Author Archives: mingyang li

Is it even possible that an impact crater which has even bigger area than Paris can hide underneath ice? The answer is yes! Recently a gigantic impact crater with 31 kilometres wide was found under Greenland’s ice. This crater was recorded in 25 largest craters on earth.

Thanks to NASA’s operation ice bridge, an airborne radar which is used to measure the thickness of the ice was applied at the edge of Hiawatha Glacier in northwest Greenland. And then researchers immediately found a round shape implements a massive crater.  Although the scientists couldn’t collect the sample from the crater from this time since the crater is still under around 900 meters deep under the ice layer, they collected the sediment from the water melt from the base of the glacier. In the sediment, they found out some significant signs of the impact: “shocked” quartz grains with deformed crystal lattices and glassy grains which implements flash-melted rock. This proves that the meteorite which caused this crater was a relatively rare iron meteorite.

To determine the age of this crater, scientists first determine the age of ice sheet covered on the crater which is 11,700 years old. Then researchers found out that the crater has cut through an ancient riverbed formed  2.6 million years ago. That is to say that the crater was probably formed between 11700 years and 2.6 million years old.

Kurt Kjaer and his team from the University of Copenhagen mentioned that when this kind of big iron meteorite slammed to earth, the impact must cause severe environmental damage around the Northern Hemisphere. Since the crater is likely formed from 11700 and 2.6 million years old, the impact might be the main reason which caused Younger Dryas which is also known as Ice Age. However, this theory is still a hypothesis and is a lack of convincing evidence.

All in all, a massive crater was found underneath Greenland’s ice and it might be the main reason caused the Ice Age back then. Below is a video shows the whole discovery story if this massive crater.

 

India and China are the countries with the largest number of people in the world. There are about 2.7 billion people living in these two countries which are more than one-third of the whole population in the whole world.  As shown below, the population of China and India has almost 40% of people on earth.

The air pollution from these two countries is high as well mainly because of their large population with ranked 4th in China and 5th in India. As shown on this webpage. ,  The real-time recorded air pollution data implies that India and China have serious air pollution.

Recently, a study shows that if we are able to eliminate the pollutants emission of India and China, about 15 million years of life in China and 11 million years of life in India can be saved.  Although there are plenty of articles talking about the hazard effect of particulate matter(AKA PM2.5) to human. However, there is no essay has quantified the impact of particulate matter in a specific region and an operatable strategy of solving this problem.

In this study, the researchers from Harvard calculated the change in mortality and life expectancy in each province in China and India with the help of state-of-the-art atmospheric chemistry modeling. The result shows that Shandong, Henan, and Sichuan provinces in China, and Uttar Pradesh state in India needs to replace coal-fired powerplant into less pollutant power generating technologies like wind or water power generation.

With this study, we can start to identify all the region with high pollutant due to coal-fired power plants all over the world and change them into a more clean and renewable energy source. As the result, the world would be a better place without pollutant from coal-fired power plants.

 

The freshwater crisis has been a serious global problem for years. There is 70 percent of the world covered by water while there’s only 2.5 percent of it is fresh. What if I tell you now there is a way we can transform from toxic water with heavy metal ion into safe drinking water?

In 2018 September 21, researchers in UNSW and RMIT funded by The ARC Centre for Future Low-Energy Electronics Technologies (FLEET) published an efficient and revolutionary method to transform water with heavy metal ion into drinking water by filtering the water through aluminum oxide nano-filters. It indicates that the water source recycle will be improved further with the massive production of this portable and low-cost filter paper.

The research shows that the liquid metal-based filter paper can excellently separate the oil and heavy metal ions(mainly lead ion), which highly improved water source recycle system.  The lead ion has a strong affinity to the aluminum oxide surface while the water doesn’t react with it. Thus, safe drinking water is obtained after the filtration.

The method of making this aluminum oxide nano-filters are quite simple and more importantly, cheap. First thin sheets and nanofibers of boehmite while annealing. The researchers then add of aluminum into gallium alloy in room temperature, then they expose the melt to liquid water or water vapor and aluminum oxide will be synthesized on the alloy’s surface.

Fortunately, The researchers decided to release their study to the public, which means that people all over the world are able to produce the same aluminum oxide nano-filters free and increase the quality of fresh water worldwide.

The researcher also indicates that more research about using liquid metal as the base material is needed in the future.