Flares, like the ones here, burn off the natural gas emitted during oil and gas production, turning methane into less potent carbon dioxide. But the efficiency of these flares is much lower than previously thought.
Alan Gorchov Negron/University of Michigan, Yulia Chen/Stanford University
In many oil and gas producing regions, flames light the sky. The flares burn off 98 percent of the escaping natural gas, oil and gas companies claim. But observations of three U.S. oil and gas fields show efficiency is only around 91 percent , scientists report in the Sept. 30 Science . Making up the difference would be the equivalent of taking nearly 3 million cars off the road.
The natural gas escaping is primarily methane. This greenhouse gas lingers for only nine to 10 years in the atmosphere, but its warming potential is 80 times that of carbon dioxide. So oil and gas companies light flares — burning the methane to produce less-potent carbon dioxide and water. The industry and the U.S. government assumed those flares worked at 98 percent efficiency. But previous studies said that might be too optimistic , says Genevieve Plant, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor ( SN: 4/22/20 ).
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Plant and her colleagues sent planes to sample air over more than 300 flares in the Bakken Basin in North Dakota and the Permian and Eagle Ford basins in Texas, which account for more than 80 percent of the flaring in the country. The samples showed five times as much methane unburned than previously estimated.
The drop from 98 to 91 percent efficiency might seem small, but the effects are large, says Dan Cusworth, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Arizona in Tucson who was not involved in the study. “Any percentage that is in the methane phase instead of CO 2 phase is substantially more problematic.”
Half of the difference is due to flares that aren’t burning. “We expected that flares might show a range of efficiencies, but we did not expect to see so many unlit flares,” Plant says. Between 3 and 5 percent of flares weren’t working at all. If those fires were lit, and 98 percent efficiency achieved, the result could remove the equivalent of about 13 million metric tons of carbon from the atmosphere. Light ‘em up.
Bethany was previously the staff writer at Science News for Students . She has a Ph.D. in physiology and pharmacology from Wake Forest University School of Medicine.
Science News was founded in 1921 as an independent, nonprofit source of accurate information on the latest news of science, medicine and technology. Today, our mission remains the same: to empower people to evaluate the news and the world around them. It is published by the Society for Science, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) membership organization dedicated to public engagement in scientific research and education (EIN 53-0196483).
For one tiny Australian spider, somersaulting is the secret to taking on ants twice its size.
Ants — armed with powerful jaws and sometimes chemical weapons — are so dangerous to spiders that fewer than 1 percent of arachnids attempt to hunt the insects ( SN: 9/8/21 ). High-speed footage now reveals that the Australian ant-slayer spider ( Euryopis umbilicata ) can tackle this risky prey by leaping over and lassoing its victims with silk.
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“This acrobatic behavior is just fascinating. I’ve personally never seen this kind of hunting,” says Paula Cushing, an evolutionary biologist and curator of invertebrate zoology at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, who was not involved in the study.
Alfonso Aceves-Aparicio, a behavioral ecologist at the Max Plank Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany, stumbled across the somersaulting spiders while walking home one night. A graduate student at Macquarie University in Sydney at the time, Aceves-Aparicio was intrigued when he noticed dark dots darting across the pale bark of a eucalyptus tree.
The dots were tiny spiders moving among ants. Suddenly, one of the spiders jumped. “I thought it was trying to escape an ant,” Aceves-Aparicio recalls. “But then I saw the ant floating and I thought, woah, there’s something going on here.”
Aceves-Aparicio borrowed a high-speed camera to see what the spiders were doing in greater detail. By slowing the action down, he and his colleagues could see that the spiders were in fact hunting ants in a completely unknown way.
Most ant-hunting spiders use webs or sneak up on their prey from behind to minimize risk. But despite being smaller than their prey, Aceves-Aparicio’s spiders were facing banded sugar ants ( Camponotus consobrinus ) head on. Each spider positioned itself so that it could watch ants as they moved up the tree. As one approached, the spider flipped above its prey. Once in the air, the spider latched a thread of silk onto the ant.
This single tethering action — performed in the space of milliseconds — determined whether the hunt would succeed. If the tether stuck, the spider then darted around the ant, deftly encircling them with more silk and yanking them off their feet to be dragged off and consumed.
What stands out to Aceves-Aparicio and his colleagues was the technique’s effectiveness. Predators like lions and wolves tend to miss around 50 percent of their intended targets. The success rate of the 60 spider hunts that the researchers filmed was a staggering 85 percent.
To Aceves-Aparicio, the discovery shows that extraordinary behaviors can hide in plain sight. “The message here is to have a little curiosity and to pay attention,” he says. “There are things going on everywhere. We just have to be there to find them.”
Freda Kreier was a fall 2021 intern at Science News . She holds a bachelor’s degree in molecular biology from Colorado College and a master’s in science communication from the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Science News was founded in 1921 as an independent, nonprofit source of accurate information on the latest news of science, medicine and technology. Today, our mission remains the same: to empower people to evaluate the news and the world around them. It is published by the Society for Science, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) membership organization dedicated to public engagement in scientific research and education (EIN 53-0196483).
Sperm whales (shown) dive far underwater looking for food. Dense, intricate networks of blood vessels allow the animals to accomplish the feat without harming their brains.
If you look at parts of the circulatory system of whales and dolphins, you might think that you are looking at a Jackson Pollock painting, not blood vessels. These cetaceans have especially dense, complex networks of blood vessels mainly associated with the brain and spine, but scientists didn’t know why. A new analysis suggests that the networks protect cetaceans’ brains from the pulses of blood pressure that the animals endure while diving deep in the ocean, researchers report in the Sept. 23 Science .
Whales and dolphins “have gone through these really amazing vascular adaptations to support their brain,” says Ashley Blawas, a marine scientist at the Duke University Marine Lab in Beaufort, N.C., who was not involved with the research.
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Called retia mirabilia, which means “wonderful nets,” the blood vessel networks are present in some other animals besides cetaceans, including giraffes and horses. But the networks aren’t found in other aquatic vertebrates that move differently from whales, such as seals. So scientists had suspected that the cetaceans’ retia mirabilia play a role in controlling blood pressure surges.
When whales and dolphins dive, they move their tail up and down in an undulating manner, which creates surges in blood pressure. Land animals that experience similar surges, like galloping horses, are able to release some of this pressure by exhaling. But some cetaceans hold their breath to dive for long periods of time ( SN: 9/23/20 ). Without a way to relieve that pressure, those blasts could tear blood vessels and harm other organs, including the brain.
In the new study, biomechanics researcher Margo Lillie of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and colleagues used data on the morphology of 11 cetacean species to create a computational model that can simulate the animals’ retia mirabilia. It revealed that the arteries and veins in this tangle of blood vessels are really close and may even sometimes be joined. As a result, the retia mirabilia could equalize the differences in blood pressure generated by diving, perhaps by redistributing the blood pulses from arteries to veins and vice versa. This way, the networks get rid of, or at least weaken, huge blood pressure surges that might otherwise reach and devastate the brain.
The networks “equalize the [blood flow] in a way that you never lose that blood that’s in the vein and it doesn’t collapse down on itself, and you don’t have that shooting arterial blood going really fast into the brain,” says marine biologist Tiffany Keenan of the University of North Carolina Wilmington who was not involved in the study. “It’s really neat to know what we’ve always wondered, but no one had been able to show.”
Still, studying cetaceans is tricky due to their protected status and limited access to samples, which are usually from animals that have been stranded, researchers say. For this reason, one limitation of the new study is that the researchers had to input data from different species to make their model.
“They take a little bit from here and a little bit from there, mixing a dolphin with a beluga whale with a beaked whale — it is sort of like a quilt,” says Andreas Fahlman, a marine scientist at the Oceanogràfic Foundation in Valencia, Spain, who was not involved in the study.
As a result, the model may be missing important aspects that might be specific to other species, which have unique anatomies and even move differently, with some staying closer to the surface or others diving deeper. Taking a closer look at the circulatory system of whales and dolphins, perhaps using nonintrusive techniques such sensors that can measure blood flow and pressure, may help confirm that the computational model reflects real-life dynamics.
Science News was founded in 1921 as an independent, nonprofit source of accurate information on the latest news of science, medicine and technology. Today, our mission remains the same: to empower people to evaluate the news and the world around them. It is published by the Society for Science, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) membership organization dedicated to public engagement in scientific research and education (EIN 53-0196483).
In the 1970s, scientists wondered whether any supercontinents existed before Pangaea (illustrated). Today, we know there were at least two, and researchers are exploring what supercontinent might come next.
Before Pangaea — What? — Science News , September 30, 1972
The continents as we know them resulted when the protocontinent Pangaea broke apart and its fragments made the long slow journey to their present positions. The process took about 200 million years. But the Earth’s crust is an estimated 4.5 billion years old.… [Scientists are exploring] the perplexing problem of what went on during the billions of years before Pangaea went to pieces.
The continents have an on-again, off-again relationship that has existed since well before Pangaea, fossil and rock evidence shows. Most scientists agree that the earliest known supercontinent, called Nuna, formed around 1.5 billion years ago. It broke apart and reunited as the supercontinent Rodinia about 1 billion years ago. A third supercontinent called Pannotia may have formed roughly 600 million years ago near the South Pole, but its existence is debated . Today, scientists are predicting how continents will merge in the future. A supercontinent dubbed Amasia could form 250 million years from now as the continents drift toward the North Pole ( SN: 1/21/17, p. 18 ).
Erin I. Garcia de Jesus is a staff writer at Science News . She holds a Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of Washington and a master’s in science communication from the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Science News was founded in 1921 as an independent, nonprofit source of accurate information on the latest news of science, medicine and technology. Today, our mission remains the same: to empower people to evaluate the news and the world around them. It is published by the Society for Science, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) membership organization dedicated to public engagement in scientific research and education (EIN 53-0196483).
Svante Pääbo won the 2022 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for his pioneering work in deciphering the genetics of our hominid relatives, Neandertals and Denisovans.
Establishing a new field of science to answer the question of what makes humans unique from our extinct relatives has earned Svante Pääbo the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine.
“Humanity has always been intrigued by its origins. Where did we come from and how are we related to those who came before us? What makes us different from hominins that went extinct?” said Anna Wedell, a member of the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm that announced the prize on October 3.
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Before Pääbo’s work, archaeologists and paleontologists studied bones and artifacts to learn about human evolution. But the surface study of those relics couldn’t answer some fundamental questions about the genetic changes that led humans to thrive while other ancient hominids went extinct. Pääbo, a geneticist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, worked out a way to extract and analyze DNA from ancient bones ( SN: 11/15/06 ). That led to uncovering small genetic differences between humans and extinct human relatives.
Getting DNA from ancient bones was once considered impossible, says Leslie Vosshall, a neuroscientist at the Rockefeller University in New York City, who is the vice president and chief scientific officer at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. DNA breaks down over time, so many scientists thought that there would be none remaining in fossils tens of thousands of years old. Not to mention that DNA from bacteria and other microbes and from living people contaminate the ancient genetic material. Yet Pääbo managed to stitch together tiny fragments of Neandertal DNA into readable sequences. He started with DNA from mitochondria, the energy-generating organelles inside cells. Then, he assembled a complete genetic instruction book, or genome, for a Neandertal.
Over the years Vosshall watched as Pääbo presented snippets of DNA from old bones at scientific meetings. “Nobody believed him. Everyone thought it was contamination or broken stuff” from living people. “Just the mere fact that he did it was so improbable. That he was able to get the complete genome sequence of a Neandertal was viewed, even up until he did it, as an absolutely impossible feat.”
“On a technical basis, the prize is also richly deserved,” she says.
Noted Nils-Göran Larsson, vice chairman of the Nobel committee: “This is a very fundamental, big discovery… Over the years to come, [this] will give huge insights into human physiology.”
Pääbo’s work established the field of paleogenomics. “He always pushed the frontiers of evolutionary anthropology,” says Ludovic Orlando, a molecular archaeologist at the Centre for Anthropobiology and Genomics of Toulouse in France.
Pääbo said that when he got the news of his win, he thought at first it was an “elaborate prank” by the people in his research group, but soon realized it was the real deal. “The thing that is amazing to me is that we now have some ability to go back in time and actually follow genetic history and genetic changes over time,” he said in a news conference several hours after the prize was announced.
Pääbo and colleagues have made surprising discoveries about human evolution from studying ancient DNA. For instance, they learned that humans and our extinct cousins, Neandertals, had children together. That discovery came as a shock to even people who had been looking for signs of interbreeding ( SN: 5/6/10 ). Evidence of that mixing can still be found in many humans today ( SN: 10/10/17 ).
DNA passed down from those extinct ancestors has influenced human health and physiology for better or worse. For instance, genetic variants inherited from Denisovans helped humans adapt to high altitude in Tibet ( SN: 7/2/14 ). But some Neandertal DNA has been linked to a higher risk of developing some diseases , including severe COVID-19 ( SN: 2/11/16; SN: 10/2/20 ).
Tina Hesman Saey is the senior staff writer and reports on molecular biology. She has a Ph.D. in molecular genetics from Washington University in St. Louis and a master’s degree in science journalism from Boston University.
Aimee Cunningham is the biomedical writer. She has a master’s degree in science journalism from New York University.
Science News was founded in 1921 as an independent, nonprofit source of accurate information on the latest news of science, medicine and technology. Today, our mission remains the same: to empower people to evaluate the news and the world around them. It is published by the Society for Science, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) membership organization dedicated to public engagement in scientific research and education (EIN 53-0196483).
Some picturesque blue lakes may not be so blue in the future, thanks to climate change.
In the first global tally of lake color, researchers estimate that roughly one-third of Earth’s lakes are blue . But, should average summer air temperatures rise by a few degrees, some of those crystal waters could turn a murky green or brown, the team reports in the Sept. 28 Geophysical Research Letters .
The changing hues could alter how people use those waters and offer clues about the stability of lake ecosystems. Lake color depends in part on what’s in the water, but factors such as water depth and surrounding land use also matter. Compared with blue lakes, green or brown lakes have more algae, sediment and organic matter, says Xiao Yang, a hydrologist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.
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Yang and colleagues used satellite photos from 2013 to 2020 to analyze the color of more than 85,000 lakes around the world. Because storms and seasons can temporarily affect a lake’s color, the researchers focused on the most frequent color observed for each lake over the seven-year period. The researchers also created an interactive online map that can be used to explore the colors of these lakes.
The approach is “super cool,” says Dina Leech, an aquatic ecologist at Longwood University in Farmville, Va., who was not involved with the study. These satellite data are “just so powerful.”
The scientists then looked at local climates during that time to see how they may be linked to lake color around the world. For many small or remote water bodies, records of temperature and precipitation don’t exist. Instead, the researchers also relied on climate “hindcasts” calculated for every spot on the globe, which are pieced together from relatively sparse records.
Lakes in places with average summer air temperatures that were below 19° Celsius were more likely to be blue than lakes with warmer summers, the researchers found. But up to 14 percent of the blue lakes they studied are near that threshold. If average summer temperatures increase another 3 degrees Celsius — an amount that scientists think is plausible by the end of the century — those 3,800 lakes could turn green or brown ( SN: 8/9/21 ). That’s because warmer water helps algae bloom more, which changes the properties of the water, giving it a green-brown tint, Yang says.
Extrapolating beyond this sample of lakes is a bit tricky. “We don’t even know how many lakes there are in the world,” says study coauthor Catherine O’Reilly, an aquatic ecologist at Illinois State University in Normal. Many lakes are too small to reliably detect via satellite, but by some estimates, tens of thousands of larger lakes could lose their blue hue.
If some lakes do become less blue, people will probably lose some of the resources they have come to value, O’Reilly says. Lakes are often used for drinking water, food or recreation. If the water is more clogged with algae, it could be unappealing for play or more costly to clean for drinking.
But the color changes wouldn’t necessarily mean that the lakes are any less healthy. “[Humans] don’t value lots of algae in a lake, but if you’re a certain type of fish species, you might be like ‘this is great,’” O’Reilly says.
Lake color can hint at the stability of a lake’s ecosystem, with shifting shades indicating changing conditions for the critters living in the water. One benefit of the new study is that it gives scientists a baseline for assessing how climate change is affecting Earth’s freshwater resources. Continued monitoring of lakes could help scientists detect future changes.
“[The study] sets a marker that we can compare future results to,” says Mike Pace, an aquatic ecologist at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, who was not involved with the study. “That’s, to me, the great power of this study.”
X. Yang et al . The color of Earth’s lakes . Geophysical Research Letters . Vol. 49, September 28, 2022, e2022GL098925. doi: 10.1029/2022GL098925 .
Science News was founded in 1921 as an independent, nonprofit source of accurate information on the latest news of science, medicine and technology. Today, our mission remains the same: to empower people to evaluate the news and the world around them. It is published by the Society for Science, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) membership organization dedicated to public engagement in scientific research and education (EIN 53-0196483).
