The Daily Galaxy: Great Discoveries Channel

Global Warming is Accelerating Growth of Ancient High-altitude Trees

Ancient pines close to treeline have wider annual growth rings for the period from 1951 to 2000 than for the previous 3,700 years, reports a University of Arizona-led research team. Regional temperatures have increased, particularly at high elevations, during the same 50-year time period. Increasing temperatures at high altitudes are fueling the post-1950 growth spurt has been observed in Rocky Mountain bristlecone pines, including ones in Arizona's San Francisco Peaks.

Bristlecone pines live for thousands of years on dry, windswept, high-elevation mountain slopes in the western U.S. The scientists collected and analyzed tree rings from Great Basin bristlecone pines located in three mountain ranges in eastern California and Nevada that are separated by hundreds of miles.

Experts Predict Great Barrier Reef Could Be World's 1st Gobal Ecosystem to Collapse

The Great Barrier Reef will be so degraded by warming waters that it will be unrecognizable within 20 years, according Charlie Veron, former chief scientist of the Australian Institute of Marine Science, at a conference in London: “There is no way out, no loopholes. The Great Barrier Reef will be over within 20 years or so. They would be the world’s first global ecosystem to collapse. I have the backing of every coral reef scientist, every research organization. I’ve spoken to them all. This is critical. This is reality.”

Is Growth of Mega Cities Accelerating the Biodiversity Crisis? -A Galaxy Insight

"Every week humans create the equivalent of a city the size of Vancouver."

A new study outlines the uncomfortable question of what happens to the planet’s biodiversity when cities take over the world. Cities are growing, and they’re growing fast. It is projected that urban growth will create an additional 350,000 square miles of cities roads, buildings and parking lots—covering a combined area the size of Texas—by 2030. Every week humans create the equivalent of a city the size of Vancouver. What will this staggering growth mean for both nature and people?

Shai Agassi -The Next Bill Gates? A Bold Plan for the Mass Adoption of Electric Cars

Forget about the hybrid auto -- Shai Agassi shares his global electric car vision for a radical plan to take entire countries oil-free by 2020.

Apophis Nixes Earth's One-Million-Year Asteroid-Impact Cycle: NASA Says "Close, But No Impact"

“The threat of the Earth being hit by an asteroid is increasingly being accepted as the single greatest natural disaster hazard faced by humanity.”

Nick Bailey of the University of Southampton's School of Engineering Sciences team

Using updated information, NASA scientists have recalculated the path of the Apophis asteroid -approximately the size of two-and-a-half football fields. The refined path indicates a significantly reduced likelihood of a hazardous encounter with Earth in 2036..

A Planet of Peak Water? Leading Experts Says Water Scarcity Will Become the #1 Global Challenge

A rare herd of desert elephants in Mali is being ravaged by one of the worst droughts in living memory, which has left water sources at lowest level in the past quarter of a century. Could this haunting event be a harbinger of a wider, unfolding global crisis?

Is There a "Moore's Law" for Cities? World's Leading Experts Say "Yes"

Several thousand years ago the evolution of social organizations in the form of cities brought a new dynamic to the planet that seems to be uniquely human: People actually do walk on average faster in larger cities whereas heart rates decrease as animal size increases. With the city, it seems, mankind has created an "organism" operating beyond the bounds of biology.

1783 Iceland Eruption Shrunk the Nile -The Planet's Longest River

Volcanic eruptions in high-latitudes can greatly alter climate and distant river flows, including the Nile, according to a study funded in part by NASA. Researchers found that Iceland's Laki volcanic event, a series of about ten eruptions from June 1783 through February 1784, significantly changed atmospheric circulations across much of the Northern Hemisphere creating unusual temperature and precipitation patterns that peaked in the summer of 1783, including far below normal rainfall over much of the Nile River watershed and record low river levels.

The Blue Planet -Power of Water (VIDEO)

Can Prehistoric Fossils Predict Future Climate Change? A Galaxy Classic

The first comprehensive reconstruction of an extreme warm period shows the sensitivity of the climate system to changes in carbon dioxide (CO2) levels as well as the strong influence of ocean temperatures, heat transport from equatorial regions, and greenhouse gases on Earth's temperature. Scientists examined fossils from 3.3 to 3.0 million years ago, known as the mid-Pliocene warm period. Research was conducted by the Pliocene Research, Interpretation and Synoptic Mapping (PRISM) group, led by the U.S. Geological Survey.

Global Warming is Accelerating Growth of Ancient High-altitude Trees

Ancient pines close to treeline have wider annual growth rings for the period from 1951 to 2000 than for the previous 3,700 years, reports a University of Arizona-led research team. Regional temperatures have increased, particularly at high elevations, during the same 50-year time period. Increasing temperatures at high altitudes are fueling the post-1950 growth spurt has been observed in Rocky Mountain bristlecone pines, including ones in Arizona's San Francisco Peaks.

Bristlecone pines live for thousands of years on dry, windswept, high-elevation mountain slopes in the western U.S. The scientists collected and analyzed tree rings from Great Basin bristlecone pines located in three mountain ranges in eastern California and Nevada that are separated by hundreds of miles.

Experts Predict Great Barrier Reef Could Be World's 1st Gobal Ecosystem to Collapse

The Great Barrier Reef will be so degraded by warming waters that it will be unrecognizable within 20 years, according Charlie Veron, former chief scientist of the Australian Institute of Marine Science, at a conference in London: “There is no way out, no loopholes. The Great Barrier Reef will be over within 20 years or so. They would be the world’s first global ecosystem to collapse. I have the backing of every coral reef scientist, every research organization. I’ve spoken to them all. This is critical. This is reality.”

Is Growth of Mega Cities Accelerating the Biodiversity Crisis? -A Galaxy Insight

"Every week humans create the equivalent of a city the size of Vancouver."

A new study outlines the uncomfortable question of what happens to the planet’s biodiversity when cities take over the world. Cities are growing, and they’re growing fast. It is projected that urban growth will create an additional 350,000 square miles of cities roads, buildings and parking lots—covering a combined area the size of Texas—by 2030. Every week humans create the equivalent of a city the size of Vancouver. What will this staggering growth mean for both nature and people?

Shai Agassi -The Next Bill Gates? A Bold Plan for the Mass Adoption of Electric Cars

Forget about the hybrid auto -- Shai Agassi shares his global electric car vision for a radical plan to take entire countries oil-free by 2020.

Apophis Nixes Earth's One-Million-Year Asteroid-Impact Cycle: NASA Says "Close, But No Impact"

“The threat of the Earth being hit by an asteroid is increasingly being accepted as the single greatest natural disaster hazard faced by humanity.”

Nick Bailey of the University of Southampton's School of Engineering Sciences team

Using updated information, NASA scientists have recalculated the path of the Apophis asteroid -approximately the size of two-and-a-half football fields. The refined path indicates a significantly reduced likelihood of a hazardous encounter with Earth in 2036..

A Planet of Peak Water? Leading Experts Says Water Scarcity Will Become the #1 Global Challenge

A rare herd of desert elephants in Mali is being ravaged by one of the worst droughts in living memory, which has left water sources at lowest level in the past quarter of a century. Could this haunting event be a harbinger of a wider, unfolding global crisis?

Is There a "Moore's Law" for Cities? World's Leading Experts Say "Yes"

Several thousand years ago the evolution of social organizations in the form of cities brought a new dynamic to the planet that seems to be uniquely human: People actually do walk on average faster in larger cities whereas heart rates decrease as animal size increases. With the city, it seems, mankind has created an "organism" operating beyond the bounds of biology.

1783 Iceland Eruption Shrunk the Nile -The Planet's Longest River

Volcanic eruptions in high-latitudes can greatly alter climate and distant river flows, including the Nile, according to a study funded in part by NASA. Researchers found that Iceland's Laki volcanic event, a series of about ten eruptions from June 1783 through February 1784, significantly changed atmospheric circulations across much of the Northern Hemisphere creating unusual temperature and precipitation patterns that peaked in the summer of 1783, including far below normal rainfall over much of the Nile River watershed and record low river levels.

The Blue Planet -Power of Water (VIDEO)

Can Prehistoric Fossils Predict Future Climate Change? A Galaxy Classic

The first comprehensive reconstruction of an extreme warm period shows the sensitivity of the climate system to changes in carbon dioxide (CO2) levels as well as the strong influence of ocean temperatures, heat transport from equatorial regions, and greenhouse gases on Earth's temperature. Scientists examined fossils from 3.3 to 3.0 million years ago, known as the mid-Pliocene warm period. Research was conducted by the Pliocene Research, Interpretation and Synoptic Mapping (PRISM) group, led by the U.S. Geological Survey.