YOUR WEEKLY NEWS UPDATE
- A report by Brazil’s space research agency found that deforestation increased by 22% in a year. The Amazon is home to about three million species of plants and animals, and one million indigenous people. It is a vital carbon store that slows down the pace of global warming. According to the latest data, some 13,235 sq km (5110 sq miles) was lost during the 2020-21 period, the highest amount since 2006.
- These machines could revolutionise computing, harnessing the strange world of quantum physics to solve problems beyond reach for even the most advanced “classical” ones. But the hurdles in building practical, large-scale versions have kept quantum computers confined to the lab. The new chip has 127 “qubits”, twice as many as the previous IBM processor. Qubits (quantum bits) are the most basic units of information in a quantum computer.3. Russia’s test of an anti-satellite missile system is not the first of its kind. Back in 2007, China tested its own missile system against one of its own weather satellites in orbit. The explosion created more than 3,000 pieces of debris the size of a golf ball or larger – and more than 100,000 much smaller pieces. Of the orbiting fragments considered a threat to the ISS, about a third are from this Chinese test. And at the speeds these objects travel in orbit, even small pieces can threaten spacecraft with destruction.
- Russia’s test of an anti-satellite missile system is not the first of its kind. Back in 2007, China tested its own missile system against one of its own weather satellites in orbit. The explosion created more than 3,000 pieces of debris the size of a golf ball or larger – and more than 100,000 much smaller pieces. Of the orbiting fragments considered a threat to the ISS, about a third are from this Chinese test. And at the speeds these objects travel in orbit, even small pieces can threaten spacecraft with destruction.
- One of China’s top urban design thinkers and Dean of Peking University’s college of architecture and landscape, Yu Kongjian is the man behind the sponge city concept of managing floods being done in China. This will be done just like a sponge with many holes, the city tries to contain water with many ponds. Also instead of channeling water away quickly using rivers with vegetation or wetlands to slow water down. This has the benefit of creating green parks and animal habitats, and purifying the surface run-off with plants removing polluting toxins and nutrients.
- Cutting down trees to save a city from drought might seem like an unlikely plan, but that is exactly what the South African city of Cape Town is doing, soon after it became the first global city to come close to running out of water. Its existential crisis was triggered by a severe and unanticipated drought that turned all the local reservoirs into dustbowls. Teams armed with chainsaws are seeking to protect those reservoirs in an unusual manner – by chopping down tens of thousands of trees on the mountains surrounding them.
- The latest discovery comes from the International “i-Atlantic” project. It has revealed that if global temperatures increase to levels predicted the ocean will not be able to provide what is currently Earth’s largest long-term carbon store. One third of the carbon dioxide in our atmosphere dissolves in the ocean. It therefore acts as an important buffer against rising temperatures. When CO2 dissolves in the ocean, it is taken up by marine plants and animals becomes part of an ocean cycle that results in some of it being locked into the deep ocean mud for centuries.
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