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GLOBAL NEWS Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, who led the expedition. The team explored the volcanoes last summer as the Russians were planting a flag on the nearby sea floor, triggering an international flap over ownership of the seabed. The 1,800-kilometre-long ridge, which cuts across the Arctic from Greenland to Siberia, is in international waters. It is one of the planet's "spreading" ridges where molten rock rises up from inside the Earth, creating new crust. In the valley where the two crustal plates are coming apart, which is about 12 kilometres across, they found dozens of distinctive, flat- topped volcanoes that appear to have erupted in 1999, producing the layer of dark, smoky, volcanic glass on the seabed. (Source: Canwest News Service, 25 June 2008, http://tinyurl.com/ 59ewyv) "I am feeling both humbled and perplexed by this," said Anderson, who is now working as a retiree. "There is something very strange going on with spacecraft motions. We have no convincing explanation for either the Pioneer anomaly or the fly-by anomaly." As to whether these new anomalies are linked with the Pioneer anomaly, Anderson told SPACE.com: "I would be very surprised if we have discovered two independent spacecraft anomalies. I suspect they are connected, but I really do not know." (Source: SPACE.com, 3 March 2008, http://tinyurl.com/6xb52q) magnetic field using nine years of highly accurate satellite data. Fluctuations in the magnetic field have occurred in several far-flung regions of Earth, the researchers found. In 2003, scientists found pronounced changes in the magnetic field in the Australasian region. In 2004, however, the changes were focused on southern Africa. The changes "may suggest the possibility of an upcoming reversal of the geomagnetic field", said study co- author Mioara Mandea, a scientist at the German Research Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam. Earth's magnetic field has reversed hundreds of times over the past billion years, and the process could take thousands of years to complete. The decline in the magnetic field is also. opening Earth's upper atmosphere to intense charged- particle radiation, scientists say. Satellite data show the geomagnetic field decreasing in the South Atlantic region, Mandea said, adding that an oval-shaped area east of Brazil is significantly weaker than similar latitudes in other parts of the world. "It is in this region that the shielding effect of the magnetic field is severely reduced, thus allowing high-energy particles of the hard EARTH'S CORE AND MAGNETIC FIELD CHANGING FAST apid changes in the churning movement of Earth's liquid outer core are weakening the magnetic field in some regions of the planet's surface, a new study says. "What is so surprising is that rapid, almost sudden, changes take place in the Earth's magnetic field," said study co-author Nils Olsen, a geophysicist at the Danish National Space Centre in Copenhagen. The study, published recently in Nature Geoscience, modelled Earth's also NASA BAFFLED BY FORCE ACTING ON SPACE PROBES Miesnens four spacecraft that have flown past the Earth have each displayed unexpected anomalies in their motions. These newfound enigmas join the so-called "Pioneer anomaly" as hints that unexplained forces may appear to act on spacecraft. A decade ago, after rigorous analyses, anomalies were seen with the identical Pioneer 10 and IJ spacecraft as they hurtled out of the solar system. Both seemed to experience a tiny but unexplained constant acceleration towards the Sun. Now, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory astronomer John Anderson and his colleagues, who originally helped uncover the Pioneer anomaly, have discovered that four spacecraft each raced either a tiny bit faster or slower than expected when they flew past the Earth on route to other parts of the solar system. In five of the six fly-bys, the scientists have confirmed anomalies. How MAwY CARGO CREDITS Jo I HAVE To BUY So Tr CAN SMOKE WITHOVT GUILT? Somerville NEXUS ¢ 7 AUGUST — SEPTEMBER 2008 www.nexusmagazine.com