Rock found on volcanic islands contains plastic elementsREUTERS/Rodolfo Buhrer – 03/07/2023
The geology of the volcanic island of Trindade, off the coast of Espírito Santo, has fascinated scientists for years, but the discovery of rocks made of plastic debris in the remote turtle sanctuary is causing concern.
Melted plastic is mixed with rocks on the island, located 1,140 km from Espirito Santo, in what researchers say is evidence of increasing human influence on Earth’s geological cycles.
“This is really very new and at the same time scary,” said Fernanda Avelar Santos, a geologist at the Federal University of Paraná (UFPR).
Fernanda and her team performed chemical tests to find out what kind of plastic is in the rocks, which are called “plastyspheric” because they are made up of a mixture of sedimentary grains and other debris held together by plastic.
“We saw that they mainly come from fishing nets. This is a very common piece of trash on the beaches of Trindade Island, which arrives through the ocean currents and accumulates along the beach,” said Fernanda Santos.
Trindade Island is one of the most important conservation sites in the world for the green turtle, or chelonia mydas; thousands of them go there every year to give birth. The only people living on Trudo are members of the Brazilian Navy, which maintains a base on the island and protects the turtle nesting grounds.
“The place where we found these (plastic) samples is a permanent conservation area in Brazil, near the nesting site of the green turtle,” the geologist said.
The discovery raises questions about humans’ legacy on Earth, Fernanda says.
“What we talk about so much about the Anthropocene is this, the Anthropocene is this. The pollution, the trash in the sea, the plastic that was wrongly thrown into the oceans, is being transformed and turned into geological material that can be preserved in (the planet’s) records.”
READ BELOW: Learn the Differences Between Comets, Asteroids, Meteors and Meteorites
Comets, such as Neowise, which has been visible in Brazil since last Wednesday (22), are often confused with other stars in the Solar System, such as meteoroids, meteorites, meteorites and asteroids. THE R7 spoke to astronomer Cássio Barbosa, from Centro Universitário FEI, to understand the difference between them
*Practical exercise at R7 under the supervision of Pablo Marques
Rodolfo Langhi and Nicolas Langhi
According to the expert, comets are stars that consist mainly of rock and, mainly, of ice. They are known to have a long and shiny “tail”, which is actually rock and dust particles released into space when the surface of the celestial body approaches the Sun, and also water changes from a solid to a gaseous state.
Most comets come from the Oort Cloud, which is 50,000 times farther than Earth is from the Sun, but they can also come from the Kuiper Belt, a region of the Solar System that stretches from the orbit of Neptune to the 50 AU (astronomical unit) from the Sun. Their sizes can vary from tens to hundreds of kilometers.
“Asteroids are also bodies composed primarily of rock and ice, with the difference that the former is more abundant than the latter – that is, more rock than ice,” says Barbosa. “For this reason, they also do not produce a tail as they approach the Sun,” he adds.
Most of these bodies come from the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and like comets, their sizes can also vary from tens to hundreds of kilometers.
“Once you understand what comets and asteroids are, it is possible to talk about meteoroids, which are nothing more than fragments of comets or asteroids, which break off from these celestial bodies and travel in space, in orbits around the Sun,” he explains. the astronomer
“Meteors, in turn, commonly called shooting stars, are the phenomena that characterize the passage of a meteoroid through the Earth’s atmosphere.” These can also show a brightly colored streak across the sky and produce sounds.
“Meteorites, finally, are meteorites that not only reach the atmosphere, but also reach the surface of the Earth.” They can range from simple cosmic dust to celestial bodies weighing several tons. The largest meteorite ever found on Earth, named Hoba West, fell near the town of Grootfontein, Namibia. The rocky body is estimated to weigh about 60,000 kilograms.
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