Wednesday, 12 December, 2018

Antarctica’s Ice Shelves Are Melting Rapidly

Antarctica’s Ice Shelves Are Melting Rapidly

Posted on Thursday, 27 October, 2016Sunday, 20 August, 2017 by Zheluo Cai

Antarctica’s Ice Shelves Are Melting Rapidly.

Antarctica measures about 14 million square kilometers or 5.4 million square miles, about twice the size of Australia, and larger than the USA and Mexico together. Along its western edges, giant glaciers have been melting since 2002, and sections of the ice sheet are creeping towards the sea. There is growing evidence that this trend is accelerating: there has been a 75% increase in Antarctic ice mass loss in the ten years from 1996 to 2006. As of November 2012, the total mass loss from the West Antarctica is estimated at 118 ± 9 gigatonnes per year, mainly from the Amundsen Sea coast. In fact, ice mass loss in both Antarctica and Greenland contributes about 20% to the current rate of global sea level rise.

Read Article Here:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/new-research-finds-antarcticas-ice-shelves-are-melting-rapidly-1477407600

Arp 188 and the Tadpole's Tail.
Image Credit: Hubble Legacy Archive, ESA, NASA; Processing: Faus Márquez (AAE). Distant galaxies form a dramatic backdrop for this disrupted spiral galaxy Arp 188, the Tadpole Galaxy. It is 420 million light-years distant toward the northern constellation of the Dragon (Draco), with its eye-catching tail of about 280 thousand light-years long, featuring massive, bright blue star clusters. It is theorised that a more compact intruder galaxy crossed in front of Arp 188 - from right to left in this view - and was slung around behind the Tadpole by their gravitational attraction, with tidal forces drawing out the spiral galaxy's stars, gas, and dust forming the spectacular tail. The intruder galaxy, 300,000 light-years behind the Tadpole, is seen through foreground spiral arms at the upper right.

Sunflowers (Tournesols) is the name of two series of still life paintings by the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh. The first series, executed in Paris in 1887, depicts the flowers lying on the ground, while the second set, executed a year later in Arles, shows a bouquet of sunflowers in a vase. In the artist's mind, both sets were linked by the name of his friend Paul Gauguin, who acquired two of the Paris versions. On March 30, 1987, Japanese insurance magnate, Yasuo Goto, paid the equivalent of US $39,921,750 for van Gogh's Still Life: Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers at auction at Christie's London. The painting currently resides at Seiji Togo Yasuda Memorial Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo.

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