Earth Science Club of Northern Illinois - ESCONI

WGN Publicizes the 2014 ESCONI Show for 3/15 and 3/16

Thank you WGN for putting the ESCONI show on your calendar!

You can share this link with your friends and family who are looking for things to do next weekend.

Preview: 2014 Live Auction - Coral Specimen

Large, distinctive coral - will be sold at live auction at ESCONI Gem, Mineral and Fossil Show, March 15-16

It is spring time and these guys need 1 hour of your time

It is spring time and these ESCONI guys can't put up and take down the 2014 ESCONI Gem, Mineral and Fossil show by themselves! 

Please give 1 hour to making the show possible on one of these days:

Friday 3/14 -  need help seting up show 11 am to 5 pm
Saturday 3/15  - help on the silent auction, the live auction, crack geodes for kids, junior or book booth
Sunday 3/16 - help run a booth, take down show from 4 pm to 6 pm

Send email to [email protected] and let the club know what you can do.

 

Virus Back After 30,000 Years

Via Scientific American:

 Mar 4, 2014 |By Ed Yong and Nature magazine 

Larger than some bacteria, this virus — seen in a cross-section under a transmission electron microscope — was still able to infect amoebae despite having spent 30 millennia in a frozen state.
Credit: Julia Bartoli & Chantal Abergel; Information Génomique et Structurale, CNRS-AMU

In what seems like a plot straight out of a low-budget science-fiction film, scientists have revived a giant virus that was buried in Siberian ice for 30,000 years — and it is still infectious. Its targets, fortunately, are amoebae, but the researchers suggest that as Earth's ice melts, this could trigger the return of other ancient viruses, with potential risks for human health....  Scientific American:

Mammoth Back To Life?

Via NYTimes:

Bringing extinct animals back to life is really happening — and it’s going to be very, very cool. Unless it ends up being very, very bad.

Grand Canyon Like Valley in Antarctica

Via Forbes:

A giant valley deeper than the Grand Canyon is buried beneath several miles of glacial ice in West Antarctica, according to a new study by British scientists....

... Ross eloquently summarized the implications of this research, stating: “To me, this just goes to demonstrate how little we still know about the surface of our own planet.”

Abstract Photographs of Mining

Beautiful photographs