If a 160-square-mile ice shelf collapsing isn't a sure sign of global warming, then we sure as heck don't know anymore what is. Last month, a huge chunk of the Wilkins ice shelf in Antarctica broke away from its main body, and the remaining bulk of it is about to give way any time soon. Scientists are not as disturbed, though. Read on to the full article to know why.

Australia's Aurora Australis, a marine science research vessel, recent came back from its trip from Antarctica. Dr. Martin Riddle, leader of the voyage, said that their expedition was able to uncover the rich and complex marine life in the previously unknown environment. Find out what they discovered in the full article.

Underwater volcanic eruptions are fairly common, but under-ice eruptions? Not so much. Scientists have discovered evidence of a volcano erupting under the Antarctic ice sheet 2000 years ago. Details in the full article.

The Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary is a vast stretch of ocean near Antarctica, 50 million square kilometers in size and ordained as a whaling-free zone by the International Whaling Commission. Unfortunately, the strict zero-whaling rule isn't honored apparently as the Greenpeace ship called the Esperanza spotted a Japanese whaling fleet within the sanctuary. What followed was a game of cat and mouse, and Greenpeace took the field...for now.

Data gleaned from satellite Metop revealed that the ozone hole over Antarctica was twice as big as Europe at its worst. This observation was made in late September. Scientists who analyzed data from the Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment 2 (GOME-2) on board Metop said that some unusual meteorological conditions this year caused the extensive thinning of the ozone layer.

Europe's Metop is one of three identical weather and climate observer spacecrafts that will be flying in a polar orbit over the next few years to gather data. This is a joint project between Eumetsat and the European Space Agency (ESA).

Metop's newest observation - though significant and alarming - pales in comparison to last year's recorded size of the Arctic ozone hole. Last year's hole was said to have been twice the size of North America. Even with the Montreal Protocol which places an international ban on substances responsible for ozone depletion, scientists still find ozone thinning over different regions such as the South Atlantic, South America, and Australia. Because of these recent findings, almost 200 governments have agreed to speed up the timetable on phasing out chemicals that have negative effects on the ozone layer.

Scientists and researchers believe that when the next Ice Age occurs, sadly due to global warming currently plaguing our Earth, ancient bacteria and viruses will come back to life.

This belief was strengthen further when an eight-million-year-old bacterium, extracted from the oldest known ice on Earth, started growing in a laboratory. The said bacterium was dug by a team of researchers from Rutgers University in New Jersey.

It came from the ice found between three and five metres beneath the surface of a glacier in the Beacon and Mullins valleys of Antarctica. Aside from the eight-billion-year-old sample, four more samples were taken ranging between 100,000 and eight million years old.

"We tried to grow them in media, and the young stuff grew really fast. We could plate them and isolate colonies", commented team member Kate Bidle. Quite intriguingly, the oldest sample only contains one type of bacterium compared to the younger ones which are home to various micro-organisms. The oldest sample, furthermore, grows much slowly - only doubling in size every 70 days.

Scientist Russell Vreeland of the Ancient Biomaterials Institute at West Chester University in Pennsylvania gave this interesting comment, "This has been happening probably for a long, long time. Ice freezes and melts, rocks sink and are eroded. Microbes have been involved with this process for almost four billion years".

Following the collapse and disintegration of the Larson A and B ice shelves in Antarctica, scientists have launched a 10-week expedition to explore the area and see what species dwell in the previously unexplored area.

Life has again proven its resiliency as over a thousand species were catalogued in the frigid waters off the part where the collapse happened. Interesting new creatures were found, such as a colorful octopus that looks like it was painted in the psychedelic era, a gelatinous sea squirt, sea cucumbers and some crustaceans.

Scientist Gauthier Chapelle, a member of the expedition described what they found as "virgin geography" and said "if we don't find out what this area is like now following the collapse of the ice shelf, and what species are there, we won't have any basis to know in 20 years' time what has changed and how global warming has altered the marine ecosystem."

This newly-discovered marine ecosystem became available for exploration when the ice shelves covering it were torn off the coast of Antarctica. Ice shelves are formed when glaciers inland creep out to sea over a long time and create a thick blanket of ice floating but still attached to the glacier. However, scientists say that global warming is rapidly changing the landscape in the frosty south.

In the past 30 years, about 13,500 square kilometers have broken away, drifted out to sea and dissipated in warmer waters. That's roughly half the size of New Jersey. As the terrain changes, the environment at the sea floor gradually adjusts. Some species survive the change while some die out. In some cases, new species start moving into the ecological neighborhood.

Sea lilies, sea urchins and sea cucumbers were found in this environment, but scientists noted that these species are not indigenous to the terrain. These creatures are usually found in much deeper waters but the disintegration of the ice shelves seem to have made the environment more viable for their existence.
 
Scientists pointed out that of all the species found in the expedition, 95 percent were native to the area while five percent were outsiders who moved in. In ecological terms, there has been a substantial change in the locale's biodiversity.

"Life at the sea floor obviously reacts very slowly to this very climactic change in the environmental conditions," said JulianGutt, head scientist of the International Polar Year expedition. "[It] needs hundreds to thousands of years until a new community has fully developed, if this will happen at all."

Gutt also pointed to disturbances caused by icebergs as a life-spawning event in the continent. Icebergs crashing against the shelves often leave a scarred terrain where signs of life seem to return.

     

Recently, more than a thousand aficionados and experts gathered in Viña del Mar for the Tenth International Ufology Conference, organized by Chile's Ufology Investigation Group. The highlight of the meeting was the display of photos and videos allegedly taken by the members of Chile's Armed forces.

The military video and photos included a photo of a spherical metallic object captured flying over Antarctica and a video of Navy ships being pursued by a luminous object. Aside from that, Rodrigo Bravo, Captain of the army's Fifth Division also talked about his thesis entitled "Observations of unidentified aerial phenomena identified by the Civil Air Force."

Although the captain's words do not represent the Chilean Armed Force's position on UFOs, he had been given the authorization by his superiors to participate in the conference.

Also present in the conference is retired official Armando Valdés who is involved in one of Chile's first documented UFO abductions, known as the Valdés case. This happened on April 1977 when Armando and five members of an army patrol, saw two bright objects descending from the sky.

He checked it out by himself and according to his colleagues, he just vanished. 15 minutes later, he re-appeared and passed out. It was reported that the date on his watch had been advanced by five days and he had about a week's growth of beard. His colleagues also mentioned that when Valdés regained consciousness, he uttered these words: "You do not know who we are, nor where we come from. But I tell you that we will soon return."

Fact or pure fiction? Your guesses are as good as ours.

News from down south. Waaaay down south.

Mount Erebus has a couple of interesting features. First, it's surrounded by chimney-like projections called fumaroles. Hot steam and gas escape from the volcano's sides, melting the ice and forming ice tunnels. The steam goes up the tunnels and freeze as soon as it hits the colder air above ground. These towers can grow to up to 60 feet before collapsing. Second is its lava lake with the molten lava visible. The scalding pool gets as hot as around 1,700 degrees Fahrenheit and is miles deep.

McMurdo Station, US' main research base in Antarctica is 20 miles from Mount Erebus and they monitor the volcano's activity for most of the year. The poles would be getting a lot more attention this year for the fourth International Polar Year (since 1882). Scientists will study how the poles affect the world's weather and what forms of life can survive in extreme cold.

Mount Erebus has been erupting regularly in 2005, spewing up to 50 lava bombs every time. Imagine being bombarded with ten foot wide blobs of lava. Pretty scary, especially when Erebus can throw it up to a mile from the actual mountain.

Here's a clip of Mount Erebus' eruption.

We all heaved a sigh of relief when scientists announced three years ago that the depletion of the ozone layer may be slowing down due to the international ban on chlorofluorocarbons. And it was only several weeks back that we reported on the healing of the Ozone layer. But now, it seems that the celebration was a little bit too soon.

According to the European Space Agency (ESA), so far this year, the protective layer hovering 15 miles above Earth, shielding us against harmful ultraviolet rays, has lost approximately 44 million tons. This number topped the previous record of 43 million tons of ozone loss back in 2002. Says ESA Atmospheric Engineer Claus Zehner, "The extreme loss of ozone can be explained by the temperatures above Antarctica reaching the lowest record in the area since 1979."

The depletion of the ozone layer is caused mainly by free radical catalysts. Because of the imminent danger the depletion may cause to man's health, countries started to slowly exert efforts at minimizing the damage, with Sweden being the first nation to ban CFC-containing aerosol sprays in 1978. By 1985, the Antarctic Ozone hole was discovered, and as such, negotiations at the Montreal Protocol sharply limited CFC production in 1987 and phased out completely by 1996.

The ozone level has been reported to lower by about 3% every year on a global scale during the past decade, thereby increasing the risk of skin cancer, cataracts and harm to marine life.

The ozone loss for this year was determined via the Envisat satellite of ESA.