Excerpt from huffingtonpost.comAs a society, we don't talk much about emotions. Conversations tend to focus more on what we're doing or what we're thinking. In fact, most people find it easier to start sentences with, "I think..." instead of "I feel...
Tag: witnessed (page 1 of 2)
Excerpt from worldtechtoday.com
A group of researchers at the Princeton University has found that frustrated magnets, inspite of not possessing any magnetic feature at low temperatures, do exhibit features of Hall Effect. ‘Frustrated’ magnets are so called because of their inability of getting a long range magnetic order inspite of a huge exchange between the spins of their elementary particles.
The Hall Effect suggests that when magnetic field is applied to electric current carried by charged particles present in a conductor, it causes magnet to bend to the other side of semi-conductor. They are of great interest in physics and material science. Appreciating that frustrated magnets are capable of producing Hall Effect could hold the key to future advances in computing and the creation of devices such as quantum computers.
“To talk about the Hall Effect for neutral particles is an oxymoron, a crazy idea,” said N. Phuan Ong, one of the authors of the study and Eugene Higgins Professor of Physics at Princeton.
Inspite of that, he together with his colleague, Princeton’s Russell Wellman Moore Professor of Chemistry as well as their graduate students Max Hirschberger and Jason Krizan witnessed this unusual behavior in frustrated magnets.
“All of us were very surprised because we work and play in the classical, non-quantum world. Quantum behavior can seem very strange, and this is one example where something that shouldn’t happen is in reality there. It really exists,” said Ong in a statement.
The researchers wanted to find out the reason underlying “discontent” nature of Hall Effect.
In this particular case, the team led by Ong and Moore studied pyrochlores, a class of magnets ‘which should have orderly “spins” at very low temperature, but have been found to have spins that point in random directions, thus rendering them with magnetic frustration properties.’ They attached small electrodes to both sides of crystals and later passed heat through them using microheaters at extremely low temperatures.
The outcome of the experiment, states Ong, stunned the entire team.
Excerpt from csmonitor.com
Thanks to a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing, the Hubble Space Telescope has captured four images of the same supernova explosion.
For the first time, a cosmic magnifying glass has allowed scientists to see the same star explosion four times, possibly offering a revealing glimpse into these explosive stellar deaths and the nature of the accelerating universe.
Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have captured four images of a supernova explosion in deep space thanks to a galaxy located between Earth and the massive star explosion. You can see how Hubble saw the supernova in this NASA video. The galaxy cluster warped the fabric of space and time around it — like a bowling ball placed on a bed sheet — allowing scientists to see the supernova in four images.
"It was predicted 50 years ago that a supernova could be gravitationally lensed like this, but it's taken a long time for someone to find an example," lead study author Patrick Kelly, an astronomer at the University of California, Berkeley told Space.com. "It's fun to have been able to find the first one."
The supernova, which was discovered on Nov. 11, 2014, is located about 9.3 billion light-years away from Earth, near the edge of the observable universe. The researchers have named the distant supernova SN Refsdal in honor of the late Norwegian astrophysicist Sjur Refsdal, a pioneer of gravitational lensing studies. Due to gravitational lensing, "the supernova appears 20 times brighter than its normal brightness," study co-author Jens Hjorth, head of the Dark Cosmology Centre at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen, said in a statement.
The lensing galaxy, which is about 5 billion light-years from Earth, is part of a large cluster of galaxies known MACS J1149.6+2223. In 2009, astronomers discovered that this cluster was the source of the largest known image of a spiral galaxy ever seen through a gravitational lens.
The four images of the supernova each appeared separately over the course of a few weeks. This is because light can take various paths around and through a gravitational lens, arriving at Earth at different times.
Using gravity as a lens
Gravity is created when matter warps the fabric of reality. The greater the mass of an object, the more space-time curves around that object and the stronger its gravitational pull, the discovery enshrined in Einstein's theory of general relativity, which celebrates its centennial this year.
As a result, gravity can also bend light like a lens, meaning objects see n behind powerful gravitational fields, such as those of massive galaxies, are magnified. Gravitational lensing was first discovered in 1979, and today gravitational lenses can help astronomers see features otherwise too distant and faint to detect with even the largest telescopes.
"These gravitational lenses are like a natural magnifying glass. It's like having a much bigger telescope," Kelly said in a statement. "We can get magnifications of up to 100 times by looking through these galaxy clusters."
When light is far from a gravitationally lensing mass, or if the gravitationally lensing mass is not especially large, only "weak lensing" occurs, barely distorting the light. However, when the light comes from almost exactly behind the gravitationally lensing mass, "strong lensing" can happen.
When a strongly lensed object occupies a large patch of space — for instance, if it's a galaxy — it can get smeared into an "Einstein ring" surrounding a gravitationally lensing mass. However, strong lensing of small, pointlike items — for instance, super-bright objects known as quasars — often produces multiple images surrounding the gravitationally lensing mass, resulting in a so-called "Einstein cross."
The observations of SN Refsdal mark the first time astronomers on Earth have witnessed strong lensing of a supernova, with four images of an exploding star arrayed as an Einstein cross.
An expanding universe
These new findings could help scientists measure the accelerating rate at which the universe is expanding, researchers say.
A computer model of the lensing cluster suggests the scientists missed chances to see the lensed supernova 50 and 10 years ago. However, the model also suggests more images of the explosion will repeat again within the next 10 years.
The timing of when all these images of the supernova arrive depends on the gravitational pull of the matter generating the gravitational lens. So, by measuring those times, the researchers hope to map how visible normal matter and invisible dark matter is distributed in the lensing galaxy.
Dark matter is currently one of the greatest mysteries in science, a poorly understood substance thought to make up five-sixths of all matter in the universe. A better understanding of how dark matter is behaving in this gravitationally lensing cluster might help shed light on the material's nature, Kelly said.
Analyzing when the images arrive could also help scientists pinpoint the rate at which the universe is expanding. Although there are already several ways to measure the cosmic expansion rate, "there has been a lot of heated debate between different methods, so it'd be interesting to see how this new technique might affect the area," Kelly said. "It's always nice to have completely independent measurements of the same quantity."
The scientists detailed their findings in the March 6 issue of the journal Science.
Jerdon's BabblerExcerpt from techtimes.comJerdon's Babbler is a species of bird that was believed to be extinct until this species unexpectedly resurfaced in Myanmar. This brown and white bird is roughly the size of a house sparrow.The bird was last ...
Excerpt
rt.com
An extraordinary bright orange flash has lit up the sky in Russia’s Sverdlovsk region in the Urals. While locals captured the massive ‘blast’ on numerous cameras, both scientists and emergency services still struggle to explain the unusual event.
Dark evening skies in the town of Rezh in Sverdlovsk region near Russia's Ekaterinburg turned bright orange for some ten seconds on November 14, with the event being caught on several cameras by the locals.
A driver filmed the massive flash with his dashcam, later posting the video on YouTube, with more people commenting they’ve seen it too. Teenagers in the town of Rezh also filmed the phenomenon with a mobile phone.
Theories of what might have caused the “blast” appeared both on social and traditional media, with a new meteorite or military exercise in the region being among the top guesses. Regional emergency services said no accidents in connection with the event had been recorded. No sound of explosion has been reported either.
According to E1.ru, the emergency officials suggested the military were behind the flash, as they might have had a scheduled explosive ordnance disposal procedure. The city administration has also said such ammunition disposal might have taken place, while the military themselves denied they were behind the mystery.
A fireball caused by an asteroid’s collision with the Earth's atmosphere is among other presumed reasons for the burning sky.
Another astronoma, Vadim Krushinsky, doubted his colleague's theory, saying the color of the flash does not support the asteroid speculation. The shade of light depends on the body’s temperature, and flashes caused by bolides are usually whiter, he explained to Ekburg.tv. The observatory engineer suggested his own theory, saying a space rocket launch might have been the cause.
Click to zoom
A path of launches from the Plesetsk cosmodrome lies above the area, Krushinsky said. But, according to Russian Federal Space Agency's website, the latest launch from the Plesetsk cosmodrome happened on October 29, with the next one planned for November 24.
People in the Urals witnessed a space ‘invasion’ event a year and a half ago, when the famous Chelyabinsk meteorite hit the region. A massive fireball explosion in February 2013 injured over a thousand people with shattered glass mostly, and damaged many residential and industrial buildings.
Excerpt from
uncovermichigan.com
Astronomers have revealed that their efforts to spot earth-like planets, also called as exo-planets, could be undermined by space dust and grit from asteroid collisions in addition to comet remnants. According to them, exozodiacal light, which is a light reflected from dust and grime of asteroids, could hide exo-planets and their alien suns.
The researchers put the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) located in Chile into use to detect the exozodical light from far away galaxies. Researchers compared the results with the data available from previous studies to produce a clearer, more complete picture. Habitable areas in nine alien star systems were probably surrounded by these light formations.
Zodiacal light can be seen from earth as a white glow in areas with completely dark skies. It seems to be emanating from the horizon around the sun. The best time to spot zodiacal light is usually before sunrise or right after sunset. According to experts, the white glow appears to be triangular in shape and it seems to emanate directly from the sun itself.
Sunlight reflecting off gas and dust surrounding the sun lead to creation of zodiacal light seen on earth’s skies. However, it was certainly the first time when the exozodiacal light was witnessed on alien solar systems, thanks to the VLTI telescope.
Details of the study have been published online this week in the journal Nature Physics.
Ramblings of an Insomniac Sagittarius
So what's keeping me up tonight?
Well, it's this light; you know the one, the bright light at the end of the tunnel that so many report after a near-death experience. I think about that light a lot, and it's no wonder really as, although our world is full of countless mysteries, there aren’t too many that are as incredible to think about then the question of life after death. One of my favorite pastimes is to try to picture just what it is exactly that awaits us at the end of our current lives, and at the end of that lighted tunnel.
Firstly, let's take a cursory look at the odds that there is something for us after this lifetime. At minimum it's a 50-50 shot, as either there is something after here or there isn't. But we can go beyond that and adjust those odds a bit by adding variables to our equation.
Let's consider the countless reports of an afterlife witnessed during a near-death experience. If just one of these reports is accurate-just one mind you, then the odds that something awaits us after this lifetime shifts dramatically, wouldn't you say?
Aside from that, we can add as a variable the incredible long shots necessary for life as we know it to come into being. These long shots certainly shift our odds considerably, and I must say it’s quite refreshing and enjoyable to stand on the short-shot side for once.
Another piece of evidence we would be remiss not to examine is a piece of evidence that is certainly the largest and for me, the most obvious, yet I believe it is the single piece of evidence that is more commonly overlooked when examining the life after death question; our visible universe itself. Just think about it for a moment; does this incredible, remarkable, miraculous, gorgeous, mysterious and seemingly boundless kingdom resemble in any way an accident? Or does it resemble more a product of conscious and purposeful creation?
When I look around, especially when I look up, I am left with absolutely no doubt that all and everything is a product of intelligent design. So for me, the odds are astoundingly good there awaits us something incredible, something miraculous, and for me, something so exciting to think about. I think a lot of us may lose sight of that sometimes.
So, what is it then that awaits us? Let's start off with what is, for me, but perhaps not you, the most hellish possibility. If the bright light at the end of the tunnel is a hospital delivery room and we are immediately born right back into this world, well then, I would have to say that all those biblical stories about hell are true.
But moving on to more positive possibilities of the white light at the end of the tunnel, I feel a very good possibility would be that the white light that we are seeing is actually our eyes filling with light as we remove a virtual reality headset. You may feel that this is kind of an odd possibility, but I feel it is a very real possible that all of us are playing an Earth-sized virtual reality game, an MMORPG, or massively multiplayer online role-playing game, not unlike World of Warcraft.
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| Playing World of Warcraft |
Can you imagine that? Just imagine, at the end of your life here, you experience the sensation of someone somewhere helping you pull from your head a virtual reality headset as your eyes fill with the bright light of a room, possibly even your very own bedroom, somewhere, sometime. Where could that possibly be, and what can our reallives possibly be like?
Just think about for a moment. If our lives are constructs of a super advanced virtual reality game, just imagine what our genuine reality could be like. It could be absolutely unidentifiable to the lives we are now living. We could be living eternal and incredible lives humans currently reserve only for gods. Wouldn't that be wonderful? Wouldn't that be miraculous? And I see all this as a very plausible possibility. I even see this possibility as the most plausible, as amazing as that may seem.
Now, if we are currently living a reality that is completely removed from our true reality, then how would we have entered this virtual state? We must enter it somehow, and we aren’t getting hit over the head with a brick like in an Ignatz and Krazy Kat cartoon. No, there must be some kind of process we go through to enter this state of reality, and I feel it’s likely we utilize some kind of virtual reality technology, even if that technology is largely natural, meaning we utilize our minds more than we rely on technology. Nonetheless, I believe that we are using some kind of virtual reality to enter this reality, this MMORPG.
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| Ignatz & Krazy Kat ~ Probably one of the reasons we are playing this virtual reality game |
Just sitting here at the computer sharing my thoughts about this with you causes my mind to stir, and I see I’m going to be up very late tonight as I lie in bed pondering all of this, but I can't think of a better reason to miss a little sleep.
Greg Giles
I feel its worth noting that many unidentified flying craft have been witnessed and also videotaped spinning around as it hovered. Greg Click to zoom
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| Winston Churchill |
bbc.com/news/uk
The government took the threat of UFOs so seriously in the 1950s that UK intelligence chiefs met to discuss the issue, newly-released files show.
Ministers even went on to commission weekly reports on UFO sightings from a committee of intelligence experts.The papers also include a wartime account claiming prime minister Winston Churchill ordered a UFO sighting be kept secret to prevent "mass panic".
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Spotters often drew what they saw and sent pictures to the MoD |
The files show reports of UFOs peaked in 1996 - when The X Files was popular.
The Joint Intelligence Committee is better known for providing briefings to the government on matters relating to security, defence and foreign affairs.
But the latest batch of UFO files released from the Ministry of Defence to the National Archives shows that, in 1957, the committee received reports detailing an average of one UFO sighting a week.
The files also include an account of a wartime meeting attended by Winston Churchill in which, it is claimed, the prime minister was so concerned about a reported encounter between a UFO and RAF bombers, that he ordered it be kept secret for at least 50 years to prevent "mass panic".
X Files
Nick Pope, who used to investigate UFO sightings for the MoD, said: "The interesting thing is that most of the UFO files from that period have been destroyed.
"But what happened is that a scientist whose grandfather was one of his [Churchill's] bodyguards, said look, Churchill and Eisenhower got together to cover up this phenomenal UFO sighting, that was witnessed by an RAF crew on their way back from a bombing raid.
"The reason apparently was because Churchill believed it would cause mass panic and it would shatter people's religious views."
Reports of sightings of UFOs peaked in 1996 in the UK - when science fiction drama The X Files was popular.
According to the files, there were more than 600 reports in 1996, compared with an average of 240 in the previous five years.
“Start Quote
Dr David Clarke National Archives UFO consultantUFOs have become the third-most popular subject for people to write to the ministry of defence saying please could you release this file”
The figures for 1996 show 609 reported sightings of unidentified flying objects, 343 letters from the public to the MoD's UFO desk and 22 enquiries and questions from MPs.
But by 2009, the MoD's UFO inquiry desk -Sec(AS)2 - had been closed down.The 18 files released on Thursday are the latest to come out as part of a three-year project between the MoD and the National Archives.
Dr David Clarke, a UFO consultant to the National Archives, explained why the papers are being made public now.
Dr Clarke told the BBC: "Since the Freedom of Information Act arrived in 2005, this subject - UFOs - have become the third-most popular subject for people to write to the Ministry of Defence saying 'please could you release this file, or papers that you hold on this particular case'.
"What they've decided to do is to be totally open and to say, 'look we're not holding any secrets back about this subject we've got all these files and we're going to make them available to the public'."
One includes details on "aerial phenomena" prepared for a meeting of the Cabinet Office's Joint Intelligence Committee in April 1957.
According to a note included in the Red Book, the weekly intelligence survey, four incidents involving UFOs tracked by RAF radars were "unexplained".
'Spaceman' The documents also include reports of a famous incident dubbed the "Welsh Roswell" in 1974, where members of the public reported seeing lights in the sky and feeling a tremor in the ground.
Other cases included in the files are:
- A near-miss with an "unidentified object" reported by the captain and first officer of a 737 plane approaching Manchester Airport in 1995.
- A mountain rescue team called to investigate a "crashed UFO" in the Berwyn Mountains in Wales in 1974.
- Attempted break-ins at RAF Rudloe Manor in Wiltshire - sometimes referred to as Britain's "Area 51" - the US's secretive desert military base.
- The Western Isles incident, when a loud explosion was reported in the sky over the Atlantic in the Outer Hebrides.
- The 14-minutes of "missing" film relating to the Blue Streak missile test launch in 1964, believed by some to show a "spaceman".
- A gambler from Leeds who held a 100-1 bet on alien life being discovered before the end of the 20th Century, and who approached the government for evidence to support his claim after the bookmakers refused to pay out. The MoD said it was open-minded about extra-terrestrial life but had no evidence of its existence.
Thomas Razzeto, GrahamHancock.comMy most passionate plea is for you to wake up to your true self as pure awareness. We have all heard it said that you are not a human being having a spiritual experience, but instead, you are a spiritual being having a human experience. Yet you are not a being of any kind, spiritual or physical. You are pure awareness! And most importantly, your awareness is the One Awareness – the Divine Awareness – and as such, it is the only reality tha [...]
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Branson vows to find out cause of spacecraft crash
Excerpt from
sfgate.com
MOJAVE, Calif. (AP) — Billionaire Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson vowed Saturday to find out what caused the crash of his prototype space tourism craft that killed one of two test pilots, adding that while he remains committed to civilian space travel "we are not going to push on blindly."
In grim remarks at the Mojave Air and Space Port, where the craft known as SpaceShipTwo was under development, Branson gave no details of Friday's accident and deferred to the National Transportation Safety Board, whose team had just arrived.
"We are determined to find out what went wrong," he said, asserting that safety has always been the top priority of the program that envisions taking wealthy tourists six at a time to the edge of space for a brief experience of weightlessness and a view of Earth below.
"Yesterday, we fell short," he said. "We'll now comprehensively assess the results of the crash and are determined to learn from this and move forward."
He also criticized early speculation about crash causes. "To be honest, I find it slightly irresponsible that people who know nothing about what they're saying can be saying things before the NTSB makes their comments."
The pilot killed in the test flight was identified Saturday as Michael Tyner Alsbury, 39, of nearby Tehachapi. The surviving pilot is Peter Siebold, 43, who parachuted to safety and was hospitalized.
Both worked for Scaled Composites, the company developing the spaceship for Virgin Galactic. Scaled Composite said Alsbury was the co-pilot for the test flight. Siebold, who was piloting SpaceShipTwo, "is alert and talking with his family and doctors," the company said in a statement.
More than a dozen investigators in a range of specialties were forming teams to examine the crash site, collect data and interview witnesses, NTSB Acting Chairman Christopher A. Hart told a press conference at Mojave Air and Space Port.
"This will be the first time we have been in the lead of a space launch (accident) that involved persons onboard," said Hart, noting that the NTSB did participate in investigations of the Challenger and Columbia space shuttle disasters.
Virgin Galactic — owned by Branson's Virgin Group and Aabar Investments PJS of Abu Dhabi — plans to fly passengers to altitudes more than 62 miles above Earth. The company sells seats on each prospective journey for $250,000.
The company says that "future astronauts," as it calls customers, include Stephen Hawking, Justin Bieber, Ashton Kutcher and Russell Brand. The company reports receiving $90 million from about 700 prospective passengers.
On Saturday, Branson said none of that money has been spent and that anyone who wanted a refund could get it. However, he said, no one has asked, and instead someone signed up on the day of the accident in a show of support.
Friday's flight marked the 55th for SpaceShipTwo, which was intended to be the first of a fleet of craft. This was only the fourth flight to include a brief rocket firing. The rocket fires after the spacecraft is released from the underside of a larger carrying plane. During other flights, the craft either was not released from its mother ship or functioned as a glider after release.
The NTSB investigators were expected to head to an area about 20 miles from the Mojave airfield where debris from SpaceShipTwo fell over a wide area of uninhabited desert Friday morning. The spacecraft broke up after being released from a carrier aircraft at high altitude, according to Ken Brown, a photographer who witnessed the accident.
Friday's accident was the second this week involving private space flight. On Tuesday, an unmanned commercial supply rocket bound for the International Space Station exploded moments after liftoff in Virginia.
SpaceShipTwo is based on aerospace design maverick Burt Rutan's award-winning SpaceShipOne prototype, which became the first privately financed manned rocket to reach space in 2004. Three people died in a blast at the Mojave Air and Space Port in 2007 while testing a rocket motor for SpaceShipTwo.