Research

Gray whales live in the North Pacific, and once also lived in the North Atlantic, but appear to have been driven to extinction by the 18th century. A gray whale hasn't been spotted in the Atlantic basin for nearly 300 years, until three years ago when in May 2010, a gray whale was spotted off the coast of Israel. In July 2010, that same whale was spotted off the coast of Spain. Until now, gray whales had never been found in the Southern Hemisphere.

Four tour boats on dolphin-spotting cruises near Namibia's Walvis Bay spotted an unusual whale. Just eight days later, John Paterson of the Albatross Task Force confirmed that the lone whale was a gray whale -- the first ever recorded south of the equator.

Comparing photographs with the whale spotted nearly Israel and Spain in 2010 confirm that the whale found in the Southern Hemisphere was not the same whale. Scientists are now trying to determine the origins of the whale.

It is possible that the whale swam south past Baja California, rounded the tip of South America and across the Atlantic, but it seems unlikely as the whale would have to travel a large distance against currents, through open ocean, from west to east. Gray whales typically do not do any of that.

Researchers working 2.4 kilometers below Earth's surface in a Canadian mine have discovered a source of water that has remained isolated for at least one billion years.

The scientists say that they are not yet sure if anything has been living in the water all this time, however the water contains high levels of methane and hydrogen, which are requirements for supporting life.

Micrometer-scale pockets in minerals that are billions of years old are capable of holding water that was trapped during the minerals' formation, however no source of free-flowing water passing through interconnected cracks or pores in Earth's crust has previously been shown to have stayed isolated for more than tens of millions of years.

Chris Ballentine, a geochemist at the University of Manchester, and his team carefully captured water flowing through fractures in the 2.7-billion-year-old sulphide deposits in a copper and zinc mine near Timmins, Ontario. This ensures that the water did not come into contact with mine air.

In order to date the water, the researchers used three lines of evidence, all of which were based on the relative abundances of various isotopes of noble gases present in the water. They determined that the fluid couldn't have contacted Earth's atmosphere or have been at the planet's surface for at least 1 billion years, and possibly as long as 2.64 billion years, which is not long after the rocks through which if flowed through formed.

The fossilized remains of an Ice Age bison were recently discovered at a Caltrans construction site near Pala Mesa in north San Diego County, Calif., while working on the State Route 76 East highway project.

According to a Caltrans representatie, Cathryne Bruce-Johnson, the remains are estimated to be around 200,000 years old. It is the first time that bison remains from the Ice Age have been found in Southern California.

The San Diego Natural History Museum unveiled the find on Monday in a presentation.

Caltrans, which is an abbreviation for the California Department of Transportation, has been working on improving the Route 76 ramp that runs between interstates 15 and 5. The widening and overhaul of the I-15/Route 76 interchange is expected to continue through summer 2014.

Any paleontological discoveries that are made between now and the project's completion are protected by the Environmental Quality Act of California, a law that requires developers grant researchers a chance at collecting specimens before moving forward toward completion of construction projects.

Scientists from Northwestern University have discovered an environmentally kinder way to mine gold, which involves using simple cornstarch instead of cyanide to isolate gold from raw materials in a selective manner.

The scientists say that this "green" technique extracts gold from crude sources and leaves behind other metals that are frequently discovered mixed together with the crude gold. The technique can also assist with the removal of gold from consumer electronic waste.

Most gold mining companies today use gold extraction techniques involving the use of cyanide, which is very bad for the environment.

Sir Fraser Stoddart, the Board of Trustees Professor of Chemistry in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, says that researchers have switched "nasty reagents with a cheap, biologically friendly material derived from starch."

Interestingly, the starch method was discovered by accident, using simple test tube chemistry. The scientists mixed together a test tube of the starch-derived alpha-cyclodextrin and one of a dissolved gold salt. They had been attempting to produce a three-dimensional cubic structure that could be used to keep gases and tiny molecules. Instead, they got needles, which formed quickly upon mixing the two solutions at room temperatures.

According to new research published in the journal Nature Communications, the Minoans were actually Europe's first advanced civilization.

Study co-author George Stamatoyannopoulos, a human geneticist at the University of Washington, said:

"We now know that the founders of the first advanced European civilization were European. They were very similar to Neolithic Europeans and very similar to present day-Cretans," ( residents of the Mediterranean island of Crete.)

Researchers had previously believed that the Minoan culture emerged in Egypt.

British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans discovered the Minoan palace of Knossos more than 100 years after Crete gained its independence from the Ottoman Empire. He was blown away by the building's beauty, and believed that the similarities to Egyptian art proved that the culture was originally from Egypt.

The strange Martian mountain known as Mount Sharp, which is the ultimate destination of NASA's Curiosity rover, was likely built primarily by wind rather than water, according to a new study.

Many scientists have postulated that the 3.4-mile high mountain formed primarily from layers of lakebed silt, which was one of the big reasons that the mountain was chose as the rover's ultimate destination. The new research, however, holds that wind likely did most of the building of Mount Sharp.

Study co-author Kevin Lewis of Princeton University said in a statement:

"Our work doesn't preclude the existence of lakes in Gale Crater, but suggests that the bulk of the material in Mount Sharp was deposited largely by the wind."

Curiosity landed inside the 96-mile-wide crater in August 2012, kicking off a two-year mission to research Mars' past and present potential to host microbial life. The rover has already accomplished its main goal of finding that a spot near the landing site known as Yellowknife Bay was once capable of supporting life billions of years ago Curiosity, however, still needs to make its trek to the base of Mount Sharp - a 6-mile journey to the rover's main science target.

Observations from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbitor (MRO) have suggested that the mountain's foothills were exposed to liquid water some time in the past. For the new study, researchers used other MRO observations to come up with the new wind-based theory of Mount Sharp's formation, determining that the mound's layers are not flat-lying stacks that would be expected in lakebed deposits. Instead, they fan outwards in an odd radial pattern from the mountain's center, which is consistent with results from the researchers' computer model that suggested that wind blowing down Gale's slopes could build a mound in the crater's center while at the same time leaving areas near the rim bare.

Scientists from the University of Manchester have shown that natural emissions and humanmade pollutants can both have an unexpected cooling effet on Earth's climate by making clouds brighter.

Clouds are composed of water droplets that are condensed onto tiny particles suspended in the air. When the air is humid enough, the particles swell into cloud droplets. Researchers have known for some decades that the number of these particles and their size control how bright the clouds appear from the top, which controls the efficiency with which clouds scatter sunlight back into space.

One of the major challenges for climate scientists is to understand and quantify these effects, which have major effects in polluted areas of the world.

The tiny seed particles can either be natural from things like sea spray or dust, or humanmade pollutants from things like vehicle exhaust or industrial activity. These particles ofte contain a large amount of organic material and are quite volatile compounds, so in warm conditions they exist as a vapor.

Researchers have found that the effect acts in reverse in the atmosphere as the volatile organic compounds from pollution or from the biosphere evaporates and give off characteristic aromas.However, under moist, cooler conditions where clouds form, the molecules prefer to be liquid and make larger particles that are more effective seeds for cloud droplets.

Researchers from around the globe have made repeated attempts to capture data of Greenland's ice via overhead aircraft and space satellites, but now NASA is going about the data collecting in a new way - they're sending in a robotic rover, much like the ones that the space agency has sent to Mars in recent years.

A robot named GROVER, which stands for Goddard Remotely Operated Vehicle for Exploration and Research, will deploy to the northern Atlantic land mass today (Friday) to begin a five-week analysis mission of its melting ice sheets.

The rover will run a solo mission from May 3 to June 8. During the mission, GROVER will use ground-penetrating radar to study the thickness of the glaciers and the patterns in which snow accumulates over time to build them up. Solar panels and wind turbines will keep the rover running as it moves across miles of remote snow and ice that would be inaccessible to a human team without massive supplies of food and fuel weighing them down.

A second rover named Cool Robot will join GROVER in mid-June. Cool Robot was built at Dartmouth University in Hanover, New Hampshire, with funding from the National Science Foundation, and will bring with it an assortment instruments for testing not only the ice, but the atmosphere as well.

Historians have long suspected that the early settlers of Jamestown resorted to cannibalism to survive the deadly winter of 1609-10, a period in which 80 percent of colonists survived, but now they have physical proof. Douglas Owsley, division head for physical anthropology at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, presented earlier this week a forensic analysis of 17-century human remains that prove survival cannibalism took place in historic Jamestown.

Owsley made the announcement along with chief archaeologist William Kelso from the Jamestown Rediscovery Project and Preservation Virginia and historian James Horn, vice president of research and historical interpretation at Colonial Williamsburg.

Owsley and Kelso have worked together closely since 1996, examining skeletal remains along with a team of archaeologists to understand the lives of the individual colonial settlers in the Chesapeake. The particular incomplete human skull and tibia (shown above) were excavated in 2012 by Jamestown archaelogists as a part of a 20-year excavation of James Fort. The remains were unusual due to their location and extensive fragmentation. Kelso then decided to take the remains to the Smithsonian's forensic anthropologist for a comprehensive analysis.

Researchers identified several features on the skull and tibia which indicated that the individual was cannibalized. Four shallow chops to the forehead indicate a failed first attempt to open the skull, and the back of the head was then struck by a series of deep, forceful chops from a small hatchet or cleaver. A final blow split the cranium open. Sharp cuts and punctures mark the sides and bottom of the mandible, which indicate efforts to remove tissue from the face and throat using a knife.

NASA has sent rovers to Mars to explore and determine if there is or ever was life on the Red Planet, but there are also scientists here on Earth attempting to solve the same mystery. A team of scientists, including a Michigan State University professor, has examined a meteorite that formed on Mars more than a billion years ago.

MSU geological sciences professor Michael Velbel says that one of the problems is that most meteorites that originated on Mars and landed on Earth arrived so long ago that they now have characteristics that tell of their time on Earth, which obscures any clues that they may offer about their time on Mars. He added:

"These meteorites contain water-related mineral and chemical signatures that can signify habitable conditions. The trouble is by the time most of these meteorites have been lying around on Earth they pick up signatures that look just like habitable environments, because they are. Earth, obviously, is habitable. If we could somehow prove the signature on the meteorite was from before it came to Earth, that would be telling us about Mars."

The researchers found mineral and chemical signatures on the rocks that indicate terrestrial weathering, or changes that occurred on Earth.