Daily Archives: September 24, 2021

VIDEO: How a Super Volcano Apocalypse Tore Apart the Surface of Mars – Newsweek

Posted: September 24, 2021 at 11:30 am

Thousands of volcanic events known as "super-eruptions" occurred on Mars 4 billion years ago for a half-billion years according to NASA scientists. Each of the giant eruptions catapulted the equivalent of 400 million Olympic-size swimming pools of gas and molten rock toward the sky, creating a thick ash cloud thousands of miles long.

The eruptions would have been astonishingly powerful, NASA said. The most recent comparable event on earth was the eruption of the Toba Caldera Complex 75,000 years ago in Northern Sumatra, which led to a 10-year global volcanic winter.

NASA said Sept. 15 that a team found evidence that a region of northern Mars called Arabia Terra experienced thousands of volcanic eruptions that sent water vapor, carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide high into the planet's atmosphere.

Patrick Whelley, a geologist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, who led the Arabia Terra analysis, said: "Each one of these eruptions would have had a significant climate impact maybe the released gas made the atmosphere thicker or blocked the sun and made the atmosphere colder."

"Modelers of the Martian climate will have some work to do to try to understand the impact of the volcanoes," said Whelley.

After a super-eruption, a volcano collapses into a giant hole called a caldera, which stretches across dozens of miles.

"Seven calderas in Arabia Terra were the first giveaways that the region may once have hosted volcanoes capable of super-eruptions," NASA said in a statement.

The calderas were initially mistaken for craters created by asteroid impacts, but scientists proposed instead in 2013 that the "craters" were actually calderas.

"[I]nstead of looking for volcanoes themselves, we looked for the ash because you can't hide that evidence," Whelley said.

Using NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Whelley's team re-evaluated studies that suggested mineral deposits on the surface of Arabia Terra were the products of volcanic eruptions.

Alexandra Matiella Novak, a volcanologist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, said the pieces fit: "[W]e picked it up at that point and said, 'OK, well these are minerals that are associated with altered volcanic ash, which has already been documented.' Now we're going to look at how the minerals are distributed to see if they follow the pattern we would expect to see from super-eruptions."

The team identified minerals on the Martian surface by analyzing the light emitted by chemical compounds that they contained. Then they scanned canyons and craters hundreds of thousands of miles from the calderas to learn whether wind had carried volcanic ash there.

The result was a three-dimensional image of Arabia Terra, layering mineral data over the topographic maps of canyons and craters.

They found the mineral-rich deposits of ash were very well-preserved.

Jacob Richardson, a geologist at NASA Goddard who worked with Whelley and Novak, said: "That's when I realized this isn't a fluke; this is a real signal. We're actually seeing what was predicted, and that was the most exciting moment for me."

The NASA team calculated that it would have taken thousands of eruptions to produce the amount of minerals they found. They said they were baffled that so many super volcanoes were concentrated in one region of Mars. They sparsely dot across the planet.

"It's possible that super-eruptive volcanoes were concentrated in regions on Earth but have been eroded physically and chemically or moved around the globe as continents shifted due to plate tectonics," NASA said.

This story was provided to Newsweek by Zenger News.

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Femina Fab 40: The Mangalyaan Women Behind India’s Maiden Mission To Mars | Femina.in – Femina

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Feminas Fabulous 40 for 2021The Olympians who represented the country on a prestigious platform. Some brought glory and others hope. The women who inspire us and make us believe that anything is possible, especially after the year that we have had. Women who have raised their voices and lent a voice to those who did not have one. There are too many to count, but this selection of 40 women will motivate us to hold our heads high while we march ahead.

The Mangalyaan WomenScientists

It was a long, complicated journey right from the announcement of the Mangalyaan project in 2010 till the orbiter was launched in 2013. A team of 500 scientists spread across Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) centres was roped in, and at least 27 per centof the key positions were held by women.

Nandini Harinath and Ritu Karidhal handled the missions operations from the UR Rao Satellite Centre (URSC), Bengaluru. They also worked on calculating the spacecrafts trajectory to Mars and on designing an autonomous software system to self-correct problems, respectively. Moumita Dutta and Minal Sampat built and tested the scientific instruments at the Space Application Centre (SAC). Besides these four superwomen, there were several other women scientists who played significant roles in Indias maiden mission, the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), or Mangalyaan.

The launch of Mangalyan on November 5, 2013 marked a significant step in Indias space-related developments. India became the fourth country to place a satellite in the orbit of Mars, and this also made ISRO the first-ever space organisation to successfully execute the mission in the first attempt. Since it was a calculation-intensive mission, the mathematical expertise of the womens team was used extensively for manoeuvres, designs and path calculations. S Arunan, the missions project director, also credited the women scientists contingency plans for the precision of the minute calculations involved. He proudly mentioned that the women scientists played integral roles.

Minnie Vaids book, Those Magnificent Women and Their Flying Machines, talks of the efforts of women scientists who worked for the success of Mangalyaan.

Also Read: ISRO scientist Ritu Karidhal's Mars Mission

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Femina Fab 40: The Mangalyaan Women Behind India's Maiden Mission To Mars | Femina.in - Femina

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Ancient Mars was once home to thousands of supervolcanoes – Big Think

Posted: at 11:30 am

Mars is a relatively quiet and uneventful place today, but topographical evidence suggests the planet had a violent past. A recent NASA study found that the Arabia Terra region of northern Mars was once home to thousands of massively explosive supervolcanoes, which produce the biggest eruptions known to science.

Earth is home to a handful of supervolcanoes, such as Lake Taupo in New Zealand, the Yellowstone Caldera in the U.S., and Mount Merapi in Indonesia, to name a few. Supervolcanic eruptions are rare: The last one erupted in Sumatra, Indonesia, about 76,000 years ago.

But NASAs new research suggests supervolcanic eruptions might not be so rare if you look back far enough in a planets history. In Mars vegetation-free, ocean-free barrenness, evidence of such ancient events remains visible today.

Scientists initially thought that the massive basins observed in Arabia Terra were asteroid impact craters, but some evidence suggested otherwise. For example, the basins werent as round as craters tend to be, and very deep floors and benches of rocks against their walls suggested some sections had collapsed.

In 2013, scientists proposed that seven of these basins were actually calderas depressions left behind after supervolcanic eruptions and they calculated the amount of ash that would have been dispersed by such eruptions.

Other researchers were also intrigued by the hypothesis, proposing that the volcanic minerals could be found on the surface of Arabia Terra. Another team calculated the likely trajectory of the ash ejected from the super volcanoes. They surmised the ash would travel eastward, downwind, where it would thin out as it traveled away from the center of the calderas.

Patrick Whelley, a NASA geologist and lead author of the recent study, said he and his colleagues had read that [2013] paper and were interested in following up, but instead of looking for volcanoes themselves, we looked for the ash, because you cant hide that evidence.

Fortunately, NASAs Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter had already been gathering data on ash deposits on the Martian surface. Coauthor and geologist Alexandra Matiella Nova said, So we picked it up at that point and said, OK, well these are minerals that are associated with altered volcanic ash, which has already been documented, so now were going to look at how the minerals are distributed to see if they follow the pattern we would expect to see from super eruptions.

Layering ash data over images from the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars, the team assembled 3D topographical maps of Arabia Terra that revealed the supervolcanoes ejecta was relatively undisturbed from where it landed in layers, remaining plainly visible.

The studys third coauthor, geologist Jacob Richardson, said, Thats when I realized this isnt a fluke, this is a real signal. Were actually seeing what was predicted and that was the most exciting moment for me.

Based on the amount of ash predicted in the 2013 research, the team calculated that it would have taken thousands of supervolcanic eruptions in this one spot to produce the amount of ash they had identified.

According to NASA, the ash deposits blasted into the Martian skies the rough equivalent of 400 million Olympic-sized swimming pools worth of water vapor, carbon dioxide, and sulfur dioxide. The researchers estimated that this occurred about four billion years ago, over a 500-million-year period.

Whalley said: Each one of these eruptions would have had a significant climate impact maybe the released gas made the atmosphere thicker or blocked the Sun and made the atmosphere colder. Modelers of the Martian climate will have some work to do to try to understand the impact of the volcanoes.

The finding raises questions for geologists, such as whether Earths early history might have been similarly explosive, with the evidence of terrestrial super-volcanoes long ago obliterated by plate tectonics.

Richardson mused: People are going to read our paper and go, How? How could Mars do that? How can such a tiny planet melt enough rock to power thousands of super eruptions in one location? I hope these questions bring about a lot of other research.

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How to Bet on Sports for Beginners: 12 Tips to Know | The …

Posted: at 11:29 am

Over the past few years, sports betting has emerged from the shadows and into the mainstream. The anti-gambling stigma that existed for decades faded quickly in American popular culture, opening the door for a massive, multibillion-dollar legal sports betting industry to emerge.

With sports betting now legal in many states, millions of sports fans will be looking to enter the betting market for the first time. But where do you begin if youre unfamiliar with the terminology?

Heres an introduction into how to bet on sports. Well be adding to this series in the coming weeks.

Use the links below to jump to each section.

When oddsmakers release a betting line on a game, the first thing they do is decide which team should be the favorite and which should be the underdog.

The favorite is the team that is expected to win the game and will get a minus sign next to its odds, while the underdog is expected to lose and gets a plus sign. If the game is a toss-up, books will open it as a pick or pickem.Click to return to table of contents.

There are two main ways to bet on a favorite or an underdog. The first is the point spread, which is a bet on the margin of victory.

For example, say the Patriots are 7-point favorites against the Jets. Theyd be listed at -7.

If you bet on the Patriots, they need to win the game by 8 points or more for you to win your bet. If the Patriots win by 8 points or more, you cover. If the Patriots win by exactly 7 points, that is called a push, which means you get back the money you originally bet.

If the Patriots win by 6 points or fewer (or lose the game straight-up), you lose your bet.

On the flip side, if you bet on the Jets plus the points (+7), you need the Jets to either win the game lose by six points or fewer for you to win (or cover) your bet.

Spreads are available for all sports, but they are predominantly used when betting on higher-scoring sports like football and basketball.