Young can 'only read digital clocks'

Is time up for the traditional clock face?

Do young people really struggle with traditional analogue clocks with hands?

That's the claim in a debate between teachers - with suggestions that digital clocks are being installed in exam halls for teenagers.

It follows a report in the Times Educational Supplement of a conference being told that pupils needed a digital clock to be able to tell the time.

Malcolm Trobe, of the ASCL head teachers' union, said young people were much more used to using digital clocks.

As such, schools could be trying to give them more help by letting students use digital clocks in exam rooms during the summer GCSEs and A-levels.

"To adults it might seem second nature to use a standard clock face," said Mr Trobe, ASCL's deputy general secretary.

But younger people were much more familiar with seeing the time in a digital format - on computers or mobile phones.

"Young people find it a bit easier to use a digital clock - and if they're timing themselves for questions, it might make it less likely that they'll make mistakes," said Mr Trobe.

He said, as an example, if students had to answer a question in 15 minutes, it could be easier for them looking at a clock with a digital format, if that was how they usually told the time.

There were no official indications about taking down analogue clocks, he said, but such claims were being made by teachers on social media.

One of the examples on Twitter being quoted is from a head of English, "Ms Keenan".

But she told the BBC that the digital clocks that had been installed had broken down - and now had been replaced by a traditional analogue clock.

She said it wasn't the case that a majority of students can't tell the time using such analogue clocks, but it could be a barrier for some.

For the "digital generation", she said an analogue clock could be becoming an "anachronism".

Will this be a trend for the approaching summer exams?

Only time will tell.

Record concentration of microplastics found in Arctic

Plastic particles end up in sea ice floating in the Arctic

Record levels of microplastics have been found trapped inside sea ice floating in the Arctic.

Ice cores gathered across the Arctic Ocean reveal microplastics at concentrations two to three times higher than previously recorded.

As sea ice melts with climate change, the plastic will be released back into the water, with unknown effects on wildlife, say German scientists.

Traces of 17 different types of plastic were found in frozen seawater.

Microplastics are tiny plastic pieces under five millimetres long. They can be eaten by filter-feeding animals and passed up the food chain.

A considerable amount of microplastic is released directly into the ocean by the gradual breakdown of larger pieces of plastic. But microplastics can also enter the sea from health and beauty products, washing synthetic textiles or abrasion of car tyres.

Their "plastic fingerprint" suggests they were carried on ocean currents from the huge garbage patch in the Pacific Ocean or arose locally due to pollution from shipping and fishing.

More than half of the microplastic particles within the ice were so small that they could easily be ingested by sea life, said Ilka Peeken of the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven, Germany, who led the study.

"No one can say for certain how harmful these tiny plastic particles are for marine life, or ultimately also for human beings," she said.

Smaller than human hair

The ice cores were gathered from five regions throughout the Arctic Ocean in the spring of 2014 and summer of 2015. They were taken back to the laboratory, where they were analysed for their unique plastic "fingerprint".

"Using this approach, we also discovered plastic particles that were only 11 micrometres across," said co-researcher Gunnar Gerdts, also from the Alfred Wegener Institute.

"That's roughly one-sixth the diameter of a human hair, and also explains why we found concentrations of over 12,000 particles per litre of sea ice - which is two to three times higher than what we'd found in past measurements."

The ice cores were gathered during expeditions of the German ship Polarstern

The researchers found a total of 17 different types of plastic in the sea ice, including packaging materials like polyethylene and polypropylene, but also paints, nylon, polyester, and cellulose acetate (used to make cigarette filters).

They say the plastic found its way to the Arctic Ocean from the huge garbage patch in the Pacific Ocean or from ship's paint and fishing nets.

"These findings suggest that both the expanding shipping and fishing activities in the Arctic are leaving their mark," said Dr Peeken.

"The high microplastic concentrations in the sea ice can thus not only be attributed to sources outside the Arctic Ocean. Instead, they also point to local pollution in the Arctic."

Melting sea ice

The study confirms that sea ice traps large amounts of microplastics and transports them across the Arctic Ocean. The plastic particles will be released back into the ocean when the sea ice melts.

"As climate change will accelerate sea ice melting, more microplastics will be released from the sea ice and will enter the marine environment," said Dr Pennie Lindeque, lead plastics scientist at Plymouth Marine Laboratory, who was not part of the research team.

The ice cores were analysed for traces of plastic

Dr Jeremy Wilkinson, a sea ice physicist at the British Antarctic Survey, said the work, published in Nature Communications, was a "benchmark study".

"Microplastic particles were found throughout all cores sampled," he said. "It suggests that microplastics are now ubiquitous within the surface waters of the world's ocean. Nowhere is immune."

And Dr Jason Holt of the National Oceanography Centre said we might expect plastic waste from some European countries to eventually end up in the Arctic, due to ocean circulation patterns.

"It is therefore vital to understand the transport and fate of plastic waste in the Arctic and how it impacts on the marine environment there, and what can be done to reduce this impact," he said.

Plastic waste 'building up' in Arctic

Warmer Arctic is the 'new normal'

Microplastics threat to ocean giants

Estimates suggest about eight million tonnes of plastic move from the land into the ocean every year, with some finding its way into remote areas, such as the Polar Regions and the deep ocean floor.

Jupiter’s Iconic Red Spot is Shrinking, What Could Happen Next?

Voyager 2 image of Great Red Spot and south equatorial belt

 upiter is home to one most mysterious weather phenomena in our solar system — a massive anticyclone called the Great Red Spot.

Scientists are closely watching this centuries-old storm because it could soon disappear.

Rising Sun on Planet Jupiter

 The GRS is scientifically referred to as an anticyclone due to its counterclockwise rotation.Anticyclones look and act similar to tropical cyclones we experience on our planet that bring triple-digit wind speeds and leave large-scale destruction.

 Earth’s cyclones develop and grow over oceans but break up shortly after making landfall - in part, because of an increase of friction from the land.

 The longest tropical cyclone on Earth lasted 31 days while anticyclones can last for hundreds of years.

 Since the Jovian planet is composed primarily of hydrogen and helium gas, it’s believed that there isn’t any land to help dissipate winds, so anticyclones continue to grow, and in some cases, merge into even bigger systems.

The GRS has consumed its fair share of smaller storms, earning its title as the largest anticyclone in the solar system. 

It’s about 10,000 miles wide and is estimated to penetrate about 200 miles into Jupiter's atmosphere but new research suggests that it could go even deeper.

It’s big enough to consume the Earth whole.

But the Great Red Spot may not last forever and some scientists believe it might actually be nearing its end.

When it was observed in the late 1800’s, the GRS was estimated to be over 25,000 miles across.

In the late 1970s, NASA’s Voyagers 1 and 2 flybys measured it at 14,500 miles across.

Then in the 1990s, a Hubble Space Telescope photo showed that the GRS at about 13,000 miles across and in the late 2000s a photo measured it around 11,000 miles. Most recently, in 2017, NASA’s Juno Probe observed the GRS at its smallest size ever recorded. 

Juno requires a five-year cruise to Jupiter

Now the disappearance of this iconic red spot is only theoretical, but if it does vanish, it could give us a better understanding of Jupiter’s atmosphere and may even give us a view into the core of the gas giant.

Studying the Great Red Spot and other bizarre weather phenomena throughout the solar system could help us gain a deeper understanding of the fluctuating weather patterns on Earth.

12 photos show how humans explored Earth's oceans from the 1600s to now

The world's oceans cover 71% of the planet's surface, yet we've more thoroughly mapped the surface of Mars than we have the ocean floor.

At the recent opening of an exhibit about exploring unseen parts of the ocean at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), Investor Ray Dalio put the ocean's immensity into perspective. 

"The deepest part [of the ocean] is about as high as the highest land," Dalio, who funds ocean exploration through his philanthropic organization, said.

All that water is full of things to discover. Earth's oceans contain fascinating geology and life in unlikely places, including tiny creatures that produce at least 50% of the oxygen we breathe.

Plus, there are far more organisms that we haven't encountered.

"We still know so little about the ocean," John Sparks, the curator in charge of the AMNH's department of ichthyology, said at the exhibit opening. But thanks to new technologies, our understanding of Earth's oceans is changing rapidly. Scientists have found everything from microorganisms that could help provide cures for disease to fish that live deeper than we thought anything could survive.

For thousands of years, humanity had limited options for exploring the ocean. For the most part, we literally skimmed the surface, though people have had impressive capabilities in that regard for quite a while. (Early humans may have reached Australia 65,000 years ago.) Ocean explorers also dove as deep as they could without breathing devices — and could reach surprising depths in that way. 

People didn't start exploring the depths of the ocean until fairly recently, yet there were some impressive early underwater ships. Here are some of the vessels humans have used to explore the ocean, starting long ago and going up to the present day. 

The first submersile to travel underwater was reportedly created in 1620 by Dutch inventor Cornelius Drebbel. He demonstrated the vehicle for King James I in the Thames River.

Underwater vehicles and devices used to explore the ocean are often submersiles, which require some sort of on-land or at-sea support. The term "submarine" generally refers to vessels that don't need a support vehicle, like many military vessels.

Reportedly, Drebbel's submersile could stay underwater for about three hours, going down about 15 feet (4 meters).

American inventor David Bushnell built the "Turtle" in 1775. The underwater vessel was used to try to attach explosives to British ships in New York Harbor.

Named the "American Turtle," Bushnell designed and built the vessel in Connecticut as a machine for carrying gunpowder underwater to blow up enemy ships. In the depiction above, its first mission is manned by Sergeant Ezra Lee, who is shown opening the hatch after an unsuccessful attack. The auger visible in the image was used to drill charges into ships' wooden hulls.

While we've mostly focused on underwater vessels used for exploration in this list, the fact that many consider the Turtle the first submarine (since records of the Drebbel are so scant) made it worthy of inclusion. The Turtle could go about 15 feet underwater (4 meters).

Naturalist William Beebe and engineer Otis Barton created the Bathysphere in 1930. The device was lowered by a cable into the ocean in Bermuda.

Beebe and Barton conducted a series of dives with the Bathysphere between 1930 and 1934, setting a depth record of 1 kilometer (3,028 feet)in August 1934. This allowed Beebe to make the first observations of deep-sea life in its own habitat.

Before this, the deepest humans had ever gone underwater was around 525 feet. For that, people used an atmospheric diving suit that was armored to protect against the pressure.

For every 10 meters (33 feet) you go underwater, pressure increases by about 1 atmosphere, a measure of Earth's air pressure at sea level. That means 10 meters down, pressure is double what it is at sea level. One kilometer down, pressure is 100 times what it would be at sea level.

To withstand those forces, Barton designed a spherical submersile made of steel with windows made of three-inch thick quartz.

Barton broke the Bathysphere's record in a similar vessel he created called the Benthoscope, which traveled 4,500 feet (1,372 meters) deep in 1949.

Barton designed the Benthoscope to withstand even greater pressures than the Bathysphere. His 4,500-foot descent off the coast of California remains the deepest a submersible suspended on a cable has ever gone.

Underwater explorer Jacques Cousteau helped design the SP-350 Denise or "Diving Saucer," which was the first vehicle designed solely for underwater exploration.

Cousteau's Diving Saucer's name in French was the SP-350 — "SP" for soucoupe plongeante, which means "diving saucer" in French. The 350 referred to the depth it could descend: 350 meters (1,148 feet).

He called the vessel Denise.

Cousteau's "Diving Saucer" was built in 1959 and could stay underwater for four to five hours.

The vessel used jets of water for propulsion.

Humans only reached the bottom of the ocean in 1960, when they traveled 6.8 miles (10.9 kilometers) down into the Mariana Trench.

They used a type of deep sea submersile known as a bathyscape. The particular model they first used to reach the bottom was named the "Trieste."

The first humans to reach that depth were US Navy Lieutenant Don Walsh and Jacques Piccard, the son of the Trieste's designer.

 Eventually, it became possible to use remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) like the Hercules ROV, which oceanographer Robert Ballard used to map the Titanic in 2004.

The Hercules ROV can travel 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) underwater.

Using an ROV to explore underwater is a game-changer because operating them remotely means the vehicles don't need space or life-support equipment for people. Because of that, an ROV is usually operating underwater 24 hours a day. (Pilots take shifts controlling it through a long fiber-optic cable.)

ROVs are used in industry, but Hercules was one of the first designed for scientific research, especially for the fields of archaeology, biology, and geology.

In the Deepsea Challenger, filmmaker James Cameron traveled alone to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, 6.8 miles (10.9 kilometers) down, in 2012.

The Deepsea Challenger is a deep-diving submersile that Cameron piloted himself all the way down to the bottom of the sea.

The submersile Alvin has been in use for more than 50 years, though it has received a number of upgrades over time. As of its 2014 upgrade, it can go 2.8 miles (4.5 kilometers) underwater.

The submersible has safely transported over 2,500 researchers on more than 4,800 dives to depths of 14,764 feet (4,500 meters).

Modern documentaries that reveal more of the ocean than we've ever seen, like Blue Planet II, use submersiles to explore the unseen parts of the ocean.

While filming 1,500 feet (457 meters) underwater in Antarctica for Blue Planet II, the production team sprung a leak.

Luckily, they were still able to capture remarkable footage.

On that particular dive, they found that the waters beneath Antarctica are teeming with life. Using submersiles and ROVs, the Blue Planet II production team visited 39 countries on 125 expeditions, spending more than 6,000 hours underwater. While filming in the Mariana Trench, the deepest part of the ocean, they captured footage of an ethereal snailfish about 8,000 meters (5 miles) underwater, the deepest a fish had ever been spotted up to that time.