area of possibly steaming ash and dust, maybe they just found New Jersey by accident.
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As volcanoes go, this rather large. I am reminded of the bit in Blue Mars [wikipedia.org] where the west Antarctic ice sheet slides off the continent in a few days and global sea levels rise by six metres.
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How large is than in Libraries of Congress?
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Bond. (Score:2)
ice on, lava below, inaccessible - threat of global destruction by melting the ice caps. now I just need several hundred minions wearing identical surplus overalls and large corridors I can drive my C5s, Mini Mokes and of course the G-Whiz down. Better order a brace of those new TATA mini cars to get with modern times and all the ladies have to wear mini skirts. Damn, better get back to work.
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will accelerate melting at some point (Score:5, Interesting)
There is a quite thick layer of soot and ash trapped inside the glacier. At some point when the glacier melts enough, that whole layer becomes visible and thus the reflection of sunlight from the glacier surface diminishes. And the melting speed increases dramatically. To make things worse, the layer will stay there for some time as it is bit warmer than the ice and so it bores small holes where to stay put instead of getting flushed away.
And don't get me started on that active volcano under glacier. How it will react when the weight of the glacier eases rapidly? Possible earthquakes and that means tsunami.
Funny thing, a Finnish author named Risto Isomäki has written a hard scifi book about the subject only couple of years ago. It's called the sands of Sarasvati.
Wales, as a common unit of size!!! (Score:4, Interesting)
Wales has, for decades, been used in the UK as a standard of measurement, not just of land mass but also of population, annual rain fall, tourist numbers and exports. Every large country's size was measured in 'Wales'es. Popular media, like radio and television have used the 'Wales', mainly in news reports.
"The Americans have invaded Vietnam. This country in south east Asia is 14 times the size of Wales."
"The Falklands have been invaded! These disputed islands, half the size of Wales, have been sought after by the Argentine government for decades."
etc
Uh oh (Score:2)
Re:Wales are not fish! (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
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Not Klingon, but Welsh.
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