SCIENCE
Earthquake Swarms at Yellowstone Alert Scientists
Caldera Blew Its Top In Atom Bomb Sized Blast 640,000 Years Ago - Landslide After 1959 Quake Killed 28.
Seventy thousand years ago was the last time Yellowstone’s volcano erupted. In the last few days swarms of tremors have been detected there – up to 250 small earthquakes. No one’s predicting Yellowstone is about to blow its top but scientists are interested, since a eruption is always possible.
Such swarms are frequent in Yellowstone but it is unusual to have them occur over several days, says University of Utah geologist Robert Smith. Smith directs the Yellowstone Seismic Network, which operates seismic stations around the park. He said the quakes have ranged in strength from barely detectable to one of magnitude 3.8 that happened Saturday. A magnitude 4 quake is capable of producing moderate damage.
“This is an active volcanic and tectonic area, and these are the kinds of things we have to pay attention to,” Smith said. “We might be seeing something precursory.
Yellowstone is the caldera of a volcano that last erupted 70,000 years ago. Yellowstone remains very geologically active — and its famous geysers and hot springs are a reminder that a pool of magma still exists five to 10 miles underground. “That’s just the surface manifestation of the enormous amount of heat that’s being released through the system.”
A caldera is a cauldron-like volcanic feature usually formed by the collapse of land following a volcanic eruption. They are sometimes confused with volcanic craters. The word comes from Spanish caldera, and this from Latin CALDARIA, meaning “cooking pot”. In some texts the English term cauldron is also used.
Yellowstone has had significant earthquakes as well as minor ones in recent decades. In 1959, a magnitude 7.5 quake near Hebgen Lake just west of the park triggered a landslide that killed 28 people. Yellowstone Caldera last erupted some 640,000 years ago, it released about 1,000 km3 of dense rock equivalent (DRE) material, covering a substantial part of North America in up to two metres of debris. By comparison, when Mount St. Helens erupted in 1980, it released ~1.2 km3 (DRE) of ejecta.
Australians Say Parasite Could Kill Mosquitoes Before They Can Spread Disease.
20,000,000 Unnecesary Deaths Due To DDT Hoax and Ban.
Scientists have been racing to genetically engineer mosquitoes to become resistant to diseases like malaria and dengue fever that plague millions around the world, as an alternative to mass spraying of insecticides. A new report Friday suggested a potentially less complicated approach: Breeding mosquitoes to carry an insect parasite that causes earlier death.
The Australian scientists knew that one type of fruit fly often is infected with a strain of bacterial parasite that cuts its lifespan in half. So they infected the mosquito species that spreads dengue fever — called Aedes aegypti –with that fruit-fly parasite, breeding several generations in a tightly controlled laboratory.
Once a mosquito encounters dengue or malaria, it takes roughly two weeks of incubation before the insect can spread that pathogen by biting someone, meaning older mosquitoes are the more dangerous ones.
Voila: Mosquitoes born with the parasite lived only 21 days compared to 50 days for regular mosquitoes, University of Queensland biologist Scott O’Neill reported in the journal Science.
Theoretically, it could spread: This bacterium, called Wolbachia, is quite common among arthropod species, including some mosquito types _ just not the specific types that spread dengue and malaria, the researchers noted. And Wolbachia strains are inherited only through infected mothers, with an evolutionary quirk that can help them quickly gain a foothold in a new population.
Next month, O’Neill’s team begins longer studies in special North Queensland mosquito facilities that better mimic natural conditions to see how well the wMelPop strain persists as more mosquitoes are born, and what happens when they’re exposed to dengue.
“By killing old mosquitoes, wMelPop could thus impact on dengue transmission,” Pennsylvania State University specialists Andrew Read and Matthew Thomas concluded in an editorial accompanying the work, which they called “a major step.”
It’s possible that dengue viruses could evolve to incubate more rapidly if their mosquito hosts die younger, they noted, although that likely would be less of a problem than today’s insecticide resistance.
Still, “determining whether it can remove enough infectious mosquitoes to be useful will be a challenge,” the duo cautioned.
There is hope this could be the biggest advance in vector control since the ill-advised ban on DDT promulgated by a scientific fraud by Rachel Carson (1907-1964) who erroneously claimed in her 1962 book SILENT SPRING that it thinned egg shells contributing to the eradication of entire wild bird species. Her research proved bogus but facilitated the ban of the pesticide DDT in 1972 in the United States spreading worldwide. The World Health Organization demanded the ban be lifted after it showed more than 20 million unnecessary deaths had resulted and the claim of damage to egg shells was a hoax.
“Firefinder” Defends U. S. And Allied Troops
System defensive and deterent to attackers.
ThalesRaytheonSystems is upgrading its defensive “Firefinder” AN/TPQ-37 is the world’s premier long-range weapon locating radar, deployed worldwide by the U.S. Army and 11 international customers. It locates the position of hostile artillery, rockets and mortars so friendly forces can quickly and accurately return fire.
The gadget is designed to protect Marine and Army units at the brigade level towed by a Humvee and can track incoming round/rocket from a range of about 15 miles. The system a detects a projectile during its initial upward/launch trajectory (i.e., the linear portion of its flight path) prior to reaching apogee and before it starts its descent..
A computer program analyzes the track data and then extrapolates the round’s point of origin. This calculated point of origin is then reported to the operator with map coordinates, thus allowing friendly artillery to direct counterbattery fire towards the enemy artillery.
The upgrade will extent the systems battlefield life; improve reliability, and save the military billions of dollars long tem.
Observers say if you opene fire on a Firefinder equipped unit you better be runninf like hell as soon as you shoot. Pinpoint counterfire can be on the way within seconds. Firefinder is a deterent because as soon as the enemy know it is deployed they carefully reconsider their attack tactics.
Happy New Year! - Not So Fast.
Don’t forget 2008 is “leap second” year.
Don’t forget: 2008 is officially a leap second year. That means the countdown on Times Square at midnight Wednesday should go something like this “…THREE, TWO, ONE-AND-A-HALF, ONE… Happy New Year!”
The extra second was mandated by the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service (IERS) in Paris, and is not to be taken lightly particularly by what presumably are robed mystical guardians of the 200 or so ultra-accurate atomic clocks scattered in time temples around the globe, and those – like me – with those “atomic wrist watches and clocks will be treated to a hiccup as 2009 is delayed a full second at midnight.
Who cares? Many do. Satellites whizzing around at miles per second, the Internet that operates at nanosecond intervals, and global positioning systems — all depend on knowing precisely what time it is.
The same thing happened in 2005, and will occur in 2012 or 2013.
Leap days occur once every four years because it takes 365 days plus six hours for our planet to complete its orbit around the Sun. Astronomers figured that out centuries ago and the calendar had to be adjusted by two weeks.
But leap seconds are added strictly on a case-by-case basis, depending on need. This year’s will be the 24th bonus second since the practice was initiated in 1972. Before that there wasn’t anything available that could measure time that accurately.
The sleight-of-clock is necessary to reconcile two different time scales.
Atomic clocks are not really clocks like you have on your kitchen wall but scientific gadgets that measure the :vibrations” of atoms and are accurate to billionth of a second per day. Contrary to popular myth atomic clocks do not use radioactivity, but rather the precise microwave signal that electrons in atoms emit when they change energy levels. Early atomic clocks were masers with attached equipment. Currently the most accurate atomic clocks are based on absorption spectroscopy of cold atoms in atomic fountain
Other time is based on Earth’s imperfect rotation on its own axis.
The two systems get out of whack because the planet’s spin is affected by a host of slightly fluctuating variables, including solar and lunar gravity, the movement of the tides, solar wind, space dust and magnetic storms.
Even the amount of polar ice has gotten into the act because melting ice caps have an impact too.
You can see the atomic time at www.time.gov.
And so, at exactly 23:59:59 Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) — or Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), to the scientifically literate — on December 31, the world’s clocks will add a beat to their metronomic sort of tick tickety tock
China Says Mine Is Bigger than Yours and Everybody Elses Too.
Massive Radio Telescope To “See” Closer to Universe’s Edge Hunt For Pulsars and LGMs (Little Green Men).
Dateline Guiyang, China (XNA) Dec 29, 2008 China officially started construction of a five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST), the largest in the world, in a remote southwest region last Friday. Preparation and research for the project took some 14 years and willmcost $102 million.
The dish-like telescope, as large as 30 football fields, will stand in a region of typical Karst depressions in Guizhou Province when it’s done in 2013.
Karst depressions are usually located in regions plentiful in limestone and dolomite, where groundwater has enlarged openings to form a subsurface drainage system.
FAST’s main spherical reflector will be composed of 4,600 panels. Its observation sensitivity will be 10 times more powerful than the 100-m aperture steerable radio telescope in Germany. Its overall capacity will be 10 times larger than what is now the world’s largest (300 m) Arecibo radio telescope developed by the United States and located in Puerto Rico, according to Nan Rendong, the chief scientist of the project and an NAO (National Astronomical Observatory) researcher.
The Chinese government promises that the massive facility will allow international astronomers and scientists to discover more of the secrets of the universe based on cutting-edge technologies, said Zhang Haiyan, an NAO official in charge of construction. Skeptics worry that China could use the facility as leverage trading access for concessions elsewhere.
Since the first pilsar was discovered in 1967 scientists have observed only 1,760, which are strongly magnetized spinning cores of neutron stars that have exhausted their fuel. With the help of FAST, they could find as many as 7,000 to 10,000 within a year, Nan said.
Pulsars have allowed scientists to make several major discoveries, such as confirmation of the existence of gravitational radiation as predicted by the theory of general relativity.
FAST could also be a highly sensitive passive radar to monitor satellites and space debris, which would be greatly helpful for China’s ambitious space program. Some areexpressing concern that the communist state-owned FAST can be used militarily to produce a highly detailed map of near space.
The telescope could also help to look for other LGMs (Little Green Men) civilizations by detecting and studying communication signals in the universe.
Chinese scientists and officials selected Dawodang, Pingtang County as the site, where a Karst valley will match the shape of the huge bowl-like astronomical instrument.
The sparsely populated, underdeveloped region will provide a quiet environment to ensure the electromagnetic waves, the crucial requirement of operation, are not interrupted by human activities.
Construction of a new residential area about 60 km away also began on Friday to relocate 12 households. By 2013, when the telescope is to be in operation, all 61 farmers will move to their new houses in Kedu town, with farmland allocated by the government.
Perhaps the most “humorous” part of the announcement is a typical statement by a 68-year old man to be displaced by the project extolling it, he said “The project is beyond my imagination. I’m glad to see that an ordinary old guy like me could contribute to the country’s science program.”
Regardless of propaganda and even potential for subversion for military purposes FAST will be a powerful scientific instrument.
Snowbound in Seattle
So, I was listening to the radio when the weather reporter was talking about Seattle’s coldest and snowiest Winter, with people roaming aimlessly thinking that Captain Kirk had teleported them to Alaska. I did not think much about it, but the next report came the Upper Midwest where sub-zero temperatures have frozen everything in sight including Santa’s sleigh.
I told my wife that the news must be wrong, after all the same news station has spent the last 10 years reporting on how all scientists agree that it’s rising manmade C02 levels which are the cause of global warming. So how could temperatures be falling? How could snow be piling up in Seattle in December? Al Gore, Barack Obama and friends tell us that CO2 levels have been rising without interruption. Yet, we have snow in Seattle……….and Malibu for that matter!
So, I thought I’d call a Seattle-resident friend of mine, a California transplant, to check it out “firsthand”. To my surprise, indeed, it was, and still is, snowing in Seattle. And alot of the powdery stuff is lying around with more to come. But right on cue, as if she had just finished a tub of popcorn while watching “An Inconvenient Truth”, she said it was all due to global warming.
I expected that one to be sure; she was, and remains, a steadfast loyalist to the Gore mantra. Yet even Al Gore has changed his tune – it’s no longer global warming, but global climate CHANGE. Maybe that’s an attempt to blend in with Obama’s change message, but me thinks it’s brilliant crisis communications on his part. After all it becomes most difficult to explain away global temperature drops, higher snowfall and increasing ice sheets unless you change the terminology – global climate CHANGE covers it all, no?
I could not resist the golden opportunity to present some cold hard facts…..
From the El Niño year of 1998 until Jan., 2007, the average temperature of the Earth’s atmosphere near its surface decreased some 0.25 C (0.45 F). From Jan., 2007 until the spring of 2008, it dropped a whopping 0.75 C (1.35 F). All of this in the face of rising CO2 levels.
Meanwhile, the National Weather Service reports that last summer was Anchorage’s third coldest on record. “Not since 1980 has there been a summer less reflective of global warming,” Craig Medred wrote in the Anchorage Daily News. All this in the face of rising CO2 levels.
Alaska’s glaciers are thickening in the middle. “It’s been a long time on most glaciers where they’ve actually had positive mass balance,” U.S. Geological Survey glaciologist Bruce Molnia told Medred Oct. 13. Similarly, the National Snow and Ice Data Center found that Arctic sea ice expanded 13.2 percent this year, or a Texas-sized 270,000 square miles. Yes, all of this in the face of rising CO2 levels.
So, armed with facts out the gazoo and with my friend glued to the Weather Channel, snowed in, you’d think I might have scored a point or two. Maybe even a glint of light showing through a crack in the door. Nope.
As if in the middle of a lengthy Gore lecture, she told me without missing a beat that what the news was not telling me is that “the snow is warmer……..not the same snow as in 1980”. Now call me a skeptic. Call me a heretic. Call me anything you want, but don’t call me stupid. More snow, lower temperatures, frozen railways all explained away by warmer snow? Give me a break.
I had news for her - global temperatures have fallen, snow is falling, and solar cycles will continue to drive global temperatures from here into eternity. No amount of politicization of what should be a scientific issue will change that inalterable fact.
It’s time for whatever brave scientists are left in this world to speak out. It’s time for any professional journalists who might inhabit our soon-to-be “deserted” planet to shed their own politics and report facts. It’s time for those who call people such as me close-minded, to open up their own.
Now that is a very inconvenient truth!
New Zealand Taxes Cow Fa*ts U. N. Concerned About Flatulence and Burps
Farm animal flatulence and belching is “one of the main issues” on the dictator dominated U. N. agenda in Poland where 187 nations gathered this month, reported the New York Times. The Times went on to explain that “the trillions of farm animals around the world generate 18 percent of the emissions that are raising global temperatures, according to United Nations estimates, more than from cars, buses and airplanes.” “We haven’t come to grips with agricultural emissions,” morose warned Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, head of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in a front page article in the New York Times on December 4, “From Hoof to Plate, a New Bid to Cut Emissions.”
A week later the Associated Press reported that “2008 is on a pace to be colder than last year” On December 11, the palm trees were snow-covered in New Orleans in the earliest snowfall ever recorded in the city’s history. Enjoying a rare blizzard on the Outer Banks, kids were building snowmen on the beach a week before Thanksgiving. “Alaskan glaciers grew this year instead of retreating,” reported Investor’s Business Daily on December 15, while “Fairbanks had its fourth coldest October in 104 years of records,” and “the temperature at Denver International Airport dropped to 18-below-zero on December 14, breaking the previous record of 14-below set in 1901.”
A report on Hypocrisy.com last week by Canadian climatologist Dr. Tim Ball is an indictment of the IPCC for outright manipulation of its statistics to prove its point. Its favored tactic is to prematurely publish preliminary study results to create the false impression about global warming so scientifically challenged but politically inspired reporters sensationize those studies to spew pablum to largely ignorant publics.
The IPCC is not dissuaded by facts continuing to flog its agenda and adding cow flatulence and hog burps to its doomsday scenario all the while collecting nearly a billion dollars - mostly from the U. S. - to flit around the world on what has become little more than a taxpayer paid global junketeering program. Not unlike Al Gore’s mamouth carbon footprint this collection of hypocrites disgorge more carbon than all the world’s cows on bad diet collectively.
To control our carbon footprint, says Dr. Pachauri, we should “reduce meat consumption.” A good world-saving lunch would be an internationally sanctioned broccoli burger, minus the cheese, unless we can find some zero-emitting heifers, hogs or develop some kind of methane-capturing cow diapers.
In a “Raise a Stink” campaign earlier this year, farmers in New Zealand mailed reeking parcels of sheep and cow poop to members of Parliament to protest a proposed flatulence tax. The new levy is designed to filch tens of millions of dollars from the pockets of farmers, raise meat prices, meet the government’s commitments under the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, and pay for research into methane gas emissions from agricultural animals. The New Zealand postal service had something of a “poop protest” of its own arguing the campaign threatened the physical and mental health of postal workers.
Under the Kyoto Protocol, New Zealand is required to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. “According to government figures, New Zealand’s 45 million sheep and cattle burped and farted about 90 percent of the country’s methane emissions,” reports London’s Telegraph.
Next year, Sweden is launching a green labeling program for food, so consumers can readily see that a turkey is allegedly better than a pig for keeping the ocean levels down, and that carrots are even better. “Producing a pound of beef creates 11 times as much greenhouse gas emissions as a pound of chicken and 100 times more than a pound of carrots, according to Lantmannen,” a Swedish environmental group, reports the Times.
Water Discovered Deep In Universes Past
… where science and religion intersect triggering robust debate and discussion
Researchers at Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy has used the 100 meter Effelsberg radio telescope to detect water at the greatest distance from Earth so far.
The water vapour was discovered in the quasar MG J0414+0534 at redshift 2.64, which corresponds to a light travel time of 11.1 billion years, a time when the Universe was only a fifth of the age it is today. The water vapour is thought to exist in clouds of dust and gas that feed the supermassive black hole at the centre of the distant quasar.
Water is believed to be a necessary ingredient for crbon based life to exists. “This suggests that water may be much more abundant in the early Universe than first thought, and can be used for further research into supermassive black holes and galaxy evolution at high redshift,” said a statement by the Institute.
The discovery may be challenged given the vast distances, and observation variables even though it seems to have been confirmed by the high-resolution interferometric observations with the Expanded Very Large Array.
SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) proponents like most at the Carlo Segan Institute propound that it is a statistically certainty that not only life but intelligent life exists elsewhere. Logic dictates intelligent life may have come and gone numerous time in the vast history of the universe.
These are areas where science and religion intersect triggering robust debate and discussion.
47% Say They’d Pay More for “Green” Goods and Services
38% say “no” to paying more– few support Gore’s ideas; limited enthusiasm for hybrid cars — 45% see conflict between economics and environment.
Forty-seven percent (47%) of U.S. voters say they are willing to pay more for goods and services if it means a cleaner environment, even as President-elect Obama promises to move ahead aggressively on both the economic and ecological fronts.
Thirty-eight percent (38%) are not willing to pay more, and 15% are undecided, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. The survey was taken on Saturday and Sunday nights.
Women by eight percentage points more than men are willing to pay more for “green” goods and services. A plurality of men (45%) are not.
Sixty percent (60%) of African-American voters also are willing to pay more if it means a cleaner environment, compared to 46% of whites.
Among Democratic voters, 61% are willing to pay more, 27% are not, and 12% are undecided. A majority of Republicans (51%) are unwilling to pay more for “green” goods and services, while 32% are and 18% aren’t sure. Unaffiliated voters by a seven-point margin favor paying more to go “green,” with 15% undecided.
But in a survey in mid-October, Americans reacted unenthusiastically to paying more for an energy-efficient hybrid car. Even faced with soaring gas prices, only 37% said they were more likely to buy a hybrid than they were 12 months ago.
While slightly more (42%) said they were at least somewhat likely to buy one in the next five years, just 33% said they would do it because it’s good for the environment.
Forty-five percent (45%) of voters in the latest survey say there is a conflict between economic growth and environmental protection, but 38% disagree. Seventeen percent (17%) aren’t sure.
In a survey in early October, 54% of Americans said it is possible to drill offshore for oil without harming the environment, but nearly as many (48%) also agreed there is a conflict between economic growth and environmental protection.
Fifty percent (50%) of men now say there is a conflict between growth and protecting the environment, with only 40% of women in agreement. Forty-five percent (45%) of whites and just 29% of blacks agree.
While 56% of conservatives and a plurality of moderates (43%) see a conflict between the two, 51% of liberals say there is no such conflict.
With all the focus on the troubled U.S. economy, 67% of voters say it is at least somewhat likely that environmental issues will be moved down the Obama administration’s priority list, including 25% who say it is Very Likely. Just four percent (4%) say it is not likely at all that Obama’s priorities will be changed.
Thirty-six percent (36%) of Republicans and 29% of unaffiliated voters rate it Very Likely that environmental issues will get pushed down, as do 14% of Democrats.
On introducing his energy and environmental team on Monday, however, Obama said he would move ahead in these areas in spite of the economy. “This will be a leading priority of my presidency and a defining test of our time,” he said.
This week Obama continues to register near-record highs in the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Approval Index.
Forty-one percent (41%) of voters say global warming is a Very Serious problem, with another 24% describing it as somewhat serious. Sixteen percent (16%) say it is not at all serious.
These numbers continue to decline in surveys since early April when 47% of American adults said Global Warming was a Very Serious problem and another 26% said it was Somewhat Serious.
Sixty-two percent (62%) of Democrats view global warming as Very Serious, compared to 38% of unaffiliateds and 16% of GOP voters. Twenty-six percent (26%) of Republicans and 21% of unaffiliated voters say it is not at all serious, but only four percent (4%) of Democrats agree.
Voters are evenly divided over the cause of global warming: 43% say it’s caused primarily by human activity, while the same number (43%) say it is due to long-term planetary trends. Six percent (6%) blame some other unspecified reason, and eight percent (8%) aren’t sure.
While 53% of men attribute it to long-term trends, a plurality of women (49%) blame it on human activity. Sixty-five percent (65%) of Democrats link it to humans, while 68% of Republicans say long-term trends are at fault. Unaffiliateds by eight points agree with the majority of Republicans.
Algerian projects captures and buries carbon dioxide
…duplication problematic because of long term storage.
Dateline Krechba, Algeria (AFP) Dec 15, 2008 - If you want to sell natural gas in Europe its CO2 content can not exceed 0.3 percent. Algerian natural gas has a carbon-dioxide content of 9.1 percent. So Sonatrach of Algeria in cooperation with, BP of Britain and Statoil of Norway are “scrubbing” the carbon-dioxide out and burying it under a remote stretch of the Sahara desert.
The joint venture is the the world’s first and largest onshore carbon capture and sequestration scheme – a real tongue twister. Usually the carbon-dioxide is vented into the atmosphere but the consortium decided to bury it instead.
“There’s no reason for the CO2 to migrate anywhere, there’s no reason why it shouldn’t stay there,” a spokesman says. It’s ironic that the carbon-dioxide was extracted from deep under the desert and is bing put back some 6,100 feet under a layer of slate that is impermeable to gas. .
Salah project managers say an estimated 800,000 tons of CO2 is being re-injected each year, equivalent to what 200,000 cars produce annually. Over the anticipated 30-year life of project, about 20 million tonnes of carbon dioxide will be captured and sequestered deep in the earth about 750 miles south of Algiers.
The gas is purged of nearly all its CO2 by being pumped through a liquid amine solution. Amine is a chemical capable of detecting — and separating — CO2 from natural gas. The CO2 separation part of the $4 billion project is about $100 million.
But despite its cost effectiveness and technical feasibility, the In Salah model may not be universally applicable. What is needed is a verifiably secure reservoir to contain the CO2, which may not be available elsewhere. At the Krechba field, there are no worries on that score.
Volcano Not Meteor Killed Dinosaurs - New Theory
Colossal Deccan Eruption 68.5 million Years Ago; Not Yucatan Asteroid Hit Ended Reign of Dinosaurs.
It’s only a theory but, Greta Keller a Princeton University professor is now saying dinosaurs died gradually from climate change caused by colossal volcanic eruptions in India and not because of a meteor or asteroid strike. The prevailing theory has been that dinosaurs flickered out when a huge space rock smashed into the Yucatan are of Mexico causing a worldwide conflagration and the smoke and debris tossed into the atmosphere that blocked the Sun’s heat causing temperatures to plummet and plants to die.
Fossil records show the Age of Dinosaurs ended roughly 65 million years ago with the K-T or Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event. Keller’s theory has been discussed for over a year. A 1993 “Science” journal article discusses that the so-called Deccan Traps eruption occurred 68.5 million years ago but does not make the scientific connection Keller and colleagues now have made.
The Deccan Traps are a large igneous province located on the Deccan Plateau of west-central India east of modern day Mumbai It is one of the largest volcanic features on Earth The “traps” consist of multiple layers of solidified flood basalt that together are more than 2,000 meters thick and coverinmg an area of 500,000 square kilometers. The term ‘trap’, used in geology for such rock formations, is derived from the Swedish word for stairs (trappa, or sometimes trapp), referring to the step-like hills forming the landscape of the region. The enormous eruptions propelled millions of tons of debris and gases into the atmosphere blocking the Sun’s radiation and profoundly changing the global climate.
Keller reaches her conclusion based on new evidence from National Science Foundation-funded field work in India and Mexico that the dinosaur went extinct extinction and the meteor impact occurred at different times. She says the asteroid crashed into Earth hundreds of thousands of years before dinosaurs disappeared. Their mass extinction appears to have occurred at the end of India’s Deccan eruptions.
Keller and her colleagues will present their findings during the December 2009 American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco. The new and still controversial theory is the stuff television is made and in fact it will be included in an upcoming History Channel feature “What Really Killed the Dinosaurs.” Both theories are unified in one way that something plunged Earth into sudden cold killing dinosaur’s food source starving or freezing them.
It is almost inevitable some media airheads will convolute this to tie it to the current bastardized argument about climate change. But, at least you will have this perspective.
“Pay attention” Sun Raps Scientist’s Knuckles
It’s like the nun who rapped your knuckles in grade school and said, “Pay Attention!” - scientist learned the most critical lesson in science observation, and seeing.
For some reason, and there is a lot of research into why, the Sun goes in and out of periods of activity and quiet in 9 to 11 years long cycles. When it is in an active phase there are many so-called sun spots which are actually upheavals in the Sun’s surface. One of the most dramatic solar activity are Solar flares that are the most powerful explosions in the solar system. Packing a punch equal to a hundred million hydrogen bombs, they obliterate everything in their immediate vicinity. Not a single atom should remain intact.
At least that’s how it’s supposed to work.
Two years ago a large sunspot rounded the sun, and with little warning it exploded. On the “Richter scale” of flares, which ranks X1 as a big event, the blast registered X9, making it one of the strongest flares of the past 30 years.
NASA braced because such a ferocious blast usually produces a blizzard of high-energy particles dangerous to both satellites and astronauts but mostly absorbed In Earth’s atmosphere. An hour later the blizzard of hjigh energy particles arrived after traveling the 93,000,000 (million) miles.
But what arrived were not the particles expected.—rather it was a burst of hydrogen atoms, and nothing else. The pure hydrogen streamed past NASA spacecraft for a full 90 minutes.”
Then there was 30 minutes of quiet followed by a second wave “broken atoms.” Flares are supposed to produce-protons and heavier ions such as helium, oxygen and iron..
Most likely this has been happened this way since long before humankind was even a glint in God’s eye. It’s like the nun who rapped your knuckles in grade school and said, “Pay Attention!” - scientist learned the most critical lesson in science observation, and seeing.
So how did the hydrogen escape destruction? The theory is they didn’t In fact scientist think the hydrogen atoms started out as protons and electrons and recombined along the way to form a hydrogen atom – one proton and one electron.
But, because ions have an electric chanrge the Sun’s magnetic field delayed them and they arrived later. Hydrogen atoms are neutral charged so they whiz out first and faster.
While this is all rather arcane and even esoteric it is hard to imagine the steel in the fender of your car started out as an iron atom formed inside a star. Maybe our own Sun – maybe not, and assembled an atom at a time into a molten Earth billions of year ago. So, our Ford’s can have a fender.
“Star Wars” Strategic Defense Initiative Comes Big Step Closer
SDI Defeated Soviet Without a shot fired- Missile Shield Comes closer for USA.
President Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars” – Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) exposed the former Soviet Union’s vulnerabilities forcing the USSR into collapse ending the Cold War without a shot fired and paying a TRILLION DOLLAR PEACE DIVIDEND that allowed balanced federal budgets in the Clinton 90s. As the COLD WAR wound down research and development in such a missile shield was greatly scaled back but has been ramped up under President Bush. In the 1980s the technology did not exist to make SDI work and the USSR could have overwhelmed it will salvos of nuclear tipped missiles. But, it knew it simply couldn’t keep pace with Star Wars that eventually could have erected an impenetrable ICBM shield over America and its allies.
Now Raytheon’s Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle (EKV) a key component in that defensive shield was recently and successfully tested over the Pacific Ocean.
“While communicating with ground sensors, the EKV detected, tracked and discriminated the target,” the company said in a statement.
Raytheon said that during the flight, the EKV calculated knew where it was by using stellar navigation and sighting of stars; chose an aim-point; position itself for a direct hit, striking the target at a closing velocity of more than 18,000 mph.
Soon after the target missile was launched from Juneau, Alaska, it was detected and tracking data was sent to the U.S. Missile Defense Agency’s Ballistic Missile Defense System. Early Warning Radar, at Beale Air Force Base, Calif., monitored the target long-range ballistic missile as it flew downrange. The company’s X-Band Radar, on the Sea-based X-band radar array, was also involved in monitoring the target missile.
The successful test compares to hitting one bullet with another bullet at a range of hundred of miles and is an important step toward a missile defense shield like the one proposed to be installed in the Czech Republic and Poland. That system is strenuously opposed by Russia even though the U. S. says it is designed to knock down missiles fired by rogue states like Iran and North Korea.
Components have already been installed in Greenland and elsewhere in an effort to shield the U. S. mainland from missile attack.
President-elect Obama has said he will not “weaponize space” and it is unclear if that would include this anti-missile missile system and components.
Worlds Strongest Critter Won’t Win Any Beauty Contest
Given All My Other Posts On Insect Life I Thought This Would Be Of Interest
The Hercules beetle holds the undisputed title as the strongest creature on earth for its size but, it isn’t going to win any beauty pageants. The ugly cuss is able to carry 850 times its own body weight. This is the equivalent of a 180-pound human lifting an M-1 Abrams main battle tank over his head. Given the average weight of 1 ounce, the average Hercules beetle can lift an equivilent of approximately 53.125 pounds over its head.
The larval stage of the Hercules beetle will last one to two years, with the larva growing up to 4.5 inches (110 mm) in length and weighing up to 120 grams. Much of the life of the larva is spent tunneling through its primary food source of rotting wood. After the larval period, transformation into a pupa and then molting will occur, the beetle then emerging as an adult. Adults will roam the forest floor in search of decaying fruit.
You likely won’t run into one of these creatures unless you’re wandering around a rain forrest some place. If you do steer clear although the critter is usually pretty timid it is likely a good idea to walk around this beetle in case it is in a bad mood.
Carbon Dioxide Discovered on Exoplanet 380 Trillion Miles Away
NASA Finds More Evidence of Exo-Life
NASA announced that the Hubble Space Telescope has discovered carbon dioxide The Jupiter-sized planet 63-light years (about 380 trillion miles away, called HD 189733b, is too hot (1,000 degrees) Celsius for life. But new Hubble observations are a proof-of-concept demonstration that the basic chemistry for life can be measured on planets orbiting other stars. Organic compounds can also be a by-product of life processes and their detection on an Earth-like planet may someday provide the first evidence of life beyond Earth. Last year water vapor was detected on the same exo-planet.
But this is the first time carbon dioxide has been found in the atmosphere of a planet orbiting another star. This is an important step along the trail of finding the chemical biotracers of extraterrestrial life, as we know it.
“This is exciting because Hubble is allowing us to see molecules that probe the conditions, chemistry, and composition of atmospheres on other planets,” says first author Mark Swain of The Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, USA. “Thanks to Hubble we’re entering an era where we are rapidly going to expand the number of molecules we know about on other planets.”
The international team of astronomers used Hubble’s Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) to study infrared light emitted from the planet. Gases in the planet’s atmosphere absorb certain wavelengths of light from the planet’s hot glowing interior. The team identified not only carbon dioxide, but also carbon monoxide. 
2008 Is A Leap Second Year
Atomic Clock Accurate To 1 second in 20,000,000 years.
On December 31, 2008 a “leap second” will be added to the world’s clocks at 6:59:59 pm Eastern Standard Time (3:59:59 pm) , when the extra second will be inserted at the U.S. Naval Observatory’s Master Clock Facility in Washington, DC. This marks the 24th leap second to be added to UTC, a uniform time-scale kept by atomic clocks around the world, since 1972.
Historically, time has been based on the mean rotation of the earth relative to celestial bodies and the second was defined in this reference frame. However, the invention of atomic clocks defined a much more precise “atomic time” scale and a second that is independent of the earth’s rotation.
In 1970, an international agreement established two timescales: one based on the rotation of the earth and one based on atomic time that measures time based on the “vibration” of atoms and is accurate within 1 second in 20,000,000,000 years. The problem is that the earth’s rotation is very gradually slowing down, which necessitates the periodic insertion of a “leap second” into the atomic timescale to keep the two within 1 second of each other.
The International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service (IERS) is the organization which monitors the difference in the two timescales and calls for leap seconds to be inserted or removed when necessary. Since 1972, leap seconds have been added at intervals varying from six months to seven years, with the last being inserted on December 31, 2005.
The U.S. Naval Observatory is charged with the responsibility for the precise determination and dissemination of time for the Department of Defense and maintains its Master Clock.
The U.S. Naval Observatory, together with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), determines time for the