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The data-storing abilities of hard drives could soon swell to 40 terabytes (TB) and beyond, says Western Digital. Currently the largest hard disk drive (HDD) that stores data on spinning disks can hold about 14TB of information. Western Digital said the bigger drives were made possible by finding a way to use microwaves to write data on 3.5in drives. The first bigger-capacity drives should go on sale in 2019.

The enormous volcano sitting beneath Yellowstone National Park could erupt sooner than previously expected, scientists studying the area say.

At the ends of the Solar System, beyond the orbit of Neptune, there is a belt of objects composed of ice and rocks, among which four dwarf planets stand out: Pluto, Eris, Makemake and Haumea. The latter is the least well known of the four and was recently the object of an international observation campaign which was able to establish its main physical characteristics.

It is well-known among researchers that the Vikings, those Scandinavian warriors who roamed the seas between the 9th and 11th centuries, made contact with the Islamic world. But new evidence suggests these interactions were greater than previously thought.

Jo Johnson, the UK universities minister, said the government wanted to secure “an ambitious agreement” with the EU to safeguard Britain’s science and innovation, and pledged to allow British universities to continue close research collaboration with their European peers.

Mount Agung in Bali is currently on the verge of eruption, and more than 100,000 people have been evacuated. However, one of us (Dian Fiantis) will go into the area when it erupts, to collect the ash.

The US used to be extremely hot. These sort of historical temperatures don’t happen anymore.

Source: http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/severeweather/a-thigh.gif

Twenty-five states set their all-time record maximum temperature during the 1930s. The vast majority set their all-time record with CO2 below 350 PPM.

Paper Reviewed: McCulloch, M.T., D’Olivo, J.P., Falter, J., Holcomb, M. and Trotter, J.A. 2017. Coral calcification in a changing world and the interactive dynamics of pH and DIC upregulation. Nature Communications 8: 15686, DOI:10.1038/ncomms15686.

Forest fires are down 80%, but climate fraudsters want to push their scam, so they announce that humans didn’t know how to count before 1960.

Prior to 1965, October 11 used to be a warm day in the US, but over the past century, October 11 afternoon temperatures have fallen several degrees.

In recent years, October has seen some rapid recoveries of Arctic ice extents.  But this year may become something special. With the early onset of Siberian snow cover and the resulting surface cooling, ice is roaring back, especially on the Asian side. Consider the refreezing during the last 11 days through yesterday. —Ron Clutz, Science Matters, 7 October 2017

And we wonder what is heating our seas.According to Oregon State University (OSU), there may be more than one million underwater volcanoes. Here’s how their website puts it:

There have been 26 significant ‘space weather’ events affecting Earth over the last 50 years. These solar events can severely disrupt the Earth’s magnetosphere (the boundary between the Earth’s magnetic field and the solar wind), and pose a direct threat to electrical infrastructure – knocking out technologies that we rely on every single day, like GPS signals, electrical grids, computers and satellites. To put it lightly, if a major event were to happen tomorrow, it’s likely to cost at least $2 trillion in damages in the first year alone.

New reports are arguing that Brexit may not have such a major effect on the UK’s tech sector as previously imagined.

Research released by Tech City UK and Nesta claim that foreign workers are more likely to have come from outside the EU, meaning that losing EU-based workforce may not be as ‘dangerous’ for businesses as previously thought.