but proponents of a hydrogen economy say that it could be produced in vast quantities from water using excess electricity from wind turbines and solar plants.
Furthermore, the reaction uses both the catalyst and a strong alkali to rip apart methanol and water, turning them into three parts hydrogen and one part carbon dioxide.
and with the help of satellite imaging and undersea sensors, researchers have discovered a long-elusive source for the deep ocean streams of cold water that help to regulate the Earth's climate.
Antarctic bottom water (AABW) is cold, highly saline water that forms near the shores of Antarctica.
Being denser than typical seawater, it sinks to the depths and then moves north in sluggish currents that spread across the globe.
in the Weddell sea, was found in 1940; two others were found in the Ross Sea
and along the Ad#lie Coast of East Antarctica in the 1960s and 70s. But for years, researchers have suggested that these were not the only ones.
In particular, water samples from an area called the Weddell gyre contain atmospheric pollutants known as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCS),
indicating that the deep water came into contact with the air far too recently to have been carried there from one of the known AABW sinks.
and his colleagues have traced that water to a fourth AABW source, in the Cape Darnley polynya.
Polynyas are regions of open water near sea ice that are kept from freezing by wind and currents that sweep newly formed ice away.
because most of the salt in sea water is expelled as it freezes. Armed with the hypothesis that the missing source might be such a polynya,
the researchers moored instruments on the seabed, hoping to spot the descending current. In addition, they relied on data from elephant seals (Mirounga leonina) tagged with instruments that monitor ocean conditions."
"The seals went to an area of the coastline that no ship was ever going to get to,
"punching through into a layer of this dense water cascading down to the abyss. They gave us very rare and valuable wintertime measurements of this process.
The new finding fills a gap in researchers understanding of the Southern ocean s role in global climate,
the stability of the Antarctic ice sheet and changes in sea level, says Richard Alley, a geophysicist at Pennsylvania State university in University Park,
the resulting changes in cold-water circulation could have important effects on global climate, letting the ocean depths warm
and thereby changing the rate of heat exchange between Antarctica and the tropics. Moreover, he says
sea levels could rise#owing to the fact that water expands as it warms #and temperature changes could affect deep-sea ecosystems s
"Any water on the surface would disappear very quickly, Barclay says.""There is almost no chance of an atmosphere or liquid on the surface.
The researchers tested their approach on 637 Austronesian languages spoken mainly on islands in Southeast asia and the Pacific, including Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia.
More impressively, the method allowed the authors to determine the structure of miyakosyne A a chemical made in very small quantities by a species of sea sponge.
including the planned closure of the Experimental Lakes Area research station in northwestern Ontario. But this year, the government offered some support for clean energy companies.
but they cannot operate in water#a serious obstacle to using such devices in living organisms.
Now, Saraf s team has shown that the nano-necklace device works in water and can monitor a cell s vital signs."
"Now that we can do this in water, we want to try mammalian cells, Saraf says
#Gene-analysis firms reach for the cloud For Chaim Jalas at the Center for Rare Jewish Genetic disorders in New york,
Oracle, based in Redwood Shores, California, has its own products aimed at helping researchers and hospitals to analyse data.
and at sea testing than any other company, says Caitlyn Antrim, executive director of the Rule of law Committee for the Oceans in WASHINGTON DC,
and a deep-seabed-mining consultant. The venture could add#40#billion (US$60#billion) to the UK economy over the next 30#years,
Cameron s government sponsored Lockheed s claim to the 58,000-square-kilometre potential mining site through the company s subsidiary UK Seabed Resources in London.
The International Seabed Authority in Kingston Jamaica, which granted the exploration rights, has granted also claims in the region to several other countries,
Polymetallic nodules form over thousands of years on the sea floor, through processes that are still not fully understood;
and the founder of Seaminr, a seabed-mining consultancy in Urbanna, Virginia. PAUL JACKMAN/NATUREHARVESTING nodules is technically easier than mining the mineral-rich remnants of non-active hydrothermal vents on the sea floor,
a proposal that has garnered also attention (see Nature 447,246-247; 2007). ) Nodules rest unattached, and often visible, in seafloor sediments,
so obtaining them would not entail grinding up rocky seafloor crust. Lockheed has released not specific plans,
but the general scheme for harvesting uses a device that moves along the sea floor, vacuuming or raking up nodules.
The equipment would grind down the nodules to create a slurry that would be pumped to ships
and then transported onshore for processing (see Wealth from the sea). The most lucrative product would probably be nickel,
or creatures that live higher in the water column, such as fish. A study at a nodule plain off Peru found that seafloor communities showed limited recovery after disturbance
with sediment dwellers gradually returning over 7 years (H.#Bluhm Deep-sea Res. II 48,3841-3868;
) Craig Smith, a deep-sea biologist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, will lead an initial assessment of seafloor life for Lockheed s project, gathering baseline data for the potential harvest zone
One official emphasized that the administration had no intention of modifying existing plans for the outer continental shelf
#Life found deep under the sea For the first time, scientists have discovered microbes living deep inside Earth s oceanic crust#the dark volcanic rock at the bottom of the sea.
formed when water flows through the iron-rich rock, to convert carbon dioxide into organic matter.
Chemosynthesis also fuels life at other deep-sea locations such as hydrothermal vents but those are restricted to the edges of continental plates.
where rising lava meets sea water and cools. The newborn rock#mostly basalt#is pushed away from the ridges
the team heated the rock samples to 65#C in water rich in chemicals found on the sea floor.
Lever now plans to analyse fragments of crust collected from other sites in the Pacific ocean and the North atlantic."
"Given the large volume of sub-seafloor crust, one can t help but wonder how the amount of living biomass there compares to that at the Earth s surface,
Previously, CITES delegates have hesitated to interfere with trade in commercially valuable marine species, say many campaigners. Conservationists see the move into timber as equally significant,
ndosomes are like buckets of water that have to be kept full despite the leaks in them.
Altering either the faucet or the leak rate can dramatically change the water level in the bucket.
when water is added. This allows specimens to be magnified physically, and then imaged at a much higher resolution.
The specimen is washed then in salt-free water to induce a 100-fold expansion in volume.
#'Crazy Craters'Found in Swiss Lake Four giant craters were found by accident in the muddy floor of one of Switzerland largest lakes, a new study reports.
Researchers surveying Lake Neuchâtel for evidence of past earthquakes spotted the craters near the lake northwestern shore near the Jura Mountains.
The pits are among the largest and deepest pockmarks ever found in Earth lakes, the researchers said.
The giant craters are similar in size to seafloor pockmarks created by methane gas explosions. However
the researchers think that erupting groundwater excavated these razy craters. hese craters are, in fact, springs,
Reusch and her co-authors found the craters at water depths of 328 feet (100 m) or more.
-and landslide-triggered tsunamis in Alpine lakes. In the past decade researchers have discovered that tsunamis wiped out villages along the shores of both Lake Geneva and Lake Lucerne in the past 1, 500 years.
But instead of ancient quake or tsunami deposits, Reusch and her colleagues stumbled upon an enormous feature they dubbed Chez-le-Bart crater (razy crater. never expected anything like this,
The mix of water and sediment hides a deep crack that penetrates nearly 200 feet (60 m) down toward the underlying bedrock, the study researchers reported.
Water welling up into the crack keeps the mud in motion. The research team conducted detailed surveys of water and sediments in and around the craters.
The results suggest these unusual features are connected to the Jura Mountains karst system an underground network of limestone caves and cracks.
The same limestone underlies the lake, and the scientists think that groundwater is bubbling up into the craters through cracks in the limestone rock.
At least one crater directly overlies a major earthquake fault. For instance, water inside Crazy crater is 47 degrees Fahrenheit (8. 4 degrees Celsius),
but the surrounding lake water is colder, at just 42 F (5. 8 C). Chemical markers in the local karst groundwater are also a match for water drawn from the craters,
Reusch and her co-authors reported April 21 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters s
#Real-life Hoverboard Breaks World record A hoverboard rider recently soared into Guinness World records after flying a record distance on the futuristic, flying skateboard.
Catalin Alexandru Duru, the inventor of the prototype hoverboard, traveled the length of two -and-a-half football fields (about 905 feet or 375 meters) to achieve the world record title before landing gently in the sparkling water of Quebec's Lake Ouareau.
Duru reached a height of 16.4 feet (5 m), but the flying board is allegedly capable of much greater altitudes,
but is tested usually over water because of how dangerously high it can fly (which is ironic
Laser Technique Etches Water Repellence Into Metalthe team of researchers from the University of Tsukuba, Utsunomiya University,
the young animals suddenly had trouble remembering how to complete a water maze, making more than twice as many errors after they already been trained to navigate the maze.
nearly as good as young animals at completing the water maze, for instance, the scientists report online today in Nature Medicine.
generating water, carbon dioxide, and electricity. The electricity is fed through a circuit where it powers our devices,
These devices work best at converting hydrogen gas and oxygen to water and electricity, and even work at lower temperatures around 600°C. Unlike conventional SOFCS the BZY membranes allow the flow not of negatively charged oxygen ions toward the anode,
Kiri Wagstaff and her colleagues at the Jet propulsion laboratory in Pasadena California have developed software that can identify a plume of water
#Water-splitter could make hydrogen fuel on Mars Making fuel on site for a return trip to Mars may be a step closer.
A cunning way to split water into oxygen and hydrogen in two distinct steps could be a boon to both astronauts
But existing methods for creating usable hydrogen gas from water require a lot of electricity. That means renewable energy sources like wind or sunlight which are often patchy are not reliable enough.
To get around it they built a device that uses a single pulse of power to split water so continuous energy is needed not.
The device zaps water with electricity to release oxygen then a silicon-based chemical mediator dissolved in the water mops up stray protons and electrons.
whether Cronin's device will be able to compete with other existing processes says Steve Reece a water-splitting expert at Lockheed martin in Cambridge Massachusetts.
But the same planet orbiting a sun-like star in a binary system would be in the habitable zone where conditions could support liquid water
when life was emerging our young planet had an atmosphere oceans and primordial continents. But it did not yet have an ozone layer to shield the surface from the sun's harshest ultraviolet rays.
Now Xavier Dumusque of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge Massachusetts and his colleagues have used the HARPS-N telescope in the Canary islands to pin down Kepler-10c's mass.
It is made probably from the same materials as Earth water silicates and iron but in different proportions says Dumusque.
and splashes down in the ocean. Dragon V2 instead comes with a set of incredibly powerful Superdraco engines each capable of producing more than 70000 newtons of thrust.
It was thought that this turbulence was similar to that in a fluid behaving like mixing ocean currents
#NASA'flying saucer'for Mars to land in Hawaii In June while beachgoers in Hawaii sit blissfully unaware a flying saucer will descend over the island of Kauai.
To simulate Mars's thin atmosphere On earth the team in Hawaii will first lift a test vehicle fitted with the LDSD system to about 37 kilometres above the Pacific ocean using a high-altitude balloon.
The saucer should gently splash down in open water. NASA has three more test flights in Hawaii planned for the LDSD
#Squirting moons face off in race to find alien life Icebound seas just keep getting hotter at least as candidates for life beyond Earth.
In December astronomers announced hints of watery plumes spurting from Jupiter's large moon Europa potentially giving us a peek into a vast ocean likely to exist beneath its ice.
Saturn's moon Enceladus stole back the limelight last week when NASA reported firm evidence of an ocean linked to geysers at its south pole (see diagram below.
NASA's Cassini spacecraft flew through the geysers and detected water salts and carbon-based molecules.
whether the geysers were erupting from an ocean or from water pockets that wouldn't last long enough for life to get a toehold.
Cassini scientist Luciano Iess at the Sapienza University of Rome Italy and colleagues have mapped now Enceladus's gravity
and shown that it has a crescent-shaped ocean holding about as much water as Lake superior in North america.
The constantly gushing geysers would let us easily sample those seas making Enceladus a prime target for a life-seeking mission says Cassini scientist Carolyn Porco.
Europa meanwhile appears to be covered entirely by an ocean sandwiched between a rocky core and a thin ice crust.
and now we have hints that Europa spurts plumes of water intermittently. Data from NASA's Galileo probe which orbited Jupiter from 1995 to 2003 show clay-like minerals on Europa's surface probably debris from meteor impacts
which would let nutrients from the surface make their way into the liquid ocean. It looks promising
Sampling the ocean may require a probe to land and drill through the ice since we don't know for sure
#Buried'Lake superior'seen on Saturn's moon Enceladus Saturn's icy moon Enceladus already known for spitting plumes of water into space just got even more interesting.
New gravity readings suggest it hosts a subsurface sea the size of Lake superior at its south pole
-and that this liquid water is in direct contact with the moon's core which is rich in nutrients.
Both findings boost hopes that the sea hosts life. The result comes hot on the heels of the discovery late last year that a second icy moon Europa
which orbits Jupiter also spews plumes of water. Both moons are now among the hottest prospects in the solar system for finding alien life
Most astronomers thought that the plumes force their way out through cracks in an icy crust sitting over a sea of liquid water.
But until now no one knew how deep that sea went. Luciano Iess at the Sapienza University of Rome in Italy and his colleagues used radar On earth to track Cassini on three separate fly-bys of Enceladus
Either answer suggests that the rock has been in substantial contact with water for instance allowing minerals to dissolve
That could be explained by a localised sea sitting beneath 35 kilometres of ice and up to 8 kilometres deep.
It would contain about as much water as Lake superior in North america. Hosting an ocean in contact with rocks boosts the chances that Enceladus hosts life
because the rocks could leach elements like potassium sulphur and phosphorus vital for life into the water.
One of the alternative models was just little pockets of water driving the jets and in that model you wouldn't have much in the way of life
because it wouldn't be in contact with the rock says team member Jonathan Lunine at Cornell University in Ithaca New york. This gravity map hinting at a much larger ocean is a more favourable model for having some sort of life in Enceladus's interior.
If there might be life there when can we go? Cassini winds down in three years
The subsurface-sea idea is just the simplest possible interpretation of the gravity data cautions William Mckinnon at Washington University in St louis who was involved not in the work.
If the sea exists there is the question of how long it has been liquid and whether it might eventually freeze
The former is important as life would require the sustained presence of water to gain a toehold.
As for the possibility of the sea freezing completely it is true that Enceladus is losing a lot of heat to space
Could the plumes deplete the sea completely? Probably not. Even if they continue at the current rate the moon would only have lost 30 per cent of its water by mass
when the sun becomes a red giant in 6 billion years. A lot of things can happen in 6 billion years
and the pieces would collide with each other resulting in more and more debris. To build its debris-catching net JAXA brought in Nitto Seimo a company that specialises in fishing equipment Unlike a net you would use in the ocean this one is a 700-metre-long mesh of aluminium
The crew of the final Apollo mission lifted off from the moon's Sea of Serenity on 14 december 1972.
Launched on 2 december the Chang'e-3 mission touched down on a 1160-kilometre-wide basin known as the Sea of Rains.
The moon is the nearest island in space out from the Earth says Igor Mitrofanov at Russia's Institute for Space Research in Moscow the project scientist for two planned Russian-led rover missions.
As countries develop their space programmes the moon is a natural first foray beyond Earth that allows remote-controlled robots to get their sea legs
while staying within a 10-second call of the planet's shores. But the moon is more than a test bed for space missions.
Studying the water's isotopes and any organic material it might hold in deep freeze could shed light on where Earth got its water
and the building blocks of life says Foing. The damp moon could also be a useful resource for future robotic
and human exploration says Paul Spudis of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston Texas. Astronauts could drink moon water extracted from its rocks or use it as radiation shielding.
Water could also be split into hydrogen and oxygen for use as rocket fuel. Much of the weight of today's rockets comes from their own propellant so having a source of fuel already in space would pave the way for much more ambitious human missions.
which could launch in 2018 to try to extract water from lunar rocks. Private groups are also hoping to get in on the action.
and teams of human miners to the moon to supply water for fuel depots that it would place in Earth orbit t
just as tree roots suck in water when vapour escapes the leaves. The result is an array of between 500 and 5000 focussed ion beams that stream from each of the eight chips on the Cubesat when the electric field the strength
They say a future version could also use water instead of xenon, which would make it easier to refuel.
of which hold water and perhaps life. A fleet of Cubesats with propulsion in orbit around a planet or moon can do a lot of things that big expensive satellites cannot, such as monitoring several locations in the atmosphere at once.
Established in the 1960s India's space programme has focused so far on aiding the country's development building satellites to spot potential sources of groundwater and monitor deforestation.
which discovered water on the lunar surface but died more than a year early because its electronics could not withstand the heat radiated from the moon.
or perhaps water in Mars's and recently NASA's Curiosity rover added to the scepticism by finding no methane when it breathed in the Martian air.
I'd say the data are equivocal at the moment says John Mustard of Brown University in Providence Rhode island.
MOM may also help reveal how Mars became a cold dry planet with an atmosphere too thin to support liquid water for long periods.
Gaping canyons and river-like channels point to large amounts of water and therefore a thick warming atmosphere in the past.
Because Venus is closer to the sun the solar wind might have stripped gaseous water from its early atmosphere leaving a thick haze of mostly carbon dioxide that turned the planet's surface into a hellish desert.
whether its surface would be warm enough to support liquid water. But it is clear from our solar system that a lot of other factors come into play says Schneider d
The launch continues the execution of an orderly programme laid out in the 1990s says Joan Johnson-Freese of the US Naval War College in Newport Rhode island.
Antares built by spaceflight company Orbital Sciences of Dulles Virginia lifted off from the Mid-atlantic Regional Spaceport on Wallops Island Virginia at 22.00 GMT.
All the signs are had that Mars plentiful slightly salty water that could have supported primitive microbes. The hope is that Mars can help us understand the origins of life
Instead it struck lucky with a sample of rock drilled on 9 february in an area called Yellowknife Bay near
According to Curiosity's onboard chemistry lab the sample is between 20 and 30 per cent smectite a clay mineral that forms in the presence of water.
The instruments also detected minerals indicating that this water was ph neutral and carried substances capable of supplying microbes with energy.
if this water had been around and you had been on the planet you would have been able to drink it says rover project scientist John Grotzinger.
which form in the presence of water scattered throughout Yellowknife Bay. The thinking is that Mars would have had liquid water billions of years ago around the time Earth was playing host to early life.
But at some point Mars dried out and lost much of its atmosphere. The planet also only briefly had a magnetic field to protect its surface from cosmic radiation
Paradoxically water which is necessary for life is a mild oxidant and can break down organic carbon says Grotzinger.
Instead the discovery came from the rover's first sample of the insides of a Martian rock drilled on 9 february near an ancient stream bed in an area called Yellowknife Bay.
enough water for microbes to thrive in; and minerals that could act like batteries allowing electrons to flow
which forms in the presence of water. More importantly they found calcium sulphate salts which form in non-acidic water.
All these clues point to ancient Mars hosting neutral slightly salty liquid water that could have supported primitive life.
if this water had been around and you had been on the planet you would have been able to drink it.
Mission scientists want to compare the layers with the rocks in Yellowknife Bay to figure out how they are related
I have an image now of possibly a freshwater lake on a Mars with a thicker atmosphere maybe a snowcapped Mount Sharp said NASA science administrator John Grunsfeld.
The rover used the drill bit at the end of its robotic arm to make a hole 1. 6 centimetres wide and 6. 4 centimetres deep in a flat veined outcrop thought to have once been saturated with water.
The Foundation concentrates its resources on activities in education the environment global development and population performing arts and philanthropy as well as grants to support disadvantaged communities in the San francisco bay Area.
Bacterial sensorsenvironmental applications for this type of sensor include monitoring the ocean for carbon dioxide levels acidity or pollutants.
cable can be deposited on the seafloor in straight lines, or in meandering, coiling patterns. f the boat is sailing slower than the rate of the cable,
that the height from which a filament is deployed does not influence its coiling patterns good news for ships that navigate choppy waters to deploy fiber-optic cables. his is important because,
as a ship sails, the height of the ocean floor relative to the surface is changing all the time,
which consists of six pumps that expel water through rubber tubes. Two of those tubes vent on the side of the robot opposite the flattened panel
The control algorithm constantly adjusts the velocity of the water pumped through each of the six jets to keep the robot on course.
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