Articles by "Scientific life"
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The history of the Black Knight Satellite, an object orbiting our planet in polar orbit, should not be so controversial. Polar orbit is an orbit that goes in the opposite direction that our planet naturally revolves. This polar orbit has been used for surveillance, and neither The United States or Russia had capabilities of launching satellites into that orbit when the Black Knight Satellite was supposedly discovered in 1954.

Currently on NASA's site: September 7, 1958, the first Black Knight Missile of the United Kingdom was launched from the Australian range at Woomera to an altitude of over 300 miles; the second Black Knight Satellite has been described as a British satellite launched in 1959 March 12 from Australia, reaching altitudes of 350 feet, weighing 1000 pounds. February 28, 1959, Discoverer I ARPA Satellite weighing 1450 pounds was launched successfully into polar orbit by USAF Thor-Agena A Booster from Pacific Missile Range; stabilization difficulties hampered tracking acquisition.

On February 20, 1962, American Astronaut John Glenn became the first American to successfully orbit the Earth on the Friendship 7 mission. He was the fifth person in space next to Russia's Astronauts.

Neither of the reports on NASA's website give any credibility that this Black Knight satellite could possibly be connected to our events of space exploration, from first Russia and then the United States, at that time period. It's obviously bigger than just 1000 pounds; most passenger cars weigh more than that. In 1958, I absolutely do not believe any country had the capabilities to launch more than a few hundred pounds to orbit and certainly not a polar orbit. History tells us that. Not to mention with all the space junk we already have in our orbit that this particular satellite has managed to remain undamaged by collisions with our other natural space happenings, such as meteors and solar flares. Grumman Aircraft Corporation supposedly took a photograph on September 3, 1960 using a tracking camera of the Black Knight in orbit. I find quite the coincidence in the similarities of the Grumman F-14 Tomcat and the images of the Black Knight found on the internet. The first flight of the F-14 Tomcat was in 1970 and it was retired in 2006. 

Space shuttle astronauts aboard Endeavor in 1998 allegedly took photographs of the Black Knight satellite, and they have been circulating the internet with the explanation of it being space junk from a prior mission that broke off and has been left there. It was reported by a UFO researcher and retired Marine Corps Aviation Major Donald Keyhoe to newspapers in 1954 that the U.S. Air Force had discovered two satellites orbiting Earth near the Moon. He later recanted his statements. Followed by that, an author, Duncan Lunan, analyzed the repeating radio signals Nikola Tesla had heard during his 1899 radio experiments, and the long delayed echoes of unknown origin picked up in 1928, by amateur radio operator, Jorgen Hals of Oslo, Norway. His speculation was that the signals came from an alien probe about 13,000 years old in an orbit around our moon. This probe, he said, originated from a star in the Epsilon Bootis solar system. Lunan later recanted his speculation claiming he made miscalculations when he decoded the signals.

I have looked at the pictures from 1998 that are all over the internet. I've thought about it for a couple years on and off. The first time I saw it, it reminded me of the movie Spaceballs. It looks like Harry's vacuum-ship, but it lost some pieces.

The thought of getting close to such a dark, ominous object in the isolated confines of the complete unknown vastness of space scares me. There may or may not be a deceased man, or even a woman, inside. Despite this, I still think its nothing more than a distraction for us. If not, there would be a clear, concise explanation.

I believe it's likely that governments have been preparing to lose people on space missions since the beginning of manned space explorations in the 1950s. It's always been a possibility. I believe that NASA, naturally, covers a lot of unexplained events caused by Unidentified Flying Objects, just like all governments hide secrets. In 2016, we are looking up at the sky, just as Nostradamus and Galileo, others before them. Not at the world around us.

~This is an excerpt from my e-book 'My Third Eye' available on Kobo, Scribd, Apple's iBooks, and on Kindle for Amazon~

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Coca-Cola has long made some pretty crazy health claims about its sugary products. A fresh lawsuit takes aim at the company for "engaging in false and misleading marketing of sugar-sweetened beverages," according to the lawsuit, first reported by the Center for Science in the Public Interest.
A health advocacy group called The Praxis Project is suing The Coca-Cola Company and the American Beverage Association, the trade organization that represents the American non-alcoholic beverage industry. The nonprofit claims that Coke, with the help of the ABA, has "engaged in a pattern of deception to mislead and confuse the public," and government agencies responsible for public health, "about the scientific consensus that consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages is linked to obesity, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease."
The Praxis Project wants to see Coke publicly release files about the sugary drink's health implications, fund a campaign educating the public about the negative health consequences of their beverages, stop any deceptive advertising and "cease all advertising that reaches children under the age of 12 in significant numbers."
This isn't the first time Coke has come under fire for sugar-state legislators have attempt to tax soft drinks or limit their sales, for example. But this lawsuit cites dozens of dubious claims made by Coca-Cola or its representatives. Here are some of the craziest statements:

"There is no scientific evidence that connects sugary beverages to obesity."

Katie Bayne, Coca-Cola's Senior Vice President of Global Sparkling Brands, said this to a USA Today reporter in 2012. That is obviously incorrect. This Harvard School of Public Health tipsheet points out two statistics, citing studies published in 2011 and 2001:
A 20-year study on 120,000 men and women found that people who increased their sugary drink consumption by one 12-ounce serving per day gained more weight over time-on average, an extra pound every 4 years... One study found that for each additional 12-ounce soda children consumed each day, the odds of becoming obese increased by 60% during 1½ years of follow-up.
An article comparing a slew of other studies published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found no link between sugary drinks and obesity, but the American Beverage Association helped fund that study. When an independent set of scientists reanalyzed the data from the industry-funded study, they found a clear relationship that the first authors had (knowingly or not) obscured by introducing various extra calculations into their data.

Sugary drinks contribute 2 percent of the calories of the British diet.

James Quincey, Coca-Cola's President and Chief Operating Officer made this claim during an interview with Jeremy Paxman on BBC Two in 2013. I couldn't find where he pulled the statistic from. But as a quick calculation, if you had one sixteen ounce bottle of Coca-Cola every day, which contains about two hundred or so calories and ate the recommended 2600 calorie diet for a moderately active 30-year-old man or 2000 calories for the 30-year-old woman, that's around 7.5 and ten percent, respectively. Even if you ate 3,500 calories, the amount eaten daily on average by people in the industrialized world, a daily soft drink is 5.7 percent, not 2.
Plus, in the United States, a 2005 report from the Center for Science in the Public Interest found that carbonated soft drinks made up seven percent of American's calories in the period from 1999 to 2001. And if you look at carbonated soft drinks combined with fruit drinks and ades, these drinks provided teenagers 13 percent of their calories in 1999 to 2000.
Those number certainly make the 2 percent figure look a little low.

"Consuming any form of sugar is not uniquely related to insulin resistance or diabetes."

This quote comes from a 2015 ABA press release published in response to a proposed California law that sugary drinks should have a warning label, attributed to Lisa Katic, a registered dietician who consulted for food industry companies, including the ABA.
Now, sugary drinks aren't the cause of type 2 diabetes but are definitely a contributor. One meta-analysis, or study that pooled other studies together, found that those who drank 1 or 2 servings of sugary drinks a day were 26 percent more likely to develop type 2 diabetes as those who drank less than one a month. Other meta-analyses have confirmed the sugary drink-diabetes link, and another study measuring sugar intake around the world found that every 150 calorie increase in sugar availability per person per day came with an increased diabetes of 1.1 percent.
Finally, the American Diabetes Association says the following:
One of the biggest risk factors for type 2 diabetes is being overweight, and a diet high in calories from any source contributes to weight gain. However, research has shown that drinking sugary drinks is linked to type 2 diabetes, and the American Diabetes Association recommends that people limit their intake of sugar-sweetened beverages to help prevent diabetes.

Coca-Cola is a "sensible" snack for "any time of day"

Nutritionist Robyn Flipse equated included Coca-Cola mini-cans alongside packs of almonds on her website as sensible snacks, or "select portion-controlled versions of your favorites... for a meal that won't break the calorie bank, helping you manage your weight for better heart health." What's important about this claim is that Flipse was, as of March 2015, one of Coke's "Health Professional Partners." So, essentially, that claim was product placement; at least, that's what Coke spokesperson Ben Sheidler compared these kinds of posts to, according to an Associated Press report.
Food news website FoodBeast reports that Flipse isn't the only one taking money to advertise on behalf of Coca-Cola. And this article on nutrition site The Nutrition Planner also suggesting that Coke mini-cans are "perfectly portioned" was written by a "consultant for the food and beverage industry, including The Coca-Cola Company."

"The key to preventing weight gain is maintaining an active lifestyle and eating more calories."

Coca-Cola once helped fund a nonprofit, the Global Energy Balance Network, to put more pressure on lack of exercise as the main cause of the obesity epidemic. While the website is down and the group has since disbanded, The New York Times reported that this statement appeared on the group's website, with two Coca-Cola funded research articles provided as proof.
Lots of people say lots of different things on diets, including whether a calorie of sugar, a calorie of protein and a calorie of fat do the same thing. However, plenty of studies have shown that eating more food makes you weigh more.
I sent these statements to Coca-Cola, whose spokesperson respondedwith all these links and this statement.
This lawsuit is legally and factually meritless. We take our consumers and their health very seriously and have been on a journey to become a more credible and helpful partner in helping consumers manage their sugar consumption. To that end, we have led the industry adopting clear, front-of-pack calorie labeling for all our beverages. We are innovating to expand low- and no-calorie products; offering and promoting more drinks in smaller sizes; reformulating products to reduce added sugars; transparently disclosing our funding of health and well-being scientific research and partnerships; and do not advertise to children under 12. We will continue to listen and learn from the public health community and remain committed to playing a meaningful role in the fight against obesity.
It remains to be seen whether the ABA or their affiliates made these statements with ill intent. However, without a doubt, sugary drinks play a role in the type 2 diabetes and obesity epidemic.
[CSPI]

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There is also Crofarm which sources produce from farmers, for retailers, on an on-demand basis. Organised retailing, especially fruit and vegetable retailing, is less than $5 billion of the $60 billion organised retailing industry, according to Ernst and Young.
There are 30 other startups trying to transform the Indian agricultural market. The solution is to organise the inefficiencies.
However, how will one solve the inefficiency when the interventions are fragmented. So maybe it's time for agri startups to combine their resources to take on the fragmented ecosystem. 2017 could be the year of agri-tech, just like how the last two years were about fintech. With demonetisation, it could be a combination of the two to change agriculture. It is a $200 billion opportunity.
According to the World Bank, India has 395 million acres of land available for cultivation, out of which only 215 million acres is cultivated.
"The distribution system in India is a few hundred years old and it works in distribution. Any efforts to change it must be inclusive of the entire supply chain," says Kishore Biyani, Chairman of Future Group. He says startups need to make money and there are no business cases that are coming out of technology only businesses propositions.
While everyone is trying to change the agri status quo, it is funny how the problems are more than the solutions. Agriculture is not like city transport systems that can be disrupted by Uber or Ola. There are deep-rooted inefficiencies with powerful incumbents who control farming resources such as finance, seeds, chemicals, distribution, and supply chain. These systems have complete access to the distribution networks that supplies to eight million kiranas across the country too. The ecosystem supports the political class financially and therefore have a sway over agriculture which is a State subject as specified by the Indian Constitution.
Political systems and incumbent businesses apart, startups have to also get used to the cultural aspects of Indian diaspora.
This incumbent system exists because farming caters to local tastes and cultures. The farmer works on the demand side based on his region and the consumption needs are supported by the local supply chains dominated by a chain of middlemen and agents who control the pricing of the produce and all dealings are entirely in cash. For technology to disrupt such a system it requires the existing supply chain to change their cash based transactions (a difficult task) and record transactions digitally and pay tax. Farmers are not taxed, but they do not have the power or the requisite information to force the system to pay them in digital transactions. They do not even possess bank accounts in majority of the cases.
Therefore, startups helping agriculture remains just a notion. It is a great narrative for the press to champion these crusaders with technologies that are changing the lives of farmers.
There are plenty of problems in the system with great inefficiencies. For example, the nutritional value of the crop is low and, according to Ernst and Young, the wastage in the distribution system is as high as 30 percent.
What are we missing here? Are startups and the system ignoring the real problems.

Fragmented efforts

Here are a few problems that startups are against and the monster they are up against (which they have to win over first):
  • There are six lakh villages in India.
  • Farming is fragmented because of small landholdings (less than 30 guntas) and offer no efficiency.
  • There is no finance available.
  • Chemical and fertiliser distribution is a powerful lobby.
  • These distributors are also money lenders.
  • Their distribution network is a multi-layer network and stronger than the banking and FMCG networks.
  • Startups are successful closest to the major cities and are yet to connect to the majority of tier 2 cities. Tier 3 and 4 cities have not yet been touched.
  • Tier 3 and 4 cities have a completely different ecosystem compared to cities.
  • Eighty percent of major cities still work with the agriculture wholesale supply chain run by traditional distribution companies.
  • Organised retailers source 20 percent of their produce directly from farmers, the rest is from mandis.
  • There is no water in most regions and agriculture is still rainfall dependent.
  • Ground water digs go more than 1,000 feet deep, on an average, only to find brackish water.
  • Farm labour has become scarce as people flock to cities for jobs.
"It is not easy to work with a farmer in India if you do not address the problem from ground up, which goes beyond price discovery," says Charlotte Schumann, Co-founder of PEAT. She adds that most of the debt is created because of the use of chemicals and seeds that are not pest resistant. PEAT is trying to build a database of problems with cropping diseases and then will add interventions to improve crop yield.
"The efforts to change farming is fragmented. The argument to change the supply chain and the kirana is too technology focused and wants to change the system overnight. It takes a behaviour change, and not a policy change, to change Indian farming," says Prem Kumar, Founder of Snapbizz, a company that is organising the retail consumption trade.
Perhaps 2017 will be the year of change.
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Scientists are working on a novel technology that will allow future electronic devices to convert heat into electricity. Previously researchers from Ohio State University in the US pioneered the use of a quantum mechanical effect to convert heat into electricity. Now, they have figured out how to make their technique work in a form more suitable to industry.
They used magnetism on a composite of nickel and platinum to amplify the voltage output 10 times or more – not in a thin film, as they had done previously, but in a thicker piece of material that more closely resembles components for future electronic devices.
Many electrical and mechanical devices, such as car engines, produce heat as a byproduct of their normal operation. It is called “waste heat,” and its existence is required by the fundamental laws of thermodynamics, researchers said.
However, a growing area of research called solid-state thermoelectrics aims to capture that waste heat inside specially designed materials to generate power and increase overall energy efficiency. “Over half of the energy we use is wasted and enters the atmosphere as heat,” said Stephen Boona, a postdoctoral researcher at Ohio State.
“Solid-state thermoelectrics can help us recover some of that energy. These devices have no moving parts, don’t wear out, are robust and require no maintenance. Unfortunately, to date, they are also too expensive and not quite efficient enough to warrant widespread use. We’re working to change that,” said Boona.
In 2012, the research group, led by Joseph Heremans, demonstrated that magnetic fields could boost a quantum mechanical effect called the spin Seebeck effect, and in turn boost the voltage output of thin films made from exotic nano-structured materials from a few microvolts to a few millivolts.
In the latest advance, they have increased the output for a composite of two very common metals, nickel with a sprinkling of platinum, from a few nanovolts to tens or hundreds of nanovolts – a smaller voltage, but in a much simpler device that requires no nanofabrication and can be readily scaled up for industry.
Heremans said that, to some extent, using the same technique in thicker pieces of material required that the team rethink the equations that govern thermodynamics and thermoelectricity, which were developed before scientists knew about quantum mechanics.
While quantum mechanics often concerns photons – waves and particles of light – Heremans’ research concerns magnons -waves and particles of magnetism. “Basically, classical thermodynamics covers steam engines that use steam as a working fluid, or jet engines or car engines that use air as a working fluid.
“Thermoelectrics use electrons as the working fluid. And in this work, we’re using quanta of magnetisation, or ‘magnons,’ as a working fluid,” Heremans said.
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In 2016, science fiction and reality collided when LIGO opened up our sixth sense to understand the universe and set the ball rolling for a new era of observational astrophysics with the detection of gravitational waves from merging black holes.
Along the way, the international team of researchers associated with the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) scientific collaboration picked up numerous accolades and inspired a new generation of scientists.
The discovery of these elusive waves, a century after Albert Einstein’s prediction, is undoubtedly the biggest physics success story in 2016. Dubbed as “ripples in the curvature of space and time”, these waves will provide information on the cosmos that wouldn’t have been possible by peering through any kind of telescope: to explore fundamental physics and could even offer a peep into the universe’s earliest moments.
The electrifying revelations by the 1,000-member LIGO also heralded a new chapter in India’s future of new-age astrophysics. With India poised to set up a LIGO (the third in the world), scientists expect to hear space-time rhythms from Indian soil within next six to seven years, according to Karan P. Jani, one of the many US-based Indian researchers working on the project.
LIGO research is carried out by the international LIGO Scientific Collaboration (which includes the GEO Collaboration and the Australian Consortium for Interferometric Gravitational Astronomy) and the Virgo Collaboration in Europe.
The LIGO-India project is envisaged as an international collaboration between the LIGO Laboratory and three lead institutions in the IndIGO consortium: Institute of Plasma Research (IPR) Gandhinagar, Inter University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), Pune and Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology (RRCAT), Indore.
The window to the cosmos literally opened up on February 11, 2016, when LIGO announced the first-ever direct observation of gravitational waves. The waves arose from the merger of two massive black holes 1.3 billion light years away and were recorded by both of LIGO’s detectors – one in Hanford, Washington, and the other in Livingston, Louisiana.
They were first tracked down on September 14, 2015, by both detectors. The LIGO Observatories are funded by the National Science Foundation and were conceived, built, and are operated by Caltech and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). A second gravitational-wave detection by LIGO was announced on June 15, 2016, also from merging black holes.
After an upgrade, on November 30, scientists restarted the twin detectors of LIGO, after making several improvements to the system.
The hunt is back on.
During the year, the LIGO team and the founders were honoured with all major awards including the $3 million Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, the Kavli Prize and Gruber Prize in Cosmology. The Special Breakthrough Prize would be shared between two groups of laureates – the three founders of LIGO and 1,012 contributors to the experiment, including 40 Indian researchers.
Gabriela Gonzalez, who serves as the spokesperson for the international collaboration, was named one of the top 10 scientists in the world by the scientific journal Nature. She was also named one of the top 100 Leading Global Thinkers by Foreign Policy magazine for the collaboration.
LIGO saw two strong gravitational wave events in its first four months, and possibly a third weaker signal. If that trend continues in the new run, researchers hope for, at least six events in the first half of 2017. Another gravitational wave detector, Virgo, in Italy, is scheduled to be switched on in 2017 and combined with the twin LIGO detectors, they should be able to pinpoint the source of the waves.
Besides adding to the knowledge of the black hole population in the universe, the observatory could also quench science’s thirst to detect gravitational waves from the merger of two neutron stars, believed to be the producers and distributors of the heavy elements, such as the precious metals.
So far, technological developments that were made for LIGO have found independent applications in science as well as industry.
With the discovery, related projects like the European Space Agency’s LISA Pathfinder satellite (which reported record-breaking gravitational wave results) have also come under the spotlight for the possibility that the search for gravitational waves could one day occur in space.
The LIGO discovery capped a decade-long search and is the unequivocal proof that Einstein’s theory of general relativity was valid. It has spawned several other studies, including one which claims the discovery may have, in fact, invalidated Einstein’s theory and instead indicate that the first signs of quantum gravity may have been found. 2016 may have been a watershed year for new-age astrophysics, but 2017 could open the floodgates.
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Space is vast, vaster than anything we’ve ever experienced on the surface of the Earth. It’s so vast, the distances so huge, that even travelling to our nearest planets will take many months. But what of the stars? If the planets are so hard to reach, how long do you think it’ll take to reach our nearest, neighbouring star.
The stars are so far and the speeds we’ve achieved so small that only one of our spacecraft has made it beyond the confines of our solar system. Stephen Hawking might have a solution for that, however. He’s working on a project, dubbed Project Starshot, that aims to build a miniature spacecraft that can go a 1000 times faster than anything we’ve sent before it.
The idea is to build a spacecraft that’s so light that it can be accelerated by the photon energy of Earth-based lasers pushing against its surface. Hawking estimates that they’ll be able to hit speeds in excess of 134 million miles per hour, that’s about a fifth the speed of light, provided the craft is light enough. At these speeds, the craft should be able to reach our nearest star (not the Sun) in less than 20 years.
While it’s easy to build a lightweight spacecraft and a laser system on Earth, the engineering problems are still quite profound. The main problem is that space isn’t empty; it’s flooded with radiation that can prove lethal to a craft as small and light as the one Project Starshot aims to build.
High-energy radiation and fast moving particles can rip an electronic circuit to shreds and the only way to prevent this is by protecting a craft with a radiation shield. To keep the craft light, this is impossible.
Engadget reports that scientists are working on a kind of self-healing circuit to fix combat the issue. They’re working on an experimental “gate-all-around nanowire transistor” which will, hopefully, heal by itself.
The transistors on this chip will feature an extra contact point. The theory is that a current can be passed through the chip to heat it up at certain intervals. The regular heating and cooling is expected to “anneal” the transistors, so to speak, which would, in theory, repair any damage to the circuit.
Nasa is working closely with Stephen Hawking to realise this design and Russian venture capitalist Yuri Milner is helping with the funding of the project.
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Soon after the Cassini orbiter successfully executed the first of its ring-grazing orbits, it beamed back photos of the northern hemisphere of Saturn, along with the hexagonal jet stream at Saturn’s pole. The ring-grazing orbits are a series of maneuvers where Cassini passes through the outer rings of Saturn. There are twenty such orbits planned, with each orbit being a week long.
The Northern Hemisphere of Saturn imaged by Cassini using different spectral filters. Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute.


In April, Cassini will start its final set of maneuvers, where it will pass through the narrow gap between Saturn and the innermost rings. The spacecraft is then going to be de-orbited into Saturn, to prevent contamination of any of the moons of Saturn, which could potentially have life. The cameras captured Saturn a few days before making the closest approach. During the first ring-grazing orbit, there was a focus on obtaining data from other instruments.
However, high resolution images of the atmosphere of Saturn, its rings, and the tiny moons that orbit at the innermost rings are expected from future ring-grazing orbits. Carolyn Porco, Cassini imaging team lead at Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colorado said “This is it, the beginning of the end of our historic exploration of Saturn. Let these images — and those to come — remind you that we’ve lived a bold and daring adventure around the solar system’s most magnificent planet.”
Cassini is expected to take a closer look and obtain the best images so far of two tiny moons of Saturn: Janus and Epimetheus. Launched in 1997, Cassini has been studying the gas giant for over twenty years. Cassini has discovered a global subsurface ocean on Enceladus, found canyons flooded with hydrocarbons and imaged flowing methane clouds on Titan.
Cassini is a collaborative effort by NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Italian Space Agency.
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Using an expert computer system to parse through over three million satellite photos, scientists have compiled a high resolution map of the Earth that's offering an unprecedented glimpse into how our planet's surface water has changed over the past three decades.
This new mapping effort was led by Jean-Francois Pekel from the European Commission's Joint Research Centre in Ispra, Italy. Recorded at a resolution of 100 x 100 feet (30 x 30 meters), the new maps show the planet's water surfaces (excluding oceans) in astonishing detail. What's more, it tracks changes in features like rivers, lakes, and wetlands over the course of 30 years. Using these maps, scientists can now study how surface waters are changing over time, and how human activities are reshaping the planet.
Earlier attempts to map our planet's surface waters lacked the required resolution. They were too fuzzy to discern smaller lakes and rivers-a huge limitation given that millions of lakes less than one square kilometer in size account for roughly 40 percent of the global area of inland water. Previous satellite surveys, the best of which featured a resolution of 820 x 820 feet (250 x 250 meters), made it difficult for geologists to discern surface water from ground; the color of water varies greatly depending on depth, presence of sediments and dissolved chemicals, and the angle at which the sunlight hits the surface.

This map of the Parana River in North-Eastern Argentina and shows how rivers meander and move, how floodplains flood intermittently, and how new areas of permanent and seasonal water are being created and lost through time. (Image: © EC-Joint Research Centre / Google, 2016)
For the new survey, Pekel's team sought to create a truly global and methodologically consistent measurement of changes in surface water over time. Indeed, our planet's water surfaces are constantly shifting, owing to natural process like flooding, sedimentation, and channel migration, and due to human activities like the construction of dams, reservoirs, and water extraction. 
To say this was a meticulous survey would be a gross understatement. The researchers analyzed 3,066,102 Landsat images taken at monthly intervals between 1984 and 2015. To handle all this data-1.8 terabytes to be exact-and to distinguish terrestrial land features from water, the researchers utilized an expert computer system and the processing power of the Google Earth Engine platform.
Using this system, the researchers were able to classify each pixel (representing a 100 x 100 foot block) of each image as being either water, land, or a non-valid observation. The resulting 32-year record of our planet's water history was then used to produce a set of sortable maps that document different facets of surface water dynamics.
This map shows the upper stretches of the Yenisei River in Russia and captures the spatial and temporal patterns in surface water. Dark blue colors are areas of permanent water and the pink colors show areas of where water occurs less often. (Image: © EC-Joint Research Centre / Google, 2016)
These maps have revealed some fascinating changes over a relatively short period of time. Collectively, permanent surface water has disappeared from an area measuring almost 35,000 square miles (90,000 square kilometers) since 1984-roughly equivalent to Lake Superior. Around 70 percent of surface water losses occurred in just five Middle Eastern countries, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan. This illustrates the tremendous water management challenges in this region, including drought.
Over the same time period, new permanent surface water features formed elsewhere, covering an area about double that from which water was lost, or 71,000 square miles (184,000 square km). Most new water features were associated with reservoir construction, but the impact of climate change was also detected.
"In some places, like the Tibetan plateau...a cause and effect relationship with climate can be unambiguously established," Pekel told Gizmodo. "Basically, the observed expansion of the [closed] lakes of the Tibetan Plateau, is a consequence of the accelerated snow-and-glacier melt caused by rising temperatures and increased rainfall."
In total, the new data shows that our planet, as of 2011, is covered with 1.08 million square miles (2.78 square km) of permanent surface water, and 0.31 million square miles (0.81 million square km) of seasonal surface water. Armed with these maps, geologists and climate scientists will be better equipped to assess the impacts of global warming, while also capturing the effects of human activity on surface water resource distribution.

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