Late Pliocene sand ridges at the western margin of the Barents Sea—do they monitor Late Pliocene glaciations?

Seismic data combined with core analysis of the northwesternmost exploration well on the Norwegian continental margin, well 7316/5-1, has been used to map and discuss the genesis of three well-defined sand ridges. The sand ridges have a NE-SW to N-S orientation and are of Late Pliocene age. The dimensions of the ridges are: height 40 m, length 2–4 km and width 0.5–1 km.In relation to the glaciation models of the Barents Sea, the position of well 7316/5-1, and especially information from a core that penetrated one of the sand ridges, provide important information. The ridges are not, in themselves, diagnostic for grounded glaciers at the margin of the Barents Sea shelf during the Late Pliocene, although the presence of pebbles in a cored section of the ridges may represent ice-dropped material. Whether the possible influx of glaciogenic material is related to local or regional glaciations on the Barents Shelf remains to be evaluated.     

A comment on some oscillatory models of adiabatic stars

Three different oscillatory models of adiabatic stars are reinvestigated. These are the homogenous model, the inverse square model and the Roche model. The ratio between the amplitude of the oscillations and the distance from the center is developed in a power series. For physical conclusions to be drawn, it turns out to be crucial if the power series is divergent or convergent. Mathematical arguments are given which show that the power series are really divergent for all three models.     

Inferred gas hydrate on the Barents Sea shelf — a model for its formation and a volume estimate

 On the southwestern Barents Sea shelf, sediments containing gas hydrates that overlie free gas have been inferred from multichannel seismic data. The volume of suspected gas hydrate is tentatively estimated to about 1.9×10⁸ m³. The gas hydrate zone probably formed from thermogenic gas leaking from a deeper source. The hydrate zone may have thickened during the Neogene by including gas originally trapped as free gas below the hydrate following a significant downward migration of the isotherms caused by erosion and/or subsidence. Within the present oceanographic conditions, gas hydrate is suspected to be stable or slowly decomposing. Received: 20 December 1996 / Revision received: 20 August 1997     

Some physical properties and stability of an exact model of a relativistic star

An exact solution of Einstein's field equations for an isentropic fluid sphere is examined. It turns out that the crucial factor for the physical properties and the stability of this model is the degree of incompressibility. Necessary and sufficient conditions are given for the weak and the strong energy conditions to be fulfilled and for the speed of sound to be less than the speed of light. The speed of sound always has a minimum at the center of the fluid sphere. But two possibilities exist: either the speed of sound is increasing all the way outwards to the surface of the sphere, or the speed of sound is first increasing, then reaching a maximum when still inside the fluid sphere, and thereafter decreasing outwards to the surface. The adiabatic index is investigated and is found to be increasing outwards for the actual degrees of compressibility. This adiabatic index is always greater than unity, and the temperature is thus decreasing throughout the sphere. The necessary and sufficient condition for the adiabatic index to be greater than 4/3 is also given. (This is a necessary condition for the fluid sphere to be stable.) Chandrasekhar's pulsation equation with boundary conditions is investigated, and the fluid sphere is found to bestable if and only if the degree of incompressibility is greater than a certain value.Dedicated to the memory of the late Bronislaw Kuchowicz.     

A comment on an analytical stellar model

Recently, an analytical stellar model was presented. We show that the results are incorrect as they stand.     

Mesozoic marine reptiles from Spitsbergen and their ecosystems

In the Mesozoic seas, the apex predators were reptiles. From the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, the Spitsbergen Mesozoic Research Group has excavated numerous well preserved marine reptile skeletons in order to understand the biology of these animals and the environment they lived in. The work of eleven field seasons has made this one of the largest and most productive palaeontological research projects in the high Arctic world‐wide. The initial eight seasons focused on one of the richest occurrences of Late Jurassic—earliest Cretaceous (c. 150–139 Ma) marine reptiles in the world, and nearly sixty specimens have been collected, together with a diverse assemblage of invertebrates, some of which are associated with methane seeps. The last three seasons were spent investigating events further back in time, as Spitsbergen preserves the remains from some of the first marine reptile radiations in the wake of the most devastating extinction in the history of the Earth, at the Permian–Triassic boundary (c. 252 Ma).