Earthfiles – Page 317 – Reported and Edited by Linda Moulton Howe

September 24, 2000March 20, 2019

Infectious Diseases – A Global Threat

September 24, 2000 Atlanta, Georgia - Last week, epidemiologists from around the United States gathered in Atlanta with Center for Disease Control officials to come up with a plan to cope with the possibility of a worldwide flu epidemic. New flu strains emerge every thirty to forty years on average. The last major one was the Hong Kong flu in 1968, thirty-two years ago. So health officials are afraid the stage is set for another major influenza epidemic, or pandemic. The 1968 flu killed about 34,000 Americans.

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September 17, 2000March 20, 2019

Evidence of 7000 Year Old Flood and Human Habitation Discovered Beneath Black Sea

Black ring indicates Sinop, Turkey and the area twelve miles north where marine geologist, Robert Ballard and his research team discovered "remains of an ancient structure that was apparently flooded in a deluge of biblical proportions."

September 17, 2000 Sinop, Turkey - This week a discovery twelve miles off the northern coast of Turkey near the town of Sinop (SIN-op) was announced that could force archaeologists and anthropologists to rewrite history about the relationship of Neolithic cultures in Europe, Asia and Mesopotamia seven thousand years ago.

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September 12, 2000March 20, 2019

Black Holes – A Surprising Mass in the M82 Galaxy

Bright, near-white, oval X-ray image at center of frame on right is recent of the central region of a galaxy called M82 compared to image on left taken in June 2000. The anomalous V-shaped brightening in the left frame is a transitory intensity of x-rays that are unidentified but typical of x-ray fluctuations. Chandra X-ray Observatory images courtesy of NASA/SAO/CXC.

September 12, 2000 Washington, D. C. - Today at NASA headquarters in the nation's capitol, astrophysicists presented new x-ray images by the Chandra X-ray Observatory that indicate something with the mass of at least 500 of our suns is packed into a region about the size of our moon in a nearby galaxy called M82. Such concentrated mass is probably a black hole. And if so, it is the first discovery of such a large black hole outside galactic centers. Until now, scientists have found evidence of small black holes only ten to twenty times bigger than our sun (one solar mass) or massive ones millions of times more massive than our sun, but only at the center of galaxies. This new discovery is at least 600 light years from the center of M82 and could be a new type of black hole that evolves and grows from the merger of many black holes. Further, the scientists reported that the intensity of the X-rays was rising and falling every 600 seconds, a ten minute cycle. Cycles are more consistent with matter falling into a black hole than the collapse of one gigantic star.

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September 10, 2000March 20, 2019

Largest-Ever Antarctic Ozone Hole

September 2000 Antarctic ozone depletion rates are unprecedented. NASA's Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) data shows huge white hole over the South Pole devoid of ozone and severe thinning over the entire Antarctic continent and the tip of South America. Graphic courtesy NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland.

September 10, 2000 Greenbelt, Maryland - The ozone hole over the Antarctic is the biggest it's ever been and it's only the beginning of September. Usually Antarctic ozone depletion starts in July during the South Pole's winter. That's when extremely cold air intensifies ozone destruction, reaching a peak by the end of September and into October. But this year, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland reports that already the ozone hole is larger than all of the Antarctic and extends over the southern tip of South America. That's 11 million square miles and breaks all previous records. A spokesman at the United Nations World Meteorological Observation agency in Geneva, Switzerland told reporters: "It is remarkable to find these low values so early in September, perhaps one or two weeks earlier than in any previous year."

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September 10, 2000March 20, 2019

Arctic Ice Melt Threatens Polar Bears

"If the prediction of total Arctic ice melt by 2030 is correct, then it is truly frightening because I think it would result in huge ecological changes to the polar oceans, the loss of species, changes of balance. The effects on climate change around the Northern Hemisphere particularly could be quite dramatic."

- Ian Sterling, Ph.D., Zoologist and Research Scientist

Polar bear near Churchill, Manitoba, Canada on the western edge of Hudson Bay. Photograph © 2000 by Travel Manitoba.

September 10, 2000 Churchill, Manitoba, Canada - The Arctic and northern latitudes have been singled out by the World Widelife Fund as the most vulnerable to the rapid rate of global warming. Their sobering statistic is that 20 percent of all species in northern environments could die out as melting ice and tundra completely change the habitats.

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September 6, 2000March 20, 2019

Hubble Photographs Mystery Object in Centaurus Constellation

"I have used the Hubble quite extensively to look at many dying stars and we've seen many mysterious and beautiful shapes and structures, but we've never seen such a jet-like structure."

- Raghvendra Sahai, Ph.D., Astrophysicist, Jet Propulsion Lab

In the top Hubble photo, the longest, nearly horizontal, jets of hot gas pulse outward from both sides of a mysterious object called He2-90. (The x-shaped streaks are reflections in the telescope). In the bottom Hubble photo, enhancement of the mysterious bright object is bisected by a large, vertical disk of gas and dust. Photographs in August 2000 courtesy NASA.

September 6, 2000 Pasadena, California - At the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, astrophysicists are puzzled by a bright object about 8,000 light years from earth in the constellation Centaurus. It is giving off large jet pulses that are more typical of star births. But there is also an accretion disk of gas and dust often associated with a dying star. The paradox of birth and death characteristics is forcing a re-evaluation of what has been considered a planetary nebula since the 1990s.

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September 3, 2000March 20, 2019

Environmental Updates and 79 Cattle Die in Saskatchewan

Culex pipiens mosquito which can carry the Kunjin West Nile Fever virus. — *Culex pipiens* mosquito which can carry the Kunjin West Nile Fever virus.

September 3, 2000 -

West Nile Virus in New Jersey Crows

This past week, 165 more birds - mostly crows - in central and northern New Jersey have been confirmed to be infected with the West Nile Fever virus. One was found on the campus of Princeton University. This brings the total in New Jersey this year to 322 infected birds.

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August 30, 2000January 21, 2018

Second Wheat Formation in Whitefish, Montana

August 30, 2000 Whitefish, Montana - Today I talked with Gilbert Johnson who has been a pilot since 1957 and runs a charter service and flight school out of Kalispell, Montana. He was flying with two others on August 28, 2000 when they saw a second new wheat formation in Whitefish only about 600 feet from the first formation discovered in mid-August. Flying over that first formation, Mr. Johnson and watched his compass shift fifteen degrees while traveling straight south to north, then shift another ten degrees flying north to south. So he tried the compass over this new formation.

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August 29, 2000January 21, 2018

Black Triangle, Red Lights and Spinning Disc Over Wiltshire, England Crops

August 29, 2000 Windmill Hill, Wiltshire, England - On Saturday, August 12th in Wiltshire, England before returning to Philadelphia, I talked with a professional interior painter and interior designer from Farnham, Surrey, England and his 14-year-old daughter, Claire, about a black triangle, red lights and spinning disc each had seen either with or without binoculars on August 7th during a night watch in the Windmill Hill formation that was discovered near Avebury that day. I was in that formation around 4 PM that afternoon and was amazed at the thousands of "peacock feathers" neatly created in wave patterns by the whiskers of the mature barley.