Page 28 - ARUBA TODAY

A28 SCIENCE
Wednesday 18 april 2018
Global warming is mixing up nature’s dinner time, study says

By SETH BORENSTEIN rouba, an ecologist at the habits earlier, but interde-
AP Science Writer University of Ottawa. pendent species didn’t
WASHINGTON (AP) — Glob- For example in the Nether- always move at the same
al warming is screwing up lands, the Eurasian sparrow rate. It’s the relative speed
nature’s intricately timed hawk has been late for din- of changes in timing that’s
dinner hour, often making ner because its prey, the key, Kharouba said.
hungry critters and those on blue tit, has — over 16 years Because of the small num-
the menu show up at much — arrived almost six days ber of species involved in
different times, a new study earlier than the hawk. small areas over different
shows. It’s most noticeable and studies, Kharouba’s team
Timing is everything in na- crucial in Washington could not find a statistical-
ture. Bees have to be state’s Lake Washington, ly significant link between
around and flowers have where over the past 25 temperature and changes
to bloom at the same time years, plant plankton are in how species sync to-
for pollination to work, and now blooming 34 days ear- gether. But what she saw,
hawks need to migrate In this April 23, 2015, file photo a sparrow hawk looks up after lier than the zooplankton she said, “is consistent with
at the same time as their catching a pigeon on a falcon farm, near the northern Serbian that eat them. That’s cru- climate change.”
prey. In many cases, global town of Coka. cial because that’s mess- Scientists not involved in
warming is interfering with Associated Press ing with the bottom of the the study praised the work.
that timing, scientists said. While other studies have lem. food chain, Kharouba said. “It demonstrates that many
A first-of-its-kind global looked at individual pairs These changes in species In Greenland, the plants species interactions from
mega analysis on the bio- of species and how warm- timing are considerably are showing up almost around the world are in a
logical timing of 88 species ing temperatures have greater than they were three days earlier than state of rapid flux,” Boston
that rely on another life changed their migration, before the 1980s, the study the caribou, so more of University biology professor
form shows that on aver- breeding and other tim- said. the baby caribou are dy- Richard Primack said in an
age species are moving ing, the study in Monday’s “There isn’t really any clear ing “because there wasn’t email. “Prior to this study,
out of sync by about six Proceedings of the Nation- indication that it is going enough food,” Kharouba studies of changing spe-
days a decade, although al Academy of Sciences to slow down or stop in the said. cies interactions focused
some pairs are actually gives the first global look at near future,” said study With warmer temperatures, on one place or one group
moving closer together. a worsening timing prob- lead author Heather Kha- most species moved their of species.”q

Study: Diamond from the sky may

have come from ‘lost planet’

By FRANK JORDANS would have required great have long theorized that
Associated Press pressure to form, said one the early solar system once
BERLIN (AP) — Fragments of the study’s co-authors, contained many more
of a meteorite that fell to Philippe Gillet. planets — some of which
Earth more than a decade “We demonstrate that were likely little more than
ago provide compelling these large diamonds can- a mass of molten magma.
evidence of a lost planet not be the result of a shock One of these embryo plan-
that once roamed our so- but rather of growth that ets — dubbed Theia — is
lar system, according to a has taken place within a believed to have slammed
study published Tuesday. planet,” he told The Associ- into a young Earth, eject-
Researchers from Switzer- ated Press in a telephone ing a large amount of de-
land, France and Germany interview from Switzerland. bris that later formed the
examined diamonds found Gillet, a planetary scientist moon. “What we’re claim-
inside the Almahata Sitta at the Federal Institute of ing here,” said Gillet, “is
meteorite and conclud- Technology in Lausanne, that we have in our hands
ed they were most likely said researchers calcu- a remnant of this first gen-
formed by a proto-planet lated a pressure of 200,000 eration of planets that are
at least 4.55 billion years bar (2.9 million psi) would missing today because they
Photo provided by Hillary Sanctuary of EPFL shows a thin slice ago. The diamonds in the be needed to form such were destroyed or incorpo-
of the meteorite sample from a meteorite that fell to Earth more meteorite, which crashed diamonds, suggesting the rated in a bigger planet.”
than a decade ago providing compelling evidence of a lost in Sudan’s Nubian Desert mystery planet was as least Addi Bischoff, a meteorite
planet that once roamed our solar system, according to a study in October 2008, have tiny as big as Mercury, pos- expert at the University of
published Tuesday.
Associated Press crystals inside them that sibly even Mars. Scientists Muenster, Germany, said
the methods used for the
study were sound and the
conclusion was plausible.
But further evidence of sus-
tained high pressure would
be expected to be found
in the minerals surrounding
the diamonds, he said.
Bischoff wasn’t involved in
the study, which was pub-
lished in the journal Nature
Communications.q