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100m-Wide Meteor Hit Antarctica 430,000 Years Ago

In a photo taken 10/22/17, near Malaga, Spain, a meteor is seen streaking past the constellation Canis Minor during the annual Orionid meteor showers. (Reuters)
In a photo taken 10/22/17, near Malaga, Spain, a meteor is seen streaking past the constellation Canis Minor during the annual Orionid meteor showers. (Reuters)
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100m-Wide Meteor Hit Antarctica 430,000 Years Ago

In a photo taken 10/22/17, near Malaga, Spain, a meteor is seen streaking past the constellation Canis Minor during the annual Orionid meteor showers. (Reuters)
In a photo taken 10/22/17, near Malaga, Spain, a meteor is seen streaking past the constellation Canis Minor during the annual Orionid meteor showers. (Reuters)

Research led by a Kent-based space scientist has uncovered new evidence of meteor particles reaching the Antarctic ice sheet 430,000 years ago. The team said the findings highlight the importance of reassessing the threat of medium-sized asteroids, with the potential for destructive consequences, reported The Metro.

Researchers recovered extra-terrestrial particles on the summit of Walnumfjellet within the Sor Rondane Mountains in east Antarctica. The discovery indicated a so-called low-altitude meteoritic touchdown event – where a jet of melted and vaporized material from an asteroid at least 100 meters in size reached the surface at high velocity.

The impact covered a circular area of around 2,000km – an almost-continental scale distribution, said Dr. Matthias van Ginneken from the University of Kent's School of Physical Sciences.

The research, published in the Science Advances journal, said finding evidence of such events remains critical to understanding the impact history of Earth and estimating hazardous effects of asteroid impacts.

Ginneke said while it is highly unlikely that such an event would happen over a densely-populated area – with less than 1 percent of the surface of the earth considered densely populated – its effects can be widespread.

"Severe effects of such an impact can be felt over hundreds of kilometers. Therefore, even if such an impact were to occur hundreds of kilometers away from a densely populated area, the amount of devastation would not be negligible and would need to be taken into account", he said.

Ginneken said the study could help improve knowledge of the rate of such impacts in the past and therefore how often these might happen in the future. The paper states that these events are potentially entirely destructive over a large area, corresponding to the area of interaction between the hot jet and the ground.

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$344 for a Coffee? Scottish Farm is Selling UK's Most Expensive Cup

This undated handout photo shows farmer and owner of Mossgiel Organic Farm Bryce Cunningham, right, giving a bottle of milk to barista Jacob Smith, as they pose outside The Good Coffee Cartel in Glasgow, Scotland. (Mossgiel Organic Dairy via AP)
This undated handout photo shows farmer and owner of Mossgiel Organic Farm Bryce Cunningham, right, giving a bottle of milk to barista Jacob Smith, as they pose outside The Good Coffee Cartel in Glasgow, Scotland. (Mossgiel Organic Dairy via AP)
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$344 for a Coffee? Scottish Farm is Selling UK's Most Expensive Cup

This undated handout photo shows farmer and owner of Mossgiel Organic Farm Bryce Cunningham, right, giving a bottle of milk to barista Jacob Smith, as they pose outside The Good Coffee Cartel in Glasgow, Scotland. (Mossgiel Organic Dairy via AP)
This undated handout photo shows farmer and owner of Mossgiel Organic Farm Bryce Cunningham, right, giving a bottle of milk to barista Jacob Smith, as they pose outside The Good Coffee Cartel in Glasgow, Scotland. (Mossgiel Organic Dairy via AP)

It's an enormous price to pay for a little cup of coffee, but the man behind the pitch promises it won't leave a bitter taste behind as it comes with the sweetner of a share of a dairy farm.
A Scottish dairy is offering what it bills as the UK's most expensive cup o' joe: 272 British pounds ($344) for a flat white — a double shot of espresso topped with a layer of steamed milk and a fleeting work of foam art, The Associated Press reported.
The costly cup is actually a perk for purchasing shares in Mossgiel Organic Dairy's crowdfunding campaign to enlarge its sustainable operation and produce more milk. Investors who buy 34 shares in the farm get a certificate for a flat white that can be redeemed starting this weekend at one of 13 coffee shops in Scotland that use the dairy's milk.
“This coffee costs nearly 80 times the price of an average flat white in the UK — but it’s much more than just a lovely drink,” said owner Bryce Cunningham. "We know it sounds crazy, but when you break it down, it’s a pretty good deal. How much is the future of farming worth?”
The price tops the eye-watering 265 pounds that Shot London, a coffee bar in the posh Mayfair and Marylebone neighborhoods, charged for a flat white made with rare beans from Okinawa, Japan. The Telegraph reported in April that it was the most expensive coffee in Britain.
Before launching the coffee promotion, Cunningham had already raised more than a third of the 300,000 pounds he is seeking from small investors as he tries to get a 900,000 pound loan that will help him double operations and expand out of Scotland and as far as coffee shops in London.
Shareholders receive other rewards, too, such farm tours, milk delivery discounts and invites to special events. But investors are also given a standard warning that they could lose some or all of the money they invest — except for the coffee.
The tenant farm in Mauchline, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) south of Glasgow, was worked in the 18th century by poet Robert Burns, who penned “Auld Lang Syne" and many other well-known works. Burns, who is considered the national poet of Scotland, wrote while working in the fields there for two years and his face graces each glass bottle of Mossgiel milk.
Cunningham, a former service manager for Mercedes-Benz, took over the operation in 2014 after his father and grandfather died in 2014 from terminal illnesses.
The collapse of milk prices that year and other problems forced him to sell off most of the herd and reinvent the business as an organic farm. He uses a process to “brew” the milk, instead of pasteurize it, that he said gives it the creamer taste and texture of raw milk without the health risks.
Todd Whiteford, one of the owners of The Good Coffee Cartel in Glasgow that is serving the costly cups, said they’ve been using Mossgiel's milk for several years. Despite “outrageous offers" from competitors to switch, he said other milk producers can't match the quality and consistency that makes for “rounder, smoother and sweeter” cappuccinos, lattes and flat whites — and better coffee art.
“Theirs is the best. I’ll argue with anyone about that,” Whiteford said.
Anyone who splashes out to buy a Mossgiel coffee, though, will be getting the same cup other Coffee Cartel customers can purchase for 3.10 pounds. But Cunningham says there will be a taste of virtue with every posh cup.