Tag: degrees (page 4 of 6)

Climate Change is Preventing A New Ice Age, says White House Science Advisor

December 25, 2014 / / 0 Comments





Excerpt from inquisitr.com

Climate change, particularly global warming, might be a good thing, according to President Obama’s science czar Dr. John Holdren.

In a recent online question and answer session from the White House, Holdren suggested that man-made global warming is preventing a new ice age. Holdren’s official government title is Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, and he holds degrees from MIT and Stanford. He has taught at Harvard and the University of California, Berkeley.

While the climate of the earth has changed over the millennia as a result of natural factors — principally changes in the tilt and orientation of the earth’s axis and rotation, and in the shape of its orbit around the sun — those changes occur far too gradually to have noticeable effects over a period of mere decades. In their current phases, moreover, they would be gradually cooling the earth — taking us to another ice age..."

View Article Here Read More

Ground-based telescope spots alien ‘Super-Earth’

December 16, 2014 / / 0 Comments

An artist's conception shows the size of super-Earth 55 Cancri e compared to Earth. A ground-based telescope in Spain was able to identify 55 Cancri e, which suggests that telescopes on the ground help in the search for habitable planets around other stars.


Excerpt from csmonitor.com

A telescope on the Canary Islands has spotted a planet twice the size of Earth as it passed in front of a star, the first time a planet in this category has been detected by a ground-based telescope.

Finding Earthlike planets beyond our solar system has largely been the work of space-based telescopes, but new observations from a remote island suggest that could change.

The Nordic Optical Telescope on La Palma — one of the Canary Islands off the west coast of Africa — observed 55 Cancri e, a planet twice the size of Earth, as it passed in front of its parent star and caused a dip in the star's brightness, according to a new study. This is the first time a planet in this "super-Earth" size category orbiting a sunlike star has been observed by a ground-based telescope using this detection method, the researchers say.

First identified in 2004 by a space-based telescope, 55 Cancri e has a diameter of about 16,000 miles (26,000 kilometers) — about twice that of Earth. The alien world is eight times as massive as Earth, making it a so-called super-Earth, a planet more massive than Earth but significantly smaller than gas giants like Neptune and Uranus. While not habitable, the planet's size and position around a sunlike star make it similar to planets that might support life, researchers say. 

The planet's detection with the Nordic telescope shows that observatories on the ground could use what's called the transit method — watching for dips in the brightness of a star to indicate a planet passing in front of it — to assist space-based telescopes in follow-up studies of super-Earths or Earthlike exoplanets, scientists say.

Nearly 2,000 exoplanets have now been confirmed, and upcoming exoplanet searches promise to expand that catalog. 

"We expect these surveys to find so many nearby terrestrial worlds that space telescopes simply won't be able to follow up on all of them. Future ground-based instrumentation will be key, and this study shows it can be done," Mercedes Lopez-Morales, co-author of the new research and a researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), said in a statement.

Five exoplanets orbit the star 55 Cancri, which is located 40 light-years from Earth and is visible to the naked eye. The closest-orbiting of those five is 55 Cancri e, which completes one lap around the star every 18 hours. When the planet passes between Earth and the parent star, 55 Cancri appears to dim by 1/2000th (or 0.05 percent) for almost 2 hours, researchers said.


Daytime temperatures on 55 Cancri e likely reach higher than 3,100 degrees Fahrenheit (1,700 degrees Celsius) — hot enough to melt metal and much too hot to support life. But scientists involved with the study say this approach could help characterize the atmosphere of more hospitable Earthlike or super-Earth planets.


After its initial detection, 55 Cancri e also became the first super-Earth seen by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, using light directly from the planet. Thus, it has now served twice as a litmus test for super-Earth detection methods. 

In addition to the wealth of planets identified by NASA's Kepler Space Telescope, the space agency's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission, scheduled for launch in 2017, is expected to "discover thousands of exoplanets in orbit around the brightest stars in the sky," according to the TESS website. The European Space Agency's Planetary Transits and Oscillations of stars (PLATO) mission, planned for launch in 2024, will also search for a large number of exoplanets.

View Article Here Read More

How will the world end? From ‘demonic’ AI to nuclear war — seven scenarios that could end human race

December 8, 2014 / / 0 Comments




news.nationalpost.com 


Humanity may have already created its own nemesis, Professor Stephen Hawking warned last week. The Cambridge University physicist claimed that new developments in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) mean that within a few decades, computers thousands of times more powerful than in existence today may decide to usurp their creators and effectively end humanity’s 100,000-year dominance of Earth.
This Terminator scenario is taken seriously by many scientists and technologists. Before Prof. Hawking made his remarks, Elon Musk, the genius behind the Tesla electric car and PayPal, had stated that “with artificial intelligence, we are summoning the demon,” comparing it unfavourably with nuclear war as the most potent threat to humanity’s existence.
Aside from the rise of the machines, many potential threats have been identified to our species, our civilization, even our planet. To keep you awake at night, here are seven of the most plausible.
Getty Images / ThinkStock
Getty Images / ThinkStockAn artist's depiction of an asteroid approaching Earth.
1. ASTEROID STRIKE
Our solar system is littered with billions of pieces of debris, from the size of large boulders to objects hundreds of kilometres across. We know that, from time to time, these hit the Earth. Sixty-five-million years ago, an object – possibly a comet a few times larger than the one on which the Philae probe landed last month – hit the Mexican coast and triggered a global winter that wiped out the dinosaurs. In 1908, a smaller object hit a remote part of Siberia and devastated hundreds of square kilometres of forest. Last week, 100 scientists, including Lord Rees of Ludlow, the Astronomer Royal, called for the creation of a global warning system to alert us if a killer rock is on the way.
Probability: remote in our lifetime, but one day we will be hit.
Result: there has been no strike big enough to wipe out all life on Earth – an “extinction-level event” – for at least three billion years. But a dino-killer would certainly be the end of our civilization and possibly our species.
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros.When artificial intelligence becomes self-aware, there is a chance it will look something like this scene from Terminator 3.
2. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Prof. Hawking is not worried about armies of autonomous drones taking over the world, but something more subtle – and more sinister. Some technologists believe that an event they call the Singularity is only a few decades away. This is a point at which the combined networked computing power of the world’s AI systems begins a massive, runaway increase in capability – an explosion in machine intelligence. By then, we will probably have handed over control to most of our vital systems, from food distribution networks to power plants, sewage and water treatment works, and the global banking system. The machines could bring us to our knees without a shot being fired. And we cannot simply pull the plug, because they control the power supplies.

Probability: unknown, although computing power is doubling every 18 months. We do not know if machines can be conscious or “want” to do anything, and sceptics point out that the cleverest computers in existence are currently no brighter than cockroaches.
Result: if the web wakes up and wants to sweep us aside, we may have a fight on our hands (perhaps even something similar to the man vs. machines battle in the Terminator films). But it is unlikely that the machines will want to destroy the planet – they “live” here, too.
Handout/AFP/Getty Images
Handout/AFP/Getty ImagesLaboratory technicians and physicians work on samples during research on the evolving Ebola disease in bats, at the Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Diseases research Laboratory of the National Institute for Communicable Diseases in Pretoria on Nov. 21, 2011.
3. A GENETICALLY CREATED PLAGUE
This is possibly the most terrifying short-term threat because it is so plausible. The reason Ebola has not become a worldwide plague – and will not do so – is because it is so hard to transmit, and because it incapacitates and kills its victims so quickly. However, a modified version of the disease that can be transmitted through the air, or which allows its host to travel around for weeks, symptom-free, could kill many millions. It is unknown whether any terror group has the knowledge or facilities to do something like this, but it is chilling to realize that the main reason we understand Ebola so well is that its potential to be weaponized was quickly realized by defence experts.
Probability: someone will probably try it one day.
Result: potentially catastrophic. “Ordinary” infectious diseases such as avian-flu strains have the capability to wipe out hundreds of millions of people.
AP Photo/U.S. Army via Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum
AP Photo/U.S. Army via Hiroshima Peace Memorial MuseumA mushroom cloud billows about one hour after a nuclear bomb was detonated above Hiroshima, Japan Aug. 6, 1945.
4. NUCLEAR WAR
This is still the most plausible “doomsday” scenario. Despite arms-limitations treaties, there are more than 15,000 nuclear warheads and bombs in existence – many more, in theory, than would be required to kill every human on Earth. Even a small nuclear war has the potential to cause widespread devastation. In 2011, a study by NASA scientists concluded that a limited atomic war between India and Pakistan involving just 100 Hiroshima-sized detonations would throw enough dust into the air to cause temperatures to drop more than 1.2C globally for a decade.
Probability: high. Nine states have nuclear weapons, and more want to join the club. The nuclear wannabes are not paragons of democracy.
Result: it is unlikely that even a global nuclear war between Russia and NATO would wipe us all out, but it would kill billions and wreck the world economy for a century. A regional war, we now know, could have effects far beyond the borders of the conflict.
CERN)/MCT
CERN)/MCTThis is one of the huge particle detectors in the Large Hadron Collider, a 17 mile-long tunnel under the French-Swiss border. Scientists are searching for evidence of what happened right after- and perhaps before- the Big Bang.
5. PARTICLE ACCELERATOR DISASTER
Before the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the massive machine at CERN in Switzerland that detected the Higgs boson a couple of years ago, was switched on, there was a legal challenge from a German scientist called Otto Rossler, who claimed the atom-smasher could theoretically create a small black hole by mistake – which would then go on to eat the Earth.
The claim was absurd: the collisions in the LHC are far less energetic than those caused naturally by cosmic rays hitting the planet. But it is possible that, one day, a souped-up version of the LHC could create something that destroys the Earth – or even the universe – at the speed of light.
Probability: very low indeed.
Result: potentially devastating, but don’t bother cancelling the house insurance just yet.
AP Photo/Oculus Rift/Fox
AP Photo/Oculus Rift/FoxThis photo shows a scene fromX-Men: Days of Future Past virtual reality experience. Oxford University philosopher Nick Bostrom has speculated that our universe may be one of countless "simulations" running in some alien computer, much like a computer game.
6. ‘GOD’ REACHES FOR THE OFF-SWITCH
Many scientists have pointed out that there is something fishy about our universe. The physical constants – the numbers governing the fundamental forces and masses of nature – seem fine-tuned to allow life of some form to exist. The great physicist Sir Fred Hoyle once wondered if the universe might be a “put-up job”.
More recently, the Oxford University philosopher Nick Bostrom has speculated that our universe may be one of countless “simulations” running in some alien computer, much like a computer game. If so, we have to hope that the beings behind our fake universe are benign – and do not reach for the off-button should we start misbehaving.
Probability: according to Professor Bostrom’s calculations, if certain assumptions are made, there is a greater than 50% chance that our universe is not real. And the increasingly puzzling absence of any evidence of alien life may be indirect evidence that the universe is not what it seems.
Result: catastrophic, if the gamers turn against us. The only consolation is the knowledge that there is absolutely nothing we can do about it.
AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast
AP Photo/Charles Rex ArbogastFloodwaters from the Souris River surround homes near Minot State University in Minot, N.D. on June 27, 2011. Global warming is rapidly turning America the beautiful into America the stormy and dangerous, according to the National Climate Assessment report released Tuesday, May 6, 2014.
7. CLIMATE CATASTROPHE
Almost no serious scientists now doubt that human carbon emissions are having an effect on the planet’s climate. The latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suggested that containing temperature rises to below 2C above the pre-industrial average is now unlikely, and that we face a future three or four degrees warmer than today.
This will not literally be the end of the world – but humanity will need all the resources at its disposal to cope with such a dramatic shift. Unfortunately, the effects of climate change will really start to kick in just at the point when the human population is expected to peak – at about nine billion by the middle of this century. Millions of people, mostly poor, face losing their homes to sea-level rises (by up to a metre or more by 2100) and shifting weather patterns may disrupt agriculture dramatically.
Probability: it is now almost certain that CO2 levels will keep rising to 600 parts per billion and beyond. It is equally certain that the climate will respond accordingly.
Result: catastrophic in some places, less so in others (including northern Europe, where temperature rises will be moderated by the Atlantic). The good news is that, unlike with most of the disasters here, we have a chance to do something about climate change now.

View Article Here Read More

Future Tech Watch ~ High-tech mirrors to beam heat from buildings into space ~ May replace air conditioning

November 28, 2014 / / 0 Comments



illustration of reflective panel on building

news.stanford.edu 

By Chris Cesare

A new ultrathin multilayered material can cool buildings without air conditioning by radiating warmth from inside the buildings into space while also reflecting sunlight to reduce incoming heat.

Stanford engineers have invented a material designed to help cool buildings. The material reflects incoming sunlight, and it sends heat from inside the structure directly into space as infrared radiation (represented by reddish rays).

Stanford engineers have invented a revolutionary coating material that can help cool buildings, even on sunny days, by radiating heat away from the buildings and sending it directly into space.

A team led by electrical engineering Professor Shanhui Fan and research associate Aaswath Raman reported this energy-saving breakthrough in the journal Nature.

The heart of the invention is an ultrathin, multilayered material that deals with light, both invisible and visible, in a new way.

Invisible light in the form of infrared radiation is one of the ways that all objects and living things throw off heat. When we stand in front of a closed oven without touching it, the heat we feel is infrared light. This invisible, heat-bearing light is what the Stanford invention shunts away from buildings and sends into space.

Of course, sunshine also warms buildings. The new material, in addition dealing with infrared light, is also a stunningly efficient mirror that reflects virtually all of the incoming sunlight that strikes it.

The result is what the Stanford team calls photonic radiative cooling – a one-two punch that offloads infrared heat from within a building while also reflecting the sunlight that would otherwise warm it up. The result is cooler buildings that require less air conditioning.

"This is very novel and an extraordinarily simple idea," said Eli Yablonovitch, a professor of engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, and a pioneer of photonics who directs the Center for Energy Efficient Electronics Science. "As a result of professor Fan's work, we can now [use radiative cooling], not only at night but counter-intuitively in the daytime as well."

The researchers say they designed the material to be cost-effective for large-scale deployment on building rooftops. Though still a young technology, they believe it could one day reduce demand for electricity. As much as 15 percent of the energy used in buildings in the United States is spent powering air conditioning systems.

In practice the researchers think the coating might be sprayed on a more solid material to make it suitable for withstanding the elements.

"This team has shown how to passively cool structures by simply radiating heat into the cold darkness of space," said Nobel Prize-winning physicist Burton Richter, professor emeritus at Stanford and former director of the research facility now called the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.

A warming world needs cooling technologies that don't require power, according to Raman, lead author of the Nature paper. 

"Across the developing world, photonic radiative cooling makes off-grid cooling a possibility in rural regions, in addition to meeting skyrocketing demand for air conditioning in urban areas," he said.

Using a window into space

The real breakthrough is how the Stanford material radiates heat away from buildings.

researchers Linxiao Zhu, Shanhui Fan, Aaswath Raman
Doctoral candidate Linxiao Zhu, Professor Shanhui Fan and research associate 
Aaswath Raman are members of the team that invented the breakthrough energy-saving material.
As science students know, heat can be transferred in three ways: conduction, convection and radiation. Conduction transfers heat by touch. That's why you don't touch an oven pan without wearing a mitt. Convection transfers heat by movement of fluids or air. It's the warm rush of air when the oven is opened. Radiation transfers heat in the form of infrared light that emanates outward from objects, sight unseen.
The first part of the coating's one-two punch radiates heat-bearing infrared light directly into space. The ultrathin coating was carefully constructed to send this infrared light away from buildings at the precise frequency that allows it to pass through the atmosphere without warming the air, a key feature given the dangers of global warming.

"Think about it like having a window into space," said Fan.

Aiming the mirror

But transmitting heat into space is not enough on its own.
This multilayered coating also acts as a highly efficient mirror, preventing 97 percent of sunlight from striking the building and heating it up.

"We've created something that's a radiator that also happens to be an excellent mirror," said Raman.

Together, the radiation and reflection make the photonic radiative cooler nearly 9 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than the surrounding air during the day.

From prototype to building panel

Making photonic radiative cooling practical requires solving at least two technical problems.

The first is how to conduct the heat inside the building to this exterior coating. Once it gets there, the coating can direct the heat into space, but engineers must first figure out how to efficiently deliver the building heat to the coating.

The second problem is production. Right now the Stanford team's prototype is the size of a personal pizza. Cooling buildings will require large panels. The researchers say there exist large-area fabrication facilities that can make their panels at the scales needed.

The cosmic fridge

More broadly, the team sees this project as a first step toward using the cold of space as a resource. In the same way that sunlight provides a renewable source of solar energy, the cold universe supplies a nearly unlimited expanse to dump heat.

"Every object that produces heat has to dump that heat into a heat sink," Fan said. "What we've done is to create a way that should allow us to use the coldness of the universe as a heat sink during the day."

In addition to Fan, Raman and Zhu, this paper has two additional co-authors: Marc Abou Anoma, a master's student in mechanical engineering who has graduated; and Eden Rephaeli, a doctoral student in applied physics who has graduated.

View Article Here Read More

New organic carbon species linked to formation of diamonds — and life itself

November 22, 2014 / / 0 Comments

Excerpt from sciencedaily.comNew findings by a Johns Hopkins University-led team reveal long unknown details about carbon deep beneath Earth's surface and suggest ways this subterranean carbon might have influenced the history of life on the planet....

View Article Here Read More

Rosetta mission: Philae lander bounces twice, lands on side ~ Cliff face blocking solar power

November 13, 2014 / / 0 Comments


How Esa scientists believe Philae has landed on the comet – on its side
How Esa scientists believe Philae has landed on the comet – on its side. Photograph: European Space Agency/Reuters


Excerpt from
theguardian.com


Rosetta mission controllers must decide whether to risk making lander hop from shadow of cliff blocking sunlight to its solar panels.


The robotic lander that touched down on a comet on Wednesday came to rest on its side in the shadow of a cliff, according to the first data beamed home from the probe.

Pictures from cameras on board the European Space Agency’s Philae lander show the machine with one foot in the sky and lodged against a high cliff face that is blocking sunlight to its solar panels.
The precarious resting place means mission controllers are faced with some tough decisions over whether to try and nudge the spacecraft into a sunnier spot. If successful, that would allow Philae to fully recharge its batteries and do more science on the comet, but any sudden move could risk toppling the lander over, or worse, knock it off the comet completely.

The washing machine-sized lander was released by its Rosetta mother ship at 0835am GMT on Wednesday morning and touched down at a perfect spot on the comet’s surface. But when anchoring harpoons failed to fire, the probe bounced back off into space. So weak is the gravitational pull of the comet that Philae soared 1km into the sky and did not come down again until two hours later. “We made quite a leap,” said Stephan Ulamec, the Philae lander manager.

In the time it took the probe to land for the second time, the comet had rotated, bringing more treacherous terrain underneath. The spacecraft bounced a second time and finally came to a standstill on its side at what may be the rim of an enormous crater.

“We bounced twice and stopped in a place we’ve not entirely located,” said Jean-Pierre Bibring, Philae’s lead scientist. Teams of scientists are now trying to work out where the probe is. What mission controllers do know is that they are not where they hoped to be. “We are exactly below a cliff, so we are in a shadow permanently,” Bibring added.

With most of Philae in the dark, the lander will receive only a fraction of the solar energy that Esa had hoped for. The spacecraft needs six or seven hours of sunlight a day but is expected to receive just one and a half. Though it can operate for 60 hours on primary batteries, the probe must then switch to its main batteries which need to be recharged through its solar arrays. If Philae’s batteries run out it will go into a hibernation mode until they have more power.

The spacecraft was designed with landing gear that could hop the probe around, but from its awkward position on its side the option is considered too risky.

Though caught in a tight spot, the Philae lander’s systems appear to be working well. The Rosetta spacecraft picked up the lander’s signal on Thursday morning and received the first images and more instrument data from the surface of the comet.

One of Philae’s major scientific goals is to analyse the comet for organic molecules. To do that, the lander must get samples from the comet into several different instruments, named Ptolemy, Cosac and Civa. There are two ways to do this: sniffing and drilling. Sniffing involves opening the instruments to allow molecules from the surface to drift inside. The instruments are already doing this and returning data.

Panoramic view around the point of Philae's final touchdown on the surface of comet 67P, taken when Rosetta was about 18km from centre of comet. Parts of Philae's landing gear can be seen in this picture.
Panoramic view around the point of Philae’s final touchdown on the surface of comet 67P, taken when Rosetta was about 18km from centre of comet. Parts of Philae’s landing gear can be seen in this picture.Photograph: European Space Agency/AFP/Getty Images

Drilling is much riskier because it could make the lander topple over... Pushing down into the surface will push the lander off again. “We don’t want to start drilling and end the mission,” said Bibring.
But the team has decided to operate another moving instrument, named Mupus, on Thursday evening. This could cause Philae to shift, but calculations show that it would be in a direction that could improve the amount of sunlight falling on the probe. A change in angle of only a few degrees could help. A new panoramic image will be taken after the Mupus deployment to see if there has been any movement.

Meanwhile, the Rosetta orbiter team will continue to try to pinpoint Philae’s position.

View Article Here Read More

Dark matter may be massive & collide with Earth every billion years

November 10, 2014 / / 0 Comments

 Excerpt from zeenews.india.com A new study has revealed that no evidence has been found that dark matter is made of tiny exotic particles, and it might be more massive.Researchers from Case Western Reserve University found that dark matter ...

View Article Here Read More

Has Amelia Earhart’s plane finally been found? Not so fast

November 4, 2014 / / 0 Comments


 


Excerpt from

A small group of wreckage hunters purports to have found a bit of Earhart’s Lockheed Electra aircraft. It’s a good story, but critics of the find are more vocal than ever.


A metal sheet, some small bones and an “ointment pot” may be the final artifacts of Amelia Earhart’s failed 1937 journey around the world, if a small group of wreckage hunters is to be believed. They could also be the remains of some other plane, a turtle and trash. 

But the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (Tighar), which first found the warped bit of aluminum on a 1991 trip to the tiny atoll of Nikumaroro, in the Republic of Kiribati, says the 19in-by-23in slab has to be part of Earhart’s Lockheed Electra aircraft, which disappeared while she was flying over the Pacific. 

Tighar’s executive director Ric Gillespie made headlines this week by announcing “new research” into the 1991 fragment that he says answers earlier critics and proves it is from Earhart’s plane. 

The story he proposes is not implausible: the metal’s rivets don’t match with the Electra’s design, but that’s because because it’s actually a patch made to repair the aircraft after a bad landing in Miami, earlier on Earhart’s trip. Gillespie’s team managed to find a Miami Herald photo from 1937 which shows, over the place where a window should be, a particularly shiny piece of metal. In fact, a lab tested the metal back in 1996 and found it to be “essentially the same” 24ST Alclad aluminum that was to cover most aircraft of the 30s, including Earhart’s Electra. Gillespie says that “the patch was as unique to her particular aircraft as a fingerprint is to an individual … [the aluminum] matches that fingerprint in many respects”.
Metal fragment believed to be from Amelia Earhart's plane
The aluminium fragment believed to be from Amelia Earhart’s aircraft.Photograph: Tighar/Reuters

Under Gillespie’s theory, Earhart made it to the island, sent radio signals “for at least five nights before the Electra was washed into the ocean”, and eventually died there.

But Gillsepie’s been here before, and his critics are not quiet, with one saying: “Everybody should have facts to back up [their] opinions, and Mr Gillespie, well, he doesn’t.” (A second, more concisely, says: “He’s very creative.”) After discovering the metal, Gillespie gave a 1992 press conference to say that “every possibility has been checked, every alternative eliminated … We found a piece of Amelia Earhart’s aircraft.”

Objectors immediately pointed out that he had not checked the fragment’s rivets, which did not match Earhart’s Electra. Now, 22 years later, the photo could indeed explain the discrepancy – but Gillespie still lacks a wreck to compare the pattern to. As a substitute, Gillespie’s team went to a Kansas facility that’s restoring an Electra and claims to have found – by holding the patch up alongside the restored plane – that the rivets seemed consistent with the pattern. No independent researchers have confirmed their findings.

To be fair, Tighar realizes they know less about the scrap than they’d like: “If the artifact is not the scab patch from NR16020, then it is a random piece of aircraft wreckage from some unknown type involved in an unknown accident that just happens to match the dozens of material and dimensional requirements of the patch.”

Considering the vastness of the Pacific Ocean and the sheer amount of wreckage scattered across it over the past century, this actually seems pretty reasonable, but Tighar doubles down on its implication of certainty: “[That would mean] this incredibly specific, but random, piece of debris just happened to end up on Nikumaroro, the atoll where so much other evidence points to Earhart.”

What evidence does Tighar present? In 2011 they tested three bones found near a turtle shell, which could perhaps have been human or that of a turtle. DNA tests were inconclusive. (Gillespie says “the door is still open for it to be a human finger bone.”)

Gillespie told the Miami Herald earlier this year that “the key to it is her final message, where she says ‘line of position 157 dash 337’ … That’s a line that Noonan calculated from the sunrise, running 337 degrees to the north-west and 157 degrees to the south-east. And if you follow it far enough, there are two deserted islands on it, McKeon Island and Gardner Island.” 

It’s a good story, just like the one ex-marine Floyd Kilts used to tell about how a tribesman told him about a partial human skeleton and a woman’s shoe, which ended up with a British official and disappeared afterward. (Micronesians settled on the island a year after Earhart vanished.) But despite all the story and circumstantial evidence, no expedition in the past 70 years has found the Electra on or near either island.

But Tighar of course thinks it might. It found a “sonar streak” 600ft below the surface “the right size, the right shape … in the right place to be part of the Electra”, which the group has so far had neither the time nor funding to investigate. Gillespie admits it could also be part of a reef, a geological formation or any number of things once lodged into the seabed and now drifted away. He intends to explore the site in a 2015 expedition. Whether he turns up with Earhart’s lost Electra or something else entirely, he will have a new story.

View Article Here Read More

The Unstoppable Awakening of Humanity

September 25, 2014 / / 0 Comments

by Zen GardnerWe’re undergoing an amazing transformation. Absolutely diametrically opposed to the constant, gradual attempt by elitists to shut down humanity via eons of engineered subjugation, we’re being consciously and vibrationally liberated by the very nature of the Universe in spite of all their efforts.It’s not readily apparent to most, but it’s very clearly there.It’s subtle and yet obvious at the same time. Knowledge of this change or shift in conscio [...]

View Article Here Read More

Today’s New Moon Commences Libra Cycle

September 24, 2014 / / 0 Comments

cafeastrology.comA NEW Moon occurs on Wednesday, September 24, 2014, at 2:14 AM EDT. Early Wednesday, a new cycle begins. The Virgo New Moon cycle ends and the Libra New Moon cycle begins. The New Moon in Libra cycle is a good time to commit ...

View Article Here Read More

NASA: Water Vapor Found on Neptune-size Alien Planet

September 24, 2014 / / 0 Comments



space.com

By Nola Taylor Redd, Space.com Contributor 

 A Neptune-size planet beyond the solar system has telltale traces of water vapor in its atmosphere, making it the smallest exoplanet known to have the wet stuff yet, scientists say.

Several massive Jupiter-size giants have had the components of their atmosphere examined, but until now, the atmospheres of smaller planets have proved more elusive. In this new study, scientists discovered traces of water on the alien planet HAT-P-11b, which orbits a star 124 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus.

"Water is the most cosmically abundant molecule that we can directly observe in exoplanets, and we expect it to be prevalent in the upper atmospheres of planets at these temperatures," lead author Jonathan Fraine said in an email interview. Fraine, a graduate student at the University of Maryland, worked with a team lead by Drake Deming, also of the University of Maryland. 

"Detecting it is both a confirmation of our theories and revealing for the bulk of the spectrum that we can observe," Fraine told Space.com.

This artist’s illustration depicts the alien planet HAT-P-11b, which shows signs of water in its atmosphere, as the exoplanet crosses in front of its parent star.
This artist’s illustration depicts the alien planet HAT-P-11b, which shows signs of water in its atmosphere, as the exoplanet crosses in front of its parent star. As starlight passes through the puffed-up atmosphere surrounding the planet, shown here in orange, scientists can detect its composition.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Detecting alien planet atmospheres

This image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows the star HAT-P-11 (center), which has a Neptune-size planet that is the smallest yet known to have water in its atmosphere. The planet, HAT-P-11b, is not visible in this image. The other bright object seen here is another star.
Credit: NASA, ESA, J. Fraine

As a planet passes, or transits, between Earth and its sun, it blocks light from the star. The dip in light is how many exoplanets are first found. But these transits also allow astronomers to study the atmospheres of exoplanets. By observing the spectrum of light that passes through an exoplanet’s atmosphere, scientists can determine what it is made up of.


For HAT-P-11b, a planet roughly four times the radius of Earth, that makeup is 90 percent hydrogen, with traces of water vapor. The Neptune-size planet orbits its sun every five days, at a distance that is only one-twentieth of the Earth-sun distance (which is 93 million miles, or 150 million kilometers). As a result, the temperature climbs higher on HAT P-11b than it does on gas giants in the solar system, reaching a sizzling 1,120 degrees Fahrenheit (605 degrees Celsius).

Scientists have been studying the atmospheres of Jupiter-like planets for years, but smaller planets produce a smaller signal that is more challenging to observe. For the new study, researchers examined the atmospheres of four other smaller exoplanets — two roughly the size of Neptune and two smaller super-Earths — but the results were disappointingly featureless.

"We do indeed have the technology — the resolution — to observe Neptune-size exoplanets, and even super-Earths," Fraine said.

But the chemical compositions of the other four planets were blocked by a familiar phenomenon — clouds.

"We've just been seeing a whole lot of nothing," Eliza Kempton, of Grinnell College in Iowa. Kempton models planetary atmospheres but was not involved in the research.

This artist's illustration shows what the skies may look like on different alien planets. On the left is a cloudy planet, while on the right is a planet with clear skies that may resemble the sky of exoplanet HAT-P-11b, a Neptune-size world thought to hav
This artist's illustration shows what the skies may look like on different alien planets. On the left is a cloudy planet, while on the right is a planet with clear skies that may resemble the sky of exoplanet HAT-P-11b, a Neptune-size world thought to have water in its atmosphere.
Credit: NASA


Kempton added that the flat, featureless signals observed for the other planets were attributed to clouds or hazes in the upper atmosphere. The high clouds blocked light from the star, keeping it from penetrating through to the observers' side of the planet and leaving scientists unable to characterize the chemicals in the atmosphere.

"It's not crazy to think that there should be clouds in these exoplanet atmospheres, because we see clouds in all the planetary atmospheres in our solar system," Kempton said.

Although the hot, Neptune-size planet lives in a different environment from the icy giants in the solar system, it is similar to one of the four smaller planets whose atmosphere had already been studied. Those planets are known as GJ436b, GJ1214b, HD97658b and GJ3470b.

HAT-P-11b is only slightly larger and warmer than the alien planet GJ436b, making them good to compare to one another because one has clouds and one does not, Fraine said.

"I like to consider them the bigger version of the Earth-Venus twin pair," Fraine said of the planets HAT-P-11b and GJ436b.

"They are basically the same mass, radius and temperature, but small changes in the formation, or even these bulk properties, may be causing vast changes in the atmospheric composition."

The research is detailed in the Sept. 25 issue of the journal Nature, along with a commentary article by Kempton.

 A planet's upper atmosphere results from what happens both above and below it. The balancing act involves irradiation from its star and from cosmic rays on the outside, as well as the chemical and dynamical systems lower in the atmosphere, Fraine explained.

"If we know the input from above — the host star — and the upper atmosphere from our observations, then the missing piece of the puzzle is the interior composition," he said.
Although the interior of a planet is complex, Fraine called the newly characterized atmosphere "a great step forward in solving the puzzle."

The composition of the small planet's atmosphere also supports the core accretion model of planetary formation, where smaller particles combine to create larger and larger particles, eventually reaching planet-size proportions.

"Core accretion predicts that planets are built from the inside out," Fraine said.

"Measuring that HAT P-11b likely has a relatively hydrogen-poor atmosphere implies that it was formed from rocky material that later acquired a thick atmosphere above it, which is what the core-accretion model predicts."

Had the planet formed along the lines of the competing gravitational instability model, its composition and that of its atmosphere should bear a stronger similarity to its star than what was measured by scientists.

Because of its crucial role in the balancing act, the water vapor detected in the exoplanet's atmosphere played an important part in modeling its formation and evolution.

"In the long run, if we can detect water, methane, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, etc., in dozens to hundreds of exoplanet atmospheres of various bulk properties, then we will be able to paint a much clearer picture of how planets form, and, likewise, how Earth formed," Fraine said.

"This was just one of the beginning brush strokes to painting the full picture of how planets, as well as ourselves, were formed."

View Article Here Read More

Fall Begins Monday: Equinox Myth Debunked

September 21, 2014 / / 0 Comments


The start of fall in the Northern Hemisphere begins Sept. 22, 2014.
Excert from space.com
By Joe Rao, Space.com Skywatching Columnist 


 Sick of long, hot summer days? Well, you're in luck. Astronomically speaking, autumn is about to begin in the north.
On Monday (Sept. 22), at 10:29 p.m. EDT (0229 Sept. 23 GMT) autumn begins astronomically in the Northern Hemisphere. This also marks the start of spring in the southern half of the globe.
This date is called an equinox, from the Latin for "equal night," alluding to the fact that day and night are then of equal length worldwide. But that is not necessarily correct. [Earth's Equinoxes & Solstices Explained (Infographic)] 

Not so equal

Referring to the equinox as being a time of equal day and night is a convenient oversimplification. For one thing, it treats night as simply the time the sun is beneath the horizon, and completely ignores twilight. If the sun were nothing more than a point of light in the sky, and if the Earth lacked an atmosphere, then at the time of an equinox, the sun would indeed spend one half of its path above the horizon and one half below.
But in reality, atmospheric refraction raises the sun's disc by more than its own apparent diameter while it is rising or setting. Thus, when the sun looks like a reddish-orange ball just sitting on the horizon, it's really an optical illusion. It is actually completely below the horizon.
In addition to refraction hastening sunrise and delaying sunset, there is another factor that makes daylight longer than night at an equinox: Sunrise and sunset are defined as the times when the first or last speck of the sun's upper or lower limbs — not the center of the disc — are visible above the horizon.
And this is why if you check your newspaper's almanac or weather page on Monday and look up the times of local sunrise and sunset, you'll notice that the duration of daylight, or the amount of time from sunrise to sunset, still lasts a bit more than 12 hours. 
In New York City, for instance, sunrise is at 6:43 a.m., and sunset comes at 6:54 p.m. So the amount of daylight is not 12 hours, but rather 12 hours and 11 minutes. Not until Sept. 26 are the days and nights truly equal. (On Sept. 26, sunrise is at 6:47 a.m., and sunset is 12 hours later).
At the North Pole, the sun currently is tracing out a 360-degree circle around the entire sky, appearing to skim just above the edge of the horizon. At the moment of this year's autumnal equinox, it should theoretically disappear completely from view, and yet its disc will still be hovering just above the horizon.  Not until 52 hours and 10 minutes later will the last speck of the sun's upper limb finally drop completely out of sight.      
This strong refraction effect also causes the sun's disc to appear oval when it is near the horizon. The amount of refraction increases so rapidly as the sun approaches the horizon that its lower limb is lifted more than the upper one, distorting the sun's disc noticeably.

Not as dark as it seems

Certain astronomical myths die hard. One of these is that the entire Arctic region experiences six months of daylight and six months of darkness. Often, "night" is simply defined by the moment when the sun is beneath the horizon, as if twilight didn't exist. This fallacy is repeated in innumerable geography textbooks, as well as travel articles and guides. 
But twilight illuminates the sky to some extent whenever the sun's upper rim is less than 18 degrees below the horizon. This marks the limit of astronomical twilight, when the sky is indeed totally dark from horizon to horizon.
There are two other types of twilight. Civil (bright) twilight exists when the sun is less than 6 degrees beneath the horizon. It is loosely defined as when most outdoor daytime activities can be continued. Some daily newspapers provide a time when you should turn on your car's headlights. That time usually corresponds to the end of civil twilight.
So, even at the North Pole, while the sun disappears from view for six months beginning Sept. 25, to state that "total darkness" immediately sets in is hardly the case. In fact, civil twilight does not end there until Oct. 8. 
When the sun drops down to 12 degrees below the horizon, it marks the end of nautical twilight, when a sea horizon becomes difficult to discern. In fact, at the end of nautical twilight, most people will regard night as having begun. At the North Pole, nautical twilight does not end until Oct. 25. Finally, astronomical twilight — when the sky indeed becomes completely dark — ends Nov. 13. It then remains perpetually dark until Jan. 29, when the twilight cycles begin anew. So, at the North Pole, the duration of 24-hour darkness lasts almost 11 weeks, not six months.

View Article Here Read More

Hollow Earth Conspiracy: The HOLE Truth

September 15, 2014 / / 0 Comments

by Will Storr For centuries, Hollow Earth conspiracy theorists have tried to prove that there’s a whole other world beneath our own. But first they need to find the way in...Late at night, on October 4 2002, a strange guest appeared on a cult American radio show. Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell had a reputation for exploring weird themes with fascinating guests, but few had ever sounded as excited as this one. Dallas Thompson was a former personal trainer who had spent his [...]

View Article Here Read More
Older posts Newer posts

Deep Space Leaderboard 728x90

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International License.
unless otherwise marked.

Terms of Use | Privacy Policy



— Up ↑ —