Multi-Wavelength Analysis of High-Energy Electrons in Solar Flares: A Case Study of the August 20, 2002 Flare

A multi-wavelength spatial and temporal analysis of solar high-energy electrons is conducted using the August 20, 2002 flare of an unusually flat (γ₁ = 1.8) hard X-ray spectrum. The flare is studied using RHESSI, Hα, radio, TRACE, and MDI observations with advanced methods and techniques never previously applied in the solar flare context. A new method to account for X-ray Compton backscattering in the photosphere (photospheric albedo) has been used to deduce the primary X-ray flare spectra. The mean electron flux distribution has been analysed using both forward fitting and model-independent inversion methods of spectral analysis. We show that the contribution of the photospheric albedo to the photon spectrum modifies the calculated mean electron flux distribution, mainly at energies below ∼100 keV. The positions of the Hα emission and hard X-ray sources with respect to the current-free extrapolation of the MDI photospheric magnetic field and the characteristics of the radio emission provide evidence of the closed geometry of the magnetic field structure and the flare process in low altitude magnetic loops. In agreement with the predictions of some solar flare models, the hard X-ray sources are located on the external edges of the Hα emission and show chromospheric plasma heated by the non-thermal electrons. The fast changes of Hα intensities are located not only inside the hard X-ray sources, as expected if they are the signatures of the chromospheric response to the electron bombardment, but also away from them.     

Establishment of “Zernov’s Phyllophora field” marine reserve: Protection and restoration of a unique ecosystem

“Zernov’s Phyllophora field” is a unique habitat located in the northwestern Black Sea. At the site, there is a dense stand of agarophytes (red algae) and a high diversity of associated fauna. On November 21 2008, the president of Ukraine (Victor Yuschenko) declared this area a botanical reserve of state-wide importance; it was established to protect and restore a unique natural environment. “Zernov’s Phyllophora field” is the first offshore, fully marine MPA in the Black Sea, and it is the largest. The total area is 402,500 ha, covering 12.5% of the northwestern shelf of the Black Sea. The Ukrainian Scientific Centre for the Ecology of Sea has developed a program for (1) preservation, (2) restoration and (3) further rational use of biological resources at the site. It contains three conforming and interdependent sub-programs that put forward a series of measures for implementing the objectives (preservation, restoration, sustainable resource use).The northwestern Black Sea was heavily impacted by anthropogenic loading in the period 1970–1980, and Zernov’s Phyllophora field was considerably degraded and reduced in area. During recent years the perimeter of the Phyllophora field has slightly extended, and restoration of the benthic phytocoenosis has begun. Assigning this area the status of a marine reserve (Marine Protected Area) will further promote processes of restoring faunal and floristic biodiversity to historically healthy levels.     

Dynamics of electron beams in the inhomogeneous solar corona plasma

Dynamics of a spatially-limited electron beam in the inhomogeneous solar corona plasma is considered in the framework of weak turbulence theory when the temperature of the beam significantly exceeds that of surrounding plasma. The numerical solution of kinetic equations manifests that generally the beam accompanied by Langmuir waves propagates as a beam-plasma structure with a decreasing velocity. Unlike the uniform plasma case the structure propagates with the energy losses in the form of Langmuir waves. The results obtained are compared with the results of observations of type III bursts. It is shown that the deceleration of type III sources can be explained by corona inhomogeneity. The frequency drift rates of the type III sources are found to be in good agreement with the numerical results of beam dynamics.     

Introduction

Environmental reconstructions utilising the evidence of relic or fossil periglacial features are necessarily based on the nature and present distribution of comparable active features. The most critical features are those indicative of permafrost, because of the negative mean annual temperatures required for permafrost, whereas many other cold climate features are much less informative as to temperature implications. (Washburn, Geocryology, 1980, 279).     

Geomorphic and stratigraphic evidence for an unusual tsunami or storm a few centuries ago at Anegada, British Virgin Islands

Waters from the Atlantic Ocean washed southward across parts of Anegada, east-northeast of Puerto Rico, during a singular event a few centuries ago. The overwash, after crossing a fringing coral reef and 1.5?km of shallow subtidal flats, cut dozens of breaches through sandy beach ridges, deposited a sheet of sand and shell capped with lime mud, and created inland fields of cobbles and boulders. Most of the breaches extend tens to hundreds of meters perpendicular to a 2-km stretch of Anegada??s windward shore. Remnants of the breached ridges stand 3?m above modern sea level, and ridges seaward of the breaches rise 2.2?C3.0?m high. The overwash probably exceeded those heights when cutting the breaches by overtopping and incision of the beach ridges. Much of the sand-and-shell sheet contains pink bioclastic sand that resembles, in grain size and composition, the sand of the breached ridges. This sand extends as much as 1.5?km to the south of the breached ridges. It tapers southward from a maximum thickness of 40?cm, decreases in estimated mean grain size from medium sand to very fine sand, and contains mud laminae in the south. The sand-and-shell sheet also contains mollusks??cerithid gastropods and the bivalve Anomalocardia??and angular limestone granules and pebbles. The mollusk shells and the lime-mud cap were probably derived from a marine pond that occupied much of Anegada??s interior at the time of overwash. The boulders and cobbles, nearly all composed of limestone, form fields that extend many tens of meters generally southward from limestone outcrops as much as 0.8?km from the nearest shore. Soon after the inferred overwash, the marine pond was replaced by hypersaline ponds that produce microbial mats and evaporite crusts. This environmental change, which has yet to be reversed, required restriction of a former inlet or inlets, the location of which was probably on the island??s south (lee) side. The inferred overwash may have caused restriction directly by washing sand into former inlets, or indirectly by reducing the tidal prism or supplying sand to post-overwash currents and waves. The overwash happened after A.D. 1650 if coeval with radiocarbon-dated leaves in the mud cap, and it probably happened before human settlement in the last decades of the 1700s. A prior overwash event is implied by an inland set of breaches. Hypothetically, the overwash in 1650?C1800 resulted from the Antilles tsunami of 1690, the transatlantic Lisbon tsunami of 1755, a local tsunami not previously documented, or a storm whose effects exceeded those of Hurricane Donna, which was probably at category 3 as its eye passed 15?km to Anegada??s south in 1960.     

Homotrema rubrum (Lamarck) taphonomy as an overwash indicator in Marine Ponds on Anegada, British Virgin Islands

Marine hypersaline ponds on Anegada, British Virgin Islands contain stratigraphic evidence (Shell and Sand Sheet) of a A.D. 1650?C1800 overwash event that could have formed through a hurricane or tsunami. Candidates for the deposit include far-field (e.g. 1755 Lisbon tsunami) and local Puerto Rico Trench events (e.g. 1690), but hurricanes cannot be ignored. The goal of this study is to provide additional information to assess the origin of the deposit by examining the taphonomic characters of Homotrema rubrum, a common encrusting foraminifer in Caribbean reef settings. Surface samples (n?=?12) from major sub-environments (reef-flat, beach, storm wrack, and dune) and pond sections (n?=?6; 20?C80?cm thick) are analyzed for their Homotrema concentration (specimens/cm³) and taphonomic character. Particle-size analysis was conducted on the same sections and samples. Highly Preserved (red colored, angular, intact chambers) Homotrema dominate the beach, storm wrack, and reef-flat deposits relative to the dune sand, but the beach and storm wrack contain the largest specimens. The Shell and Sand Sheet in the pond has Highly Preserved and abundant Homotrema (specimens/cm³) versus other sedimentary units in the ponds (e.g. Mud Cap and Shelly Mud). Its taphonomic character is most similar (test size and condition) to the storm wrack deposit on the beach indicating an outside provenance for the sand. Concentration of Homotrema in the Shell and Sand Sheet declined southward indicating a northerly reef-flat provenance for the overwash, although it does not preclude a southern inundation as well. It is unclear whether Homotrema individuals originated from the reef itself or were eroded from older beach ridge deposits during the overwash event. Conclusions from Homotrema taphonomic analysis were limited by the lack of comparative data from known hurricane and tsunami deposits in other Caribbean regions.     

The migrating embryo model for disk evolution

Abstract– A new view of disk evolution is emerging from self‐consistent numerical simulation modeling of the formation of circumstellar disks from the direct collapse of prestellar cloud cores. This has implications for many aspects of star and planet formation, including the growth of dust and high‐temperature processing of materials. A defining result is that the early evolution of a disk is crucially affected by the continuing mass loading from the core envelope, and is driven into recurrent phases of gravitational instability. Nonlinear spiral arms formed during these episodes fragment to form gaseous clumps in the disk. These clumps generally migrate inward due to gravitational torques arising from their interaction with a trailing spiral arm. Occasionally, a clump can open up a gap in the disk and settle into a stable orbit, revealing a direct pathway to the formation of companion stars, brown dwarfs, or giant planets. At other times, when multiple clumps are present, a low mass clump may even be ejected from the system, providing a pathway to the formation of free‐floating brown dwarfs and giant planets in addition to low mass stars. Finally, it has been suggested that the inward migration of gaseous clumps can provide the proper conditions for the transport of high‐temperature processed solids from the outer disk to the inner disk, and even possibly accelerate the formation of terrestrial planets in the inner disk. All of these features arising from clump formation and migration can be tied together conceptually in a migrating embryo model for disk evolution that can complement the well‐known core accretion model for planet formation.     

Building the cosmic distance scale: from Hipparcos to Gaia

Hipparcos, the first ever experiment of global astrometry, was launched by ESA (European Space Agency) in 1989 and its results published in 1997 (Perryman et al. in Astron. Astrophys. 323:L49, 1997; Perryman & ESA (eds.) in The Hipparcos and Tycho catalogues, ESA SP-1200, 1997). A new reduction was later performed using an improved satellite attitude reconstruction leading to an improved accuracy for stars brighter than 9th magnitude (van Leeuwen & Fantino in Astron. Astrophys. 439:791, 2005; van Leeuwen in Astron. Astrophys. 474:653, 2007a). The Hipparcos Catalogue provided an extended dataset of very accurate astrometric data (positions, trigonometric parallaxes and proper motions), enlarging by two orders of magnitude the quantity and quality of distance determinations and luminosity calibrations. The availability of more than 20 000 stars (22 000 for the original catalogue, 30 000 for the re-reduction) with a trigonometric parallax known to better than 10% opened the way to a drastic revision of our 3-D knowledge of the solar neighbourhood and to a renewal of the calibration of many distance indicators and age estimations. The prospects opened by Gaia, the next ESA cornerstone, planned for launch in 2013 (Perryman et al., in Astron. Astrophys. 369:339, 2001), are still much more dramatic: a billion objects with systematic and quasi simultaneous astrometric, spectrophotometric and spectroscopic observations, about 150 million stars with expected distances to better than 10%, all over the Galaxy. All stellar distance indicators, in very large numbers, will be directly measured, providing a direct calibration of their luminosity and making possible detailed studies of the impacts of various effects linked to chemical element abundances, age or cluster membership. With the help of simulations of the data expected from Gaia, obtained from the mission simulator developed by DPAC (Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium), we will illustrate what Gaia can provide with some selected examples.     

Magnetic Stratigraphy from Deep Clastic Turbidites: An Example from the Eocene Hecho Group (Southern Pyrenees)

A paleomagnetic study of a 2200-meter thick section of clastic turbidites from the Eocene Hecho group (southcentral Pyrenees, Spain) allows defining its magnetostratigraphic record. Natural remanent magnetization is carried by up to three components: a viscous low-temperature component; a second component unblocked between 300°C and 345°C, likely carried by iron-sulphides; and a third component which demagnetizes at temperatures higher than 345°C and is likely carried by magnetite. The second and third components may display opposite polarities at the same site. The magnetite component delineates different polarity zones and has a more consistent behavior along section if compared with the iron-sulphide component, which displays either a normal or a reverse direction without any stratigraphic consistency along section. The bulk of iron sulphides are interpreted to be secondary in origin and to carry diagenetic overprints acquired at different times after deposition and the magnetite component is taken as the characteristic primary magnetization. As supported by biostratigraphy, the section is correlated from chrons C20r to C18n.2n (Lutetian-Bartonian transition), which indicates a mean sediment accumulation rate of about 52 cm/ky for the studied section. The new chronostratigraphy allows constraining the age of the upper Hecho Group (Banastón and Jaca allogroups) to an unprecedented level and is consistent with previous magnetostratigraphic work in younger sediments from the Jaca Basin. Deep clastic sedimentary systems should not be neglected as a target for magnetostratigraphic studies despite diagenetic growth of secondary minerals may mask the primary signal.     

The effect of syndepositional deformation within the Upper Permian Capitan Platform on the speleogenesis and geomorphology of the Guadalupe Mountains, New Mexico, USA

The Guadalupe Mountains in New Mexico and Texas are home to more than 300 caves. Caves have been formed within the Upper Permian Capitan carbonate platform and are oriented along two structural trends, one of which is parallel to the platform margin and the other of which is roughly perpendicular to it. Our recent studies of the Capitan Platform have identified syndepositional faults associated with growth monoclines and synclines in Slaughter Canyon, New Mexico, and these are also parallel to the platform margin. In this study, we demonstrate that syndepositional faults and folds are also present in Rattlesnake and Walnut Canyons, as much as 19 km along strike, and that they have exerted control on karstification of the Guadalupe Mountains from the Upper Permian until present.Three distinctive episodes of karst formation have been recognised in outcrops on the basis of karst-filling deposits and crosscutting relationships. The syndepositional “Phase 1 karst” was formed along syndepositional faults and fractures and is filled by platform-derived sediments. The burial “Phase 2 karst” is filled by post-Permian siliciclastics and is limited to the youngest syndepositional faults and fractures that penetrate the platform in the proximity of its terminal margin. Connectivity of these youngest faults and fractures to the platform top and the overlying stratigraphy is inferred to have controlled the distribution of the Phase 2 karst. The “Phase 3 karst” includes the present cave systems, which were mainly formed by sulphuric acid produced by mixing of fossil and fresh underground waters in conjunction with the uplift of the Guadalupe Mountains in the Late Tertiary, and have since been modified by vadose karst processes. The Phase 3 karst caves are not solely developed along syndepositional faults and fractures as the earlier karst palaeocaverns are, but also follow another, uplift-related, structural trend.Syndepositional folds, faults, and fractures in the Capitan Platform have influenced the shaping of the modern surface geomorphology of the Guadalupe Mountains by controlling drainage and, hence, erosion. Trellis drainage parallel to the platform margin is developed where syndepositional folds, faults, and fractures occur. The morphology of the trellis drainage varies systematically across the range in response to the character of the deformation structures and karst features along which the drainage channels have developed.