STUFF: News, Technology, the cool and the plain weird

[MIKA27]

Has the mystery of DB Cooper been solved?

DB Cooper who jumped from a Hijacked plane never to be seen again and right Richard Lepsy who a writter claims my be the same person.

It is 44 years since a man known only as DB Cooper leapt out of a hijacked 727 airliner with a parachute on his back and a bag stuffed with $200,000 (£132,000) of bank notes.

No trace of him has ever been found.

But now a new theory suggests he may have been a grocery store manager who disappeared before the hijacking.

Lisa Lepsy said she remembered watching news coverage of the audacious airborne heist on television two years after her father, ****, failed to return from work.

In 1980, an 8 year old boy came across three rotting wads of $20 bills (pictured) bearing serial numbers that matched the ransom money given to DB Cooper along the banks of the Columbia River

"We were all sitting on the couch watching Walter Cronkite," she toldWZZM, a local TV station, referring to the news anchor. "When the composite sketch of DB Cooper came on the TV screen, everyone looked at each other and said, 'That's dad!'

"We were stunned because the resemblance was unbelievable, and my brothers and I were all sure that was our dad."

Richard Lepsy with his family including daughter Lisa (right).

The legend of DB Cooper has become the stuff of American Thanksgiving legend.

A man known as Dan Cooper boarded Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305 in Portland, Oregon, bound for Seattle, Washington, on November 24, 1971.

DB cooper in an FBI handout

During the flight he ordered a glass of bourbon before asking a flight attendant to write a note: 'I HAVE A BOMB IN MY BRIEFCASE. I WILL USE IT IF NECESSARY. I WANT YOU TO SIT NEXT TO ME. YOU ARE BING (sic) HIJACKED.'

When the plane was being refuelled at Tacoma International Airport , he allowed its 36 passengers to disembark and received four parachutes and $200,000 in return.

After stealing $200,000 in cash DB Copper jumped from the plane

The plane, a 727 with a rear door and steps, was allowed to take off. Somewhere between Seattle and Reno, Cooper tied the bag of cash to his body and leapt from the back of the plane in stormy weather.

No trace of him was ever found, giving him the distinction of carrying out the only successful hijacking in American aviation history.

Evidence left behind by DB Cooper simlar to the one Lisa Lepsy claims her father Richard wore.

Many suspect he died on the descent. That theory was strengthened in 1980 when an 8-year-old boy stumble open three wads of rotting $20 bills with serial numbers matching the cash given to Cooper.

However, his body was never found leading to countless theories about who he was and what might have happened.

Ross Richardson, who has taken up the case, says there is plenty of evidence to suggest that Lepsy was Cooper.

Still Missing by Ross Richardson

"The FBI says the skyjacker spoke with no discernible accent, and they believe he was from the Midwest; **** Lepsy grew up in Chicago before he moved to Grayling,” he said.

"The FBI says the skyjacker left behind a black tie and a tie clasp on the plane; it's the exact same tie that was mandatory neck wear for all Glen's Market employees.

"The FBI says the skyjacker's shoes were loafers; those were **** Lepsy's favorite shoes."

Richard Lepsy

The 33-year-old father-of-four disappeared in 1969 after going to work at Glen's Market. His car was discovered a few days later at a nearby airport. The keys were still in the ignition.

One way to test the theory would be to use DNA recovered from the rotting bank notes.

"By putting this story out there, we may be able to get the clues we need to solve not one but two mysteries," said Mr Richardson, the author of Still Missing. "I hope the FBI looks into this, starting by running tests on the DNA samples that have been submitted by Lisa.

[MIKA27]

The New Hulk Isn't So Angry Anymore

For decades, being pissed off was the Hulk’s thing. The living embodiment of Bruce Banner’s rage smacked down all comers, using a near-bottomless pit of anger as fuel for his strength. There’s a new Hulk now, though, and he doesn’t seem quite as cranky as the last one.

There’ve been lots of versions of Marvel Comics’ strongest superhero over the years. Most of them have been centered on scientist Bruce Banner, whose exposure to gamma ray radiation unleashed the green-skinned monster inside of him. Banner’s other half morphed as the decades went on, going from angry toddler-speak to old-school mob chatter to genius-level diction along the way. Protecting the Earth and various loved ones was something those Hulks often did out of a sense of guilt, duty or responsibility; none of the permutations were ever happy for very long. This new Hulk is the exact opposite. He’s actually having fun.

Spoilers follow.

Amadeus Cho isn’t rocking ripped purple pants in this week’s Totally Awesome Hulk #1, by writer Greg Pak and artists Frank Cho, Sonia Oback, and Cory Petit. The 17-year-old genius who’s wielding the power of the Hulk wears board shorts when battling a giant, fire-breathing two-headed tortoise. Introduced years ago in the Amazing Fantasy anthology series, Cho was a supporting character during several Bruce Banner story arcs, serving as intellect and conscience for the behemoth. Like the other relaunched Marvel series of the last few weeks, Totally Awesome Hulk takes place after an eight-month gap after the end of the publisher’s still-in-progress Secret Wars event. It’s Amadeus’ show but Banner does get shown in a flashback that shows his Hulk making a heroic sacrifice that threatens to make the monster even stronger. Banner’s current status is a mystery and character dialogue says that Amadeus chose to take on the gamma energy of the Hulk to go on a quest to smash and apprehend a crop of unexplained monsters threatening the Earth.

Amadeus’ partner on his mission is his younger sister Maddy, who pulls an overbearing mother/commanding officer shtick from a base of operations that doubles as a Korean BBQ truck. Their bickering dynamic is a change from the previous Hulk/companion relationships, which were often undercut with a hint of fear. Maddy isn’t scared of Amadeus; she’s scared for him. Instead of the rage that threatened to overwhelm Banner at any moment, Amadeus seems like he’s going to have a different emotional challenge to deal with. He comes close to being lethally distracted a few times this issue, too busy being buzzed off the power of his new form. It’s an appropriate thematic switch for a teenage character, since adolescence is a time when folks think they can handle more than they’re capable of.

This is a Hulk who flirts and chows down on burgers. While there’s a threat of emotional dysfunction teased in this debut, it’s not the main throughline of this version of the green giant. Amadeus is ok with himself in both personas. More than the shift in identity and ethnicity, having an angst-free Hulk is the biggest change that the character’s seen in ages. ‘Hulk is the chillest one there is.’ Has a nice ring to it.

[MIKA27]

Hundreds Of Dinosaur Footprints Found In A Scottish Lagoon

A team of researchers has happened upon several hundred footprints left by Middle Jurassic dinosaurs at a coastal lagoon in Scotland.

The footprints measure around 70cm across, which is larger than those that would have been left by T. Rex, and date back around 170 million years. In fact, the team that discovered the prints reckon they were left by early sauropods — large plant eating dinosaurs that weighed over 20 tonnes and could be as tall as a 7-storey building.

While other large areas of dinosaur footprints have been found in the past, this is the largest to be identified in Scotland and should help researchers better understand how early sauropods moved. Stephen Brusatte, one of the researchers, explains to New Scientist that “these dinosaurs weren’t swimmers but they would have been moving around knee-deep in this brackish lagoon”.

Amusingly, Brusatte stumbled across the prints by accident, when returning to his car after an unsuccessful day of fossil hunting.

[MIKA27]

This Is How Marines Learn To Overcome Obstacles

You’re looking at a Critical Skills Operator with U.S. Marine Corps as he learns how to uses a torch to cut through a metal door. That’s just part of a list of techniques including “mechanical, ballistic, thermal and explosive” methods that the soldiers uses to overcome walls, fences and anything else that gets in their way. They don’t take “no” for an answer at the door.

[MIKA27]

Volcanic Ghost Villages in Indonesia

Indonesia’s Mount Sinabung sprang to life over the past few years, erupting and releasing destructive pyroclastic flows following 400 years of dormancy. Numerous villages that had been established on its slopes now sit completely empty—declared too dangerous to inhabit by Indonesian authorities. Associated Press photographer Binsar Bakkara recently visited the newly-formed ghost villages of Guru Kinayan, Simacem, Kuta Gugung, and Sibintun, documenting the crumbling houses and personal belongings left behind that serve as “eerie reminders of how life suddenly stopped when the volcano erupted and everyone was forced to evacuate their homes.”

A damaged church is dwarfed by Mount Sinabung in the abandoned village of Simacem, North Sumatra, Indonesia, on November 16, 2015. The village is located within an area which, following the eruption of the volcano, has been declared too dangerous to inhabit, forcing its residents to abandon their homes.

The wreckage of a van is overgrown by plants in Simacem village in North Sumatra, on November 16, 2015

Mount Sinabung is seen through a crumbling house in the abandoned village of Simacem on November 16, 2015.

A cassette player caked with dried volcanic ash sits inside an abandoned house in Simacem on November 16, 2015.

The peak of Mount Sinabung is seen through a broken window from the living room of an abandoned house in Simacem on November 16, 2015.

The door of a barn is secured with a weathered padlock in the village of Guru Kinayan, which was abandoned following the eruption of Mount Sinabung, in North Sumatra, Indonesia, on November 13, 2015

Mount Sinabung looms above the abandoned village of Sukanalu in North Sumatra, Indonesia, on November 16, 2015. The village is one of several declared too dangerous to inhabit, forcing residents to abandon their homes.

Chairs are strewn across a church which was abandoned following the eruption of Mount Sinabung in the village of Kuta Gugung, Indonesia, on November 13, 2015.

A photograph hangs on the wall of a house which was abandoned following the eruption of Mount Sinabung, in the village of Guru Kinayan on November 13, 2015

The interior of a house abandoned following the eruption of Mount Sinabung in the village of Guru Kinayan on November 12, 2015.

Another interior view of a house abandoned in the village of Guru Kinayan on November 12, 2015.

Wild plants overgrow the rubble of a house as Mount Sinabung looms in the background, above the abandoned Sibintun village in North Sumatra on November 12, 2015.

In this November 16, 2015 photo, damaged photographs hang inside a house abandoned following the eruption of Mount Sinabung in Simacem, North Sumatra.

The peak of Mount Sinabung viewed through a window of a burned-out house, in the abandoned village of Sibintun on November 12, 2015.

[MIKA27]

DO YOU THINK PSY'S LATEST VIDEO WILL GO VIRAL?

PSY is back in action with his latest album 7 Things You Need to Know dropping this week. Of course, everyone loved "Gangnam Style", but get ready to experience PSY as you've never seen him before in his video "Daddy".

The video features plenty of his signature quirkiness. PSY's face is super-imposed on a baby and then a little boy as he is born, goes to grade school, and dances with his grandpa (who also has amazing dance moves). Seeing PSY as a baby is both creepy and hilarious.

The video is packed with plenty of ridiculous dance sequences and over-the-top visuals as PSY dances his way through the various stages of life. We're hoping some of these dance moves catch on over the next few months. We want to see these live on the dance floor!

[MIKA27]

DUCATI BOL D’OR BY XTR PEPO

If you have so much as a passing interest in highly engineered custom motorcycles, you’ll almost certainly have encountered the work of Pepo Rosell before. Probably under the name of his previous enterprise – Radical Ducati.

He closed down Radical Ducati a year or so a go in order to take a 12 month sabbatical and decide what he wanted to do next. After much soul searching he realised that what he wanted to do was build fast motorcycles – but he wanted to expand his reach to cover far more than a single marque.

His new company is called XTR Pepo, and this bike is one of his first creations since returning to the wrenches. It’s based on a 1983 Ducati Pantah 600 TL however as with all of Pepo’s work, very little of the original motorcycle remains.

The trellis frame was modified to accommodate a rear side cantilever suspension system and the swing-arm is a modified version from a Ducati Monster 696. The front suspension was sourced from a Monster S4RS and the wheels were pulled from the Monster that donated its swing-arm. Braking has been significantly improved over stock, with NG rotors used up front with Brembo radial calipers.

The engine was sourced from a 1992 Ducati 900 SS, and it now has ported and polished heads, higher compression, an anti-hooping clutch and the fly-wheel has been eliminated. A pair of matching 40mm Dellorto carburettors replaced the stock units and the new lithium battery feeds power to Dyna electronic ignition.

That eye-catching front fairing is a custom design by XTR Pepo, along with its unique twin headlight arrangement, custom fibreglass fuel tank and hand-laid fibreglass seat.

The completed bike has a strong endurance theme with is befitting of its name: Bol d’Or – after the famous French motorcycle endurance race. If you’d like to see more of Pepo’s work you can click here to visit XTR Pepo.

[MIKA27]

BRECKENRIDGE TWENTY FIVE BEER

While many breweries celebrate a special anniversary with a special beer,Breckenridge Twenty Five is one of the best we've come across. Breckenridge took their delicious Vanilla Porter and amped it up to to an imperial version at 9.8%. Then they let it mingle in Barbados rum barrels along rare, fresh, vanilla beans from Veracruz in Mexico. We can't think of a better way to celebrate a Silver Anniversary.

[MIKA27]

A Fantastic Looking Star Wars Art Exhibit Is Set to Open in France

Did you hear? There’s a new Star Wars movie coming out. And one of the ways Lucasfilm and Disney are choosing to spread awareness is officially licensed art exhibits.

There was one in Los Angeles last month and, later this week, a second will be opening in France. It’s called Star Wars: An Art Odyssey will be on display at the Space Villeneuve Bargemon in Marseille from December 3 to January 17.

If you live in the area, well, you’re lucky. If not, we’ve got a few images from the show for you to check out. Visit this link for more information on the show.

Orlando Arocena

Stephen Sampson

Simon Delart

Robert Bruno

Rich Davies

John Aslarona

Andy Fairhurst

[MIKA27]

NEW "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice" Trailer

[polarbear]

NEW "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice" Trailer

As awesome as that was, I kinda wish I hadn't watched it

I didn't need to know that Doomsday was the big bad that brought them both together (I mean, I figured he was, but I didn't need them to spell it out for me)

[Duxnutz]

Terrifying Clowns Are Menacing A Wisconsin Town And People Are Freaking Out

Clowns are inherently terrifying to many people simply because they exist. Yet when a clown lurks menacingly (and silently) on a street corner, the horror quotient exponentially ups itself. The finer details of this tale remain unclear, but whatever is going down has shaken up a community and a college campus. The Milwaukee suburb of Waukesha, Wisconsin, has seen quite a few reported sightings of a clown, who usually dresses in an orange jumpsuit. The clown stands on street corners and in front of dilapidated structures. In Satan’s the clown’s wake, the community has come unglued.

Reporter Nick Bohr of WISN 12 ABC in Milwaukee has been on the case since weird stuff hit the news last week.

In short order, Bohr announced that the case was solved. The clown in the orange jumpsuit was a local teenager who is “developmentally delayed” and looking to freak people out. According to Waukesha Police Sgt. Jerry Habanek, the teenager “likes to watch the reactions people have when he’s dressed as a clown.” Case solved? Not quite. This story is not as simple as it seems…

People continued to freak out about these clowns all weekend long, and they’re still obsessed.

Man I miss Milwaukee!

[MIKA27]

As awesome as that was, I kinda wish I hadn't watched it

I didn't need to know that Doomsday was the big bad that brought them both together (I mean, I figured he was, but I didn't need them to spell it out for me)

I kinda agree on that. I figured Doomsday was always in it, but now it's definitive. Will be interesting to see how it all melds together and what becomes of Superman as in the comics, Doomsday kills Superman.

[MIKA27]

Man I miss Milwaukee!

A normal night out on the town there is it?

[brschoppe]

Man I miss Milwaukee!

Man...what is in the water up there in Waukesha? Isn't this the same town where last year the two girls tried to murder their friend to impress the fictional character Slenderman? Crazy town!

[MIKA27]

Virgin Galactic Announces New 'Cosmic Girl' Mothership That Could Help It Compete With SpaceX

Space cowboy Richard Branson and his company, Virgin Galactic, have shown off a 747-400 aeroplane that could launch rocket payloads from the air straight into orbit.

The mothership, a.k.a “Cosmic Girl,” would carry Virgin Galactic’s LauncherOne rockets to new heights. In concept, using a modified commercial aeroplane as a rocket-carrier negates the need for a ground launch pad and all of its attendant logistics. Instead, the rocket is bound to the plane’s wing, and after reaching an altitude of 10,668m on its hitched ride, it can disengage, fire up its engine, and continue its mission to deposit a satellite payload into orbit.

Cosmic Girl, which has been in the Virgin fleet as a commercial aircraft since 2001, is set to undergo quite the transformation, per Virgin’s press release: “the LauncherOne rocket will be mounted to the carrier aircraft under the left wing, adjacent to the position that has been used by other 747s to ferry a fifth engine.” The rocket weighs about 24,948kg.

Originally conceived by Branson as a offshoot of his Virgin empire focused on space tourism, Virgin Galactic has been increasingly getting in on the satellite game. The Washington Post reports:

Virgin already has signed a $4.7 million contract with NASA to launch more than a dozen experimental satellites on a test flight. And it also has a deal with OneWeb, which plans to build a global Internet satellite system, for 39 satellites with an option for 100 more.

Branson talked up the quick satellite turnaround time that using a plane launch would make possible. “If you’re waiting for one of these giant rockets to put small satellites into space, you sometimes have to wait six months, or a year,” he said at the Cosmic Girl event. By contrast, a Virgin Galactic mothership could theoretically be good to go with 24 hours of notice. The payoffs could be huge.

Branson says he wants to use the LauncherOne rocket and satellite systems to help extend Internet and communication services to unconnected communities. This would mean creating new markets for Virgin, of course, but it’s also a laudable humanitarian goal. And Virgin announced in September that it will increase the payload weight that LauncherOne can handle, which would put it into competition for insanely lucrative government satellite launch contracts — like the ones that SpaceX have been going after for so long.

A similar mode of “air launch” is also the mechanism behind flying Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo, the long-simmering experimental craft designed to ferry space-loving tourists. SpaceShipTwo crashed last year in testing, resulting in the death of a pilot, and Virgin is at work on a new craft. But with the addition of Cosmic Girl to the air launch fleet, Virgin’s satellite plans can continue to evolve, independent of SpaceShipTwo’s shadow.

[MIKA27]

Our Sun Could Release Superflares As Powerful As A Billion Megatonne Bombs

By studying a nearby sun-like star, astronomers have concluded that the Sun is capable of releasing solar flares a thousand times greater than anything previously recorded. Scientists say the chances of this are quite slim, but warn that such an event would threaten life on Earth.

Astronomers have documented superflares before, but never in our own Solar System. The new study, conducted by researchers at the University of Warwick, suggests that the similarities between the flares observed on a K-type eclipsing binary star (dubbed KIC9655129) and our own Sun demonstrate the potential for our own host star to produce similar, highly-energetic “superflares”.

The details of their work now appears in the latest edition of The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Big Bad Stellar Waves

Solar flares are a sudden flash of brightness on a sun’s surface, and they’re among the most powerful forces produced within a stellar system.

A typical solar flare, which happens on our Sun at irregular and frequent intervals, releases energy equal to about 100 million megatonne bombs (or 1029 to 1032 ergs of energy over a timescale of a few hours). But a superflare, which astronomers frequently (and mercifully) observe outside our Solar System, is more powerful by an order of magnitude, releasing energies equivalent to a billion megatonne bombs (or 1033 to 1036 ergs).

If our Sun were to suddenly churn out such a superflare, it would be…bad. Warwick astronomer Chloë Pugh, who led the new study, described it this way in a press release:

If the Sun were to produce a superflare it would be disastrous for life on Earth; our GPS and radio communication systems could be severely disrupted and there could be large scale power blackouts as a result of strong electrical currents being induced in power grids.

It’s obviously important that we learn more about this extreme form of superflare — and whether or not our Sun is actually capable of such stellar feats.

The new study suggest that, yes — our Sun can produce superflares because the underlying physics observed on KIC9655129 also apply to our own Sun. However, the conditions required for a superflare are extremely unlikely to occur on the Sun, a conclusion that’s based on previous observations of solar activity.

Overlapping Super-Pulses

Astronomers are able to study the solar flares of distant stars by scanning the skies for spectral pulses, which resemble waves. Every once in a while, typical solar flares consist of multiple, overlapping pulses. But as the Warwick astronomers note in the new study, their data shows evidence of multiple waves, or multiple periodicities, in a single stellar superflare.

Artist’s impression of a superflare (University of Warwick/Ronald Warmington)

By analysing data collected by the Kepler space telescope, the researchers were able to detect distinct wave patterns in the light curve of a flare emanating from KIC9655129.

Typically, the signatures of a solar flare involve a rapid increase in intensity, followed by a gradual decline. This decline phase is often a bit bumpy, a phenomenon known as “quasi-periodic pulsations,” or QPPs. The flare observed by the Warwick astronomers featured not one, but two significant periodicities. Statistical modelling suggests these two bursts were independent and overlapping — and not the products of chance.

“The most plausible explanation for the presence of two independent periodicities is that the QPPs were caused by magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) oscillations, which are frequently observed in solar flares,” noted study co-author Anne-Marie Broomhall. The magnetic breakdown of stable MHDs, measured as waves and oscillations on the Sun’s corona, are typically cited as cause of solar flares.

This means that the physical processes involved in regular, plain old solar flares (like the ones produced by our Sun), are the same ones that are involved in producing stellar superflares.

“[This] finding supports the hypothesis that the Sun is able to produce a potentially devastating superflare,” concludes Broomhall. So it sounds like our Sun is bigger and badder than we thought possible. Hopefully, we’ll never have an opportunity to see it flex its muscles.

[MIKA27]

Here's A New Teaser For Game Of Thrones Season 6

Premiering in April next year, the sixth season of Game of Thrones promises the return of some characters the ‘net has been sorely missing. If you can’t wait until a proper trailer comes out, here’s a 40-second teaser.

Hey, look, Jon Snow!

[MIKA27]

Inside America's Oldest Hat Factory

Bollman Hat Company, located in Adamstown, Pennsylvania, is America’s oldest hat factory. It first opened in 1868 and its machines are decades old and that all makes for a fascinating place with so much history. It’s really cool to see how the machines work since they all have their own specific tasks and weird way of accomplishing them.

[MIKA27]

A Trip to Los Glaciares National Park

With the United Nations holding its climate change conference in Paris, Getty Images photographer Mario Tama traveled to Argentina’s Los Glaciares National Park, to capture images of the beautiful region, and of climate change in action. In Los Glaciares, part of the Southern Patagonian Ice Field, most of its 50 large glaciers have been retreating during the past half-century due to warming temperatures, according to the European Space Agency.

Monte Fitz Roy stands in Los Glaciares National Park, part of the Southern Patagonian Ice Field, on December 2, 2015 in Santa Cruz Province, Argentina.

Monte Fitz Roy, right, in Los Glaciares National Park on December 2, 2015.

The Spegazzini glacier, in Los Glaciares National Park, on November 28, 2015

The Spegazzini glacier (left) and Heim glacier, part of the Southern Patagonian Ice Field, on November 28, 2015.

Spegazzini glacier empties into Lago Argentino, in Los Glaciares National Park on November 28, 2015.

Ice calves from the face of Perito Moreno Glacier on November 27, 2015, in Santa Cruz Province, Argentina.

The jagged surface of Perito Moreno Glacier, photographed on November 27, 2015.

Ice calves from Perito Moreno Glacier in Los Glaciares National Park on November 27, 2015.

Monte Fitz Roy stands in Los Glaciares National Park on December 1, 2015, in Santa Cruz Province, Argentina.

Horses stand outside Los Glaciares National Park in Santa Cruz Province, Argentina, on November 27, 2015.

A river with glacial runoff flows outside Los Glaciares National Park on December 1, 2015.

An iceberg broken off from a melting glacier floats in Lago Argentino, which holds runoff water from the Southern Patagonian Ice Field, on November 28, 2015.

Perito Moreno Glacier stands above Lago Argentino on November 27, 2015.

A man poses for a friend with his jacket blowing in the wind, in front of Perito Moreno Glacier in Los Glaciares National Park, on November 30, 2015.

Melted glacial ice floats in Los Glaciares National Park on November 29, 2015.

People view Perito Moreno Glacier from a platform on November 27, 2015.

People hike on Perito Moreno Glacier, part of the Southern Patagonian Ice Field, on November 30, 2015, in Santa Cruz Province, Argentina.

[MIKA27]

ECOGUARD:

Woodcessories have presented their latest iPad cover, the beautiful EcoGuard. The premium handcrafted wood cover is made from the finest real wood with natural waxes, the solid wood cover protects your iPad beautifully. As with the original cover from Apple, the cover features the innovative lamellar form that allows multiple positions for a comfortable use of the iPad. The Sleep/Wake function is of course also on board. The high-quality, comprehensive microfiber coating inside ensures the iPad display is protected at all times from scratches and dust. Available for iPad Mini (1,2 and 3) and iPad Air 2 in cherry wood or walnut.

[MIKA27]

MINUS-8 SQUARE CHRONO WATCH

Drawing inspiration from classic aviation timepieces, the Minus-8 Square Chrono Watch is both grounded in the past and thoroughly modern. Its 40mm rounded square case is made from 316 stainless steel with a PVD finish, complimented by a vegetable-tanned leather strap. The dial is protected by a sapphire crystal and offers three timing hands, a date window at 4:30, and a three sub-dial chronograph, all powered by a precise Miyota Quartz FS21 movement. It's water resistant to 100 meters, and available in four fashionable color combinations.

[MIKA27]

See One Artist Convert The Walking Dead TV Show Back Into Comic Form

AMC’s The Walking Dead is such a popular show, sometimes it’s easy to forget it’s based on a comic book. Even though the characters we know and love got started on the page, seeing them in that medium is still fun, especially through the eyes of Kirk Manley.

Manley is an artist who does comic-inspired art based on episodes of The Walking Dead. He even did the poster for the upcoming Walker Stalker Con, which takes place December 4 through 6 at the Meadowlands Exposition Center in New Jersey.

Here are just a few examples of his great work. Head to his Deviant Artpage for more.

[MIKA27]

This Is What Will Happen To Antarctica In 100 Years

In more temperate parts of the world, ice is just ice, but in Antarctica, ice is everything. It defines Antarctica: Earth’s southern polar ice cap, a 14-million square kilometre ice sheet, covers 98 per cent of the continent. But within the next hundred years, Antarctica stands to lose much of that ice, especially in its western half.

Life on the Ice

Along about half of Antarctica’s coast, floating shelves of ice protrude out into the water. Ice streams, or glaciers, flow downhill from the interior to the coast, and when the ice reaches the sea, it floats. These ice shelves are still connected to ice sheets on land, but they rise and fall with the tide. Ice also forms on the surface of the sea.

When you hear “sea ice” you may imagine icebergs, but they’re two different things. Icebergs are chunks of glaciers that have broken off and floated out to sea; they’re several kilometres thick, and they’re usually made of fresh water (Antarctica’s ice sheet holds over 60 per cent of the world’s fresh water).

Sea ice, on the other hand, is exactly what it sounds like: sheets of frozen sea water, usually just a few metres thick. During the South Pole winter, the seas freeze until the ice covers an area of ocean nearly the size of the continent itself. At the end of winter, the ice begins to recede, although some sea ice lingers around the coast through the summer.

Life in Antarctica depends on the sea ice. Ice means shelter and security, and it’s a substrate for life. Krill larvae hide from predators and forage on algae on the underside of floating sea ice, and several species of penguins and seals live, hunt, and breed on that ice. Krill are also at the base of the food web for other Southern Ocean predators, from seals to whales, so declining sea ice potentially threatens the entire ecosystem.

“If you lose the sea ice, then you’ve lost essential habitat for a very important species at the base of the food web for all the penguins,” said NOAA biologist Jefferson Hinke. “You’re going to lose the ability of the krill to really reproduce, and then all of your predators that are dependent on that particular prey suddenly are left with a big hole in their diet as well.”

Stormy Seas Ahead

Much of the region’s sensitivity to climate change is due to the Antarctic Peninsula, an 1287km strip of land that stretches northward into the Southern Ocean. Antarctica’s isolation protects most of the continent; it’s surrounded by the cold waters of the Southern Ocean, whose current flows in a swift circle around Antarctica, uninterrupted by land. These are some of the most violent, stormy waters in the world, but for Antarctica, they act as a buffer.

“I kind of think of it as like a big cushion: the mere fact that Antarctica is an isolated land mass surrounded by these oceans and very strong strong winds,” said paleoclimate researcher Elizabeth Thomas of Cambridge University and the British Antarctic Survey. But the Antarctic Peninsula sticks out into the Southern Ocean, catching the full force of the wind and the sea.

We are now seeing a shift in weather patterns. It’s the product of a complex set of interactions between atmospheric systems, but the root cause is warmer water thousands of miles away — and, of course, the root cause of that is greenhouse gas emissions. “Changes in sea level pressure in the tropical Pacific, changes in sea surface temperatures in the tropical and western Pacific, do seem to be closely related to changes in precipitation in this part of west Antarctica,” said Thomas.

The El Niño Southern Oscillation, a climate pattern fuelled by periodic changes in water temperature in the tropical Pacific, helps move that warmer water southward. In the process, it interacts with the Southern Annular Mode, a belt of westerly winds that periodically shifts from north to south. When the SAM is in its “positive” phase, the winds shift south, carrying more low pressure systems and storms to Antarctica. In particular, there has been an increase in storm activity in a stormy low pressure system called the Amundsen Sea Low, near the base of the Peninsula.

Vanishing Sea Ice

That warmer water means sea ice forms later in the season, doesn’t cover as much of the ocean, and melts sooner than it used to. So although the rest of the continent has been slowly gaining sea ice in recent years, it has been on the decline in western Antarctica. In that respect, the big picture doesn’t tell the whole story.

“Very often, people refer to Antarctic sea ice as one thing. You’ll hear people report ‘Antarctic sea ice is increasing,’ and that’s because they’re combining all the sea ice in all the different sectors and coming up with a trend, although it’s actually quite small,” said Thomas. “But there’s very, very big regional differences. So, Antarctica is huge, the Southern Ocean is huge, and there’s big differences between what’s happening in the Bellingshausen Sea, which is just adjacent to the Antarctic Peninsula, and what’s happening in the Ross Sea.” Around the Bellingshausen Sea, sea ice has been declining since the early 20th century.

Thinning Ice Shelves

Diagram of an ice shelf.

The coastal ice shelves of West Antarctica are melting away, too. When warm water reaches the bases of floating ice shelves, it melts the ice from the bottom up, in what’s called basal melting. Antarctica’s ice shelves have always experienced some basal melting, but not nearly as much as today. Until recent decades, snowfall accumulation was enough to replace the small amount of ice lost to basal melting each year, so the ice shelves stayed about the same size — but as melting speeds up, snowfall can’t build up fast enough to replace the ice.

That’s despite the fact that West Antarctica is receiving more snowfall than it used to. Ellsworth Land gets about 1.5m of snowfall accumulation every year, according to Thomas and her colleagues, which is about 33 per cent more than it received in the early 1900s. Her team studied 300-year ice core records from three glaciers in West Antarctica, and found that precipitation rates in the area had been pretty stable from 1700 to 1900, then started to increased throughout the 20th century. The change accelerated significantly starting in the late 1970s.

The same storms that are bringing warm water to the base of West Antarctica’s ice shelves are also bringing more moisture, and that means more snow — lots of it. “Sea ice acts as a big lid to the ocean, so you’re effectively putting a big film over the ocean… which prevents moisture uptake from the surface of the ocean,” said Thomas. “Less sea ice is like taking the lid off the ocean and allowing us to get access to that surface level moisture.”

Yet some of the region’s ice shelves, like the Pine Island glacier, are melting so quickly that even 1.5m of snow a year isn’t enough to replace the lost ice. So ice shelves get thinner, and the grounding line — the point where the ice shelf stops resting on the bedrock and begins floating — gets pushed further back. That makes the shelves unstable, and eventually, they can collapse.

We’ve already seen what that looks like. In 2002, an ice shelf the size of Rhode Island collapsed into the Southern Ocean. It had been sheltering an underwater ecosystem of chemotrophic microbes clustered around seafloor vents 800m below the surface.

The processes that are changing West Antarctica’s coastline are expected to continue over the next century. “Certainly all the evidence seems to be suggesting that we’re going to get this strengthening in the winds [the circumpolar westerlies],” said Thomas. “You’re going to be getting more onshore winds that are going to be driving this melting of warm water reaching the tongues of the glaciers. I’m guessing that as we go into the future, we’re going to start seeing more ice shelf collapse.”

Adelie penguins

The Future of the South Pole

That could mean big changes for Antarctica’s ecosystem. Unless they can adapt quickly, species that rely on the ice as a place to forage and breed could disappear from the Peninsula region as their habitat changes. “Crabeater seals and Adelie penguins are extremely vulnerable,” said NOAA pinniped researcher Mike Goebel. “If the ice disappears, based on what we know of their distributions today, they will decline and disappear.”

Crabeater seal.

Adelie penguins are already declining. “It’s not like they’re going to disappear entirely, but I would expect that their populations continue to decline in the Peninsula region, at least for the foreseeable future,” said Hinke.

Greater snowfall makes matters worse. “For species like [Adelie] penguins that breed on land and have to build nests from rocks, when it snows, those get covered, and then the birds show up and their nest sites aren’t anywhere to be found,” he said. “In which case, they just melt little tubes of snow into the bottom of a snow bank, and their eggs freeze, and therefore fail, or they get buried in their nests.” As a result, the number of chicks Adelie penguin breeding colonies produce varies strongly from year to year, and it remains to be seen whether the birds will adapt their breeding cycles or nesting habits to the new realities of West Antarctic weather.

But one species’ loss is sometimes another species’ gain. Gentoo penguins are moving into some of the territory opened up by the receding ice. Gentoos usually live further north, but they have recently been moving into nesting grounds on the Peninsula. If the sea ice continues to disappear in West Antarctica, ecologists could see Gentoo penguins replacing Adelie and chinstrap penguins in the region. “It’s an interesting mix of some benefitting and some not benefitting from the changes that are occurring,” said Hinke.

Other northern species aren’t so lucky. Fur seals share their range with the Gentoo, but their numbers have actually declined in recent years — mostly because leopard seals have been eating them. Leopard seals hunt on sea ice for a mixed diet of krill and young crab eater seals. “But because the ice has receded, they appear to be preying more on fur seal pups, and because of that fur seals are declining,” said Goebel.

Sleepy fur seal pup

That’s because crab eater seals, like leopard seals, only breed and give birth on sea ice; it’s also the only place they hunt. Leopard seals may have a better chance; they can haul out on land and hunt krill from shore. “But nobody’s ever seen them breed or pup on land,” said Goebel. Their fate may depend on whether they can pick up the habit.

And if the krill vanish with the sea ice, many of Antarctica’s predators — not to mention the world’s already-endangered whale populations — could be in serious trouble.

An Ice-Free Future?

What will West Antarctica look like a century from now? It will probably be slightly warmer; average temperatures on the continent have increased about 0.5C every decade since the 1940s, and that trend shows no signs of reversing or slowing. And it will probably be snowier and stormier, with less predictable weather patterns.

Much of the sea ice that now surrounds the western coast during the winter months will be absent a hundred years from now, and many of West Antarctica’s ice shelves will be in danger of collapse; some may have already broken up, contributing to a rising global sea level. Some species will have vanished from the region, either due to extinction or migration, and other species will have moved in. But East Antarctica, buffered by the Southern Ocean, may not look much different from today.

Ultimately, the fate of the continent depends on people living several thousand miles away. The world leaders meeting in Paris this week are hoping to make a deal that will change things sufficiently to keep global average temperatures from rising more than 2C above what they were before the Industrial Revolution. Even if that goal is achieved, most of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet will still become unstable in the next century, according to a modelling study by climate researcher Ricarda Winkelmann and her colleagues, published earlier this year in the journal Science Advances.

The good news is that most of eastern Antarctica’s sheets will remain stable, thanks to the relative protection of the Southern Ocean’s currents. But if we miss the 2⁰ target, the Wilkes Basin — an area on the opposite side of the continent from the Antarctic Peninsula — could start losing its ice rapidly.

Some observers say that what’s happening in West Antarctica today could be a preview of how the eastern half of the continent could respond to similar changes if global warming continues unchecked. That’s especially true of the animals that inhabit the icy landscape. “The kinds of changes in when they breed, their reproductive success, the changes in weather patterns that occur because of warming air temperatures and warming oceans – those kinds of things, I think, are good precursors,” said Hinke. “It probably won’t map on directly, but it does provide a little bit of a future glimpse.”

But Thomas contends that West Antarctica isn’t an exact model for the fate of the rest of the continent. “I think it would be alarmist to say that what’s happening in the Antarctic Peninsula is evidence of what’s going to happen to the rest of the continent,” she said. “Because it is so huge, and there are so many other factors that I think any changes in, especially, east Antarctica are going to be very slow indeed.”

Antarctica’s bedrock, beneath the ice.

Yet slow changes still matter. There are about 10,000 gigatonnes of carbon left in the world’s fossil fuel reserves, and Winkelmann’s study predicts that if we burn it all, Antarctica would be bare bedrock in a few thousand years. As she and her colleagues wrote, “Our results show that the currently attainable carbon fuel resources are sufficient to eliminate the Antarctic Ice sheet.”

[MIKA27]

These Dogs Are Honorary Geologists For Their Early Exploration Of Alaska

Every geologist needs a field hat to protect them from scorching sun and drenching rain, but a really lucky geologist will have a trusty dog. Meet the adventurous dogs who trekked across north Alaska, and the geologists who explored with them.

In 1924 and 1925, United States Geological Survey (USGS) field teams trekked across northern Alaska to survey the state. Their pack of field dogs helped carry gear, haul sleds, drag boats upstream, and carry meat home from successful hunts. These are photos from their adventures in the Colville district.

March 18, 1924: Geologist Mertie with his hands full of ptarmigan before the warming spring melted the Alaskan snow.

March 26, 1924: Lunch break along the Unakserak River trail.

March 28, 1924: Lynt returns to camp from a victorious hunt with a sheep on his sled.

April 21, 1924: Geologists Fitzgerald and Tait set up a topographical station to survey the lands.

April 21, 1924: Geologist Mertie running a dog sled (with a decidedly unimpressed field dog) across the Alaskan landscape.

April 21, 1924: An ice mound along the east fork of the river with geologists and dog sled for scale.

May 20, 1924: Field life is lacking in a few luxuries at this spike camp on the southwest fork of a creek.

May 23, 1924: Uncrating canoes at Camp 22 in preparation for navigating the rivers.

June 12, 1924: Camp 29 below the river rapids.

July 5, 1924: Geologists and dog in a Peterboro canoes on Colville River. The wooden canoes were named for being manufactured in Peterborough, Ontario.

July 25, 1924: Camp 48, the midway point of the Colville-Chipp portage.

1925: Dogs hauling a large caribou back to camp after a successful hunt.

1925: Humans and canines trekking across a mountain pass.

1925: Fully-loaded field dogs make the journey easier

1925: Feld dogs *** and Jerry carrying their packs across the wilderness

1925: The humans carry 30 kilogram (29kg) packs, and the dogs help carry the rest of the load with packs up to 18 kilograms (18kg) apiece.

1925: Dogs and humans take a quick break

1925: Dogs pulling boats upstream on the Etivluk River.

1925: Dogs on the banks of the Etivluk River hauling boats upstream

1925: Dogs hauling a partly-loaded boat across the tundra of Etivluk-Aniuk Pass.