Tag Archives: Kilometers

Jaguar Sets Records by Swimming Over 1.3 Kilometers

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Jaguars are known to be strong swimmers

Matthias Graben/ImageBroker RF/Getty Images

The camera trap captured footage of a jaguar swimming at least 1.3 kilometers on the island of Ceradam Saddam in central Brazil.

Interestingly, it’s suggested that the jaguar may have swum nearly twice that distance. To reach the island, it needed a 1 km swim to a smaller island, followed by a 1.3 km swim, or a direct 2.3 km swim from the mainland without a break.

“We speculate this cat used a small island as a stepping point,” said Leandro Silveira from the Jaguar Conservation Fund in Brazil. “In fact, I managed to swim a straight 2.3-kilometer stretch.”

Jaguar was snapped with a camera trap

Leandro Silveira/Jaguar Conservation Fund in Brazil

According to Silveira, this is the longest confirmed swim by a large cat documented through direct evidence. Jaguars are indeed powerful swimmers, adept at hunting caimans underwater. However, there have been no previous reports of them swimming beyond 200 meters at one time, according to Silveira.

In 2020, Silveira’s team placed multiple camera traps around Ceradam Saddam. In May that year, an adult male jaguar was recorded on the mainland. Fast forward four years to August 2024, and the same jaguar (recognized by its unique coat pattern) was detected on the island’s camera.

This adds to prior sightings, including a collared cougar that swam 1.1 km on Skaxin Island off the coast of Washington, indicating that local cougars might swim up to 2 km to various islands. Last year, two male lions were also photographed swimming in waterways in Uganda, with estimated distances of 1-1.5 km. Their motivation appeared to be reaching a woman calling from the other side.

The reasons behind the jaguar’s long swim remain unclear. “The island is relatively small,” Silveira explains. “As far as we are aware, it does not have an abundance of prey that would make it particularly appealing.”

The jaguar might have the capability to swim even further. Malaca – The Dipioca Islands are located over 5 km from the Brazilian coast. Potential mating with mainland jaguars.

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Source: www.newscientist.com

Winds on the alien planet reach speeds of 33,000 kilometers per hour

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Artist’s visualization of the gas giant WASP-127b

ESO/L.Calzada

The vast alien planet has fierce winds blowing around its equator at nearly 30 times the speed of sound on Earth.

Lisa Nortman He and his colleagues at the University of Göttingen in Germany used the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile to observe WASP-127b, a gas giant exoplanet more than 500 light-years from Earth. Although slightly larger than Jupiter, it is one of the least dense planets we know of.

The researchers expected the light signal from the planet’s atmosphere to have one distinct peak, but instead they found two distinct peaks.

“It was a little confusing,” Nortman says. “But when we analyzed the data a little more carefully, it became clear that there were two signals. I was very excited – my first thought was that it must be some kind of super-rotating wind. I thought that right away.”

The researchers concluded that the two mountains were caused by rapid winds from the jet stream near the equator, with half of the wind moving toward Earth and the other half moving away from it. The wind appears to be made up of water and carbon monoxide, and appears to be moving at 33,000 kilometers per hour, the fastest wind ever measured on Earth.

“We’re talking about nine kilometers per second. Even Jupiter’s wind speeds are on the order of a few hundred meters per second, so this is actually an order of magnitude bigger.” vivian parmentier at Oxford University.

He says that if you were in this wind, you wouldn’t be able to feel such extreme speeds because it would be moving around you at the same speed. But because the wind moves from the hot side of the Earth, which is always facing the star, to the cold side, which is always in darkness, you will experience a temperature difference of several hundred degrees in a few hours.

Researchers don’t know why WASP-127b has such extreme winds, but Nortman said the planet has certain peculiarities, including a low density and an unstable orbit around its star. It is said that there are certain characteristics that may play a role. “However, no clear connection has been established between those facts and particularly strong winds.”

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Source: www.newscientist.com

New: Groundbreaking drill core penetrates 1.2 kilometers into Earth’s mantle

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A rock sample from Earth’s mantle viewed under a microscope

Johan Lissenberg

In the middle of the North Atlantic, geologists have drilled 1,268 metres below the seafloor – the deepest hole ever drilled into Earth’s mantle – and analysis of the resulting rock core may provide new clues about the evolution of the planet’s outermost layers and even the origin of life.

The Earth is generally made up of several different layers, including the solid outer crust, the upper and lower mantle, and the core. The upper mantle, located just below the crust, is made up primarily of magnesium-rich rocks called peridotites. This layer drives important planetary processes such as earthquakes, the hydrological cycle, and the formation of volcanoes and mountain ranges.

“Until now, we’ve only been able to see fragments of the mantle,” Johan Lissenberg “However, there are many places on the seafloor where the mantle is exposed,” said researchers from Cardiff University in the UK.

One such region is an underwater mountain called Atlantis Mountains, located near a volcanically active area of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Pieces of the mantle constantly come to the surface and melt, giving rise to the region’s many volcanoes. Meanwhile, as seawater seeps deeper into the mantle, it is heated by higher temperatures, producing compounds such as methane, which bubbles up from hydrothermal vents and serves as fuel for microorganisms.

“There’s a kind of chemical kitchen beneath the Atlantis massif,” Lisenberg says.

To learn more about this dynamic region, he and his colleagues initially planned to use the drilling ship JOIDES Resolution to drill 200 meters into the mantle, deeper than researchers had gone before.

“We then started drilling and it went surprisingly well,” a team member said. Andrew McCaig “We retrieved a very long continuous fragment of rock and decided to go for it and go as deep as we could,” said researchers from the University of Leeds in the UK.

Ultimately, the team succeeded in drilling to a depth of 1,268 metres into the mantle.

When the researchers analyzed the drill core samples, they found that they had a much lower content of a mineral called pyroxene compared to other mantle samples from around the world, suggesting that this particular part of the mantle underwent significant melting in the past, depleting it of pyroxene, Lisenberg said.

In the future, he hopes to recreate this melting process, which will allow him to understand how the mantle melts and how that molten rock travels to the surface to feed oceanic volcanoes.

Some scientists believe life on Earth began deep in the ocean near hydrothermal vents, so by studying the chemicals that show up along the cylindrical rock cores, microbiologists hope to determine the conditions that may have led to the emergence of life, and at what depths below the ocean floor.

“This is a very important borehole because it will provide a reference point for scientists across many scientific disciplines,” McCaig says.

“While a one-dimensional sample from Earth cannot provide complete information about the three-dimensional migration paths of melt and water, it is still a major achievement,” he said. John Wheeler At the University of Liverpool, UK.

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Source: www.newscientist.com

NASA Transmits Cat Video 31 Million Kilometers into Space

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Video of cat Taters chasing laser light sent from space

NASA

NASA has broken its own record by transmitting ultra-high-definition video from deep space to a distance of 31 million kilometers. The video was not of a distant celestial body or spaceship, but of a cat called Tater chasing the light from a laser pointer.

Abhijit Biswas NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) speaks new scientist Taters were selected for the first transmission at that distance.
first television test broadcast Also featured was a cat, Felix, a cartoon feline. Lasers He says the inclusion of his pointers is a visual reflection of the use of lasers in transmission.

“Apparently this cat really likes chasing laser pointers, and somehow it all came together in this video,” Biswas said.

The 15-second video was sent by NASA.
Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) The experiment was carried out aboard the Psyche spacecraft, which was launched in October to intercept the asteroid of the same name.

DSOC is really a proof of concept and I hope everyone believes that this can be done. This technology is already being used to transmit data between the Moon and Earth, but only over a distance of 384,400 kilometers. He said it should be possible to test longer distances than the Taters test in the future.

One problem is making sure the laser light is aimed precisely at the receiving station. “It’s a very narrow beam. At the distance Psyche is now, it [is] just a few hundred kilometers [wide by the time it reaches Earth]” says Biswas. “So if you take the slightest turn, you’ll end up in the Pacific Ocean or somewhere else. You’ll miss it completely. So there was a lot of anxiety about that.”

The video was transmitted at near-infrared wavelengths by a laser transceiver and took 101 seconds to travel from the spacecraft to Earth. The 267 Mbit/s message was received by the following equipment:
hale telescope After being filmed at Palomar, it was transmitted via the Internet to JPL in Southern California, where the video was played in real time. This data rate makes DSOC faster than most national broadband connections.

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Source: www.newscientist.com