A system of planets has been discovered in the constellation Cygnus orbiting a double star. It was not thought that this was possible, and planetary scientists are saying that it will lead to a complete revision of our understanding of how planets are formed. It means that they may be even more numerous than we thought, making life all but inevitable elsewhere in the universe.
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An enormous magma dome is growing under the Greek Island of Santorini, while pressures are building inside Japan’s Mt. Fuji. And things aren’t so quiet right here in the US either!
A new survey suggests that the chamber of molten rock beneath Santorini’s volcano expanded 30-40 MILLION cubic feet between January 2011 and April 2012. Santorini had its last major eruption 3,600 years ago, burying the islands of Santorini under tons of pumice. The amount of molten rock that has arrived beneath Santorini in the past year is the equivalent of about 10-20 years growth of the volcano.
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We catch diseases from animals (and they catch them from us), but this also means we sometimes share the same physical ailments.
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The US isn’t the only country facing the coal conundrum, meaning we have plenty of coal, but don’t want to burn it, because it causes pollution and climate change.
On oilprice.com, Charles Kennedy reports that the Australian state of Queensland could become the seventh largest contributor of greenhouse gases on the planet, behind only China, the US, India, Russia, Japan, and Germany, if plans to create nine huge coal mines go through.
Greenpeace Australia analyzed the proposed mines and found that they would release an extra 705 million tons of carbon dioxide every year. The International Energy Agency describes this as "catastrophic."
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