Longest Continental Volcanic Chain Found In Australia

The world's longest chain of continental volcanoes has been discovered stretching for more than 1,200 miles along eastern Australia.

The ancient volcanic chain, reported in the journal Nature, runs from Cape Hillsborough on the central Queensland coast, south-west through central New South Wales to Cosgrove in Victoria.

"This volcanic chain was created over the past 33 million years, as Australia moved north-northeast over a mantle plume hotspot which we believe is now located in Bass Strait," said the study's lead author, Dr Rhodri Davies of the Australian National University.

"This track, which we've named the Cosgrove hotspot track [after an extinct Victorian volcano in the chain], is nearly three times as long as the famous Yellowstone hotspot tracks on the North American continent."

This kind of volcanic activity is surprising because it occurs away from tectonic plate boundaries where most volcanoes are found.

These hotspots are thought to form above mantle plumes, narrow upwellings of hot rock that originate at Earth's core-mantle boundary almost 1,800 miles below the surface. A volcano chain is created as the tectonic plate moves over the hotspot.

The newly identified volcanic chain is the most westerly of three major volcanic chains running along eastern Australia.

The authors examined 15 extinct volcanoes in eastern Australia that had been known about for quite some time and appeared to follow a generally similar track.

"The volcanoes in central Queensland showed an age progression, so they got younger towards the south, and so too did those in New South Wales and Victoria," Davies said.

The researchers looked at the movement of the Australian tectonic plate.

"Australia is actually the fastest moving continent on Earth, moving towards Indonesia at around seven centimetres per year," Davies said.

The researchers found the chain of now-extinct volcanoes in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria had all passed over the same fixed mantle plume hotspot as the Australian continental plate tracked north-northeast.

"We showed that these volcanoes are surface manifestations of the same mantle plume," Davies said.

"However, the two groups of volcanoes were geochemically very distinct from each other and were separated by a gap of 700 kilometres, so no-one ever put these two volcanic chains together."

Chain helps give better understanding of volcanism

Davies and colleagues used seismology to map the thickness of Earth's crust and mantle -- known as the lithosphere -- that lies under eastern Australia.

They found volcanoes in central Queensland erupted through lithospheres about 50 miles thick while those in New South Wales and Victoria had melted through lithospheres about 62 miles thick.

But the gap between the Queensland volcanoes and those in New South Wales and Victoria occurred because the lithosphere in this region was at least 93 miles thick.

"So the mantle plume can't melt through in those regions, so there's no volcanoes on the surface," Davies said.

The thickness of the lithosphere also explained differences in the chemical composition of the volcanic rocks at different locations.

"If you take a mantle plume of a specific temperature and raise that to a depth of say 130 kilometres below the surface, specific minerals from the surrounding rock will enter that melt," Dr Davies said.

"And if the plume reaches shallower depths of say 100 kilometres, additional elements will enter the melt, changing the chemical composition.

"By looking at this chain of volcanoes in Australia and understanding the composition of the volcanic rock and how they evolved with time, we will understand volcanism on other continents and through earlier periods in Earth's history which is still poorly understood."

Read more at Discovery News

Paleolithic Hunter-Gatherers Loved Oatmeal Too

Some like it hot, some like it cold, and it looks like they probably liked it about 32,000 years ago.

An ancient grinding stone found in the Grotta Paglicci, Apulia, in southern Italy, has hit the news after scientists discovered that some of the debris on the stone turns out to be none other than oatmeal. The stone harkens back to the Gravettian era, a late Paleolithic culture, known for its tool making. It was recovered in the 1950s, but it wasn’t until recently that Marta Mariotti Lippi and team at the University of Florence in Italy studied the debris and found the oat fragments.

The team determined that the Gravettian people heated the grains before grinding them with the stone in order to preserve and prep them for processing. The resulting powder was then made into bread and oatmeal.

The Grotta Paglicci, Apulia served as home to ancient hunter-gatherer cultures anywhere from 34,000-32,000 years ago, and has produced artifacts that include mural paintings with animals and etchings on bones. As for the stone, Lippi says the team intends to continue studying the debris to find out what else prehistoric cultures dined on.

Matt Pope, an archaeologist with University College London, told Herald Scotland, “There is a relationship there to be explored between diet, experimentation with processing plant food and cultural sophistication. We’ve had evidence of the processing of roots and cattails, but here we’ve got a grain, and a grain that we’re very familiar with.”

From Discovery News

Mercury's Speedy Spin Hints at Planet's Insides

Mercury is a spinning faster than scientists had thought: New research shows that the planet completes a rotation on its axis roughly 9 seconds more quickly than scientists previously charted — and that data will help scientists understand more about the planet's molten core.

Mercury is a rocky planet only slightly larger than Earth's moon. Based on the data collected from NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft, scientists think most of Mercury contains a molten core that takes up 70 percent of the planet's mass. The newly measured rotation rate can be used to help calculate the proportions of solid and liquid within, even as researchers begin to understand its cause.

"One possible explanation for Mercury's faster rotation is that Jupiter influences its orbit," study participant Alexander Stark, of the German Space Agency (DLR) Institute of Planetary Research, said in a statement. "As a result, its distance from the sun varies, which, in turn, affects the planet's rotation speed."

Mercury is the closest planet to the sun. Because of tidal forces exerted by the star's gravity, Mercury has a 59-day rotation period that represents a 3:2 ratio with its 88-day orbit around the sun — for every three times it rotates, it orbits the sun twice. This ratio is unique among planets in the solar system.

MESSENGER (Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry and Ranging) was the first orbital mission around Mercury; after flying by the planet a couple of times, it remained there taking measurements between 2011 and 2015.

While it was there, MESSENGER was also the first spacecraft to detect slight irregularities as Mercury moved around its orbit. By measuring the irregularities, scientists can deduce the size and density of the core, as well as map the planet more accurately.

Read more at Discovery News

Magellanic Clouds Captured by Planck Satellite

It may look like a close-up of a Vincent van Gogh painting, but this is a portrait of the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds as seen through the eyes of the European Space Agency’s Planck satellite.

The Magellanic Clouds, which can only be seen from the southern hemisphere, are two of our nearest neighbors.

The Large Magellanic Cloud is the big red and orange blob near the center of the image, while the Small Magellanic Cloud is the triangular-shaped object in the lower left.

The Planck spacecraft, which operated from 2009 to 2013, studied the sky in microwave and infrared wavelengths.

As the probe examined the cosmic microwave background radiation, which is the left over heat from the big bang, it saw the dust between the stars in the Magellanic Clouds and virtually anything else that shone at these frequencies.

This includes many other galaxies, both near and far, as well as interstellar material in the Milky Way.

Interstellar dust in a large star-forming region of the Milky Way known as the Chameleon constellation, can be seen as the mixture of red, orange and yellow clouds in the upper part of the image.

A large dusty filament can also be seen stretching from the dense clouds of Chameleon, in the upper left, towards the opposite corner of the image.

Although it appears to stretch between the two Magellanic Clouds, it is actually part of our own galaxy, a mere 300 light-years away and aligned with our galaxy’s magnetic field.

Read more at Discovery News

Medieval Bones Burst From Ground When Tree Topples

The skeleton of a Medieval teenager has literally burst from the ground when storms in Sligo, Ireland, blew over a massive, centuries-old beech tree, revealing bones entangled in the roots.

“The upper part of the skeleton was raised into the air trapped within the root system,” archaeologists Marion Dowd of Sligo-Leitrim Archaeological Services, said in a statement.

“The lower leg bones, however, remained intact in the ground. Effectively as the tree collapsed, it snapped the skeleton in two,” Dowd said.

Analysis of the bones and radiocarbon dating suggest the remains belonged to a 17-20-year-old man who lived in the early Medieval period, between 1030 and 1200 A.D.

At over 5′ 10″ in height, the teenager was taller than the average Medieval person. He was almost certainly from a local Gaelic family and is believed to have toiled in physical labor from a young age, as suggested by mild spinal joint disease in the skeleton.

The young man died a violent death, according to archaeologists. Two stab wounds, probably inflicted by a knife, are clearly visible to the ribs and the left hand.

“Whether he died in battle or was killed during a personal dispute, we will never know for sure,” Dowd said.

The man was given a Christian burial. However, it is not known whether he was interred in a graveyard or in an isolated burial.

“While historical records state the presence of a church and graveyard in the area, no above-ground trace survives and no other skeletons were encountered during the excavations,” Sligo-Leitrim Archaeological Services said.

Further analysis of the remains is currently underway.

From Discovery News

Oldest, Longest Ancient Egyptian Leather Manuscript Found

The oldest Egyptian leather manuscript has been found in the shelves of the Egyptian museum in Cairo, where it was stored and forgotten for more than 70 years.

Dating from the late Old Kingdom to the early Middle Kingdom (2300-2000 B.C.), the roll measures about 2.5 meters(8.2 feet) and is filled with texts and colorful drawings of the finest quality.

“Taking into account that it was written on both sides, we have more than 5 meters (16.4 feet) of texts and drawings, making this the longest leather roll from ancient Egypt,” Wael Sherbiny, the Belgium-based independent scholar who made the finding, told Discovery News.

The first Egyptian to obtain his PhD in Egyptology in 2008 from the Leuven University in Belgium, Sherbiny specializes in the ancient Egyptian religious texts and is preparing the full publication of the unique leather roll.

He announced the finding at the recent International Congress of Egyptologists in Florence.

Nothing is known about the manuscript’s origins. The French Institute of Oriental Archaeology in Cairo bought it from a local antiquities dealer sometime after the WWI. Later it was donated to the Cairo Museum, where it was unrolled shortly before the outbreak of the WWII.

“Since then it was stored in the museum and fell completely into oblivion,” Sherbiny said.

Basically a portable religious manuscript, the more than 4,000-year-old roll, contains depictions of divine and supernatural beings which predate the famous drawings found in the Book of the Dead manuscripts and the so-called Netherworld Books from the New Kingdom onwards (1550 B.C. onwards).

Religious spells, formulated in the first person singular, also abound there.

“They were likely recited by a priest,” Sherbiny said.

It is known that priests used to carry leather rolls to reference while reciting sacred texts during religious rituals.

Only six other portable manuscripts have survived from ancient Egypt and could possibly share a close date with the Cairo leather roll. All of them are papyri.

“Leather was considered a very precious writing material in ancient Egypt. It was the principal writing medium to record holy texts and great historic events as it was more practical than papyrus due to its flexibility and durability,” Sherbiny said.

Such prestigious leather rolls, kept in the libraries and archives of temples, were also used as master copies from which cheaper copies were reproduced on papyrus. While papyri were preserved by Egypt’s dry climate, leather objects quickly perished.

The Cairo roll was no exception: part of it was fragmented into very tiny pieces. Like in a jigsaw puzzle, Sherbiny pieced them all together.

The pieces formed a large pictorial-textual segment from the so-called Book of Two Ways, which is an illustrated composition containing temple rituals later adapted for the funerary use.

This composition is known to Egyptologists as it occurs on the floorboard of Middle Kingdom coffins (2055-1650 B.C.) from the necropolis of Hermopolis in Upper Egypt.

“Amazingly, the roll offers an even more detailed iconography than the Hermopolitan coffins in terms of texts and drawings,” Sherbiny said.

Read more at Discovery News

Calif. Firefighters Battle to Save World's Largest Trees

Several record-breaking and historic trees are in the path of one of three massive wildfires that are ravaging central and northern California.

The trees in harm’s way include “General Grant,” a giant sequoia that, at over 260 feet tall, is one of the top three largest trees in the world; and Boole Tree, which is the world’s sixth largest giant sequoia.

The Rough Fire surrounding the trees has burned 135,000 acres and remains less than 50 percent contained.

A webcam captured the Rough Fire burning toward the Sierras:

So far, the legendary trees have been spared, thanks to firefighters who have been battling the blaze 24/7.

“It’s getting better, firefighter Luis Magana told The Sacramento Bee. He added that on Friday, “it was raining down ash,” but that has turned into more of a light ash drizzle now.

Underbrush was cleared in a grove near the trees, and prescribed burns have kept the fire from overrunning the break around General Grant Grove, a section of the greater Kings Canyon National Park where the historic trees are.

The General Grant Tree is over 3000 years old, and is known as the national Christmas Tree of the U.S. The region is also home to the fabled Chicago Stump, which is what’s left of the 95-foot-wide General Noble Tree that was cut down in 1892 to create an exhibit for the following year. It was one of the largest trees to have ever been cut down.

Paul Garnier, a spokesman for the Rough Fire’s incident management team, told the Los Angeles Times that a bark and beetle infestation previously killed multiple pine trees in the area, adding fuel to the already drought-ravaged landscape.

Garnier said that crews hand-cut lines around the historic trees — even the Chicago Stump — and ran designated hose lines to them. The trees, surrounded by flames, were then blanketed with an aboveground sprinkler system.

Wildfires are a part of a healthy ecosystem, he said, and can help some trees germinate.

“It really is more that man has come into this wild space so we have to be involved and make sure people and property are protected,” he added.

Read more at Discovery News

North American Continent Isn't as Solid as You Might Think

You’ve heard the phrase “solid as a rock.” But it turns out that at least as far as North America is concerned, the rock isn’t necessarily so solid.

In a study published in Nature Geoscience, scientists from the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences reveal that North America’s ancient rocky core actually is extremely deformed, and that its root actually shifts away from the center by nearly 530 miles to the west-southwest. Our continent in some ways resembles a person with scoliosis, a crooked spine.

That shift in the root also runs counter to the previous assumption by scientists that the continents’ rocky cores, called cratons, have been pretty much stable for the past 2.5 to 3.8 billion years, even as the continents themselves break up, drift apart and are pushed back together. The cratons are among the oldest geological features on the planet.

“We combined and analyzed several data sets from Earth’s gravity field, topography, seismology and crustal structure and constructed a three dimensional density model of the composition of the lithosphere below North America,” GFZ scientist Mikhail Kaban explained in a press release. ”It became apparent that the lower part of the cratonic root was shifted by about 850 kilometers (528.17 miles).”

But you may be wondering how North America’s craton got so messed up. The German scientists, who modeled the flow of the Earth’s semi-molten mantle beneath the continent, say that the hot material flows westward at a velocity of about 4 millimeters — about 0.16 of an inch–per year. That may not seem like a lot, but it’s enough to put the continental core out of kilter.

Read more at Discovery News

Uniting classical and quantum mechanics: Breakthrough observation of Mott transition in a superconductor

An international team of researchers, including the MESA+ Institute for Nanotechnology at the University of Twente in the Netherlands and the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory, announced today in Science the observation of a dynamic Mott transition in a superconductor.

The discovery experimentally connects the worlds of classical and quantum mechanics and illuminates the mysterious nature of the Mott transition. It also could shed light on non-equilibrium physics, which is poorly understood but governs most of what occurs in our world. The finding may also represent a step towards more efficient electronics based on the Mott transition.

Since its foundations were laid in the early part of the 20th century, scientists have been trying to reconcile quantum mechanics with the rules of classical or Newtonian physics (like how you describe the path of an apple thrown into the air--or dropped from a tree). Physicists have made strides in linking the two approaches, but experiments that connect the two are still few and far between; physics phenomena are usually classified as either quantum or classical, but not both.

One system that unites the two is found in superconductors, certain materials that conduct electricity perfectly when cooled to very low temperatures. Magnetic fields penetrate the superconducting material in the form of tiny filaments called vortices, which control the electronic and magnetic properties of the materials.

These vortices display both classical and quantum properties, which led researchers to study them for access to one of the most enigmatic phenomena of modern condensed matter physics: the Mott insulator-to-metal transition.

The Mott transition occurs in certain materials that according to textbook quantum mechanics should be metals, but in reality turn insulators. A complex phenomenon controlled by the interactions of many quantum particles, the Mott transition remains mysterious--even whether or not it's a classical or quantum phenomenon is not quite clear. Moreover, scientists have never directly observed a dynamic Mott transition, in which a phase transition from an insulating to a metallic state is induced by driving an electrical current through the system; the disorder inherent in real systems disguises Mott properties.

At the University of Twente, researchers built a system containing 90,000 superconducting niobium nano-sized islands on top of a gold film. In this configuration, the vortices find it energetically easiest to settle into energy dimples in an arrangement like an egg crate--and make the material act as a Mott insulator, since the vortices won't move if the applied electric current is small.

When they applied a large enough electric current, however, the scientists saw a dynamic Mott transition as the system flipped to become a conducting metal; the properties of the material had changed as the current pushed it out of equilibrium.

The vortex system behaved exactly like an electronic Mott transition driven by temperature, said Valerii Vinokur, an Argonne Distinguished Fellow and corresponding author on the study. He and study co-author Tatyana Baturina, then at Argonne, analyzed the data and recognized the Mott behavior.

"This experimentally materializes the correspondence between quantum and classical physics," Vinokur said.

"We can controllably induce a phase transition between a state of locked vortices to itinerant vortices by applying an electric current to the system," said Hans Hilgenkamp, head of the University of Twente research group. "Studying these phase transitions in our artificial systems is interesting in its own right, but may also provide further insight in the electronic transitions in real materials."

The system could further provide scientists with insight into two categories of physics that have been hard to understand: many-body systems and out-of-equilibrium systems.

"This is a classical system that which is easy to experiment with and provides what looks like access to very complicated many-body systems," said Vinokur. "It looks a bit like magic."

As the name implies, many-body problems involve a large number of particles interacting; with current theory they are very difficult to model or understand.

"Furthermore, this system will be key to building a general understanding of out-of-equilibrium physics, which would be a major breakthrough in physics," Vinokur said.

The Department of Energy named five great basic energy scientific challenges of our time; one of them is understanding and controlling out-of-equilibrium phenomena. Equilibrium systems--where there's no energy moving around--are now understood quite well. But nearly everything in our lives involves energy flow, from photosynthesis to digestion to tropical cyclones, and we don't yet have the physics to describe it well. Scientists think a better understanding could lead to huge improvements in energy capture, batteries and energy storage, electronics and more.

Read more at Science Daily

Stellar discovery: Massive binary star with unique properties

PhD candidate Matt Shultz has discovered the first massive binary star, epsilon Lupi, in which both stars have magnetic fields. A binary star is a star system consisting of two or more stars, orbiting around their common centre of mass.

For the past few years, the BinaMIcS (Binarity and Magnetic Interactions in various classes of Stars) collaboration, formed to study the magnetic properties of close binaries, has been trying to find such an object. They have now discovered one using the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope.

"The origin of magnetism amongst massive stars is something of a mystery," says Mr. Shultz (Physics, Engineering Physics and Astronomy), "and this discovery may help to shed some light on the question of why these stars have magnetic fields."

In cool stars, such as the Sun, magnetic fields are generated by a convection in the outer portion of the star. However, there is no convection in the outer layers of massive star, so there is no support for a magnetic dynamo. Nevertheless, approximately 10 per cent of massive stars have strong magnetic fields.

Two explanations have been proposed for the origin of massive star magnetic fields, both variants on the idea of a so-called "fossil" magnetic field, which is generated at some point in the star's past and then locked in to the star's outer portion.

The first hypothesis is that the magnetic field is generated while the star is being formed; the second is that the magnetic field originates in dynamos driven by the violent mixing of stellar plasma when the two stars in a close binary merge.

"This discovery doesn't change the basic statistics that the BinaMIcS collaboration has assembled," says Mr. Shultz, "and we still don't know why there are so few magnetic, massive stars in close binaries."

The research shows the strengths of the magnetic fields are similar in the two stars, however, their magnetic axes are anti-aligned, with the south pole of one star pointing in approximately the same direction as the north pole of the other.

Read more at Science Daily