Humans have witnessed many cataclysmic volcanic eruptions, from the one that destroyed Pompeii in 79 A.D. to the extraordinary Krakatoa eruption of 1883. But around the world right now there are about 20 so-called “supervolcanoes” that could outdo them all.
One of these monster volcanoes lurks beneath Yellowstone National Park. The Yellowstone Caldera is an enormous craterlike depression measuring 30 miles by 45 miles and filled with molten material (magma). If it were to blast its innards out in a super-eruption, it’s no exaggeration to say that the human race could be imperiled.
But scientists at NASA have sketched the rough outlines of a plan that they say would not only spare us from a deadly super-eruption but also turn the Yellowstone supervolcano into a source of electric power. In a write-up of the plan first shared with the BBC, the team argues that we could siphon heat from the caldera until it becomes too cool to erupt — and convert the geothermal energy into electricity.
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Aerial view, Grand Prismatic Spring, Midway Geyser Basin, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming.Peter Adams / Getty Images
NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft could end up bearing a message for intelligent aliens, just as the agency’s venerable Voyager probes are doing.
Both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 famously carry copies of the “Golden Record,” which are loaded with photos, music, sounds and other data designed to teach any extraterrestrials who might encounter the probes about humanity and its home planet.
Though such an alien encounter isn’t likely, it is possible; Voyager 1 popped into interstellar space in August 2012, and its twin will probably do the same in the next few years, mission team members have said.
Marking an impassioned return to the campaign trail, former President Barack Obama made a plea Thursday night to Virginia voters to vote for Democratic candidates in the state’s first elections to be held since last year’s presidential contest.
“We need you to take this seriously, because our democracy is at stake, and it’s at stake right here in Virginia,” Obama told a crowd of 7,500 people at the Richmond Coliseum. “You can’t sit this one out.”
As Obama spoke, Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam — the Democratic nominee for governor in the commonwealth — sat on a barstool next to the 56-year-old former two-term president, basking in the glow of the former president’s political star power.
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Former President Barack Obama with Democratic gubernatorial candidate Ralph Northam during a rally in Richmond, Va., Oct. 19, 2017. (Photo: Steve Helber/AP)
The world’s leading artificial intelligence experts are sounding the alarm on killer robots.
Tesla(TSLA) boss Elon Musk is among a group of 116 founders of robotics and artificial intelligence companies who are calling on the United Nations to ban autonomous weapons.
“Lethal autonomous weapons threaten to become the third revolution in warfare. Once developed, they will permit armed conflict to be fought at a scale greater than ever, and at timescales faster than humans can comprehend,” the experts warn in an open letter released Monday.
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“These can be weapons of terror, weapons that despots and terrorists use against innocent populations, and weapons hacked to behave in undesirable ways,” the letter says.
By the end of the century, two out of three people living in Europe will be affected by heat waves, coastal floods and other weather-related disasters, largely due to global warming and climate change, according to a study published Friday in the journal Lancet Planetary Health.
That’s 350 million people in 31 countries subjected to an increased risk of death and health hazards.
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Overall, weather-related disasters are expected to cause 152,000 deaths a year in Europe between 2071 and 2100, jumping from 3,000 weather disaster-related deaths a year between 1981 and 2010.
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The researchers estimate that 99% of future weather-related deaths will be due to heat waves. That could very well cause a spike in cardiovascular disease, stroke and respiratory diseases, the researchers suggested.
A senior congressional aide who has been briefed on the deaths of four U.S. servicemen in Niger says the ambush by militants stemmed in part from a “massive intelligence failure.”
The Pentagon has said that 40 to 50 militants ambushed a 12-man U.S. force in Niger on Oct. 4, killing four and wounding two. The U.S. patrol was seen as routine and had been carried out nearly 30 times in the six months before the attack, the Pentagon has reported.
The aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak publicly, said the House and Senate armed services committees have questions about the scope of the U.S. mission in Niger, and whether the Pentagon is properly supporting the troops on the ground there.
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Myeshia Johnson cries over the casket of her husband, Sgt. La David Johnson, who was killed in an ambush in Niger, upon his body’s arrival in Miami, on Oct. 17, 2017. WPLG / AP
Let’s be blunt: With U.S. and U.K. complicity, the Saudi government is committing war crimes in Yemen.
“The country is on the brink of famine, with over 60 percent of the population not knowing where their next meal will come from,” the leaders of the U.N. World Food Program, Unicef and the World Health Organization said in an unusual joint statement.
Yemen, always an impoverished country, has been upended for two years by fighting between the Saudi-backed military coalition and Houthi rebels and their allies (with limited support from Iran). The Saudis regularly bomb civilians and, worse, they have closed the airspace and imposed a blockade to starve the rebel-held areas into submission.
That means that ordinary Yemenis, including children, die in bombings or starve.
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Buthaina is the only member of her family not killed in a Saudi-led airstrike last week.Khaled Abdullah/Reuters
By the end of the century, the global temperature is likely to rise more than 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit.
This rise in temperature is the ominous conclusion reached by two different studies using entirely different methods published in the journal Nature Climate Change on Monday.
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One study used statistical analysis to show that there is a 95% chance that Earth will warm more than 2 degrees at century’s end, and a 1% chance that it’s below 1.5 C.
“The likely range of global temperature increase is 2.0-4.9 [degrees Celsius] and our median forecast is 3.2 C,” said Adrian Raftery, author of the first study. “Our model is based on data which already show the effect of existing emission mitigation policies. Achieving the goal of less than 1.5 C warming will require carbon intensity to decline much faster than in the recent past.”
Former President George W. Bush on Thursday chastised Russia for alleged cyberattacks during the 2016 election, charging it was an effort to turn “Americans against each other” and “exploit our country’s divisions.”
Bush urged America to “harden its own defenses” in the face of “external attacks on our democracy.”
In remarks at a forum in New York held by the organization that runs his presidential library, Bush said the Russian cyberattacks amounted to a “sustained attempt by a hostile power to feed and exploit our country’s divisions.”
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Bush Slams Russia for Attempts to ‘Exploit Our Country’s Divisions’
President Donald Trump said Thursday that he’d give himself “a 10,” on a scale of 1 to 10, for how he has responded to Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria hit the island.
“I’d say it was a 10,” Trump told a reporter at a White House event with Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló. “I give ourselves a 10. … We have provided so much, so fast. We were actually there before the storm hit.”
The president’s remark conveys a different reality than what’s going on in Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory that is home to 3.4 million Americans. As of Thursday ― more than a month after Hurricane Maria hit ― 30 percent of the island still has no drinking water and 80 percent doesn’t have power. That’s according to government data updated daily, which some volunteer workers on the ground say is inaccurate. They say the situation is far more grim.
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Trump Gives Himself ‘A 10’ Out Of 10 On His Response To Puerto Rico
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
Aerial view, Grand Prismatic Spring, Midway Geyser Basin, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming.Peter Adams / Getty Images
Voyager’s Golden Record
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Trump Gives Himself ‘A 10’ Out Of 10 On His Response To Puerto Rico
