Unexpected Giant Exoplanet Discovered

A group of researchers from the University of Montreal  have announced the discovery of an exoplanet that is 115 light years away and surprisingly, was directly imaged. It also has one of the largest orbits of any known exoplanet. The discovery was published in The Astrophysical Journal.

Neptune is about thirty times further away from the Sun than Earth, around 4.5 billion kilometers away. That’s such a great distance, our minds can’t even comprehend it, and the distance from the Sun to Neptune doesn’t have anything on planet in the system of an M3 star, GU Psc, located 115 light years away in the constellation Pisces. The planet, GU Psc b, is ten times more massive than Jupiter and orbits its star at a colossal distance of 2000 AU. It takes the planet 80,000 Earth years to complete one full revolution. Neptune takes just under 165 years.

Exoplanets are typically washed out from the light of their parent star, forcing astronomers to rely on indirect methods of identification, based on how much of the star’s light is obstructed by the planet. However, the incredibly large orbit in this situation allowed them to image GU Psc b directly, based on the differing wavelengths between the planet and the star.

“The planets are much brighter when viewed in the infrared rather than visible light, because their surface temperature is lower than those of the stars, says Marie-Eve Naud. This is what has identified GU Psc b,” said lead author Marie-Eve Naud in a press release.

Another aspect that helped in identifying the exoplanet is that the host star is quite young, at only 100 million years old. The planets in the system haven’t had a chance to cool all the way, making them brighter and more easily detected. GU Psc is one of 90 young stars in the group AB Doradus and is the only one with a confirmed planet.

In order to determine some of the details GU Psc b, the researchers relied on theoretical models of how the planet may have formed. The wavelength of the light obtained from the planet indicates that it likely has a surface temperature of 800 °C (1472 °F). As a comparison, during the day on the equator of Mercury, temps only get up to about 427 °C (800 °F). They were able to use the age of the parent star to determine the mass, which is about 9-13 times more massive than Jupiter.

“GU b Psc is a true gift of nature. The great distance that separates it from its star makes possible a thorough study with a variety of instruments, allowing a better understanding of giant exoplanets in general,” co-author René Doyon said in the press release.

Researchers didn’t imagine they’d be able to directly image an exoplanet like GU Psc b with current technology, as it had been assumed that 100 light years would be the cutting-off point. Knowing that planets as distant as GU Psc b could be imaged directly may have opened more possibilities for researchers to look for exoplanets in locations they may have passed over before.

 

Seals Blood Contains As Much Carbon Monoxide As A Heavy Smokers’

Elephant seals are some of the world’s most elite divers, plunging to depths of 800 meters and holding their breaths underwater for nearly half an hour at a time. They also have as much carbon monoxide in their blood as a two-pack-a-day smoker, a new study shows. The poison even appears to offer a protective effect for them. 

 

Carbon monoxide (CO) is known as the “silent killer” because it’s a colorless, odorless gas that binds to hemoglobin, especially in the blood of smokers and firefighters. It clogs up the oxygen-carrying protein, prevents oxygen transport to tissues, and eventually causes light-headedness or even suffocation. Our bodies do naturally produce CO when heme-proteins are broken down; about 1 percent of the hemoglobin in non-smokers is bound by CO. Previous work has shown that low concentrations can be beneficial: reducing inflammatory responses and cell death caused by heart attacks and strokes. 

 

The northern elephant seal (Mirounga angustirostris) has the largest blood volumes of any mammals. To conserve oxygen for vital organs like the heart, brain, and lungs during long dives, their bodies can shut off blood flow to nonessential areas of their body, without damaging the tissues. “These animals are constantly holding their breath,” Michael Tift of Scripps Institution of Oceanography at University of California, San Diego, tells Nature. “But they don’t have any injuries.”

 

Tift and colleagues (pictured below) wanted to see how much CO elephant seals carry. So the team mildly sedated 24 elephant seals ranging from pups to the easily recognizable adult males at Año Nuevo State Park in California and collected blood samples. Then they used a blood gas analyzer to measure the proportion of hemoglobin incapacitated by CO — called carboxyhemoglobin (COHb) — relative to oxygen and carbon dioxide. 

 

The animals’ COHb levels were 10.4 percent of their total hemoglobin concentration. These are the values found in people who smoke up to 40 cigarettes a day, Tift says. And COHb levels increased as the animals aged. While high, their levels didn’t lead to carbon monoxide poisoning; the gas becomes deadly when it incapacitates more than 50 percent of hemoglobin stores, Tift explains to LiveScience.

 

So why that high? There’s only one way for an animal to clear CO from its body: Exhale it. Elephant seals probably accumulate so much COHb because they hold their breath for about 75 percent of their lives. “If they are at sea, they are constantly diving; if they are on land, they are going into sleep apneas [breath holds]. Since they are producing this stuff, they may be producing it at a similar rate to humans, but they may not be getting rid of it at the same rate,” Tift says. Alternatively, he suggests that the seals may simply produce more CO than other species because they break down heme-proteins faster, turning over more of the molecules.

 

While these COHb levels might reduce the seals’ dive limit, the constant presence of elevated CO in the blood may protect them against damaging inflammation incurred when the blood rushes back into tissues after their extreme breath-holds. 

 

In humans, blood flow is interrupted during organ transplants, strokes, and heart attacks; when blood suddenly flows back into the tissues, chemical reactions can lead to inflammation and cell death. These are called ischemia-reperfusion injuries, and they don’t seem to happen to seals. “These results are helping us find answers for the rates at which you can expose organs and tissues to this gas,” Tift says in a news release. “The elephant seal is giving us the big picture of which concentrations of carbon monoxide might be the most beneficial.” 

 

The work was presented at Experimental Biology 2014 in San Diego last month and published in the Journal of Experimental Biology last week. 

 

Scientists confirm element 117

This superheavy was produced for the second time — and by a different team of researchers than four years ago — proving that ununseptium is real

The second time’s the charm. For the second time in four years, scientists report creating a new element with 117 protons in its nucleus. That new report confirms element 117’s existence.

Both times, scientists reported making only a small amount. Several atoms. And they lasted for less than a second before breaking apart. But that was enough.

Scientists first claimed to make the element in 2010.The science community wanted to be sure that discovery was real, however, before celebrating its birthday. There was always the chance someone might have made a mistake interpreting the data.

The new announcement means chemists will likely soon be adding number 117 to their periodic table of the elements. The new entrant’s name? Unofficially, scientists are calling it ununseptium. Not terribly clever, it’s based on the Latin for one-one-seven. But that name is only temporary. Those who first created 117 should get a chance to rename it before long.

Uranium is the heaviest naturally occurring element on Earth (at least in substantial quantities). It’s number 92 on the periodic table. But for decades, scientists have been bombarding big elements with smaller ones. Their goal has been to briefly fuse them. That creates a superheavy. Depending on who you talk to, a superheavy is an either an element bigger than uranium or one more massive than rutherfordium (number 104).

For now, number 117 is the most massive element confirmed to exist. In 2006, researchers reported creating one slightly bigger: ununoctium, or number 118. But such superheavy elements must be created more than once, by different researchers. Until that happens, the scientific community will not formally accept that their existence is real. Ununoctium is still awaiting such a confirmation through a second set of tests.

The creation of element 117 began with another element, berkelium (number 97). For more than a year, researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, in Oak Ridge, Tenn., worked to make some 13 milligrams of almost pure berkelium. They shipped the radioactive element to Mainz University in Germany. There, researchers bombarded it with a high-energy beam of calcium ions. A small number of the smash-ups resulted in fusion reactions. A few atoms of element 117 emerged from those reactions.

The researchers didn’t actually “see” the new element. They deduced its creation by studying its radioactive decay. That’s when an atom sheds subatomic particles (here alpha particles). All radioactive elements, including number 117, decay. It means they break into smaller atoms or spit out subatomic particles. In the new tests, scientists quantified each successive decay of the original element and its breakdown products — known as daughters. That let them confirm that the short-lived parent must have been element 117.

In all, 72 scientists and engineers from 16 different research centers took part in the new project. They reported their achievement May 1 in Physics Review Letters.

Although element 117 was short-lived, scientists suspect some superheavies might be relatively long-lived. Such elements would exist in a so-called island of stability. Looking to find that island is one reason that scientists pursue this costly and time-consuming quest for ever-heavier elements.

A distant Earth-sized planet may have the right conditions for life

Astronomers have spotted an exoplanet that looks a lot like home. Slightly larger than Earth, this distant, alien world could have liquid water, scientists say. That’s important because water is a key ingredient for life.

It’s too soon to know if E.T. can call this planet home, and people will not be visiting any time soon. The planet orbits a star so far away that light, the fastest traveler in the universe, takes nearly 500 years to zip between that star and Earth. So the fastest spacecraft would need about 15 million years to make even a one-way trip.

The new world, Kepler-186f, was named for the Kepler space telescope that first snapped its picture. The number in its name refers to the star it orbits. Kepler-186f is the smallest exoplanet found so far that orbits within the “habitable zone” of its star. That means it’s at the right distance for water to remain liquid.

If a planet is too close, the extreme heat of its sun would evaporate liquids. If it’s too far, the extreme cold would freeze any water. But if it’s neither too far nor too close — in what some scientists refer to as the Goldilocks zone — water could pool as a liquid. Planet-hunting astronomers have been seeking habitable-zone planets because they’re the best places to look for life. All forms of known life need water for basic processes, such as transporting materials in and out of cells. So to look for life, scientists follow the water.

Astronomers reported finding the planet on April 18 in Science. They found evidence for it among data collected by the Kepler space telescope. This exoplanet-hunting observatory in space carefully watched for changes in the light coming from distant stars. As a planet passed between a star and the telescope, the star’s light would dim. Kepler picked up these dips in light. Astronomers then analyzed those changes to estimate the size and orbit of the planet. 

Kepler-186f orbits a type of star called an M dwarf. A red dwarf, this star gives off less heat and light than our sun, which is a yellow dwarf star. Because an M dwarf is cooler, any potentially habitable planets would orbit the star at a closer distance than Earth orbits our warm sun. Kepler-186f orbits its star at a distance closer than Mercury is from our sun. And four other planets orbit Kepler-186 closer still.

Close-in planets were the easiest for Kepler to spot. That’s because distant planets are less likely than closer ones to transit — or pass between the telescope and its star.

“M dwarfs are now becoming everybody’s darlings,” astronomer Jill Tarter told Science News. Although she was not involved in the discovery, she has spent her entire career studying alien worlds. She’s the former director of the Center for SETI Research in Mountain View, Calif.

When SETI scientists first heard about Kepler-186f, they directed telescopes to search for any radio transmissions. They listened for two weeks but heard no greetings from distant aliens.

M dwarf stars are the most common in our Milky Way. “If we find that Earth-sized planets around habitable zones of M stars are common, that means they’re common throughout the galaxy,” Thomas Barclay told Science News. An astronomer at NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., he helped analyze the newfound planet. 

Scientists already know life can exist on a small, rocky planet like Earth. That makes Earth-sized planets good candidates for the search for alien life.

But Barclay offers a warning: “Just because it’s in the habitable zone doesn’t mean it’s habitable.” Scientists can’t be sure the planet actually has water. And the planet orbits so closely that bursts of radiation from the star might have wiped out any chance of life.

The Kepler space telescope stopped working in 2013. Still, Barclay says its pioneering observations will guide the future of planet hunting. A mission scheduled to launch in 2017, for example, will search for worlds around the M dwarfs closest to Earth. And maybe they’ll find a home-like planet much closer to home.

 

Human scents may contain information about gender

People learn about each other by looking and listening. But some information passes from person to person without either knowing it. That’s because the body can transmit signals through subtle scents. In a new study, scientists suggest that people attracted to men can pick up a manly scent coming off of guys. Similarly, a sniff may give away a woman’s gender — but only to people attracted to women.

The study suggests the human body produces chemical signals, called pheromones. And these scents affect how one person perceives another. Scientists have demonstrated the effects of pheromones in a whole range of animals, including insects, rodents, squid and reptiles. But whether people make them has been less clear.

The new study’s findings “argue for the existence of human sex pheromones,” Wen Zhou told Science News. An olfaction researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, she studies the body’s ability to detect smells.

Zhou says people emit chemicals similar to those given off by animals. For example: When a female pig sniffs a chemical found in the saliva of male pig, she gets ready to mate. Men produce a similar chemical to that in their armpit sweat and hair. It’s called androstadienone (AN-dro-STAY-dee-eh-noan). Other scientists have shown that when women smell this compound, their hearts beat faster and their mood improves.

In much the same way, a chemical in women’s urine — estratetraenol (ES-trah-TEH-trah-noll) — lifts a man’s mood.

To explore the human impacts of these two chemicals, Zhou and her colleagues recruited 48 men and 48 women to take part in tests. Half of these recruits were attracted to people of their own gender or to both men and women. The scientists had all of their volunteers watch a video showing 15 dots moving around on a computer screen. At the same time, each recruit inhaled a concentrated form of one of the two chemicals. They weren’t aware of this, however. Each compound had first been cloaked with the scent of cloves, a strong spice.

The dots moving across the computer screen didn’t look like people. However, the way they moved reminded the study participants of people walking. And men who took a whiff of a female’s scent while watching the dots were more likely to rate those dots as looking feminine — but only if those men were attracted to women. Women had the opposite reaction. Those attracted to men said the dots looked masculine after a whiff of the male scent. The response of gay men was similar to that of heterosexual women: While inhaling a male scent, they thought the dots looked masculine. And women who were attracted to other women thought the dots looked feminine while inhaling a female’s scent. Zhou and her colleagues published their findings May 1 in Current Biology.

The brain recognizes gender in the scents that people give off, even when we are unaware of it, Zhou says.

But not every researcher is convinced the study settles the question of human pheromones. One doubter is Richard Doty. He directs the Smell and Taste Center at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

“The notion of human pheromones is fraught with problems,” he told Science News. For example, hesays, the new study may not reflect the real world. The human body may excrete these compounds at such low levels that the nose won’t detect them. If true, he says, the chemicals might not drive a person’s perception as strongly as the new test suggests.

Massive Underground City Discovered Beneath House-Could Accommodate Over 20,000 People-13 Stories Deep, 13,000 Air Shafts and Much More!

Mind-boggling, breathtaking, and incredible is the massive ancient underground city discovered beneath a house that was being renovated in Turkey, and is still to this day being further uncovered. 

Derinkuyu Underground City is an ancient multi-level underground city in the Derinkuyu district in Nevşehir Province, Turkey. It is on the road between Nevşehir and Niğde, at a distance of 29 km from Nevşehir. With its thirteen floors extending to a depth of approximately 85 m, it was large enough to shelter well over 20,000 men, women, and children. This would be a massive undertaking even with our technology today! How on earth did they do this? 

 

Turkey’s Massive, Ancient Underground City was discovered in the 1960s in Turkey, when a modern house above ground was being renovated. It is still, to this day, being excavated.

 

It is the largest excavated underground city in Turkey and is part of a network of several underground complexes found across Cappadocia. It also has individual quarters, shops, communal rooms, tombs, arsenals, livestock, and escape routes. There’s even a school, complete with a study room.

 

It begs the question: ”Why would people want to live ‘that’ deep underground?” Was it used as a giant bunker to protect its inhabitants from nuclear war or some other type of disaster?  Was it built by the Nephilim and Rephaim for their ‘future’ bloodlines to survive the end times disasters, which is the ‘Great and Terrible’ Day of the Lord?

 

 

15 And the kings of the earth, the great men, the rich men, the commanders, the mighty men, every slave and every free man, hid themselves in the caves and in the rocks of the mountains, 16 and said to the mountains and rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of Him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb! 17 For the great day of His wrath has come, and who is able to stand?”  —Revelation 6:15-17

 

 

Isaiah 2:10-21  10 They will hide in caves in the rocky hills or dig holes in the ground to try to escape from the Lord’s anger and to hide from his power and glory! 11 A day is coming when human pride will be ended and human arrogance destroyed. Then the Lord alone will be exalted. 12 On that day the Lord Almighty will humble everyone who is powerful, everyone who is proud and conceited. 13 He will destroy the tall cedars of Lebanon and all the oaks in the land of Bashan. 14 He will level the high mountains and hills, 15 every high tower, and the walls of every fortress. 16 He will sink even the largest and most beautiful ships. 17 Human pride will be ended, and human arrogance will be destroyed. Idols will completely disappear, and the Lord alone will be exalted on that day. 19People will hide in caves in the rocky hills or dig holes in the ground to try to escape from the Lord’s anger and to hide from his power and glory, when he comes to shake the earth. 20 When that day comes, they will throw away the gold and silver idols they have made, and abandon them to the moles and the bats. 21 When the Lord comes to shake the earth, people will hide in holes and caves in the rocky hills to try to escape from his anger and to hide from his power and glory.22 Put no more confidence in mortals. What are they worth?

 

Cave entrances of Cappadocia

 

And, in the book of Revelation 6 12-17:

 

12 I looked when He opened the sixth seal, and behold, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became like blood. 13 And the stars of heaven fell to the earth, as a fig tree drops its late figs when it is shaken by a mighty wind. 14 Then the sky receded as a scroll when it is rolled up, and every mountain and island was moved out of its place. 15 And the kings of the earth, the great men, the rich men, the commanders, the mighty men, every slave and every free man, hid themselves in the caves and in the rocks of the mountains, 16 and said to the mountains and rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of Him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb! 17 For the great day of His wrath has come, and who is able to stand?”

 

 

It certainly is plausible since the enemy, Satan, and the kingdom of hell have known for decades what the Word of God says, and what is soon to come. Furthermore, it would explain why the United Nations (UNESCO) has taken ownership of just about every archaeological find, including this one.  Please remember, the United Nations as well as people in our government (the elite) are luciferian, Freemason, Illuminati who are the nephilim bloodline (serpent seed).  (The kings of the earth, the great men, the rich men, the mighty men…the elite)

 

El Niño: Is 2014 the new 1997?

Every ten days, the NASA/French Space Agency Jason-2 satellite maps all the world’s oceans, monitoring changes in sea surface height, a measure of heat in the upper layers of the water.   Because our planet is more than 70% ocean, this information is crucial to global forecasts of weather and climate.

Lately, Jason-2 has seen something brewing in the Pacific—and it looks a lot like 1997.

“A pattern of sea surface heights and temperatures has formed that reminds me of the way the Pacific looked in the spring of 1997,” says Bill Patzert, a climatologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “That turned out to be the precursor of a big El Niño.”

A new ScienceCast video examines the evidence that an El Niño is developing in the Pacific.  Play it

“We can’t yet say for sure that an El Niño will develop in 2014, or how big it might be,” cautions Mike McPhaden of NOAA’s Pacific Environmental Research Laboratories in Seattle, “but the Jason-2 data support the El Niño Watch issued last month by NOAA.”

What Jason-2 has been seeing is a series of “Kelvin waves”—massive ripples in sea level that travel across the Pacific from Australia to South America.  Forecasters are paying close attention because these waves could be a herald of El Niño.

The two phenomena, Kelvin waves and El Niño, are linked by wind. Pacific trade winds blow from east to west, pushing sun-warmed surface waters toward Indonesia.  As a result, the sea level near Indonesia is normally 45 cm higher than it is near Ecuador.  Researchers call that area the “warm pool”—it is the largest reservoir of warm water on our planet.

Sometimes, however, trade winds falter for a few days or weeks, and some of that excess sea level   ripples back toward the Americas. “That’s a Kelvin wave,” says McPhaden. “It’s not unusual to see a couple every winter.”

El Niño happens when trade winds falter not just for days, but for many months. Then Kelvin waves    cross the Pacific like a caravan, raising sea level and leaving warmer equatorial waters in their wake.

On May 8th, the National Centers for Environmental Prediction forecasted a 65% chance of El Niño developing during the summer of 2014. More

“The El Niño of 1997/98 was a textbook example,” recalls Patzert. “At that time we were getting data from TOPEX/Poseidon, a predecessor of Jason-2.  Sea surface maps showed a whitish bump, indicating a sea level some 10 centimeters higher than usual, moving along the equator from Australia to South America.”

“The same pattern is repeating in 2014,” says McPhaden. “A series of Kelvin waves generated by localized west wind bursts in the western Pacific that began in mid-January 2014 are headed east. Excitement is building as a third weakening of the Pacific trade winds happened in mid-April.”

Ocean and atmospheric scientists at NOAA and NASA are carefully monitoring the Pacific trade winds. The tipping point for declaring a significant El Niño will be an even longer lasting, larger collapse in Pacific trade winds, possibly signaling a shift in weather all around our planet.

“It will become much clearer over the next two to three months whether these recent developments are the forerunner of a major El Niño—or any El Niño at all,” says McPhaden.

“Jason-2 is a marvelous Kelvin wave counter,” adds Patzert, “and it will tell the tale.”

Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is Shrinking

Jupiter’s trademark Great Red Spot — a swirling anti-cyclonic storm larger than Earth — has shrunk to its smallest size ever measured.

According to Amy Simon of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, recent NASA Hubble Space Telescope observations confirm the Great Red Spot now is approximately 10,250 miles across, less than half the size of some historical measurements. Astronomers have followed this downsizing since the 1930s. 

Images of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot taken by the Hubble Space Telescope over a span of 20 years show that the Great Red Spot is shrinking.

Historic observations as far back as the late 1800s gauged the storm to be as large as 25,500 miles on its long axis.  NASA Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 flybys of Jupiter in 1979 measured it to be 14,500 miles across. In 1995, a Hubble photo showed the long axis of the spot at an estimated 13,020 miles across. And in a 2009 photo, it was measured at 11,130 miles across.

Beginning in 2012, amateur observations revealed a noticeable increase in the rate at which the spot is shrinking — by 580 miles per year — changing its shape from an oval to a circle.

“In our new observations it is apparent very small eddies are feeding into the storm,” said Simon. “We hypothesized these may be responsible for the accelerated change by altering the internal dynamics and energy of the Great Red Spot.”

Simon’s team plans to study the motions of the small eddies and the internal dynamics of the storm to determine whether these eddies can feed or sap momentum entering the upwelling vortex, resulting in this yet unexplained shrinkage.

NASA’s Juno spacecraft is hurtling toward Jupiter now, due to reach the giant planet in July 2016.  Point-blank examination by Juno’s instruments will undoubtedly help unravel the mystery.  Stay tuned for updates from both Hubble and Juno.

West Antarctic Glaciers in Irreversible Decline

Over the years, as temperatures around the world have ratcheted upward, climate change researchers have kept a wary eye on one place perhaps more than any other:  The West Antarctic Ice Sheet, and particularly the fastest melting part of it, the glaciers that flow into the Amundsen Sea.

In that region, six glaciers hang in a precarious balance, partially supported by land, and partially floating in waters just offshore.  There’s enough water frozen in the ice sheet that feeds these icy giants to raise global sea levels by 4 feet—if they were to melt. That’s troubling because the glaciers are melting. Moreover, a new study finds that their decline appears to be unstoppable.

A new ScienceCast video lays out the evidence for irreversible decline of the West Antarctic glaciers. Play it

“We’ve passed the point of no return,” says Eric Rignot, a glaciologist working jointly at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the University of California, Irvine.  Rignot and colleagues have used 19 years of satellite radar data to map the fast-melting glaciers. In their paper, which has been accepted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters, they conclude that “this sector of West Antarctica is undergoing a marine ice sheet instability that will significantly contribute to sea level rise” in the centuries ahead.

A key concept in the Rignot study is the “grounding line”—the dividing line between land and water underneath a glacier.  Because virtually all melting occurs where the glaciers’ undersides touch the ocean, pinpointing the grounding line is crucial for estimating melt rates.

The problem is, grounding lines are buried under thousands of feet of glacial ice. “It’s challenging for a human observer to figure out where they are,” Rignot explains. “There’s nothing obvious that sticks out on the surface to say, ‘This is where the glacier goes afloat.’”

To find the hidden grounding lines, they examined radar images of the glaciers made by the European Space Agency’s Earth Remote Sensing satellites from 1992 to 2011. Glaciers flex in response to tides.  By analyzing the flexing motions, they were able to trace the grounding lines.

This led to a key discovery.  In all the glaciers they studied, grounding lines were rapidly retreating away from the sea.

Click on the image to view more animations related to this story.More

“In this sector, we are seeing retreat rates that we don’t see anywhere else on Earth,'” Rignot says. Smith Glacier’s line moved the fastest, retreating 22 miles upstream. The other lines retreated from 6 to 19 miles.

As the glaciers melt and lose weight, they float off the land where they used to sit.  Water gets underneath the glacier and pushes the grounding line inland. This, in turn, reduces friction between the glacier and its bed.  The glacier speeds up, stretches out and thins, which drives the grounding line to retreat farther inland. 

This is a “positive feedback loop” that leads to out of control melting.

The only natural factor that can slow or stop this process is a “pinning point” in the bedrock — a bump or projection that snags the glacier from underneath and keeps it from sliding toward the sea. To investigate this possibility, the researchers made a novel map of the bed beneath the glaciers using radar and other data from satellites and NASA’s airborne IceBridge mission. The map revealed that the glaciers had already floated off many of their small pinning points.

In short, there seems to be no turning back. 

“At current melt rates,” concludes Rignot, “these glaciers will be ‘history’ within a few hundred years.”