Dramatic evidence of the break-up of the Arctic ice-cap has emerged from research during an expedition by the Canadian military.

Scientists travelling with the troops found major new fractures during an assessment of the state of giant ice shelves in Canada’s far north.

The team found a network of cracks that stretched for more than 10 miles (16km) on Ward Hunt, the area’s largest shelf.

The fate of the vast ice blocks is seen as a key indicator of climate change.

Red lines show new cracks, yellow lines indicate cracks from 2002 and blue lines show the extent of the ice shelf

BBC News

The estimated population of the world will pass 6,666,666,666 today. No doubt an interesting number for people everywhere (not referring to any religion connotations). 5,555,555,555 was passed about 14 years ago. You may not realize that only a 80 years ago, the population of the Earth was only around 2 billion.

(via Slashdot)

The death toll from Burma’s devastating cyclone has now risen to more than 22,000, state media have said.

Another 41,000 are missing three days after Cyclone Nargis hit the country, causing a huge tidal surge to sweep inland, according to state radio.

The report came as aid agencies begin what they expect to be a major relief operation to help hundreds of thousands left without clean water and shelter.

BBC News

Destruction of mangrove forests in Burma left coastal areas exposed to the devastating force of the weekend’s cyclone, a top politician suggests.

ASEAN secretary-general Surin Pitsuwan said coastal developments had resulted in mangroves, which act as a natural defence against storms, being lost.

BBC News

Trying to artificially fix climate change could have serious repercussions:

Research has cast new doubt on the wisdom of using Sun-blocking sulphate particles to cool the planet.

Sulphate injections are one of several “geo-engineering” solutions to climate change being discussed by scientists.

But data published in Science journal suggests the strategy would lead to drastic thinning of the ozone layer.

This would delay the recovery of the Antarctic ozone hole by decades, and cause significant ozone loss over the Arctic, say US researchers.

BBC News

Apparently, math is harder than rocket science:

A 13-year-old German schoolboy corrected NASA’s estimates on the chances of an asteroid colliding with Earth, a German newspaper reported Tuesday, after spotting the boffins had miscalculated.

Nico Marquardt used telescopic findings from the Institute of Astrophysics in Potsdam (AIP) to calculate that there was a 1 in 450 chance that the Apophis asteroid will collide with Earth, the Potsdamer Neuerster Nachrichten reported.

NASA had previously estimated the chances at only 1 in 45,000 but told its sister organisation, the European Space Agency (ESA), that the young whizzkid had got it right.

The schoolboy took into consideration the risk of Apophis running into one or more of the 40,000 satellites orbiting Earth during its path close to the planet on April 13 2029.

Those satellites travel at 3.07 kilometres a second (1.9 miles), at up to 35,880 kilometres above earth — and the Apophis asteroid will pass by earth at a distance of 32,500 kilometres.

EDIT: Looks like the schoolboy’s sums might have been wrong after all.