New Everest Records That Are NOT From The Highest Point On Earth ...

In this photo released by Japanese mountain guide Hiroyuki Kuraoka, 71-year-old Japanese mountain climber Katsusuke Yanagisawa, foreground, climbs towards the summit of Mount Everest to become the oldest person to scale it, on Tuesday, May 22, 2007. Yanagisawa, a retired junior high school teacher from central Japan, was 71 years, 2 months and 2 days old when he reached the 8,850-meter (29,035-foot) peak on May 22, becoming the oldest Everest climber and beating the previous record set last year by another Japanese climber, Takao Arayama, who was aged 70 years, 7 months and 13 days. Image Credit: AP Photo/Hiroyuki Kuraoka, HO

New Everest Records That Are NOT From The Highest Point On Earth ...

... a change in the MSM template is in order.

As documented here at Oblate Spheroid, in a post at the end of March, Mount Everest is NOT the highest point on Earth … or to put it another way … the closest place on Earth to the universe is NOT Mount Everest.

This is an important point to re-emphasize in that the reporting from Mount Everest this climbing season is no longer accurate.

Story after story, report after report, dispatch after dispatch highlights the non-fact that someone has just set a new record “From The Highest Point On Earth”!

A few examples --- first is the latest from the Washington Post –

71-Year-Old Is Oldest Everest Climber
By BINAJ GURUBACHARYA - The Associated Press - Wednesday, May 30, 2007; 2:42 AM

KATMANDU, Nepal -- A 71-year-old has become the oldest person to climb Mount Everest, mountaineering officials confirmed Wednesday, after the Japanese retired schoolteacher returned from scaling the world's highest peak.

Katsusuke Yanagisawa was 71 years, 2 months and 2 days old when he reached the 29,035-foot peak on May 22, beating the previous record set last year by another Japanese climber, Takao Arayama, who was 70 years, 7 months and 13 days old.

"I didn't think I would make it," Yanagisawa told The Associated Press in the Nepalese capital of Katmandu on Tuesday, after returning safely from his expedition. "No more high mountains," he added.
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Just to be safe, someone should be kind enough to tell him that he should now book a trip to Ecuador and scale the world’s tallest point … Mount Chimborazo, really!

Then this from IT News, Australia –

World's highest phone call made from Everest
By Iain Thomson, 28 May 2007 06:30

I'm on the mountain ....

British climber Rod Baber has set a world record for the highest mobile phone call after dialling from the top of Everest.

Baber was sponsored by Motorola to make the attempt and managed to make the call from 29,035 feet above sea level in temperatures of -30 degrees.

Baber called from 29,035 feet/8848 metres on the highest peak of Mount Everest. For the call, Baber will use a Moto Z8 phone, a consumer-grade GSM phone that Motorola announced earlier this week and will ship in Europe and Asia in June. No plans for shipping the phone in the U.S. have been made, although Motorola has many GSM phones sold by U.S.-based carriers. Pricing has not been announced. Image Credit: Motorola

"Everest symbolises the greatest challenge to any climber. To reach the summit and achieve world records with Motorola is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity," said Baber from Everest Base Camp. advertisement

The call involved a number of technical challenges. The Chinese government had to set up a base station within line of sight of the summit, and the phone's batteries had to be taped to Baber's body to keep them warm enough to function.

The climber made two calls, one for publicity purposes and another to let his wife and children know he was OK. The calls had to be kept short to stop Baber passing out from lack of oxygen. He also sent one text message.
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… And the one text message? NOT made from the highest point on Earth as measured from the center core starting point.

Then there is this dispatch from The Rising Nepal –

Three courageous women climbers Noelle Wenceslao, Carina Dayndon and Janet Belarmino reached the summit in the morning of May 16 and arrived in Everest Base Camp in Nepal side in the afternoon on May 18. Upon arrival at EBC, the Philippine Support group of PAL Mountaineering Club headed by its chairman John Fortes greeted the climbers. - "I met some climbers reaching the summit from Nepal side and saw some mountain peaks below me. It was snowing heavily as we were climbing up," said Noelle Wenceslao, who was the first among the three to reach the summit. Image Credit: Pinays On The Summit

Filipino women set records on Everest
By A Staff Reporter - Kathmandu, May 24, 2007

The members of the Pinay Mount Everest Expedition 2007, the first Filipino women's team to scale the world's tallest peak, are very happy that they have successfully reached the summit Mt. Everest.

Carina Dayondon on the summit. Image Credit: Pinays On The Summit

All three women members of the team have not only become the first Filipino women to climb the world's highest peak but also the first women climbers from the Association for Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

They are also the first women climbers to cross the mountain from the north route in Tibet to the south route in Nepal. Until now, only very few male climbers have crossed the mountain. Crossing the traverse was an uphill challenge for them because they had to pass through an unfamiliar route while descending.

Noelle with Philippine flag. Image Credit: Pinays On The Summit

"As we are from a tropical country, climbing Everest was a dream for us," said team leader Art Valdez told a press conference organised here this evening.
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This is sad. Why can’t we help these people from making the same tragic mistake.

I know if I were these people, after spending tens of thousands of dollars to get to the bottom of the wrong mountain in pursuit of an ego driven goal that can no longer be truthfully described as the “World’s Tallest”, ( … biggest mountain as measured from the base to the summit, maybe, but not the world’s tallest point on Earth) I'd be PIxxED!

We all should be more compassionate, we should issue tickets to Ecuador to all of these new “Record Holders” and give them a free pass to climb the recently defined “World’s Tallest Point” on Earth.

Universe Prediction Suggests A 'Cosmic Humility'

The Milky Way in infrared as it is seen today. In 3 trillion years, physicist Lawrence Krauss and Robert J. Scherrer predict that only "an island universe" made from the Milky Way and its nearby galactic Local Group neighbors will be perceivable in an overwhelmingly dark void. Image Credit: E. L. Wright (UCLA), The COBE Project, DIRBE, NASA

Universe Prediction Suggests A 'Cosmic Humility' … The Death Of Modern Cosmology

In an article titled “The Return of the Static Universe and the End of Cosmology", two researchers suggest that we are making our observations in a unique period of time. This time of measurement is unique in that the forces that help us to conclude that the universe is expanding will disappear over the current visible universe horizon.

Dark energy is the key to the disappearance of the evidence we sense today. As the universe expands, the increased abundance of dark energy will eliminate the ability to measure the gravitational dynamics of moving galaxies.

Excerpts from the Science Daily -

Cosmologists Predict A Static Universe In 3 Trillion Years
2007When Dutch astronomer Willem de Sitter proposed a static model of the universe in the early 1900s, he was some 3 trillion years ahead of his time.
Science Daily - Date: May 24

Now, physicists Lawrence Krauss from Case Western Reserve University and Robert J. Scherrer from Vanderbilt University predict that trillions of years into the future, the information that currently allows us to understand how the universe expands will have disappeared over the visible horizon. What remains will be "an island universe" made from the Milky Way and its nearby galactic Local Group neighbors in an overwhelmingly dark void.

The researchers' article was awarded one of the top prizes for 2007 by the Gravity Research Foundation. It will be published in the October issue of the Journal of Relativity and Gravitation.
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According to Krauss, since Edwin Hubble advanced his expanding universe observations in 1929, the "pillars of the modern Big Bang" have been built on measurements of the cosmic microwave background radiation from the afterglow of the early universe formation, movement of galaxies away from the Local Group and evidence of the abundance of elements produced in the primordial universe, as well as theoretical inferences based on Einstein's General Relativity Theory.
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Long after the demise of the solar system, it will be up to future physicists that arise from planets in other solar systems to fathom and unravel the mysteries of the system's origins from their isolated universes dominated by dark energy.

But the irony of the presence of that abundant dark energy, the researchers report, is that future physicists will have no way to measure its presence because of a void in the gravitational dynamics of moving galaxies.

"We live in a special time in the evolution of the universe," stated the researchers, somewhat humorously: "The only time at which we can observationally verify that we live in a very special time in the evolution of the universe."

The researchers describe that modern cosmology is built on Einstein's theory of general relativity, which requires an expanding or collapsing universe for a uniform density of matter. However, an isolated region can exist inside of an otherwise seemingly static universe.
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The researchers followed up that discussion with one tracking early elements like helium and deuterium produced in the Big Bang. They predict systems that allow us to detect primordial deuterium will be dispersed throughout the universe to become undetectable, while helium in concentrations of approximately 25 percent at the Big Bang will become indiscernible as stars will produce far more helium in the course of their lives to cloud the origins of the early universe.

"Eventually, the universe will appear static," said Krauss. "All evidence of modern cosmology will have disappeared."

Krauss closed with a comment that he suggested is implicit in the paper's conclusions. "We may feel smug in that we can detect a host of things future civilizations will not know about, but by the same token, this suggests we wonder about what important aspects of the universe we ourselves may be missing. Thus, our results suggest a kind of a 'cosmic humility'".
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It’s A Small World For Death Valley Pupfish

A male and female pair of Devils Hole Pupfish swim together in Devils Hole, Nevada is this undated US Fish and Wildlife handout photo received 18 May 2007. For 60,000 years, they have withstood the bone-chilling extremes of the Ice Age, the blistering temperatures of the desert and an ever-shrinking habitat. Image Credit: AFP/US Fish and Wildlife-HO

It’s A Small World For Death Valley Pupfish

In a small pool of water, guarded by an eight foot high fence, lives an evolutionary miracle of aquatic nature.

In a place where water is considered a most rare commodity, Death Valley is home to a very small population of fish that are found no where else in the world.

Since the early 1990’s, the once thriving pupfish numbered upwards to 500 members but today is down to only 38 due primarily to shrinking habitat.

Excerpts from Agence France-Presse -

Miracle of evolution fights for survival in Death Valley
by Tangi Quemener - Fri May 18, 4:04 PM ET

DEVILS HOLE, United States (AFP) - For 60,000 years, they have withstood the bone-chilling extremes of the Ice Age, the blistering temperatures of the desert and an ever-shrinking habitat.

These days, however, the Devils Hole pupfish rely on an eight-foot high fence which surrounds their murky pool of water in this remote corner of Death Valley National Park.

At only 2.7 centimeters long, the Devils Hole pupfish are one of nature's great survivors, an evolutionary miracle which for thousands of years has called home some of the most inhospitable terrain on Earth.
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While any story about the threats facing polar bears guarantees instant headlines, generating public interest in Devils Hole's residents is an ongoing challenge says Death Valley Park spokesman Terry Baldino.

"When you see a fish, you think: 'I'm wondering how that would taste with lemon on it!'" Baldino said, saying that compared to iconic animals like polar bears, grizzly bears and bald eagles, the pupfish were "a harder sell."

"But when people come here and actually see and experience the area, and see pupfish in the wild, they say: 'It's unbelievable, there's fish here!'

"Little by little, we're trying to get the word out that the pupfish are as valuable and just as important as cuddly cute polar bears."
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Although Death Valley, which lies 400 kilometers [250 miles] north-east of Los Angeles, is known as one of the hottest and driest places on earth, where temperatures hit 50 degrees Celsius [122 degrees Fahrenheit] in summer, the pupfish's habitat was left over from the end of the Ice Age, when lakes and rivers covered the region.

Falling water levels caused by agricultural interests threatened the fish's home in the 1960s and early 1970s, resulting in a legal battle that ended with a US Supreme Court ruling in 1976 which outlawed tapping into the region's water table for irrigation by farmers.

That decision effectively turned the region into a sanctuary, offering hope for the survival of the pupfish. But since 1990 the numbers of the fish have fallen steadily, baffling scientists monitoring the species.

Paul Barrett, endangered species listing and recovery coordinator for the US Fish and Wildlife Service, said environmental officers were at a loss to explain the decline.
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"The count is currently 38, but that's a spring count," he said. "Generally the counts are higher in the fall, because fish reproduce in the summer so numbers go up. The numbers die off in the winter."

Scuba divers descend into Devils Hole twice a year to count the fish manually, while the water quality and chemistry are monitored regularly.

Barrett and Baldino said there were several reasons for ensuring the pupfish's survival.

"This fish has been there for 60,000 years estimated," says Barrett. "We don't have the right to play God, it's arrogant of us to think that as humans we can come in, and take away something that's not convenient.

"The second reason is that endangered species are symbolic in value," he added. "Things like the bald eagle, which are a symbol of the United States, the Devil's Hole pupfish is very iconic because there's a landmark US Supreme court ruling based on it."

Baldino meanwhile said studying how the pupfish has adapted to a shrinking habitat over the years could provide useful pointers for humans.

"We can learn from in our own life, as our populations grow and our world seems to shrink, we're creating a situation where we're going to have limited resources," Baldino said. "There something here that we can learn."
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The "Other White Meat" Of The Auto-Fuel World

Phill - The world's first appliance that lets you refuel your Natural Gas Vehicle indoors or outdoors from your household natural gas line! - Image Credit: FuelMaker Corporation

The "Other White Meat" Of The Auto-Fuel World

That's right, there is another fuel alternative that would allow all of us to become less dependent on foreign sources for fuel in our automobiles and this one gets very little respect.

Just as in Pork having to advertise that it is the other white meat in order to get attention … Natural Gas should launch a similar campaign.

Almost everyone is aware of E85 Ethanol as THE fuel alternative of the future, but Natural Gas should also be considered into the calculation. It's cheap, it's plentiful, it's produced locally, and the infrastructure is almost all in place for those who do not mind a little planning.

For example, only three E85 re-fueling stations exist in California (and only one of those is available to the general public) whereas there are over 200 Natural Gas stations open for general public use with another 50 under construction.

And now, with "Phill" in you garage, you will have a Natural Gas station to get any trip started.

Excerpts from USA TODAY -

Natural-gas powered cars: Who even knows they exist?
By Chris Woodyard, USA TODAY - LOS ANGELES - May 09, 2007

Imagine paying as little as $1.25 a gallon to run your car.

Not for gasoline. Instead, you would pump a fuel that's readily available, North American-produced and virtually pollution-free. Many motorists could even fill up in their own garages every night just like they would power-up with one of the gas-electric plug-in hybrids still under development.

Now, what if this magical car were available today, and no one cared. Not government officials. Not auto executives. Not consumers. Not even some environmentalists.

Therein lies the paradox of the natural-gas powered car. Most major automakers offered them in the 1990s, primarily for government and corporate fleets. Back then, smog was the chief national concern. Yet today, when natural gas offers a common-sense, immediate and ecological relief valve to the nation's dependence on foreign oil, only one major automaker still makes a production model — and sales stink.

Only about 1,000 of the more than 300,000 Civic subcompacts that Honda (HMC) sells every year in the USA are the natural-gas GX version. Most still go to corporate or government fleets. Consumers can buy them only through select dealers in California and New York.

Some natural-gas proponents quietly seethe. They feel natural gas is being overlooked for cars, pickups and SUVs at a time when the nation's energy supply is dwindling and gasoline prices stair-step ever upward.

"It's like shouting in the wind sometimes," says Ron Cogan, publisher of the Green Car Journal and a big believer in natural gas. "It seems crazy we are not exploring more natural-gas vehicles, because the technology is here."

Natural-gas cars have some significant drawbacks. There aren't enough stations selling natural gas to make them practical for cross-country drives. They don't have as much driving range as gasoline-powered cars. And their fuel tanks take up more space in the trunk of the cars.

But every alternative-energy vehicle has disadvantages.
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Ethanol vs. natural gas for cars

E85 is backed in farm states because its 85% ethanol content is made from corn. But ethanol is heavily subsidized by the government. And it, too, is available at a limited number of stations — 1,200 at present — mostly in the Midwest. Ethanol's growing popularity threatens to drive up food prices even as farmers finish planting the most acreage in corn since 1944.

Automakers and government agencies are pouring billions into development of hydrogen-powered vehicles. But ironically, the vast majority of hydrogen made in the USA right now is derived from converting natural gas.

Advocates call compressed natural gas, or CNG for short, one of the nation's best-kept secrets when it comes to powering cars. "It bugs the hell out of me" that more isn't being done to get the word out, says Mike Eaves of the California Natural Gas Vehicle Coalition.

Natural gas is:

•Cheap. In Los Angeles this week, one chain was charging $2.55 for the natural-gas equivalent of a gallon of gasoline. By comparison, self-serve regular gasoline was hitting records, averaging $3.49 a gallon Tuesday in L.A. and California as a whole, said AAA's daily Fuel Gauge Report. California currently has the nation's highest fuel prices.

Steve Ellis, alternative fuels manager for Honda's U.S. operation, says he has never heard of an instance in which natural-gas prices exceeded those of gasoline.

With a home unit made by a company called FuelMaker, refilling a car overnight from a home's own natural-gas supply can drop the price even more. In California right now, the price equates to about $1.25 in natural gas for the equivalent gallon of gasoline.

The home unit, called Phill, mounts on a garage wall and is about the size of an old pay telephone. It costs about $3,900, but is eligible for a $1,000 federal tax credit and, at least in Southern California, another $2,000 in local incentives.

Honda GX starts at $24,590 and is eligible for a $4,000 federal tax credit. It compares feature-wise to a midlevel, gasoline-powered $17,760 Civic LX. The 2007 natural-gas GX is government rated at 28 miles a gallon in the city, 39 on the highway.
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•Plentiful. While natural gas isn't renewable like ethanol, there's lots of it. Reserves point to at least a 60-year supply, says the Natural Gas Supply Association. Only 56% of crude oil for U.S. refineries comes from North America, compared with 98% of the natural gas consumed. About half of all American homes are equipped for natural gas.

•Environmentally friendly. Natural gas creates so few emissions that Civic GX is the cleanest internal-combustion powered car on the road. It's greener than a Toyota Prius gasoline-electric hybrid and tied with the Civic hybrid, according to the Energy Department rankings for 2007 models.

Prius and the two Civics are the only vehicles clean enough to qualify for stickers that allow solo drivers to take them in California's car pool lanes. But the allotment of stickers has run out for the hybrids. Only Civic GX can still receive one.

Ellis says that on a smoggy day, the GX's exhaust is cleaner than the polluted air its engine sucks in. Natural gas is more than 20% better for carbon dioxide emissions, blamed for climate change, than comparable gasoline engines.

•Ready to go. Other major automakers sell natural-gas-powered cars in Europe, Asia, South America and elsewhere, just not in the USA. General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner mentioned natural gas at a Switzerland auto show in March as one of the alternative fuels the automaker has intensified efforts to develop for foreign markets.

About 1,500 fueling stations nationwide
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Natural gas is held back by the limited but growing number of fueling stations. Nationwide, there are about 1,500 natural-gas vehicle stations, about half of which sell to the public.
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The auto industry's past interest was driven primarily by the need to try to fulfill government requirements at the time designed to spur development of clean alternative energy. Automakers saw interest fall apart when rules were modified to allow government fleet operators to switch from natural gas to flex-fuel vehicles, which burn either E85 ethanol or regular gasoline.

Ford Motor (F) phased out natural gas pickups and vans after the 2004 model year, but it still does after-sales CNG conversions in India. GM (GM) stopped sales in the USA as well.

"The (sales) volume went down every year," GM spokeswoman Nancy Libby says. "Even when Ford and Chrysler stopped making natural-gas vehicles before us, it didn't change that fact."

That was before the advent of home fueling. It was also ahead of the soaring gasoline prices of the last couple of years and President Bush's call for a 20% reduction in gasoline use.
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"CNG faces the same challenges as hydrogen but without the benefits of zero emissions," says DaimlerChrysler spokesman Nick Cappa. Chrysler stopped making natural-gas-powered cars for U.S. sales in 1996 and has no immediate plans to sell hydrogen-powered vehicles, still in development.
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Honda deserves credit for continuing to market a natural-gas car, says Tim Carmichael, president of the Coalition for Clean Air, a California environmental-advocacy group. But consumers are still largely unaware of it, and the heavy-vehicle market holds more potential. Even a major oil executive whose company is involved in natural gas isn't enthusiastic. "It's going to require some sort of incentive before people go for it," says Shell Oil President John Hofmeister.

It didn't require much of an incentive, however, for 2003 Civic GX owner Jeff Church, 51, an airline pilot who lives in San Dimas, Calif. He says his natural-gas car, which he has driven about 53,000 miles, saves him a bundle. He estimates his home fueling unit delivers natural gas as cheap as 98 cents a gallon. The even bigger incentive is his car pool lane sticker, which allows him save 15 to 50 minutes zipping 42 miles from home to work at Los Angeles International Airport.

"For a lot of miles, it's the ideal vehicle," he says.
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The Oblate Spheroid, An Earthworm's View - Fossil Forest Find

Trees Stuck In Time - Image Credit: St. Louis Post-Dispatch

The Oblate Spheroid, An Earthworm's View - Fossil Forest Find

Last week, geologists surveying a coalmine 250 feet below the current surface of the Earth's crust, came upon a preserved 300 million year old forest. Measuring over four-square miles in size, the discovery is the largest fossil forest ever to date (as mining continues, the size of the exposed fossil forest grows by the day).

The discovery of the fossil remains were in the ceiling of the coalmine and are unusual, in that the fossilized trees of a forest are still standing and preserved standing straight up, as if frozen in time.

This left lead study author Bill DiMichele, a pale botanist at the Smithsonian Institution, to observe, "We get to walk under it and look up at it," he said. "It's the earthworm's view."

Sunken Forest and Peat Cuttings - Submerged for thousands of years, and now very much visible, the Historic Sunken Forest and the Peat Cuttings on Tywyn Beach [Wales]. Not a lot is known why it is there but due to beach erosion more is showing than ever before. Image Credit: ria3 via Flickr Fossils

Excerpts from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch -

Geologists discover world's largest fossil forest in the ceiling of an Illinois coal mine
By Eric Hand - ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH - 04/24/2007

Illinois geologists have discovered the remains of one of the world's oldest tropical rainforests, preserved in the ceiling of a coal mine 250 feet below the surface.

The four-square-mile fossil forest — the largest find ever — is just south of Danville in Vermilion County, Ill., in the 300-million-year-old Herrin coal bed, a 6-foot-thick strip mined by a subsidiary of St. Louis-based Peabody Coal.

Plant fossils are common in coal beds. Coal, after all, is the compacted result of peaty plant material. But scientists are surprised by the size of this fossil bed, which they suspect came about because of a freak, fortuitous event: an earthquake that flooded and buried the forest. The vast extent of the fossil forest, which existed in a swampy time of giant dragonflies and tree ferns, has allowed the scientists to infer subtle ecological changes across the ancient landscape.

"This is almost as good as insects in amber," said Scott Elrick of the Illinois State Geological Survey and one of the authors of the study, which was published in the May issue of the journal Geology.
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These are the remnants of extinct plants from a geological period 300 million years ago, called the Carboniferous, when the world was covered in a riot of green. Illinois was near the equator and much warmer and wetter.

It was also a time before flowering plants had evolved, and so the plants would seem bizarre to modern eyes, said study co-author Howard Falcon-Lang, a geologist at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom.

"These are some of the earliest known rainforests to evolve on our planet," he said. "It was like something out of Jules Verne."

Giant tree ferns would have formed a lower canopy 30 feet high. Poking up through the ferns would have been 100-foot-tall clubmosses — asparagus-like poles that sprouted crowns full of spores. It was the age of insects, with 6-foot-long millipedes and dragonflies with yard-long wingspans.

The photo "Fosilillos" was taken next to the Bay of Biscay on the North coast near Bilbao, Spain – Image Credit: Mr. Theklan via Flickr Fossils
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An earthquake preserved all this for posterity. Elrick says it was akin to the 1811-12 earthquakes near New Madrid, Mo., which dropped a block of earth containing the Mississippi River, creating a natural dam that made Reelfoot Lake in Tennessee.

When the ancient earthquake hit, a sudden flooding in the submerged block killed the rainforest. Mud and silt rushed into the depression, preserving the stumps and logs in a layer that eventually became shale.

And that was the state of things until, 300 million years later, miners noticed shiny, funnel-shaped concretions that occasionally fell from the shale layer above them. They called them "kettlebottoms." But they were really fossilized stumps, whose roots fingered the peaty layer that ultimately became the coal seam the miners were working in.
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Lead study author Bill DiMichele, a paleobotanist at the Smithsonian Institution, said the lateral extent of the fossils allowed him to notice subtle changes in species diversity as he did surveys.
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DiMichele is now doing inventories of ancient plants in two other actively mined Illinois coal seams, the Danville and the Springfield, which sit above and below the Herrin, respectively, and are separated by about a half-million years of geological time. Where most botanists do their work by walking through a forest, DiMichele takes elevators down mine shafts — to get beneath the forest.
Reference Here>>