Planet Earth

Meteorite Falls from the Sky, Crashes into Rice Field in India

Anyone still doubting that this is on the rise?!

via Time of India:

Madhubani/Patna: Farmers working in a paddy field at a village in Madhubani district were left shaken when a meteorite-like object weighing around 15kg fell from the sky, leaving a crater at the spot where it crashed.

Madhubani DM Shirsat Kapil Ashok told TOI that the incident took place around 2.30pm on Monday. “Agriculture labourers working the paddy field where the meteorite struck claimed that they saw a fireball-like object coming down from the sky and made a deep crater where it hit the ground. The farmers also saw smoke coming out from the spot in the water-filled agriculture field,” Shirsat said.

Displaying the ‘meteorite’ wrapped in a red cloth on Tuesday morning, the Madhubani DM said the stone-like object has magnetic properties. He added that the mysterious object was kept secure in the treasury office at the Madhubani collectorate.

“I have written a letter to the principal secretary of the science and technology department along with a copy to the principal secretary of state art, culture and youth affairs department,” Shirsat said, adding the sample was sent to Patna on Tuesday evening.

“The science and technology department will take a decision regarding further action. The object might be sent to space research organisations like ISRO or any museum,” Shirsat said.

© STR/AFP/Getty Images A villager holds the suspected meteorite.

Geoscientists are not surprised at the fall of a meteorite in Madhubani district as it is said to be a common phenomenon. But the weight and size of the meteorite is noteworthy, they said.

N Dayal, a retired director of Geological Survey of India, pointed out that a meteorite weighing about five kg had fallen at Sherghati in Gaya district on August 25, 1865.

The said meteorite was a Martian rock which had solidified from a volcanic magma more than four billion years ago. Two pieces of meteorites weighing 600 gm and 200 gm respectively fell at Parsa in Muzaffarpur on April 14, 1942. However, a number of meteorites of bigger size have reportedly fallen in other states, including Jharkhand in the past and most of them have been studied in detail, Dayal said.

Patna University geology department head Ramesh Shukla said every year the earth is hit by nearly 6,100 meteors large enough to reach the ground, but the vast majority fall unnoticed in uninhabited areas. In the present case, however, the meteor has fallen in an inhabited area. Geoscientists would make a detailed study of this meteorite soon, he added.

Amitabh, project coordinator at Shri Krishna Science Centre, Patna told TOI on Tuesday that there was only a 6 to 7% chance of a meteor reaching the surface of the earth, while in 90% cases, only ashes were recovered.

“When a meteor enters the earth’s orbit, it turns into ball of fire due to friction, and it burns until there is nothing left. It is likely that the meteor which was found in Madhubani was huge maybe around 600 kg that got reduced to around 10kg.” Talking about its significance, Amitabh said, “It is presumed that meteors were formed at the birth of the universe. Through micro-analysis of meteors, scientists can get some information regarding solar system and universe. When the meteors (if iron made) came in contact with earth orbit, it also channels the magnetic power of the earth.”

B K Mishra & Faryal Rumi
The Times of India
Headline Image:
© STR/AFP/Getty Images

Planet Earth

Asteroid Will Make Close Fly by of Earth on Friday the 13th

NASA has been monitoring an asteroid which maintains an orbit around various bodies in the solar system and consistently passes through Earth’s orbit with the sun. 13 near-Earth objects in total are expected to fly past Earth in December of this year.

Earth is set to have a close encounter with an enormous asteroid which is set to fly nearby Earth on Friday at a speed of almost 18,000 miles an hour (more than 28,000 km/h), according to NASA.

The upcoming pass-by is estimated to happen on 8:25 am on 13 December, the unlucky Friday the 13th. The asteroid’s orbit diagram indicates that the near-Earth approach will follow the rock’s intersection with Earth’s orbit.

According to the space agency’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS), the asteroid has an Earth-crossing orbit with the sun and will not approach from a diagonal or perpendicular direction and instead will flyby perpendicular to earth.

It is expected to pass by earth at a shockingly close 0.03033 astronomical units, around 1.9 million miles (more than 3mn km) away.

NASA has dubbed the asteroid 2019 XO1 and estimate that it is around 243-feet wide, about the width of a Boeing 747 plane.

According to CNEOS, 2019 XO1 is classified as an Aten asteroid, meaning that its orbit circulates around a number of celestial bodies in the solar system including the Sun, Venus, Mercury, and Earth.

The asteroid has a tendency to intersect its orbit with Earth’s, typically when it is furthest away from the sun.

3 December marked the first time 2019 XO1 was identified in its frequent encroachment on Earth. It also comes close to Mercury and Venus but, unlike its proximity with Earth, it does not cross the paths of the two other planets.

The body first came near Earth on 17 November 2013, missing the planet by 0.09488 astronomical units, around 8.8 million miles.

Following its passing on Friday the 13th, the asteroid will not come back from Earth’s outcrop of the solar system until December 22, 2022, where it will creep as close as 0.09534 astronomical units, up to 8.9 million miles (more than 14Mn km) away.

Sputniknews
Image credit: © CCO

Planet Earth

Los Angeles and Chicago Are Readying to Erase 68,000 Nonviolent Marijuana Convictions

Phillip Schneider, Staff Writer
Waking Times

The cities of Los Angeles and Chicago are taking a big step toward ending the damage caused from the war on drugs by getting ready to expunge nearly 70,000 non-violent marijuana convictions from citizen’s criminal records.

Kim Foxx, Cook County’s State Attorney in Chicago, is preparing to eliminate misdemeanor convictions of close to 18,000 residents which she argues will help mostly racial minorities get back into the housing and job markets, whereas having these cannabis crimes on their record sets up a barrier between them and these life essentials.

The city of Los Angeles has also declared that they will be expunging or lessening the severity of non-violent cannabis offenses for around 50,000 residents. The crimes they intend to clear involve not only cannabis possession, but selling, cultivating, and transporting as well.

“We are undoing the harm prosecutors have caused … Folks are going to be making billions of dollars on this, selling it by the metric ton, on the backs of communities that were devastated by the war on drugs. Is that fair? No.” – Kim Foxx

This expungement of misdemeanor marijuana crimes is not exclusive to Los Angeles or Chicago, and rides on the back of the now eleven states and the District of Columbia which have legalized marijuana for recreational use either by referendum or their state legislature.

Illinois, California, and New York have all passed laws mandating the automatic expungement of low-level cannabis crimes such as possession, with an additional twelve enacting laws that allow citizens to request expungement on an individual basis.

In this year of 2019, the state of Illinois became the eleventh state in the union to legalize recreational cannabis. Starting in 2020, HB 1438 will not only end the state’s prohibition on marijuana to use over age twenty-one, but also sets up the entire state to expunge 770,000 individuals of their criminal records relating to small-scale marijuana possession.

However, some argue that blanket expungement, or the indiscriminate sealing of records and de facto erasure in the eyes of the law, will empower drug offenders with other related convictions that include violence or an involvement with gangs.

“These are people who were convicted of making a decision to break the law … We’re going down a very slippery slope when we allow people to choose what laws they want to respect and obey, and which ones they don’t.” – Bob Bushman, president of the National Narcotic Officers’ Assns.’ Coalition.

But others argue that manual expungement is too costly and time consuming, both for the state and for individuals convicted of crimes. Other states that have begun expungement include Washington under governor Jay Inslee, and Hawaii under governor David Ige, although Ige did not sign nor veto the bill.

“It’s truly the gateway conviction,” says Kim Foxx. She argues that small-scale, nonviolent marijuana convictions lead to a lesser ability to obtain jobs and housing, causing many to resort to crime just to get a roof over their heads and food on the table.

“Our clients often have very complicated records. And marijuana is often the first conviction and then they can’t get jobs or housing, and then there are more convictions … Automatic expungement is a very good first step.” – Regina Hernandez, lawyer for Legal Aid Chicago

Kim Foxx’s childhood story best exemplifies that point that low-level nonviolent drug laws are not only an assault on our personal rights but have far more potential for harm than good.

“She told me it leveled her out,” Foxx said, speaking of her mother who used cannabis to treat crippling bipolar disorder. “She never was arrested for it, but if she had been, we could have lost our housing. The idea she could have been considered a criminal is absurd. She wasn’t out there hurting people.”

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Planet Earth

Greenland is losing ice seven times faster than expected

Credit: University of Leeds / Youtube

Greenland is ceasing to be that vast white territory because it is losing ice at a speed seven times faster than in 1990.

The fatal scenario goes according to the context of global warming of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which would expose 400 million people to coastal flooding in the year 2100.

A joint work of 96 scientists from 50 international organizations has generated the most detailed image so far of the ice loss from Greenland.

The team called Ice Sheet Mass Balance Inter-comparison Exercise (IMBIE) used 26 surveys to calculate changes in the Greenland ice sheet mass between 1992 and 2018.

The worst case scenario

The research results show that Greenland has lost so far 3.8 billion tons of ice, since 1992. This thaw is enough to raise the sea level by 10.6 millimeters.

The figures are alarming as they show a seven-fold increase in ice loss in just three decades.

Aerial photograph of icebergs discharging from the Jakobshavn glacier in Greenland Credit: William Colgan, Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland

In 2013, the IPCC predicted that worldwide sea level would rise 60 centimeters by 2100, leaving 360 million people at risk due to coastal flooding. However, the new study shows that the ice loss is increasing faster than expected, which would generate an increase of even 7 centimeters more at sea level.

Andrew Shepherd in the University of Leeds, lead author of the research, he said in a statement:

As a general rule, for every one-centimeter increase in global sea level, another six million people are exposed to coastal flooding across the planet.
According to current trends, the melting of ice in Greenland will cause 100 million people to flood each year at the end of the century, which adds up to 400 million in total due to all the sea level rise. These are not unlikely events or small impacts; they are happening and will be devastating for coastal communities. ”

Caused by warming

The climate models regionals used by the team of researchers showed that half of the ice loss was due to rising air temperatures. The other half was caused by the rising ocean temperature.

Download glaciers that split icebergs in the waters of the Mogens Heinesen fjord in southwest Greenland. Credit: Benoit Lecavalier

The doctor. Erik Ivins of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory NASA and lead author of the study said in a statement:

Polar ice satellite observations are essential to monitor and predict how the climate change could affect ice losses and sea level rise. While computer simulation allows us to make projections from climate change scenarios, satellite measurements provide irrefutable evidence. ”

The team expects to continue monitoring the ice reduction in Greenland to determine the possible sea surge each year.

The research findings have been published in the journal. Nature.