October Arctic Surprise: Rapid Recovery Of Ice Extent

Written by Dr Benny Peiser

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

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Machine Learning To Predict The Trillion Dollar Solar Storm

Written by Robert Hill

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.

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Ring discovered around Haumea, dwarf planet beyond Neptune

Written by astronomynow.com

Artist’s concept of Haumea and its ring. Credit: IAA-CSIC/UHU

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.

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UK Pushes for Brexit Science Deal

Written by Rachel Hall

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.

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The End of the Ocean Acidification Scare for Corals

Written by www.co2science.org

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.

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Exploding Binary Planet Systems

Written by Richard F. Cronin

The Titus-Bode (pronounced Bow-Dee) Law, developed in the 1700s, describes how the distances between major planets follows a sequential order with the orbit of a given planet as twice the distance from the Sun as the previous planet.

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