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| When lobsters swarm up the beach and octopuses try to clamber up fishing lines to get out of the water, you know that something has gone badly wrong in the ocean. Oxygen-starved dead zones have been appearing with increasing frequency around the world, with some 400 identified so far. While most are caused by sewage or fertiliser leaching into the ocean, a possible new driver has appeared in the northwest Pacific: climate change. Just as land animals need oxygen in the freshwater pearl air to breathe, those in the sea need the oxygen dissolved in seawater. Dead zones cover up to 20,000 sq miles each and their borders shift according to wind, current and tide, killing all animal life that cannot escape in time. “Oregon is a little different,” said Jack Barth, of Oregon State University. “We have an open coastline, so the ability to flush the coast is high and there are no rivers carrying fertiliser. All nutrients appear to come from natural sources.” Related Links But for the past four years Professor Barth has been using autonomous underwater robots to monitor worrying developments on a naturally occuring area of low oxygen off the northwest Pacific, on the border of Washington state and Oregon. “We’ve seen freshwater pearl jewelry various degrees of oxygen deficiency,” he said. “We’ve seen zero oxygen, known as anoxia.” Camera footage from remotely operated vehicles “showed us just piles of Dungeness crab, dead tube worms. None could flee”. Off South Africa and Namibia, lobsters swarm to the beach when anoxic waters close in. Professor Barth cites reports that octopuses have tried to climb fishing lines to escape. Low-oxygen areas occur naturally on the west coast of all continents, where nutrient-rich waters well up to the sunlit surface, causing heavy productivity. The upper waters are well mixed by wind and waves but deeper down there is less opportunity to replenish oxygen. When dead plankton drift into this zone in a marine snowfall, they cause a secondary bloom in microscopic animal life that strips away the oxygen. If the oxygen-starved water does not reach the pearl jewelry wholesale seabed, the effects are usually less severe. If it does, the animals there are usually unable to escape. Usually winds push the de-oxygenated areas off Oregon out to sea but in recent years they have been coming ever closer to land and shallower water. Professor Barth said that climate-change models show coastal winds changing. “The forecast is for stronger and less persistent winds and for deeper waters becoming less oxygenated as surface layers warm, isolating the deeper layers more. So it’s a double-whammy we’re seeing off Oregon.” Although Professor Barth does not yet have enough records to prove that climate change is affecting the winds, he is confident that they are not altering as a result of any natural cycles, such as the warm current El Niño. | ||
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| An evolutionary “arms race” between ancient marine predators once led sea scorpions to grow to almost 3m (10ft) in length, according to scientists. The gigantic proportions of the species, called Dunkleostus, were previously attributed to environmental factors such as higher levels of oxygen in the atmosphere. Now new research suggests that fierce competition for prey with armour-plated fish pearl jewelry was behind the growth. Early sea scorpions, about 410 million years ago, were typically only 10cm-20cm in length. But the emergence of armour-plated fish, Placoderms, meant that only the largest scorpions were able to compete for food. “Sea scorpions were the dominant marine predator until armoured fish began to muscle in on scorpions’ prey,” said James Lamsdell, of the University of Bristol, who led the study. The report, published today in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters, compares the evolution in body size of the two families over millions of years and found that their sizes were closely linked. The scorpions caught prey with crab-like pincers. The pearl jewelry wholesale early fish had no teeth, but used razor-sharp bony jaws. After ten million years of co-existence, the sea scorpions had grown to more than 2.5m in length, the armoured fish about 2m. “Once they hit around 2.5m, the scorpions had mechanical issues that meant they couldn’t get any larger, but the fish carried on growing,” said Mr Lamsdell. The ability to pump oxygen around the body and being able to eat enough to wholesale pearl jewelry sustain their huge size were limiting factors for growth. Unable to compete with the speed of the fish, Dunkleostus fell extinct about 370 million years ago. The fish were wiped out about 350 million years ago. | ||
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| He and others also believe that although such ideas have an element of fun, they risk distracting attention from the far more amazing ideas that the LHC will tackle once it gets going. The Higgs boson, for example, is thought to give all other matter its mass, without which gravity could not work. If the LHC found the Higgs, it would open the door to solving all kinds of other mysteries about the origins and nature of matter. Another line of research aims to detect dark matter, which is thought to comprise about a quarter of the universe’s mass, but made out of a pearl jewelry kind of particle that has so far proven impossible to detect. However, perhaps the weirdest of all Cern’s aspirations for the LHC is to investigate extra dimensions of space. This idea, known as string theory, suggests there are many more dimensions to space than the four we can perceive. At present these other dimensions are hidden, but smashing protons together in the LHC could produce gravitational anomalies, effectively tiny black holes, that would reveal their existence. Some physicists suggest that when billions of pounds have been spent on the kit to probe such ideas, there is little need to invent new ones about time travel and self-sabotage. History shows, however, it is unwise to dismiss too quickly ideas that are initially seen as science fiction. Peter Smith, a science historian and author of Doomsday Men, which looks at the links between science and popular culture, points out that what started as pearl jewelry wholesale science fiction has often become the inspiration for big discoveries. “Even the original idea of the ‘atomic bomb’ actually came not from scientists but from H G Wells in his 1914 novel The World Set Free,” he said. “A scientist named Leo Szilard read it in 1932 and it gave him the inspiration to work out how to start the nuclear chain reaction needed to build a bomb. So the atom bomb has some of its origins in literature, as well as research.” Some of Cern’s leading researchers also take Nielsen at least a little seriously. Brian Cox, professor of particle physics at Manchester University, said: “His ideas are theoretically valid. What he is doing is playing around at the edge of our knowledge, which is a good thing. “He is pointing out that we don’t yet have a pearl necklace quantum theory of gravity, so we haven’t yet proved rigorously that sending information into the past isn’t possible. “However, if time travellers do break into the LHC control room and pull the plug out of the wall, then I’ll refer you to my article supporting Nielsen’s theory that I wrote in 2025.” This weekend, as the interest in his theories continued to grow, Nielsen was sounding more cautious. “We are seriously proposing the idea, but it is an ambitious theory, that’s all,” he said. “We already know it is not very likely to be true. If the LHC actually succeeds in discovering the Higgs boson, I guess we will have to think again. | ||
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| He and others also believe that although such ideas have an element of fun, they risk distracting attention from the far more amazing ideas that the LHC will tackle once it gets going. The Higgs boson, for example, is thought to give all other matter its mass, without which gravity could not work. If the LHC found the Higgs, it would open the door to solving all kinds of other mysteries about the origins and nature of matter. Another line of research aims to detect dark matter, which is thought to comprise about a quarter of the universe’s mass, but made out of a pearl jewelry kind of particle that has so far proven impossible to detect. However, perhaps the weirdest of all Cern’s aspirations for the LHC is to investigate extra dimensions of space. This idea, known as string theory, suggests there are many more dimensions to space than the four we can perceive. At present these other dimensions are hidden, but smashing protons together in the LHC could produce gravitational anomalies, effectively tiny black holes, that would reveal their existence. Some physicists suggest that when billions of pounds have been spent on the kit to probe such ideas, there is little need to invent new ones about time travel and self-sabotage. History shows, however, it is unwise to dismiss too quickly ideas that are initially seen as science fiction. Peter Smith, a science historian and author of Doomsday Men, which looks at the links between science and popular culture, points out that what started as pearl jewelry wholesale science fiction has often become the inspiration for big discoveries. “Even the original idea of the ‘atomic bomb’ actually came not from scientists but from H G Wells in his 1914 novel The World Set Free,” he said. “A scientist named Leo Szilard read it in 1932 and it gave him the inspiration to work out how to start the nuclear chain reaction needed to build a bomb. So the atom bomb has some of its origins in literature, as well as research.” Some of Cern’s leading researchers also take Nielsen at least a little seriously. Brian Cox, professor of particle physics at Manchester University, said: “His ideas are theoretically valid. What he is doing is playing around at the edge of our knowledge, which is a good thing. “He is pointing out that we don’t yet have a pearl necklace quantum theory of gravity, so we haven’t yet proved rigorously that sending information into the past isn’t possible. “However, if time travellers do break into the LHC control room and pull the plug out of the wall, then I’ll refer you to my article supporting Nielsen’s theory that I wrote in 2025.” This weekend, as the interest in his theories continued to grow, Nielsen was sounding more cautious. “We are seriously proposing the idea, but it is an ambitious theory, that’s all,” he said. “We already know it is not very likely to be true. If the LHC actually succeeds in discovering the Higgs boson, I guess we will have to think again. | ||
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| His warnings come at a sensitive time for Cern, which is about to make its second attempt to fire up the LHC. The idea is to accelerate protons to almost the speed of light around the machine’s 17-mile underground circular racetrack and then smash them together. In theory the machine will create tiny replicas of the inflatable primordial “big bang” fireball thought to have marked the creation of the universe. But if Nielsen and Ninomiya are right, this latest build-up will inevitably get nowhere, as will those that come after — until eventually Cern abandons the idea altogether. This is, of course, far from being the first science scare linked to the LHC. Over the years it has been the target of protests, wild speculation and court injunctions. Fiction writers have naturally seized on the subject. In Angels and Demons, Dan Brown sets out a diabolical plot in which the Vatican City is threatened with annihilation from a bomb based on antimatter stolen from Cern. Blasphemy, a novel from Douglas Preston, the inflatable bouncerbestselling science-fiction author, draws on similar themes, with a story about a mad physicist who wants to use a particle accelerator to communicate with God. The physicist may be American and the machine located in America, rather than Switzerland, but the links are clear. Even Five, the TV channel, has got in on the act by screening FlashForward, an American series based on Robert Sawyer’s novel of the same name in which the start-up of the LHC causes the Earth’s population to black out for two minutes when they experience visions of their personal futures 21 years hence. This gives them a chance to change that future. Scientists normally hate to see their ideas perverted and twisted by the ignorant, but in recent years many physicists have learnt to welcome the way the LHC has become a part of popular culture. Cern even encourages film-makers to use the machine as a backdrop for their productions, often without charging them. Nielsen presents them with a dilemma. Should they treat inflatable castles his suggestions as fact or fiction? Most would like to dismiss him, but his status means they have to offer some kind of science-based rebuttal. James Gillies, a trained physicist who heads Cern’s communications department, said Nielsen’s idea was an interesting theory “but we know it doesn’t happen in reality”. He explained that if Nielsen’s predictions were correct then whatever was stopping the LHC would also be stopping high-energy rays hitting the atmosphere. Since scientists can directly detect many such rays, “Nielsen must be wrong”, said Gillies. | ||
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