​An extinct volcano in Romania can recover in just a few weeks ● One of the most effective predators in nature lives with you at home ● The Perseverance rover has deciphered another mystery of the planet Mars

An extinct volcano in Romania could be reborn in just a few weeks

It is about an extinct volcano in the Chiomatu massif in the Harghita Mountains. This attracted the attention of a group of specialists from several research centers in Hungary, and the results of the study appeared in the journal Contributions to Mineralogy and Petrology.

What do Hungarian experts say? Well, they point out that the volcano in question is a typical example of an extinct volcano. The last major eruption occurred about 160,000 years ago. But we must not think that the danger it represents has passed.

The authors of the study bring into the discussion more than a million-year history of the volcano. And what’s really interesting is that he appeared many times. Sometimes periods of rest between eruptions were at least 100,000 years.

After the last major eruption 160,000 years ago, the volcano became active again 95,000 years ago, then 56,000 years ago, and the last known eruption was only 30,000 years ago.

The Hungarian researchers conducted a series of complex analyzes of crystals and chemical elements in the solidified magma to understand the structure of the eruptions and the reasons why such volcanoes tend to activate suddenly. Thus, they identified a key element, amphiboles (silicate minerals).

They represent a wide spectrum of composition, which means the presence of underground chambers where magma is formed and which independently feeds the volcano. Moreover, the authors of the study claim, even if today’s volcano seems extinct for thirty thousand years, it can reactivate at any moment. And the geologic record indicates that past reactivations have only occurred over a period of months, weeks, or even hours.

One of nature’s most effective predators lives with you in the house

When you think of the most efficient predator on the planet, or at least the most voracious (with the obvious exception of humans), images of sharks, tigers, killer whales, polar bears, and more automatically come to mind. None of them seem to match the hard work and greed of the animal that many of you keep at home and squish…the house cat.

This is emphasized by an international group of researchers in a study recently published in Nature Communications. Lest there be any doubt that some find fault with dry rock, the study does not say that the cat is the “top” predator. He says that it is one of the most effective.

And in this sense, scientists from the USA, Canada, France, New Zealand and Australia also give illustrative examples. For example, domestic cats hunt and consume at least 2,084 species of animals.

If you prefer percentages, it’s 9% of bird species, 6% of mammal species, 4% of reptile species, and as others have pointed out, a wide range of insects. Basically, a cat can eat any animal it can kill. Some do not retreat even from the practice of necrophagy.

In a study presented by scientists, cats were observed eating emu birds, turtles, kangaroos or even domestic cows. Even worse for the rest of the animal species, cats also have 347 endangered species among their pets (16.65% of the total number of species they consume).

To give you an even clearer idea, cats are responsible for the extinction of 26% of bird, mammal and reptile species worldwide. In Australia alone, for example, cats kill about 650 million reptiles annually. In the UK, domestic cats kill an average of 160 to 270 million animals a year. Well, now crumpled!

The Mars rover Perseverance deciphered another mystery of the planet Mars

On the anniversary of its 1,000th day on the Red Planet, the Perseverance rover has completed its mission to explore an important area of ​​Jezero Crater, a crater that formed about 4 billion years ago. The rover collected and analyzed 23 rock samples in an attempt to decipher the geological mysteries of the region.

NASA reports that the rover has identified silicates and phosphates, elements that could provide conditions for the preservation of fossil life forms, respectively, associated with their presence. And both elements were present during the formation of rocks, about 4 billion years ago.

The data provided so far indicate that after the formation of the crater, only a few million years ago, it was filled with water from rivers. The resulting lake reached a diameter of 35 kilometers and a depth of almost 30 meters. A fact that confirms the suspicions of specialists about the geological past of the territory.

Based on these data, the crater Lake becomes the main point where we can find extinct traces of Martian life forms. This is all the more so since phosphate is a key element of DNA and cell membranes.

The Perseverance rover’s next mission will be to study and analyze the chemical composition of the rocks at the rim of the crater where river water once flooded the impact site. Carbonate deposits have already been observed there, and the probability of the existence of fossil traces of life at the same place has increased significantly.

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