* Astronomy

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Whales

Blobrana · L

Whale oil is used to lubricate the Hubble Space Telescope?

This is because sperm whale oil has the unique benefit of not freezing in the subzero temperatures of space.
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Ed ~ An old story, but according to NASA they don't, but there are still doubts in my mind...

Blobrana · L

The problem of global warming has again come to the fore after the strange and rather long odyssey of a 43-foot gray whale that wandered to Herzliya in Israel, all the way from the ice-clad Canada.
Scientists have concluded that opening of a channel three years ago, which happened due to global warming, might have given the whale a chance to wander off so far.
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Blobrana · L

Update
Animal welfare experts say a pod of more than 60 whales at risk of beaching in the Western Isles are out of immediate danger.
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Blobrana · L

Rescue bid to save stranded Western Isles whales

Marine animal experts are trying to prevent a mass stranding by what is thought to be up to 100 pilot whales in South Uist in the Western Isles.
They were spotted in Loch Carnan and some were said to have cuts to their heads. The injuries may have been caused by attempts to strand themselves on the rocky foreshore of the sea loch.
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Title: Straight as an arrow: humpback whales swim constant course tracks during long-distance migration
Authors: Travis W. Horton1, Richard N. Holdaway, Alexandre N. Zerbini, Nan Hauser, Claire Garrigue, Artur Andriolo and Phillip J. Clapham

Humpback whale seasonal migrations, spanning greater than 6500 km of open ocean, demonstrate remarkable navigational precision despite following spatially and temporally distinct migration routes. Satellite-monitored radio tag-derived humpback whale migration tracks in both the South Atlantic and South Pacific include constant course segments of greater than 200 km, each spanning several days of continuous movement. The whales studied here maintain these directed movements, often with better than 1° precision, despite the effects of variable sea-surface currents. Such remarkable directional precision is difficult to explain by established models of directional orientation, suggesting that alternative compass mechanisms should be explored.

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Blobrana · L

A mysterious gray whale sighted off the coast of Israel in the Mediterranean Sea has been seen again off the north east coast of Spain.
The second sighting, made 23 days and 3000km after the first, has continued to perplex whale experts.
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Blobrana · L

UCLA biologists report how whales have changed over 35 million years

Whales are remarkably diverse, with 84 living species of dramatically different sizes and more than 400 other species that have gone extinct, including some that lived partly on land. Why are there so many whale species, with so much diversity in body size?
To answer that, UCLA evolutionary biologists and a colleague used molecular and computational techniques to look back 35 million years, when the ancestor of all living whales appeared, to analyse the evolutionary tempo of modern whale species and probe how fast whales changed their shape and body size. They have provided the first test of an old idea about why whales show such rich diversity.
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Blobrana · L

Australia tells Japan to stop whaling in the Southern Ocean by November this year or face international legal action.
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Blobrana · L

Whalers slip out of Japanese port
The Japanese whaling ship Nisshin Maru has reportedly left harbour for the annual hunt in Antarctic waters. Greenpeace said the factory ship had left the port of Innoshima, near Hiroshima, without fanfare.

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