Amelia Earhart mystery may finally be solved

Amelia Earhart last flight video :

this writer was unable to vet the following video as part of Earhart’s final flight, but it’s definitely footage of Amelia and her navigator, Fred Noonan.

From The Inquisitr by Kaanii Powell Cleaver

Many notable names of the 20th century have faded with the passage of time.
Not so with aviatrix Amelia Earhart.
The pioneering female pilot disappeared while flying over the Pacific Ocean in 1937, but people still wonder what happened to her.
In fact, the Amelia Earhart mystery is generating global buzz right now, and the world can thank Ric Gillespie and Thomas King of The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery’s Amelia Earhart Project for that.
On October 1, 2016, Nature World News made the announcement that the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery has recovered and is touting conclusive evidence that proves where and possibly how Amelia Earhart and her flight navigator, Fred Noonan, perished nearly 80 years ago.

Although no real evidence was ever presented that could prove or disprove it, the U.S. government declared the official cause of Earhart’s and Noonan’s deaths to be an airplane crash.
In theory, a plane crash into unknown Pacific waters makes sense.
She had, after all, crashed while piloting a plane at least twice before.
In reality, the demise of Amelia Earhart and her trusty navigator may be a far more grisly tale.

According to The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, or TIGHAR, Amelia knew she was running out of fuel and could not find her planned destination of Howland Island, so she landed her plane on a relatively flat coral reef on the western edge of an atoll then known as Gardner Island. She used the last of her fuel to send distress calls for several nights.
A week after Earhart’s final radio transmission, the U.S. Navy sent a fleet of search planes to find Amelia.
By then, Earhart’s Lockheed Electra had been swept off the tiny reef and into very deep water, so no wreckage was seen from above.
Search pilot Lt. John O. Lambrecht did report seeing “signs of recent habitation” on the beach, but he assumed there were natives living on the island and did not send a rescue team.

 Finding Amelia with Hard Facts and Sound Science :

Powerpoint presentation given by TIGHAR Executive Director Ric Gillespie

at The Collider in Asheville, NC on August 5, 2106

What in the world happened to Amelia Earhart?

As the official story goes, Earhart’s Lockheed Electra 10E “flying laboratory” was equipped with aviation gear that was state of the art for the time. Biography.com notes that although Amelia was a competent pilot, she was not a very good navigator.
She flew more by instinct than by instruments, which may or may not have contributed to her disappearance on June 2, 1937.
Other factors that came into play that fateful night were the overcast skies that blocked Noonan’s ability to navigate by the stars and the fact that the charts used by Noonan and Earhart were outdated and placed 6,500 feet long, 1,600 feet wide Howland Island, which was their destination, at least five miles from its actual location.
Amelia’s plane circled the region, looking for Howland Island and its tiny landing strip as they radioed a U.S. Coast Guard vessel called the Itasca with the following message.

In the days following Amelia’s disappearance, at least 100 people around the planet reported hearing distress calls that originated from Earhart’s radio, reports The Vintage News.
Among those who described calls were a shortwave operator in Texas who said that Amelia claimed to have made a partial water landing.
Another radio listener reported hearing Earhart say she was injured, but that her navigator was in worse shape than she.
Anecdotal evidence is fascinating, but not enough to prove that Earhart and Noonan survived their aviation mishap long enough to fire up the radio and send distress calls.
Things that can prove the doomed duo survived a crash and died some time later are the “hard facts and sound science” presented by Ric Gillespie at The Collider in Asheville, North Carolina, on August 5 of this year.

 Nikumaroro with the GeoGarage platform (Linz nautical chart)

According to Gillespie, Earhart landed her Lockheed Electra on the western reef slope of the South Pacific coral atoll of Nikumaroro, some 1,800 nautical miles southwest of Hawaii, 700 nautical miles south of Samoa and 1,000 nautical miles north of Fiji.
As Gillespie describes it, Nikumaroro atoll is in “the middle of nowhere.”

  Nikumaroro with the GeoGarage platform (NGA nautical chart)

And the middle of nowhere is precisely where a 19 inch by 23 inch rectangle of aluminum was found by TIGHAR researchers in 1991.
Since that time, TIGHAR researchers have unearthed several other bits of conclusive evidence on Nikumaroro, including a pot of freckle cream, the heel of a woman’s shoe that matches contemporary photos of Earhart and several small bones.
Scientists surmise that the rest of Earhart’s and Noonan’s bones may yet be discovered in old crab burrows.

 This excerpt form the Discovery Channel documentary Finding Amelia explains TIGHAR's theory about how how Earhart landed on the reef at Gardner Island (Nikumaroro)

Scab patch as proof that Amelia landed on Nikumaroro atoll.

When the aluminum slab was first discovered, some pooh-poohed it as not matching Earhart’s Elektra airplane.
In 1996, the metal was tested by an independent lab and was found to be essentially identical to the 24ST Al-clad aluminum used as the skin of Earhart’s plane, NR16020.
Recently, the TIGHAR team found a Miami Herald photograph that clearly shows the same piece used as a “scab patch” to cover a broken window on the plane that became a part of the Amelia Earhart mystery more than seven decades ago.
Gillespie notes that “the patch was as unique to her particular aircraft as a fingerprint is to an individual and that the aluminum matches that fingerprint in many respects.”

 Video summary of NAI'A's 2015 expedition to Nikumaroro in the Phoenix Islands in support of TIGHAR's search for Amelia Earhart.

Between 2001 and 2010, Gillespie and the TIGHAR team visited Nikumaroro Island several times, finding artifacts and evidence of long-ago meals, leading scientists to conclude that Earhart may have survived for several months before dying of malnutrition or illness.
Whatever the cause of her death, the brave aviatrix who flew through the Pacific sunset and into the history books perished shortly before her 40th birthday.

Links :

• Washington Post : Amelia Earhart didn’t die in a plane crash, investigator says. This is his theory
• Nature World : What Happened to Amelia Earhart? New Evidence Proves She Survived for Months, Did Not Die of Plane Crash
• GeoGarage blog :  Amelia Earhart: sonar image shows what may be lost aviator's wrecked plane

Celebrating the 500th Anniversary of Martin Waldseemüller’s 1516 Carta Marina

source : Library of Congress

Martin Waldseemüller's 1516 Carta Marina sought to present the most up–to–date conception of the world at that time.

Equal in size to his 1507 map, the Carta Marina is markedly superior to the earlier map in artistic detail, possibly reflecting the hand of the artist Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528).

It incorporates greatly expanded and corrected geographical information.

The Carta Marina could be considered the first printed nautical map of the entire world.

However, in part because of the controversies surrounding his earlier naming of the Western Hemisphere “America,” Waldseemüller omits the word from the Carta Marina, and indicates that North America is joined with Asia. 

Links :

• LOC : Celebrating the Carta Marina / Compare 1507 vs 1516 Waldseemüller maps
• GeoGarage blog : Worlds upon worlds : about the Waldseemüller world map / The making of a mysterious Renaissance map / A world redrawn : when America showed up on a map, it was the universe that got transformed
• Maps & Explorers : Carta Marina 1516: A new approach to map making
• Who Printed Waldseemüller: Watermark Evidence from the 1507, 1513 and 1516 Maps
• YouTube : Legends on Martin Waldseemüller's Carta Marina of 1516 by Chet Van Duzen
  
  

Coral colors

coral colors from myLapse

In this video we have tried to show movement and the enormous chromatic beauty of corals, a kind of marine animals that despite being one of the oldest animals on our planet, are mostly unknown.
You will discover its stunning beauty, its spectacular colors and the mystery of his movements.
To capture these images it was necessary to apply the technique of time lapse as the slow movements of these animals are very difficult to see at a glance.
The use of macro lens gives a large enough vision to contemplate the huge variety of colorful species.
To perform this video over 25000 individual images of the marine invertebrates to compose, and photography of species, such as the Acanthophyllia, Trachyphyllia, Heteropsammia cochlea, Physogyra, were made for approximately 1 year.
We like to think that with this work, we have put a small grain of sand to raise your attention about the Great Barrier Reef, one of the natural wonders of our world, endangered because of global warming and because of the industrial projects of the Government of Australia.

You can see more up-close images of the coral species featured in this film on Flickr. 

12 robots that could make (or break) the oceans

Breaking waves

From WeForum by Douglas McCauley & Nishan Degnarain

An industrial revolution is unfolding under the seas.
Rapid progress in the development of robotics, AI, low-cost sensors, satellite systems, big data and genetics are opening up whole new sectors of ocean use and research.
Some of these disruptive marine technologies could mean a cleaner and safer future for our oceans.
Others could themselves represent new challenges for ocean health.

The following 12 emerging ocean technologies are changing the way we harvest food, energy, minerals and data from our seas.

1. Autonomous ships

Image: Rolls-Royce

        
You’ve heard of driverless cars – soon there may be skipperless ships.
Ocean shipping is a $380 billion dollar industry.
Like traffic on land, ocean traffic is a major source of pollution, can introduce invasive species, and even causes ocean road-kills.
For example, over 200 whales were struck by ships in the past decade.
Companies like Rolls Royce envision autonomous shipping as a way to make the future of the industry more efficient, clean and cost-effective.
Skipperless cargo ships can increase efficiency and reduce emissions by eliminating the need for accommodation for crew, but will require integration of existing sensor technology with improved decision-making algorithms.

2. SCUBA droids

Image: Osada/Seguin/DRASSM

        
SCUBA divers working at extreme depths often have less than 15 minutes to complete complicated tasks, and they submit their bodies to 10 times normal pressure.
To overcome these challenges, a Stanford robotics team designed Ocean One: a humanoid underwater robot dexterous enough to handle archaeological artifacts that employs force sensors to replicate a sense of touch for its pilot.
Highly skilled humanoid robots may soon replace human divers in carrying out deep or dangerous ocean research and engineering tasks.

3. Underwater augmented reality glasses

Image: US Navy Photo by Richard Manley

        
Augmented and virtual reality technologies are becoming mainstream and are poised for enormous growth.
The marine sector is no exception.
US navy engineers have designed augmented vision displays for their divers – a kind of waterproof, supercharged version of Google Glass.
This new tech allows commercial divers and search and rescue teams to complete complex tasks with visibility near zero, and integrates data feeds from sonar sensors and intel from surface support teams.

4. Blue revolution

Image: InnovaSea

        
The year 2014 was the first in which the world ate more fish from farms than the wild.
Explosive growth in underwater farming has been facilitated by the development of new aquaculture tech.
Submerged “aquapod” cages, for example, have been deployed in Hawaii, Mexico, and Panama.
Innovations like this have moved aquaculture further offshore, which helps mitigate problems of pollution and disease that can plague coastal fish farms.

5. Undersea cloud computing

Image: Microsoft

        
Over 95% of internet traffic is transmitted via undersea cables.
Soon, data may not only be sent, but also stored underwater.
High energy costs of data centres (up to 3% of global energy use) have driven their relocation to places like Iceland, where cold climates increase cooling efficiency.
Meanwhile, about 40% of people on the planet live in coastal cities.
To simultaneously cope with high real estate costs in these oceanfront growth centres, reduce latency, and overcome the typically high expense of cooling data centres, Microsoft successfully tested a prototype underwater data centre off the coast of California last year.
Next-generation underwater cloud pods may be hybridized with their own ocean energy-generating power plants.

6. New waves of ocean energy

Image: Carnegie Wave Energy

        
The ocean is an enormous storehouse of energy.
Wave energy alone is estimated to have the technical potential of 11,400 terawatt-hours/year (with sustainable output equivalent to over 400 small nuclear power plants).
Technological innovation is opening up new possibilities for plugging into the power of waves and tides.
A commercial project in Australia, for example, produces both electricity and zero-emission desalinated water.
The next hurdles are scaling up and making ocean energy harvest cost-efficient.

7. Ocean thermal energy

Image: KRISO (Korea Research Institute of Ships & Ocean engineering)

        
Ocean thermal energy conversion technology, which exploits the temperature difference between shallow tropical waters and the deep sea to generate electricity, was successfully implemented in Hawaii last year at its largest scale yet.
Lockheed Martin is now designing a plant with 100 times greater capacity.
Drawing cold water in large volumes up from depths of over 1 kilometre requires large flexible pipelines made with new composite materials and manufacturing techniques.

8. Deep sea mining

Image: Nautilus Minerals

        
Portions of the seafloor are rich in rare and precious metals like gold, platinum and cobalt.
These marine mineral resources have, up until now, lain mostly out of reach.
New 300 tonne waterproof mining machines were recently developed that can now travel to some of the deepest parts of the sea to mine these metals.
Over a million square kilometres of ocean have been gazetted as mining claims in the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian oceans, and an ocean gold rush may open up as early as 2018.
Mining the seafloor without destroying the fragile ecosystems and ancient species often co-located with these deep sea mineral resources remains an unsolved challenge.

9. Ocean big data

Image: Windward

        
Most large oceangoing ships are required to carry safety sensors that transmit their location through open channels to satellites and other ships.
Several emerging firms have developed sophisticated algorithms to process this mass influx of ocean big data into usable patterns that detect illegal fishing, promote maritime security, and help build intelligent zoning plans that better balance the needs of fishermen, marine transport and ocean conservation.
In addition, new streams of imagery from nanosatellite constellations can be analysed to monitor habitat changes in near-real time.

10. Medicines from the seas

Image: PharmaSea

        
The oceans hold vast promise for novel life-saving medications such as cancer treatments and antibiotics.
The search for marine-derived pharmaceuticals is increasing in momentum.
The European Union, for example, funded a consortium called PharmaSea to collect and screen biological samples using deep sea sampling equipment, genome scanning, chemical informatics and data-mining.

11. Coastal sensors

Image: Smartfin

        
The proliferation of low-cost, connected sensors is allowing us to monitor coastlines in ways never possible before.
This matters in an ocean that is rapidly warming and becoming more acidic as a result of climate change.
Surfboard-embedded sensors could crowd-source data on temperature, salinity and pH similar to the way traffic data is being sourced from drivers’ smartphones.
To protect the safety of beachgoers, sonar imaging sensors are being developed in Australia to detect sharks close to shore and push out real-time alerts to mobile devices.

12. Biomimetic robots

Image: Boston Engineering

        
The field of ocean robotics has begun borrowing blue prints from the world’s best engineering firm: Mother Nature.
Robo-tuna cruise the ocean on surveillance missions; sea snake-inspired marine robots inspect pipes on offshore oil rigs; 1,400 pound robotic crabs collect new data on the seafloor; and robo-jellyfish are under development to carry out environmental monitoring.
That ocean species are models for ocean problem-solving is no surprise given that these animals are the result of millions of years of trial and error.

Outlook

Our fate is inextricably linked to the fate of the oceans.
Technological innovation on land has helped us immeasurably to clean up polluting industries, promote sustainable economic growth, and intelligently watch over changes in terrestrial ecosystems.
We now need ocean tech to do the same under the sea.
As the marine industrial revolution advances, we will need to lean heavily on innovation, ingenuity and disruptive tech to successfully take more from the ocean while simultaneously damaging them less.

Links :

• GeoGarage blog : Rolls-Royce sets sail for robotic shipping with virtual bridge concept / Who’s driving that boat? No one / Stanford's humanoid diving robot takes on undersea archaeology and coral reefs / Microsoft plumbs ocean’s depths to test underwater data center / The rise of British sea power / The future of technology is hiding on the ocean floor / Going deep: Cautious steps toward seabed mining / How satellites and big data can help to save the oceans / Big data maps world's ocean floor : geology of ocean floor revealed / Marine 'treasure trove' could bring revolution in medicine and industry / An ocean of data / Swarming robot boats demonstrate self-learning

Geographer: China’s claim to South China Sea not rooted in History

A map of China’s shifting definition of the so-called Nine-Dash Line.

US State Dept. Image

From USNI News by John Grady

A British geographer and journalist described China’s claims to large swaths of seas and land formations off its coast are based on 20th-century events — from the Boxer Rebellion to the defeat of Japan in World War II — and not deeply rooted in its history.

This assertion brought several heated questions from the audience.

Bill Hayton, an associate fellow at London’s Chatham House and the author of South China Sea, The Struggle for Power in Asia, named one of The Economist’s Books of the Year in 2014 and a journalist with the BBC said in response to a question that Beijing’s claims are valid “because [these territories] are ours” historically, said “a hundred years ago you [Chinese citizens] wouldn’t feel” the same way.
For much of China’s past, most of the South China Sea was viewed as “a place where pirates roam.”
His previous book Vietnam: Rising Dragon describes the diplomatic, social, political, and economic issues facing modern Vietnam. Hayton has presented widely on the South China Sea and other Southeast Asian issues in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Speaking Thursday at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington, D.C. think tank, he added, now, “every Chinese child is taught James Shoal is the southernmost part of Chinese territory.” The shoal is under water and claimed by China, Taiwan and Malaysia.
It is more than 1,000 miles from the Chinese mainland and 50 miles from the Malaysia coast.

The CSIS Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative and the Southeast Asia Program are pleased to invite you to a discussion with Bill Hayton, associate fellow at Chatham House.
Hayton will argue that the current tensions in the South China Sea can be traced back to the muddled origins of China’s claims in the early twentieth century.

He will show evidence that China’s claim to islands in the South China Sea emerged in 1909 and was further developed after 1933.

He will explain how Chinese academics and officials came to draw the “U-shaped line” by copying Western maps—and in the process incorporated mistakes and misunderstandings with consequences that still trouble the region decades later.

In answering a question about whether the media are increasing tensions over the disputes in the East and South China Seas, Hayton said, “The story has shifted” from one of China’s claims in the early 20th century in disputes with Japan and France over pieces of territory to one of who has the most influence in the region — Beijing or Washington.

He said the international arbitration panel’s recent ruling against China in a dispute with the Philippines over its so-called “9-Dash Line” territorial claims fell within the rules laid out in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea that the Spratlys were not islands.
“There are no records of settled families” by the Chinese on them. The treaty calls for “human habitation, so they [aren’t] islands in that sense.”

Hayton added that Beijing was an early and strong supporter of the treaty “to stop countries from” making territorial claims like the ones it made in the case over the Scarborough Shoal brought by Philippine case.

1947 Nanhai Zhudao (cropped)

The first time the “9-Dash Line” appears in an official document is 1946″ and includes the Spratlys in a 1947 map, he said.
The timing was part of an agreement among the Allies that “all the territory stolen from China [by Japan] will be returned.”
The question was, “Where do China’s borders lay?”

Although China did not do much surveying work in the South China Sea and its fishermen did not continually inhabit the reefs and shoals, Beijing began producing in the early decades of the 20th century “maps of national humiliation.”
They indicated certain land features also claimed by Japan, Korea, Malaysia and the Philippines were under its control.
The “line,” which has shifted several times, was to make the territory appear to be contiguous.

China propaganda video

Hayton said what moved Chinese imperial officials in the early 20th century to make these first claims was to “show it is standing up to foreigners.”
The imperial government was trying to regain control of its own affairs and territory, usually close to the mainland, and solidify support with its people.

Later Chinese Republic officials continued these moves by “sticking in flags” on the Paracel Islands and sticking “one in the eye for the Japanese or anyone else,” who didn’t respect its sovereignty and claims.

At the beginning of his presentation, Hayton said China’s claims in the disputed waters “are just as incoherent as others” to these islands, reefs, barriers and shoals.
He said Beijing is making these claims out of a “sense of entitlement,” which shows no signs of going away.

Links :

• GeoGarage blog : Just where exactly did China get the South China Sea nine-dash line from? / US Department of State seeks to clarify meaning of China's 9-dash line / What the South China Sea ruling means for the world /China’s ‘Historic Rights’ in the South China Sea: Made in America? / US: China failed to clarify 9-dash line with law / China cracks down on politically incorrect maps / China's lawful position on the South China Sea /China's line in the sea / New map boosts China's maritime claims / China's fishermen explain why they think the sea is theirs
• Quartz : The line on a 70-year-old map that threatens to set off a war in East Asia