In acidic oceans, sound carries further

Darkfrog submitted, created time 2 months 13 hours (sciencenow.sciencemag.org)

It seems that as the oceans grow more acidic with all this atmospheric CO2, sounds begin to travel longer distances before they dissipate. Despite what one might think, this is not good news for whales and dolphins, which use sound to communicate and travel. Military sonar can already disrupt cetacean behavior as much as five hundred kilometers away. If things continue at the current rate, then by 2050, these sounds will travel 70% further in some parts of the Atlantic.

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Volcano gets choke chains to slow mud

DNA2004 submitted, created time 1 year 10 months (www.nature.com)

Indonesian geophysicists hope to stem the flow of a destructive mud volcano on East Java by dropping chains of concrete balls into its mouth.

The mud eruption began on 29 May last year in the middle of a rice paddy in the village of Porong, 30 kilometres south of Surabaya, the provincial capital. Since then, the volcano has spewed out up to 126,000 cubic metres of mud a day, flooding an area of more than 4 square kilometres.

Some 10,000 people have been left homeless and 20 factories have closed

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