New Zealand’s capital shook for a second consecutive day on Tuesday after a magnitude 5.2 magnitude earthquake hit Wellington, data from monitor GeoNet showed. There were no initial reports of damage, according to news reports and a Reuters witness. A slightly stronger 5.8magnitude quake struck the capital on Monday while Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was doing a live TV interview. She calmly continued with the program and later confirmed there had been no damage.
New Zealand lies on the seismically active “Ring of Fire,” an arc of volcanoes and ocean trenches girdling much of the Pacific Ocean. The city of Christchurch is still recovering from a 6.3 magnitude quake in 2011 that killed 185 people. –The Jerusalem Post
Earth’s magnetic field, which is vital to protecting life on our planet from solar radiation, is mysteriously weakening. On average the planet’s magnetic field has lost almost 10% of its strength over the last two centuries, but there is a large localized region of weakness stretching from Africa to South America. Known as the South Atlantic Anomaly, the field strength in this area has rapidly shrunk over the past 50 years just as the area itself has grown and moved westward. Over the past five years a second centre of minimum intensity has developed southwest of Africa, which researchers believe indicates the anomaly could split into two separate cells.
The anomaly is causing technical difficulties for satellites orbiting the Earth. European Space Agency (ESA) scientists from the Swarm Data, Innovation and Science Cluster (DISC) are using data from ESA’s Swarm satellite constellation to study the anomaly. Swarm satellites are designed to identify and precisely measure the different magnetic signals that make up Earth’s magnetic field. Dr. Jurgen Matzka, from the German Research Centre for Geosciences, said: “The new, eastern minimum of the South Atlantic Anomaly has appeared over the last decade and in recent years is developing vigorously. We are very lucky to have the Swarm satellites in orbit to investigate the development of the South Atlantic Anomaly. The challenge now is to understand the processes in Earth’s core driving these changes.” One speculation is that the weakening of the field is a sign that the Earth is heading for a pole reversal – in which the north and south magnetic poles flip.
This flip doesn’t happen immediately, but instead would occur over the course of a couple of centuries during which there would be multiple north and south magnetic poles all around the globe. “Such events have occurred many times throughout the planet’s history,” said ESA, noting “we are long overdue by the average rate at which these reversals take place (roughly every 250,000 years).” That said, the space agency also noted that the dip occurring in the South Atlantic was “well within what is considered normal levels of fluctuations.” For people on the surface the anomaly is unlikely to cause any alarm, but satellites and other spacecraft flying through the area are experiencing technical malfunctions.
Because the magnetic field is weaker in the region, charged particles from the cosmos can penetrate through to the altitudes that low-Earth orbiting satellites fly at. “The mystery of the origin of the South Atlantic Anomaly has yet to be solved,” added ESA. “However, one thing is certain: magnetic field observations from Swarm are providing exciting new insights into the scarcely understood processes of Earth’s interior.” –SKYNews
BEIJING: Chinese doctors are seeing the coronavirus manifest differently among patients in its new cluster of cases in the northeast region compared to the original outbreak in Wuhan, suggesting that the pathogen may be changing in unknown ways and complicating efforts to stamp it out. Patients found in the northern provinces of Jilin and Heilongjiang appear to carry the virus for a longer period of time and take longer to recover, as defined by a negative nucleic acid test, Qiu Haibo, one of China’s top critical care doctors, told state television on Tuesday. Cases in the northeast also appear to be taking longer than the one to two weeks observed in Wuhan to develop symptoms after infection, and this delayed onset is making it harder for authorities to catch cases before they spread, said Qiu, who is now in the northern region treating patients.
“The longer period during which infected patients show no symptoms has created clusters of family infections,” said Qiu, who was earlier sent to Wuhan to help in the original outbreak. Some 46 cases have been reported over the past two weeks spread across three cities — Shulan, Jilin city and Shengyang — in two provinces, a resurgence of infection that sparked renewed lockdown measures over a region of 100 million people. Scientists still do not fully understand if the virus is changing in significant ways and the differences Chinese doctors are seeing could be due to the fact that they’re able to observe patients more thoroughly and from an earlier stage than in Wuhan. When the outbreak first exploded in the central Chinese city, the local health-care system was so overwhelmed that only the most serious cases were being treated. The northeast cluster is also far smaller than Hubei’s outbreak, which ultimately sickened over 68,000 people.
Still, the findings suggest that the remaining uncertainty over how the virus manifests will hinder governments’ efforts to curb its spread and re-open their battered economies. China has one of the most comprehensive virus detection and testing regimes globally, and yet is still struggling to contain its new cluster. Researchers worldwide are trying to ascertain if the virus is mutating in a significant way to become more contagious as it races through the human population, but early research suggesting this possibility has been criticized for being overblown. Qiu said that doctors have also noticed patients in the northeast cluster seem to have damage mostly in their lungs, whereas patients in Wuhan suffered multi-organ damage across the heart, kidney and gut.
Officials now believe that the new cluster stemmed from contact with infected arrivals from Russia, which has one of the worst outbreaks in Europe. Genetic sequencing has showed a match between the northeast cases and Russian-linked ones, said Qiu. Among the northeast cluster, only 10% have turned critical and 26 are hospitalized. China is moving aggressively to stem the spread of the new cluster ahead of its annual political gathering in Beijing scheduled to start this week. As thousands of delegates stream into the capital to endorse the government’s agenda, China’s central leadership is determined to project stability and control.
The northeast provinces have ordered a return of lock-down measures, halting train services, closing schools and sealing off residential compounds, dismaying residents who had thought the worst was over. “People should not assume the peak has passed or let down their guard,” Wu Anhua, a senior infectious disease doctor, said on state television on Tuesday. “It’s totally possible that the epidemic will last for a long time.” –Times of India
It’s been 100 days since the last recorded sunspot, which one expert says is evidence that we are entering a phase called solar minimum, reports said. There have been whispers on social media about an impending Ice Age (Just What We Need!), but NASA scientists have said we should not be overly worried, according to PennLive.com. “So far this year, the Sun has been blank 76 percent of the time, a rate surpassed only once before in the Space Age,” SpaceWeather.com reported, according to Forbes. “Last year, 2019, the Sun was blank 77 percent of the time. Two consecutive years of record-setting spotlessness adds up to a very deep solar minimum, indeed.”
NASA says that about every 11 years, “sunspots fade away, bringing a period of relative calm. “This is called a solar minimum,” Dean Pesnell of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, said on NASA.gov. “And it’s a regular part of the sunspot cycle.” The NASA report said in 2014, there was a high rate of sunspots and solar flares. The article said the sun doesn’t “become dull” during these times, rather solar activity simply changes form. Dr. Tony Phillips, an astronomer, told the U.K. Sun newspaper that the “solar minimum” is underway and it is a deep one. “Sunspot counts suggest it is one of the deepest of the past century,” he told the paper. “The sun’s magnetic field has become weak, allowing extra cosmic rays into the solar system.”
He continued, “Excess cosmic rays pose a health hazard to astronauts and polar air travelers, affect the electro-chemistry of Earth’s upper atmosphere and may help trigger lightning.” Some theorize that a lingering “solar minimum” could result in crop loss, famine and brutal cold. The Pennlive report said scientists indicate that even if we do enter a phase called “grand solar minimum” it would essentially only offset “a few years of warming caused by human activities.” “Even if a Grand Solar Minimum were to last a century, global temperatures would continue to warm,” NASA Global Climate Change reported, according to Pennlive. “Because more factors than just variations in the Sun’s output change global temperatures on Earth, the most dominant of those today being the warming coming from human-induced greenhouse gas emissions.” –Fox News
NEW DELHI – India and Bangladesh are preparing to evacuate up to 3 million people in the path of a potentially devastating cyclone, a challenge made even more daunting by the rising number of coronavirus infections in both countries. Cyclone Amphan is expected to slam into the river delta at the top of the Bay of Bengal on Wednesday local time, bringing dangerous winds, heavy rain, surging tides and flooding. Super Cyclone Amphan became the strongest storm ever recorded in the Bay of Bengal on Monday night, after intensifying with sustained wind speeds of up to 270 kilometers per hour (165 miles per hours), according to data from the U.S. Joint Typhoon Warning Center.
India had classified it as a “super cyclonic storm,” the most powerful type of cyclone and only the second such storm in the area since 1999. It weakened slightly on Tuesday but is still the equivalent of a Category 4 hurricane. The pandemic is intensifying the difficulty of preparing for the storm. India has more than 100,000 confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus, while Bangladesh has 25,000. Both countries have imposed crippling lock-downs that have left tens of millions of people with no income.
Now those vulnerable to the storm are facing the unprecedented combination of a natural disaster and a pandemic. Some evacuees say they fear catching the virus in emergency shelters, where they may face hours in enclosed spaces with little ability to maintain distance from others. Authorities are attempting to reduce crowding. In coastal areas, Bangladesh has turned schools and colleges into makeshift shelters, increasing the total available capacity from 4,000 to more than 12,000, said Mohammad Mohsin, director general of country’s disaster management department. “We did this to maintain social distancing,” he said. In India, two states will bear the brunt of the cyclone’s impact: West Bengal and Odisha. In some Odisha shelters, people are required to use hand sanitizers before entering and to wear masks for the duration of their stay.
Pradeep Jena, a senior government official overseeing the disaster relief effort in Odisha, described the current evacuation as a “great challenge” since people are already under “psychological stress” from the spread of covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. He urged authorities to explain to people that the immediate danger from the storm is greater than the threat of infection. But some people living in the state’s coastal areas are not persuaded, particularly in places where cyclone shelters were previously being used as quarantine centers. –LMT
The district recorded three new locally transmitted cases and one further death. It comes one week after Shulan, which is administered by Jilin, went on lockdown and quarantined 8,000 people in a failed bid to contain the second outbreak. On Saturday, the local government sacked six officials, including Shulan Communist Party Chief Li Pengfei, over their handling of the second wave, which has so far resulted in 18 confirmed cases since May 7.
Fengman District has recorded 12 cases of local infection in the same period and was put on lockdown starting today after a 15-point directive from the local health commission. The Wuhan-style travel restrictions include bans on all outbound foot and vehicle traffic, as well as the closure of schools and entertainment venues such as cinemas, gyms and restaurants. Residential districts have been hit with personal restrictions, with each household only allowed to send one member to shop for essentials once a day.
All shops and the majority of supermarkets in the districts were also shut today, while city officials were also gathering testing kits and protective equipment for health workers. Pictures and videos shared on social media app Weibo show shutter doors closed and streets barricaded and nearing empty as the restrictions came into place at the weekend. Jilin Ice Sports Center was converted into a field hospital within 48 hours and is now ready to accept patients following an order on May 15. It was still unclear which category of patients would be sent to the winter sports arena. Last week, a video also showed secondary school pupils being sent home as case numbers grew. Classes had only just resumed on April 7 after much of China declared victory over the coronavirus outbreak. –Daily Star
The magnetic north pole just isn’t where it used to be. Ever since James Clark Ross first identified it on the Boothia Peninsula in Canada’s Nunavut territory in 1831, scientists have been carefully measuring its location ever since. But in recent years, it’s been inching closer and closer to Siberia at a surprisingly rapid pace. Now, researchers from U.K. and Denmark say they’ve uncovered the reason for this mysterious movement: Two writhing lobes of magnetic force are duking it out near Earth’s core.
“The wandering of Earth’s north magnetic pole, the location where the magnetic field points vertically downwards, has long been a topic of scientific fascination,” the researchers write in their paper, which appears in the May 5 issue of Nature Geoscience. Earth’s magnetic field is generated by molten iron in its outer core. The flow of this liquid iron can influence the location of the planet’s magnetic poles. While poles have drifted and even swapped places numerous times over the course of Earth’s long history, what’s different about this recent shift is how quickly it’s happening. From 1999 to 2005, Earth’s magnetic north pole went from shifting 9 miles at most each year to as much as 37 miles in a year.
These scientists pored over 20 years of satellite data from the European Space Administration’s Swarm satellite mission and discovered that “…over the last two decades the position of the north magnetic pole has been largely determined by two large-scale lobes of negative magnetic flux on the core–mantle boundary under Canada and Siberia,” according to the study. Between 1970 and 1999, the flow of molten, magnetic material in Earth’s outer core changed. Because of these changes, the researchers say, the magnetic blob lurking beneath Canada slowly elongated in the early aughts, weakening the corresponding magnetic intensity on Earth’s surface. Eventually, the blob of molten material beneath Canada split in two and the stronger one slowly shifted toward the blob beneath Siberia. This spurred the magnetic north pole to slip closer and closer to Siberia, where the magnetic intensity was stronger.
In 2017, the magnetic north pole fell within 240 miles of the geographic north pole. The movement has been so rapid that the British Geological Survey and U.S. National Geophysical Data Center, which update the World’s Magnetic Model, had to accelerate their process in order to keep up. The scientists generated a series of models of Earth’s core in an effort to understand how it might move in the future. “Our predictions are that the pole will continue to move towards Siberia, but forecasting the future is challenging and we cannot be sure,” the study’s lead author, geophysicist Phil Livermore of the University of Leeds, told Live Science. These shifts have major consequences for global navigation systems. Anything or anyone that uses a compass—from ships at sea to the smart phones in our pockets—is impacted by this magnetic game of tug-o-war. –Popular Mechanics
An early Friday morning earthquake near Tonopah, Nevada, was strong enough to be felt over 300 miles away in areas such as Bakersfield, California. The 6.5 magnitude quake struck at 4:03 a.m., PDT, according to the U.S. Geological Survey and had a depth of 2.5 miles. There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries in the small town of Tonopah, located about three hours north of Las Vegas. Tonopah is home to the Tonopah Test Range, home of the U.S. Air Force’s test site of experimental and classified aircraft and famous for its connection with Area 51 enthusiasts.
In Esmeralda, Nevada, aftershocks in the same area were recorded within 15 minutes ranging from 3.8 to a strength of 4.9. This is the third 3.0 magnitude earthquake in the last 10 days for the region, according to the LA Times.
According to contributed reports from the USGS, residents as far east as Salt Lake City, Utah, reported feeling the quake and as far southwest as San Diego, a 750-mile range of reported impacts. –AccuWeather
The magnetic north pole just isn’t where it used to be. Ever since James Clark Ross first identified it on the Boothia Peninsula in Canada’s Nunavut territory in 1831, scientists have been carefully measuring its location ever since. But in recent years, it’s been inching closer and closer to Siberia at a surprisingly rapid pace. Now, researchers from U.K. and Denmark say they’ve uncovered the reason for this mysterious movement: Two writhing lobes of magnetic force are duking it out near Earth’s core.
The Extinction Protocol 