TEXT 1: How brightly the moon glows is a mystery, but maybe not for long.

    “The lunar dark side may be the moon’s more mysterious face, but there’s something pretty basic scientists still don’t know about the bright side — namely, just how bright it is.

    Current estimates of the moon’s brightness at any given time and vantage point are saddled with at least 5 percent uncertainty. That’s because those estimates are based on measurements from ground-based telescopes that gaze at the moon through the haze of Earth’s atmosphere.

    Now, scientists have sent a telescope beyond the clouds on a high-altitude airplane in hopes of gauging the moon’s glow within about 1 percent or less uncertainty, the National Institute of Standards and Technology reports in a Nov. 19 news release.

    Knowing the exact brightness of Earth’s celestial night-light could increase the reliability of data from Earth-observing satellites that use the moon’s steady glow to check that their sensors are working properly. Those satellites keep tabs on things like weather, crop health and dangerous algal blooms.”

(Adapted from https://www.sciencenews.org/article/how-brightly-moon-glows-is-mystery-but-maybe-not-long).

Planet’s ocean-plastics problem detailed in 60-year data set

Researchers find evidence of rising plastic pollution in an accidental source: log books for planktonmonitoring instruments. Matthew Warren 

Scientists have uncovered the first strong evidence that the amount of plastic polluting the oceans has risen vastly in recent decades — by analysing 60 years of log books for plankton-tracking vessels. 

Data recorded by instruments known as continuous plankton recorders (CPRs) — which ships have collectively towed millions of kilometres across the Atlantic Ocean — show that the trackers have become entangled in large plastic objects, such as bags and fishing lines, roughly three times more often since 2000 than in preceding decades.

This is the first time that researchers have demonstrated the rise in ocean plastics using a single, longterm data set, says Erik van Sebille, an oceanographer at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. “I’m excited that this has been finally done,” he says. The analysis was published on 16 April in Nature Communications. 

 Although the findings are unsurprising, long-term data on ocean plastics had been scant: previous studies looked mainly at the ingestion of plastic by sea creatures over shorter timescales, the researchers say.

Fishing for data

CPRs are torpedo-like devices that have been used since 1931 to survey plankton populations, by filtering the organisms from the water using bands of silk. Today, volunteer ships such as ferries and container ships tow a fleet of CPRs around the world’s oceans. 

(…)Each time a ship tows a CPR, the crew fills in a log book and notes any problems with the device. So Ostle and her colleagues looked through all tow logs from the North Atlantic between 1957 and 2016, to determine whether plastic entanglements have become more common.

Evidence analysis

(…)Van Sebille says that because the study focused on large plastic items, it doesn’t reveal much about the quantity of microplastics — fragments fewer than 5 millimetres long — in the oceans. These tiny contaminants come from sources such as disposable plastic packaging, rather than from fishing gear.

Nevertheless, he adds, the study demonstrates that fisheries play a major part in plastic pollution, and will provide useful baseline data for tracking whether policy changes affect the levels of plastic in the oceans. “As fisheries become more professional, especially in the North Sea, hopefully we might see a decrease,” he says.

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01252-0 (adapted).

Access: April 20th, 2019