Category: Our World

Discovering Endurance

According to open-source data, there are currently approximately 3 million sunken ships at the bottom of the seas and oceans. The majority of them were sunk during war, the second reason owing to poor visibility and other situations, and the third due to old age. One of these was the ship “Endurance,” which sank off the coast of Antarctica in 1915 while being utilized by scientists as part of the Imperial Transantarctic Expedition. Researchers have tried numerous times to locate it, with the most recent attempt being in 2022 which was successful; the old ship was discovered at a depth of more than three kilometers in the Weddell Sea.

Imperial Transantarctic Expedition

In 1914, Endurance commenced service. The Imperial Transantarctic Expedition was organized by Ernest Shackleton, an Anglo-Irish explorer of the polar regions. The research mission’s goal was to traverse Antarctica’s entire landmass. He put together a crew of 56 people, and the Aurora and Endurance ships took them to the South Pole.

Search for the sunken ship Endurance

Many attempts have been made by modern scientists and explorers to determine the exact location of where the ship sank. Their interest stemmed from the fact that the ship should have been well preserved in the frigid waters of Antarctica, where there was no oxygen or light. The Endurance22 mission, which began in early 2022, attempted again to locate the ship. The ship was found in the quickest time feasible by a crew commanded by adventurer John Shears, based on information gathered on previous missions.

The members of the expedition began scanning the region in the Weddell Sea right away. The polar explorers were based on the “Agulhas II,” a South African ship. Saab Sabertooth search vehicles, which are equipped with sensors, lights, and cameras, were utilized to scan the seabed. The ship was discovered at a depth of 3008 meters after a brief search. The recovered vessel is well preserved, according to British maritime archaeologist Mensun Bound, which is exactly what the experts expected. The ship “Endurance” is now a historical landmark and a monument.

Today, millions of sunken ships lay at the bottom of the seas and oceans. Scientists consider them to be “time capsules” that may teach a lot about the lives of individuals from different historical periods by looking at them. Ancient Greek and Roman wrecks are particularly noteworthy because they frequently contain statues and other pieces of art. As a result, the famed Antikythera Youth statue was discovered in 1900, not far from the Greek island of Antikythera.

The New Great Wall of China

The Chinese are reportedly building a gigantic new wall to supposedly keep Covid away. Yes as ridiculous as it sounds, the Chinese seem to want to make Covid pay for it.

Reports have circulated that the Chinese government is constructing a 2,000-kilometer armored fence along its Myanmar border, mainly due to the rise in COVID-19 cases in the latter country. According to the Radio Free Asia (RFA) report, 659 kilometers of the barricade have already been completed. The reports have been confirmed by images on social media that show armor-plated steel fences topped with barbed wire. This massive project has been named the “Southern Great Wall” and the construction began in 2020 after the outbreak of the virus.

Some newspapers referred to it as the “Anti Covid Great Wall’’ but experts believe that there could be some hidden agenda behind this new border situation. The Chinese government has always struggled to retain control of Yunnan’s border with Myanmar which is nearly 2,200-kilometers. Since the 1980s this border has worked as a channel for illegal trades like drug trafficking, stolen vehicles, and illegitimate capital flow. It also allowed the undocumented flow of people into China that included day traders, migrant workers, and smuggled women.

Due to its loosely policed and mostly unmonitored borders, the south west province of Yunnan has been known to provide asylum to ethnic Uyghurs and others that used it as an outlet as per their convenience. Previously, the authorities and Chinese police have taken several actions to shut down border casinos in Laos and Myanmar that have been set up to enchant Chinese gamblers. Chinese authorities also mount periodic crackdowns on the flow of cross-boundary illegal imports. This longstanding concern has likely only been reinforced by the risk of Corona Virus recurring in China through the backdoor

The construction of a new Great Wall to curb the spread of Covid-19 might seem like overkill, however, China seems to achieve multiple goals through its new border. The West however claims that the Chinese government has ulterior motives and they are trying to achieve the status of ‘super power’ at the expense of its less fortunate neighbors. 

The pandemic has provided the Chinese government with a solid reason to resolve its long-established border issues. It may sound simple but in reality, the Chinese government wants to control everything including illicit trade across its borders. Certainly, they don’t want to put an end to any of it but only want to make sure everything happens on their terms.

Mega Drought

In the previous two decades, the American west has been subjected to the most extreme mega drought in at least 1,200 years, according to scientists. Human-caused climate change is cited as a major factor in the current devastating conditions in a recently released study, and the researchers predict that more drier decades lie ahead.

Park Williams, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles and the study’s lead author, says, “Anyone who has been paying attention knows that the west has been dry for most of the last two decades.”

Human-caused global warming has played a significant role in raising the temperature. In other studies, researchers have found that the climate problem “will increasingly boost the likelihood of lengthy, widespread and severe mega droughts. This worst-case scenario already looks to be coming to pass,” according to a report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

It expands on a previous study, also led by Williams, which found that the decade from 2000 to 2018 was the second driest in the past 12,000 years of record-keeping. However, 2021 – 2022’s record-breaking heat, dwindling reservoirs, and increase in dangerously unpredictable and uncontrollable fires were worse still.

Researchers from UCLA, NASA, and Columbia University studied soil moisture levels in landscapes stretching from Montana to northern Mexico and from the Pacific Ocean north to the Rocky Mountains. They looked at tree ring patterns to figure out how much moisture was in the soil over time. Stunted development patterns can be seen in the rings where they appear closer together.

Researchers discovered that mega droughts, which are extended periods of dryness lasting more than two decades, are woven into history. Water availability fluctuated across time, even before humans began using it for industrial purposes. The climate catastrophe, on the other hand, has exacerbated this variability. In the last 22 years, soil moisture deficiencies have doubled compared to the 1900s, according to their research. More than 40% of the rise in severity was caused by humans.

The researchers are concerned that the West is reaching a tipping point in its rising trajectory. It’s been shown in numerous studies that human-caused global warming and drought are linked, and that these climate calamities compound over time. Heat waves are expected to grow in size, intensity, and frequency in the coming years, according to a substantial body of research. This study, on the other hand, provides information that shows how quickly and steeply these changes are taking place in the context of history.

There are many experts and campaigners who think this will be a wake-up call to prepare for a future that is quickly becoming reality. Unsustainable systems are already showing signs of weakness. A declining water bank account, Williams explains, “means that our spending must be curtailed before the account goes dry.”

Hunting for Alien Megastructures

In 2015, the astronomers of NASA stated that they had discovered an object, which was later on known as Tabby’s star, which blocked out about 22% of the light from its parent star named as KIC 8462852. This discovery was made by NASA’s planet hunting Kepler space observatory. It’s called a Megastructure because the largest planet, Jupiter, would only block out about 1% of a star’s light which means that this object is possibly very huge. Some astronomers thought it was a cloud of comets, and some thought it was maybe the debris from a recently destroyed planet but another guess was an Alien Megastructure.

Kepler Space Telescope

Ann Marie Cody, a researcher scientist at NASA and the SETI Institute stated in an interview with Vice that “[It’s] essentially any artificial structure built by an intelligent civilization perhaps for energy harvesting purposes”. Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) is currently working to find Alien Megastructures, and they try to find these huge objects by looking at large amounts of stars, capturing their photos and then translating them in an order of brightness. This procedure is followed when a planet-like object passes in front of the star and dims the brightness of the star’s light. Ann Marie Cody stated that if an artificial object passed in front of a star, it creates a different light signature compared to passing natural objects. The abnormal light signature will help identify the unusual object.

There still haven’t been any Alien Megastructures detected yet but there could be a high chance of some unusual objects being present and the SETI says that they will inform the world if they identify any artificial Alien Megastructure. Ann Marie Cody also stated in the interview with Vice that “we don’t want science to be happening behind closed doors,” and that “we want the public to see that it’s a process. It’s not just like you discover something instantly and there it is. You’ve got to follow-up and test all hypotheses.”

These Alien Megastructures are also known as Dyson Spheres and they look like ​​dark embers when viewed through infrared telescopes. In 1960, a scientist known as Freeman Dyson said that these Alien Megastructures were a sign of alien life and after over 60 years later, scientists are still searching for proof of alien life. There are already some red herrings that naturally exist in the galaxy which can be very similar to the artificial Dyson Spheres or Alien Megastructures and astronomers are finding it hard to tell the difference between them. The best way to find these Dyson Spheres is to look for them around supermassive black holes, or any high energy astrophysical objects.

Omicron Spread

The Omicron variant of the Covid-19 virus is said to be the most different variant from earlier versions of coronavirus, but the good news is that the symptoms are not as severe as the previous variants. But the main problem with this variant is that it is highly contagious and is spreading way more quickly than the Delta variant. Some scientists believe that the Omicron variant is the fastest spreading virus in the history of the world. The reason behind Omicron not causing that many deaths or high intensive illnesses is the vaccination program most countries have utilized. Experts from Case Western Reserve University said that patients affected by Omicron are at less risk of being admitted to the hospital or intensive care unit compared to patients affected by the Delta at a rate of 1:2. 

Research performed by the experts from Case Western Reserve University also found that a booster shot against Covid-19 will protect against the Omicron variant. These booster shots protect the human bodies from severe illnesses caused by Covid-19. The CDC director Dr Rochelle Walensky stated that “Protection against infection and hospitalization with the omicron variant is highest for those who are up to date with their vaccination, meaning those who are boosted when they are eligible”. The third dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccine was said to reduce hospital admissions by 94 percent during the delta wave, and by 82 percent once omicron started spreading. 

The Omicron variant was first identified in South Africa and spread quickly throughout the rest of the world. It effects the upper respiratory tract of the human body which is what makes it less severe than the other variants. According to WHO’s data, Omicron has reached at least 128 more countries causing disruptions in normal human activity and the countries’ economies. Countries with high amounts of unvaccinated people are most at risk of increased deaths and hospitalizations. It seems that the number of cases in South Africa have decreased thanks to the lockdown and the booster shots, which indicates that this variant can be controlled if all the nations follow the right instructions and take proper precautions. 

Director of the Basque Museum of the History of Medicine and Science, Anton Erkoreka says that the spread of Omicron has exceeded the spread of the bubonic plague, Black Death which was spread almost 700 years ago. Erkoreka stated that “It is the most-explosive and the fastest-spreading virus in history,” Currently in the USA, the Omicron variant of the coronavirus has highly affected the population which has caused the government to declare an emergency for the 8th time. Even when the Omicron variant is labeled as less severe, it is still causing deaths and hospitalizations in vulnerable people with weaker immune systems and those who are yet to be vaccinated.

Blocking Out The Sun

Jeff Bezos, the founder and executive chairman of Amazon is finding ways to block out the rays of the Sun. Bezos revealed that Amazon has collaborated with the National Center for Atmospheric Research and SilverLining, which is a non profit organization which researches and works in order to keep a safe climate. Amazon’s role in this research is that Amazon’s cloud infrastructure is being used to test different plans these organizations have created to see how the world will react when the Sun Rays will be blocked out. The central idea behind this “blocking the Sun out” plan is to cool the earth down if Global Warming keeps acting the way it is right now. The three organizations are intending to create thirty simulations including one where humans will artificially inject aerosols in the air in order to fade the Suns light resulting in cooling down the Earth.

The burning of fossil fuels is vastly increasing Global Warming which can result in constant high temperatures throughout the year, melting of ice, frequent flooding, more severe storms and droughts, increasing sea levels, scarcity of food, loss of species, high health risks and eventually poverty and unemployment. These are the reasons that scientists are working so hard to prevent further climate change.

Amazon providing its cloud to help with the research is a very cheap alternative to supercomputers which are usually used in these types of scientific researches. Supercomputers are not only highly expensive, but they also take a lot of time to set up and operate. Amazon’s cloud system is so strong that it can perform like a supercomputer. Performing this research is very important as it will not only identify the advantages of blocking out Sun rays, but will also determine the potential downsides the world will face when (and if) they decide to go with this plan. Disadvantages could include huge negative impacts on the agriculture sector and their crops which will be nearly impossible to control once it happens. This whole experiment is a huge risk which could put the whole world into danger, which is why thorough research and data collection is needed.

Entirely blocking out the Sun is also a very bad idea as the world will become a super cold place where the temperature will not be bearable, the oceans would freeze, photosynthesis will stop and due to the sudden drop in the temperatures, most of the living things will eventually die eventually. So, in short, life without Sunlight is impossible which is why the experiment these scientists are performing only includes dimming the Sun rays instead of blocking the whole Sun. Fading the Sun rays is the best and long lasting solution for the extreme climate change the world is experiencing right now which is causing a lot of problems, but to make sure that this is the right experiment, they need time.