MI weekly selection #38

canyon Greenland

Long canyon lies beneath Greenland Ice Sheet

A canyon nearly twice as long as the Grand Canyon has been found under the massive Greenland Ice Sheet. By studying data compiled over three decades, Jonathan Bamber of the University of Bristol in the U.K. and his team discovered details about the canyon, which is at least a half-mile deep and up to 466 miles long, and believe it is older than the ice sheet.

National Geographic Daily News

Water exists deep inside the moon

Evidence of water deep beneath the surface of the moon has been found by researchers, according to NASA, which funded the study. Scientists remotely detected magmatic water, which originates from deep inside the moon, using data gathered by the Moon Mineralogy Mapper aboard the Indian Space Research Organization’s spacecraft, Chandrayaan-1. “Now that we have detected water that is likely from the interior of the moon, we can start to compare this water with other characteristics of the lunar surface,” said planetary geologist Rachel Klima of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.

Seattle Pi

Brains look up words like a dictionary

Human brains may operate like a dictionary, say scientists who used mathematical analysis to link the definitions of English words to create a minimal set of words. Stevan Harnad of the University of Quebec and his team believe that finding the minimal word set and determining its structure could reveal how language is put together in the brain.

New Scientist

Mercury originates in deep ocean waters

Most of the toxic form of mercury comes from bacteria attached to organic matter sinking deep into the ocean, say researchers from the University of Michigan and the University of Hawaii. The scientists say their findings suggest that mercury levels will rise in Pacific fish over several years.

University of Michigan

Memory protein fades with age

Age-related memory loss linked to key brain protein

Science Now

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