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Severe space weather is messing up bird migrations, new study suggests
Oct 9, 2023
Because birds use magnetic fields to navigate at night during long-distance migrations, severe space weather can throw them off course.
New research indicates that severe space weather events, such as solar flares, disrupt birds' navigational skills during long migrations.
Previous research has indicated that when flying at night, birds (and many other animals) use Earth's magnetic field for navigation. Because solar events disrupt the magnetic field — as well as produce auroras — birds have more difficulty navigating during them.
The new study analyzed images taken from 37 NEXRAD Doppler weather radar stations, which can detect groups of migrating birds, as well as data from ground-based magnetometers, to study 23 years of bird migration across the U.S. Great Plains. The 1,000-mile (1,600-kilometer) span from North Dakota to Texas is considered a major migratory corridor for birds.
"The biggest challenge was trying to distill such a large dataset — years and years of ground magnetic field observations — into a geomagnetic disturbance index for each radar site," Daniel Welling, University of Michigan space scientist said in a statement. "There was a lot of heavy lifting in terms of assessing data quality and validating our final data product to ensure that it was appropriate for this study."
The work paid off. The researchers discovered that the number of migrating birds in this region decreases by 9 to 17 percent during severe space weather events. They also noticed increased rates of birds becoming lost during migration, a phenomenon known as migratory bird vagrancy.
"Our findings highlight how animal decisions are dependent on environmental conditions — including those that we as humans cannot perceive, such as geomagnetic disturbances — and that these behaviors influence population-level patterns of animal movement," Eric Gulson-Castillo, a doctoral student at the University of Michigan Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, who served as lead author on a study about the research, said in the same statement.
Interestingly, severe space weather events can also throw off human navigation. Solar outbursts affect satellite communications, disrupting technology like GPS. We can expect more extreme space weather events as the sun builds towards a peak in its 11-year solar activity cycle, expected to occur in 2025. But like weather on Earth, space weather is a fickle fellow and predictions can turn on a dime.
The team's findings were published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Oct. 9.
https://www.space.com/severe-space-weather-affects-nocturnal-bird-migration
https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2306317120
Alien spaceship spotted in Lagos? How Nigerians reacted
Oct 9, 2023
Many people were stunned this week when they spotted an unidentified flying object hovering around the sky early in the night in areas like Surulere and Maryland in Lagos.
Passers by at the Leisure Mall in Surulere had mixed reactions when they spotted a spaceship looking object flying over different buildings and leaving a large shadow of bright purple light in the sky. “Abi dem don come for us ni”, “Wetin be dis one like this” were some of the expressions of confusion and curiosity of eye witnesses at the locations the UFO was sighted.
UFOs are usually reported as being sighted mostly in America but never in Nigeria so of course, it had people wondering and talking on social media and blogs in no time.
The so called “Purple Beings” also announced their arrival with a 3D Video on LED billboards around Lagos that shows their spaceship flying over Nigerian monuments like the Abuja City Gate, Dolphin Estate and Ikoyi Bridge before finally hovering over the atlantic ocean and opening its spaceship door to see purple looking creatures quickly descend and disappear into the ocean. Scary!!!
You can only imagine the relief many Nigerians must have felt when they saw posts from Instablog9ja, Tunde Ednut and Pulse revealing that “Alien Invasion” was just the wild creation of some creative guys just having fun.
Apparently the “Alien Invasion” was Intense Group; a marketing, media and technology firm’s way of launching “Purple Stardust”, their new Creative Agency into the subconscious of Nigerians.
We stan a Genius Marketing Strategy :B Nigerians of course immediately started sharing this video to their friends and family and it has garnered almost 1 million impressions in the last 24 hours.
Intense Group and Purple Stardust CEO – Leye Makanjuola tweeted via X – “We’re here to make statements over and over again and will soon become part and parcel of Nigerian pop culture” he tweeted.
“We will infuse the much needed wave of imagination, and entertainment into the creative and media industry and elevate brands’ value beyond the confines of the ordinary,” he added.
It won’t be far fetched to think that Purple Stardust will go on to create intriguing marketing campaigns to brands who are adventurous enough to try something out of the box.
https://dailytimesng.com/alien-spaceship-spotted-in-lagos-how-nigerians-reacted/
Forgot a video