Grey whales, which migrate over 10,000 miles a year through a featureless expanse of blue, might be relying on a similar hidden sense. These disturbances sail outward and smash into our planet’s magnetic field, creating colourful light shows like the aurora borealis and sometimes disrupting communications.īiologists have already demonstrated that many animals can navigate by somehow sensing Earth’s magnetic field lines. Sunspots are a harbinger of heightened solar weather, marking times when the tangled plasma of the sun’s atmosphere coughs out more photons and charged particles than usual. This coincidence across 93 million miles of space is more plausible than it might seem. “The study convinced me there is a relationship between solar activity and whale strandings,” says Kenneth Lohmann, a biologist at the University of North Carolina who did not participate in the research. With that assistance, there is some evidence of this peculiar correlation, the researchers say in a paper published in Current Biology. ![]() Could this be why so few amphibians were known to fluoresce? But in some patches of forest and freshwater habitats where amphibians live, blue light can dominate just as it does in deep water. ![]() But scientists have focused more on aquatic animals, and when testing terrestrial animals, mainly used UV light (like in the sun). Science has documented many biofluorescent animals including chameleons, corals, jellyfish, reef fish, sharks, scorpions, butterflies, budgies, parrots, penguins, puffins, sea turtles and even flying squirrels. ![]() The study paves the way for new research into how or why amphibians possess this special adaptation, which has potential applications in medical technology and conservation. “There is still a lot out there that we don’t know,” says Jennifer Lamb, a biologist who conducted the research with Matt Davis, both at St Cloud State University in Minnesota. Many amphibians, whether salamanders, frogs or their distant cousins – possibly all of them – glow, according to a survey published in Scientific Reports. CLARREO-PF is currently scheduled to launch to the space station in NET December 2023 and will take measurements for one year, followed by an additional year of data analysis.And as cute, gross, pretty, ugly, magical and witchy-named as these slip-sliding creatures may be, they’ve been hiding something in a secret, fluorescent world invisible to humans. CLARREO-PF will have the unique ability to maintain its high accuracy throughout its lifetime, enabling it to serve as an on-orbit calibration reference for similar instruments and making it possible to detect subtle climate change trends sooner than previously possible. A 3D model of the instrument was rendered at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, which also completed building the power converter in September 2021, and sent the model to the University of Colorado Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) for use in its development of the flight instrument. The Climate Absolute Radiance and Refractivity Observatory Pathfinder (CLARREO-PF) will help us better understand Earth’s changing climate by taking measurements of sunlight reflected by Earth and the Moon, anchored to international standards, that will be five-to-ten times more accurate than those from existing sensors.
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