11 amazing inventions from the 60s and 70s which changed our lives
1 . Communications satellites
The launch of the first communications satellite, Telstar 1, on July 10, 1962, was perhaps the biggest leap forward in the field since Guglielmo Marconi sent the world's first radio message across open water in 1897. It beamed the first transatlantic television feed later that month and, as well as satellite TV, paved the way for GPS and many other things we take for granted today. Pictured are technicians joining the Telstar satellite to the third stage of the Delta Rocket in July 1962 so it could be launched from Cape Canaveral and begin transmitting television pictures all over the world. | Keystone/Getty Images Photo: Keystone/Getty Images
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Scotsman
5 days ago
- Scotsman
Why the food we eat will determine the future of life on Earth
Modern humans' diets are pushing the natural world towards a dangerous breaking point Sign up to our daily newsletter – Regular news stories and round-ups from around Scotland direct to your inbox Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Sometimes, it hits you in the quiet moments – a walk through a once-bustling woodland now eerily still, the Buddleja 'butterfly' bush with no butterflies, or the absence of bees in a summer garden. The signs are all around us: nature is in trouble. As World Environment Day approaches, I find myself thinking not just about the planet, but about the choices we make every day, especially what we eat. Because behind every meal lies a story, and right now, too many of those stories are ones of loss. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad From the depths of the oceans to the peaks of the highest mountains, life on Earth has flourished for billions of years in breathtaking diversity. Wonderfully diverse civilisations have evolved, powered by an abundance of natural riches. The world is now home to more than eight billion people and a multitude of different plants and animals, all with their part to play in the complex web of life. Buying free-range food is one way that we, as consumers, can make a real difference (Picture: Matt Cardy) | Getty Images Huge declines in mammals, birds and fish Yet nature is now in emergency mode and time is running out. To keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius this century, we must halve annual greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. Without action, exposure to air pollution beyond safe guidelines is expected to increase by 50 per cent within the decade and plastic waste flowing into aquatic ecosystems is set to nearly triple by 2040. In the last 50 years, according to WWF's Living Planet report , the total number of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish has declined by 73 per cent. It's no exaggeration to say that what happens over the next five years will determine the future for life on Earth. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad And the primary reason for all this destruction? Our food. Planet-wide, the way we feed ourselves has become a dominant activity, affecting wildlife and the natural ecosystems on which our existence depends. Nearly half the world's habitable land surface and most human water use is devoted to agriculture. Ghost food waste Industrial agriculture – factory farming – is the most damaging. More than 80 billion farmed animals are produced for food every year, two-thirds of them on factory farms. Before factory farming, animals were out on pasture, turning things we can't eat, like grass, into things we can eat in the form of meat, milk and eggs. Now confined to cages, barren warehouses, or feedlots, they are fed on food crops like corn, wheat, and soya which could otherwise have fed billions of hungry people. This creates ' ghost food waste ', where crops that could alleviate hunger are squandered. The fact is that factory farmed animals are hugely inefficient at converting grain into meat or milk. Much of the food value is lost, making it the biggest single area of food waste on the planet. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad But the harm doesn't end there: animal agriculture is responsible for more greenhouse gases than all of the world's planes, trains and cars combined. Yet the global farmed animal population is expected to continue to grow, further stepping up the pressure on a natural world in steep decline. Chemical-doused monocultures As agriculture expands at the expense of dwindling forests, wildlife disappears. This happens even more so when farming and nature part company as with industrial animal agriculture. In this way, meat production has become just another industry, churning out raw materials in a way that is commonly presented as efficient but which, in fact, is grossly wasteful. We seemed to have switched our focus from feeding people to the pursuit of commodity production at any cost. More than half of all the world's food now either rots, is dumped in landfill, or feeds those long-suffering, imprisoned animals. Whole landscapes have been swept away by monocultures – vast, prairie-like carpets of uniform crops. Birds, bees and butterflies, along with the insects and plants they feed on, are in decline. Chemical fertilisers and pesticide sprays have replaced time-honoured natural ways of keeping soil fertile and problem bugs at bay. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Farmed animals have been disappearing from fields and into confinement. Egg-laying hens in battery cages, pigs in narrow crates or barren pens, chickens for meat growing so fast that their legs can barely support their outsized bodies. Nature has been replaced by a horror show. More than enough food for all So, how did this happen? Well, part of the answer is that the food system has become hijacked by the animal-feed industry. Today, more than one-third of the entire global cereal harvest and nearly all of the world's soya is devoted to feeding industrially reared animals – food enough for more than four billion extra people. Paradoxically, we still hear talk of looming global food crises. Yet, the fact that there's already more than enough food for everybody is routinely ignored. The planet is now at a dangerous tipping point but it is not too late to prevent more destruction. What we put on our plate has never mattered more. Eating more plants and choosing organic, pasture-fed or free-range meat, milk, and eggs really can make a big difference for the future of animals, people, and the countryside. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad This World Environment Day, let's recognise that the power to change course lies in our hands. By rethinking what we eat and how it's produced, we can help restore balance to our planet.
Metro
5 days ago
- Metro
Experts reveal what would happen if supervolcano 1,000 miles from London erupted
Solfatara is one of the 40 craters of the Campi Flegrei (Picture: LightRocket/Getty Images) A supervolcano is waking up from a centuries-long sleep, scientists fear, and it could be 'devastating' if it erupts. Campi Flegrei, or 'burning fields' in Italian, is a vast volcanic region that includes nearby Mount Vesuvius. The eight-mile-wide area has been mostly eruption-free since 1538, when Naples saw a week of lava and smoke that formed Mount Nuovo. But the blast was nothing compared to the eruption 40,000 years ago, so strong that the ash clouds and gas changed the Earth's climate. Experts have long believed Campi Flegrei could erupt again, with the volcanic alert level being yellow since 2012. But a burst of volcanic activity – hundreds of small, shallow earthquakes as recently as Sunday and the earth swelling and sinking – is raising fears it might come sooner than later. Will Campi Flegrei erupt? The Solfatara crater coughs up up to 5,000 tons of carbon dioxide a day, the new study found (Picture: KONTROLAB) A 4.4 magnitude quake hit Pozzuoli and Bagnoli in March, the strongest in 40 years. While 6,000 tremors have occurred in the last six months. A new study by Italy's National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology says the Solfatara crater is also spewing up to 5,000 tons of gas a day. The institute said that 80% of the carbon dioxide is coming from magma, while the rest is from hot liquids and calcite rocks interacting, another possible sign of the volcano's awakening. One reason for the rise in seismic activity is that layers of the large, caldron-like crater that Campi Flegrei is in are weakening. Layers about 4km deep in the crater, called a caldera, have been softening since 2005 and the crust is now starting to crack. The team said there are two possible outcomes based on their findings. The magma will keep swirling beneath the surface before cooling, causing a 'failed eruption', or a 'large volume' of magma about 8km deep could 'eventually' break out. What would happen if the supervolcano erupts? Campi Flegrei, 'burning fields' in Italian, has been bubbling with volcanic activity in recent weeks (Picture: Metro) Campi Flegrei, only 1,000 miles from London, stretches out into the sea, meaning that an eruption could cause tsunamis, while plumes of ash could blot out the sun, lower temperatures and impact food supplies. Around 360,000 people live in the area, also called the Phlegraean Fields, and it is less than seven miles from Naples, home to 1million people. But Bill McGuire, a professor emeritus in geophysical and climate hazards at University College London, doubts that Campi Flegrei erupting would be world-ending – if it even happens. Speaking to Metro, he said: 'In terms of what an eruption would look like, it would all depend on the scale. A small eruption, like 1538, would probably result in local lava flows and ashfall across the Naples area. Damaging, disruptive and costly, but not devastating. 'A blast on the scale of the one that happened around 40,000 years ago would cause regional devastation and would reduce global temperatures for a number of years, bringing big problems in terms of growing crops.' The authorities have evacuation plans for the millions living in the wider Naples area, with officials posting tremor updates every six hours. McGuire added: 'We will just need to keep monitoring activity and wait and see.' Thousands of tremors, most minor and shallow, have taken place in the last few months (Picture: KONTROLAB/LightRocket/Getty A 4.4 magnitude tremor shook towns around Campi Flegrei in March (Picture: Antonio Balasco/LiveMedia/Shutte) Matthew Watson, a professor of volcanoes and climate at the University of Bristol, said that Campi Flegrei erupting would be 'grave'. He told Metro: 'This is due to both a large population living nearby and the scale at which an eruption might happen. 'Whilst the consequences of a large eruption there would be grave indeed and felt across the world, it is important to remember that eruptions of that size are very, very rare. 'It is important to prepare and plan for such events, as best we can, but talk of an imminent supervolcanic eruption is unfounded.' Christopher Kilburn, a professor of volcanology and geophysical hazards at UCL, said that the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology' findings aren't too surprising. He said to Metro: 'Campi Flegrei is a volcano, after all. The new studies, though, are helping to build a clearer picture of what is happening underground and whether another eruption is likely after nearly 500 years.' A volcanologist told Metro that the supervolcano eruption would be 'felt across the world' (Picture: KONTROLAB/LightRocket/Getty Images) Kilburn, who has studied Campi Flegrei with Italian colleagues for more than 25 years, said talks of a super-eruption are 'misleading'. He said: 'The dozens of eruptions from the volcano in the past 15,000 years have been thousands of times smaller than that. 'These smaller sizes are the most likely should another eruption occur – certainly a menace to the 500,000 people living in Campi Flegrei, but not one that 'could plunge the planet into chaos' as some headlines suggest.' Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@ For more stories like this, check our news page. 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Wales Online
6 days ago
- Wales Online
Something of 'serious concern' is happening to a huge area of Earth's ocean with big consequences
Something of 'serious concern' is happening to a huge area of Earth's ocean with big consequences The changes could have a profound impact on marine life and our lives as a result Our oceans are changing (Image: Getty Images ) New research has exposed a significant and concerning change in our oceans. More than a fifth of the Earth's ocean has become darker over the past two decades. This process takes place when changes to the ocean's top layer diminish the depths reached by sunlight. The study identified that a region exceeding 75 million square kilometres – the habitat for 90% of all marine life – experienced darkening between 2003 and 2022. Scientists from the University of Plymouth and Plymouth Marine Laboratory have scrutinised NASA satellite imagery and numerical models to determine the yearly fluctuations in the depth sunlight hits the Earth's oceans, reports the Manchester Evening News. They discovered that 21% of the global ocean had seen a darkening effect over the last two decades – with researchers warning that this could impinge on "the air we breathe, the fish we eat, our ability to fight climate change, and for the general health and wellbeing of the planet". Dr Thomas Davies, associate professor of marine conservation at the University of Plymouth, explained: "There has been research showing how the surface of the ocean has changed colour over the last 20 years, potentially as a result of changes in plankton communities." "But our results provide evidence that such changes cause widespread darkening that reduces the amount of ocean available for animals that rely on the sun and the moon for their survival and reproduction." "We also rely on the ocean and its photic zones for the air we breathe, the fish we eat, our ability to fight climate change, and for the general health and wellbeing of the planet. Taking all of that into account, our findings represent genuine cause for concern." For our free daily briefing on the biggest issues facing the nation, sign up to the Wales Matters newsletter here . Satellite images are used to work out how much of the ocean has become darker (Image: Getty Images ) The study also discovered that over 9% of the ocean – an area comparable in size to the continent of Africa – has been impacted by a reduction in the sunlight-receiving layer of water, making it 50 metres shallower. Meanwhile, 2.6% has become more than 100 metres shallower. In contrast, the research identified that approximately 10% of the ocean became brighter. While the exact effects of these alterations remain unclear, they have the potential to hugely affect marine life across the globe, experts warn. Professor Tim Smyth, head of science for marine biogeochemistry and observations at Plymouth Marine Laboratory, remarked: "The ocean is far more dynamic than it is often given credit for. "For example, we know the light levels within the water column vary massively over any 24-hour period, and animals whose behaviour is directly influenced by light are far more sensitive to its processes and change. "If the photic zone is reducing by around 50m in large swathes of the ocean, animals that need light will be forced closer to the surface where they will have to compete for food and the other resources they need. "That could bring about fundamental changes in the entire marine ecosystem." Article continues below The most noticeable changes in sunlight depth in the ocean were observed at the top of the Gulf Stream and around both the Arctic and Antarctic - areas undergoing the most extreme shifts due to climate change. The study is published in the journal, Global Change Biology.
