Oblate Spheroid

Hubble Captures Oldest On Record Galaxy - 13.1 Billion Light Years Away

2012-01-14T15:47:00.000-08:00

Image Credit: NASA

Hubble Captures Oldest On Record Galaxy - 13.1 Billion Light Years Away

NASA Hubble Space Telescope has captured an image of the oldest galaxy on record, the space administration announced January 10, 2012.

The space administration said it has captured an image of a group of galaxies located 13.1 billion light years away. The team said the galaxies represent a cluster in the initial stages of development.

The space administration notes that galaxy clusters are among the largest structures in the universe, comprising hundreds to thousands of galaxies bound together by gravity. The developing cluster, or protocluster, is seen as it looked over 13 billion years ago.

“These galaxies formed during the earliest stages of galaxy assembly, when galaxies had just started to cluster together,” said Michele Trenti of the University of Colorado at Boulder and the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Cambridge in the U.K. “The result confirms our theoretical understanding of the buildup of galaxy clusters. And, Hubble is just powerful enough to find the first examples of them at this distance.”

Hubble spotted the five galaxies while performing a random sky survey in near-infrared light. The newly found galaxies are small, ranging from 10 percent to 50 percent the size of our own Milky Way. But they are similar in brightness to the Milky Way, said astronomers NASA says the galaxy has likely grown into one of today’s massive “galactic cities,” comparable to the nearby Virgo cluster of more than 2,000 galaxies.

video solutions

This excerpted and edited from NASA -

The Age of the Universe ... Then vs. Now

Before 1999, astronomers had estimated that the age of the universe at between 7 to 20 billion years. With advances in technology and the development of new techniques we now know the age of the universe is 13.7 billion years, with an uncertainty of only 200 million years. So how did this understanding come to be?

Early estimates of the Age of the Universe

In the 1920's Edwin Hubble discovered the expansion of the universe. He found that galaxies which are further away are moving at a higher speed following the law, v=Hod, where v is the velocity in km/s, d is the distance in Mpc, and Ho is the Hubble constant in km/s/Mpc. By independently measuring the velocity and distances to galaxies, the value of Ho could be determined. Astronomers further determined that the age of the universe is related to Hubble's constant, and that it is between 1/Ho and 2/3Ho depending on cosmological models adopted. The velocity could be determined via the redshift in the spectrum. The distance to the galaxy can be determined using observations of certain types of pulsating stars, called Cepheids, whose instrinsic brightness is related to the period of their brightness variation. However, the accuracy of the distance measurement was hampered by how faint ground based telescopes could see. Up until the 1990's, the best estimates for Ho were between 50 km/s/Mpc and 90 km/s/Mpc, giving a range on the age of the universe between 7 and 20 billion years.

Enter the Hubble Space Telescope

So in 1993, the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope began a "key project" to obtain distances to the Cepheids in 18 galaxies. Astronomers were able to obtain for the first time more precise distances, and a more accurate value of Ho. In 1999 after several years of observations with HST astronomers were able to estimate Ho to be 71 km/s/Mpc within 10% uncertainty, one of the greatest achievements of modern astronomy. Extrapolating back to the Big Bang, that value of Ho implied an age between 9 and 14 billion years old.
[Reference Here]

Astronomers note that most galaxies in the universe reside in groups and clusters, and astronomers say discovering clusters in the early phases of construction has been a challenge due to the fact that they are rare, dim and widely scattered across the sky. The new find helps demonstrate that galaxies build up progressively over time, researchers said. It also provides further evidence for the hierarchical model of galaxy assembly.

The team of astronomers are scheduled to deliver the results of the findings Tuesday at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Austin, Texas. The study will also be published in an upcoming issue of The Astrophysical Journal.

“Records are always exciting, and this is the earliest and the most distant developing galaxy cluster that has ever been seen,” said Michael Shull, a member of the team who discovered the protocluster. “We have seen individual galaxies this old and far away, but we have not seen groups of them in the construction process before.”
(ht: The State Column)

An American President's Christmas Message From America To All

2011-12-24T14:48:00.000-08:00

An American President's Christmas Message From America To All

It may amaze one to ponder that only 30 years ago (December 23, 1981), a President of the United States felt it was his leadership duty to speak directly about the reason for the season and assure all, whether they believed in Christianity or not, that our country and its citizens were protected here as one, under "Faith and Freedom" ... regardless of belief or circumstance.

May God bless the memory of Ronald Reagan. A message as poignant and timeless in 1981 as it is here in 2011.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

Permafrost Estimates Increase Its Potential Contribution To Climate Change Theory

2011-12-01T10:25:00.000-08:00

Melting permafrost makes the ground cave in, creating a ribbon or pocket of collapsed land called thermokarst. Scientists at Toolik are studying this to see how often they find it and what impacts it has on surrounding environments. Image Credit: trendsupdates.com

Permafrost Estimates Increase Its Potential Contribution To Climate Change Theory

All climate change attributed to the concept that "greenhouse gasses" are the main change agent may not be associated with actual human activity at all. A major contributor to Carbon and Methane gas released in our atmosphere may actually come from Earth's natural processes as the Earth goes through its cycles of hot and cold aided by the activity of our solar system's Sun.

What the release of this information does not do, as nearly all Global Warming articles that put forward the conclusion that Human Activity is the primary reason for Earth's climate of change, is point out that the math, most of the climate change projection in time models are based upon, is a fraud that was exposed in November 2009 with the unauthorized release of emails from the University of East Anglia in Great Britain. That the theory, Anthropomorphic Global Warming (AGW) is just an effort fueled by the money from Governments and Institutions (in the form of grants) that get there power to do things by proving AGW actually exists.

Take for example this article from the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. As it is written, it stands as a cheer-leading news piece without the balance of stating that all AGW/Climate Change studies are based upon a theory ... not a fact. The article referenced below has inclusions that help to bring balance to the article with "[called-out inclusions]".

This excerpted and edited from the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner -

New estimate boosts permafrost contribution to climate change
by Jeff Richardson / jrichardson@newsminer.com

A survey of 41 [grant-paid] scientists — including seven University of Alaska Fairbanks researchers — estimates the amount of carbon released from thawing permafrost by 2100 will be 1.7 to 5.2 times larger than previously estimated.

Their conclusions, reported Wednesday in the scientific journal Nature, describe permafrost thawing as a likely accelerator of [the unproven concept on] global warming.
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In most soils such material is typically in the top several feet, but in frozen soils those carbon-filled sediments can be much deeper.

Because of that, the estimated amount of carbon stored in northern soils has tripled in recent years, to roughly 1,700 billion tons. That’s four times more than all the carbon emitted by human activity since the Industrial Revolution and twice as much as is currently present in the atmosphere.

“Soils in the north are cold,” said Ben Abbott, a UAF doctoral student at the Institute of Arctic Biology and co-author of the Nature article. “It’s like a big refrigerator, and all that material is just stored.”

With that much carbon-filled material present, a small change in the estimated amount released could make a notable difference in climate change projections. Most scientists [an untrue assumption] believe gases such as carbon dioxide and methane, both of which are released by warming permafrost, contribute to global warming [an unproven concept].

But researchers studying northern areas with permafrost have admittedly sparse data [not enough for true conclusions], said Ted Schuur, a University of Florida professor who co-authored the article. Because of that, he said, numerous members of the Permafrost Carbon Research Network were surveyed to collect a larger picture, combining scientific data with their predictions. A National Science Foundation grant paid for the work [as in, follow the money].

“We don’t know exactly what’s going to happen, but these are probably the best people to ask [a collection of people who get paid to come up with these conclusions],” Schuur said.
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Ben Abbott, the UAF doctoral student at the Institute of Arctic Biology and co-author of the Nature article mentioned above said he and other researchers have more work ahead to test their hypotheses [again, not factual conclusions] through field research. He’s spent recent summers at Toolik Field Station, a research center north of the Brooks Range, and said he’s looking forward to another season of testing soil cores and water samples for gas emissions [no mention that the most abundant greenhouse gas that exists on Earth is Water Vapor].

Other UAF researchers who participated in the survey included Terry Chapin, IAB professor emeritus; Guido Grosse, research assistant professor at the Geophysical Institute; Dave McGuire, professor of ecology; Chien-Lu Ping, natural resources professor; Vladimir Romanovsky, Geophysical Institute professor; and Katey Walter Anthony, research assistant professor with the International Arctic Research Center.
[Reference Here]

Biggest Take-Away: "The estimated amount of carbon stored in northern soils has tripled to roughly 1,700 billion tons. That’s four times more than all the carbon emitted by human activity since the Industrial Revolution and twice as much as is currently present in the atmosphere."

What this information proves is that "greenhouse gasses" and their regulation may do nothing to curb the changes in a system of changing climate found here on this Oblate Spheroid.

Live cleanly? ... Yes!

Live under the cloud of regulation based on the grant-fueled, unproven theory that Human Activity and its control can effect climate here on Earth? ... No!

Lest one wants to put forward the additional theory that Man, and his activity, are the small rock that has turned into this larger problematic snowball, check out this article that was written before the discovery of the FRAUD that became "Climategate" in November 2009, by the National Geographic about Polar Ice Caps!

<first seen as Permafrost Estimates Increase Its Potential Contribution To Climate Change Theory at Technorati and Politisite>

Matter/ Antimatter - Atom Smasher Makes New Discovery

2011-11-18T09:45:00.000-08:00

The LHCb team stands in front of their experiment, the LHCb detecor, at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva. Image Credit: CERN/Maximilien Brice, Rachel Barbier

Matter/ Antimatter - Atom Smasher Makes New Discovery

An atom smasher based near Geneva, Switzerland conducted an experiment recently and found that there may be bits of matter that don't mirror the behavior of their antimatter counterparts.

This observance is unexpected, in that scientists have operated under the theory the universe started off with roughly equal amounts of matter and antimatter where particles of antimatter have the same mass of their twins but an opposite charge. They theorized that over the ensuing 14 billion years, most of the antimatter was destroyed, leaving a leftover universe of mainly matter.

After many experiments, in Switzerland, using the Large Hadron Collider, the 17-mile (27 km) circular particle accelerator, researchers are reporting that some matter particles produced inside the machine appear to be behaving differently from their antimatter counterparts, which might provide a partial explanation to the mystery of antimatter.

Roughly equal amounts of matter and antimatter are created in the collision of energetic gold nuclei inside the particle accelerator dubbed RHIC, but because the fireball expands and cools quickly, antimatter can survive longer than that created in the big bang. In this collision an ordinary helium-4 nucleus (background) is matched by a nucleus of antihelium-4 (foreground). Image Credit: STAR Collaboration and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

This excerpted and edited from LiveScience.com -

Is the New Physics Here? Atom Smashers Get an Antimatter Surprise
By lt | LiveScience.com

One potential explanation for this outcome is called "charge-parity violation." CP violation means that particles of opposite charge behave differently from one another.

The LHCb researchers found preliminary evidence that this is happening when particles called D-mesons, which contain "charmed quarks," decay into other particles. The whimsically named charmed quarks, like many exotic particles, are so unstable, they last only a fraction of a second. They quickly decay into other particles, and it is these products that the experiment detects. ("LHCb" is short for LHC-beauty, another flavor of quark.)

From the experiment, the researchers found a 0.8 percent difference in the probabilities that the matter and antimatter versions of these particles would decay into a particular end state.
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The new finding ranks as a "3.5 sigma" result, meaning the statistics are solid enough that there is only a 0.05 percent likelihood that the pattern they see isn't really there. For something to count as a true discovery in particle physics, it must reach a 5 sigma level of confidence.

"It's certainly exciting, and certainly worth pursuing," LHCb researcher Matthew Charles of England's Oxford University told LiveScience. "At this point it's a tantalizing hint. It's evidence of something interesting going on, but we're keeping the champagne on ice, let's say."
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If the finding is borne out, it would be a big deal, because it would mean the reigning theory of particle physics, called the Standard Model, is incomplete. Currently the Standard Model does allow for some minor CP violation, but not at the level of 0.8 percent. To explain these results, scientists would have to alter their theory or add some new physics to the existing picture.
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One possible example of the kind of new physics that might explain such CP violation is called supersymmetry. This theory suggests that in addition to all the known particles, there are supersymmetric partner particles that differ by half a unit of spin. Spin is one of the fundamental characteristics of elementary particles.

So far, no one has found direct evidence of supersymmetry. But if supersymmetric particles exist, they might be created instantaneously and disappear again during the particle-decay process. That way they could interfere with the decay process, potentially explaining why matter and antimatter decay differently.
[Reference Here]

As the old saying goes ... the more man gains answers to questions, the more questions to be answered are raised here ... on this Oblate Spheroid.

<Article seen first as Matter / Antimatter - Atom Smasher Makes New Discovery at Technorati>

Toyota (TMG - Europe) To Attempt New Speed Record For Electric-Powered Vehicle

2011-08-02T07:19:00.000-07:00

No official photos of the Toyota EV racer yet, but the car is expected to be similar to this e-Wolf ALPHA·1 SRF. The "e-Wolf" features two high-capacity electric-powered engines that catapult the ALPHA 1 SRF to 100 km/h (62.137 mph) in less than 4 seconds. This vehicle was conceived for application on a full racing distance. Image Credit: ewolf-car.com

Toyota (TMG - Europe) To Attempt New Speed Record For Electric-Powered Vehicle

Toyota Motorsport GmbH (TMG) will attempt to set a new electric vehicle (EV) lap record at the legendary Nürburgring Nordschleife. The current record is held by e·WOLF, a Germany based pioneer in the area of street-legal electric vehicles.

TMG has developed a high-performance electric powertrain and this will form the basis of the record attempt, which is provisionally scheduled for the end of August.

The TMG 100% electric car, which is based on a two-seater sportscar chassis fitted with TMG’s exclusive EV technology, has a top speed of 260km/h and can travel from 0 to 100km/h in 3.9 seconds.

This car is ideal for a single-make EV championship and TMG aims to prove that green-thinking motorsport can generate emotion among fans by using innovative technology to deliver high performance.

Its challenge is to break the existing EV lap record of 9min 1.338secs set earlier this year. Already the TMG electric powertain has bettered this time during unofficial testing and it is expected to make a significant improvement during the official timed laps.

Rob Leupen, TMG’s Director of Business Operations, said: “We are extremely confident we can break the record by some distance, which is an indication of how EV performance is continuously improving. TMG is a leader in high-performance powertrains and we want to show the world how far this technology has developed. Our mission is to advance this technology, not only in motorsport but in the automotive sector in general, to deliver products with more performance and better durability for our customers.”

Ludwig Zeller, TMG’s General Manager Electrics and Electronics, said: “TMG has developed a very robust and reliable electric powertrain, which has been proven in several products already. We have built up a tremendous amount of knowledge about such high-performance powertrains, particularly battery management systems and vehicle control units, during our development programmes. Our lap record attempt brings together this knowledge and it should clearly show the great potential of high-performance electric powertrains.”

Further details about the project, including photographs and a timetable for the record attempt, will follow in the coming days.
(ht: TMG)

... notes from The EDJE

[Article first published as New Speed Record Attempt For Electric-Powered Vehicle At Nurburgring on Technorati]

Twisting Buzz Lightyear ... "To Beyond, And Infinity"

2011-08-02T06:00:00.000-07:00

Using the infrared Herschel Space Observatory, Astronomers have discovered this ring of gas at the center of our Milky Way that looks like an infinity symbol - image annotated. The image was taken using two of Herschel's instruments -- the photodetector array camera and spectrometer (70-micron-light is coded blue; 160-micron light is coded green) and the spectral and photometric imaging receiver (350-micron light is red). Image Credit: ESA/NASA/JPL-Caltech

Twisting Buzz Lightyear ... "To Beyond, And Infinity"

In a strange twist of science, astronomers using the Herschel Space Observatory have discovered that a suspected ring at the center of our galaxy is warped for reasons they cannot explain. The above image reveals the ring with greater clarity than ever before. It can be seen as the yellow loop that appears to have two lobes, highlighted here with a white ribbon overlay. In fact, the ring, which is a collection of very dense and cold gas and dust, is twisted so that part of it rises above and below the plane of our Milky Way galaxy.

Astronomers aren't sure how rings like this form in galaxies but some theories suggest they arise out of gravitational disturbances with neighboring galaxies. New stars are thought to be forming in the dense gas making up the ring.

According to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., astronomers were shocked by what they saw when they aimed the telescope at the galaxy's inner ring.

"[The] ring, which is in the plane of our galaxy, looked more like an infinity symbol with two lobes pointing to the side," JPL officials said in a statement. "In fact, they later determined the ring was torqued in the middle, so it only appears to have two lobes. To picture the structure, imagine holding a stiff, elliptical band and twisting the ends in opposite directions, so that one side comes up a bit."

Previous observations to date had only revealed portions of the ring. The Herschel Space Observatory, an infrared European Space Agency-led mission with important NASA contributions, sees long-wavelength infrared light, which can penetrate through the murky region at the center of our galaxy, allowing Herschel to get a more complete view.

"This is what is so exciting about launching a new space telescope like Herschel," said Sergio Molinari of the Institute of Space Physics in Rome, lead author of a new paper on the ring in the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters. "We have a new and exciting mystery on our hands, right at the center of our own galaxy."

The ring stretches across more than 300 light-years of space, and is about 15 Kelvin (that's minus 433 degrees Fahrenheit here on the Oblate Spheroid). The warmest material in this picture is blue, and the coldest is red.

The twist in the ring is not the only mystery to come out of the new Herschel observations. Astronomers say that the center of the torqued portion of the ring is not where the center of the galaxy is thought to be, but slightly offset. The center of our galaxy is considered to be around "Sagittarius A*," where a massive black hole lies. According to Alberto Noriega-Crespo of NASA's Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, it's not clear why the center of the ring doesn't match up with the assumed center of our galaxy. "There's still so much about our galaxy to discover," he said.

Oh, and the reference to Toy Story's Buzz Lightyear? ... Whenever he launched himself to be in flight, he would always exclaim, "To infinity, and beyond!" Little did the writers and creators of Toy Story know that there was actually a destination as ... Infinity.

An abstract and full PDF of the Astrophysical Journal Letters study is online at http://arxiv.org/abs/1105.5486.
(ht: herschel.caltech.edu & space.com)

[Article first published as Twisting Buzz Lightyear ... "To Beyond, And Infinity" on Technorati]

Google's Blogger Down For Over 24 Hours!

2011-05-13T09:56:00.000-07:00

Blogger Logo - Image Credit: Blogger.com

Google's Blogger Down For Over 24 Hours!

Blogger ... Google's web log hosting portal, has been down for a full 24 hours at the time of this posting.

This seems like a modern era record for this usually very reliable communications service and personal publishing arm of the giant search powerhouse, Google.

With all of the push Google has been putting in on Chrome, one has to ask - Is Blogger now becoming just an ugly stepchild to the array of focused services that Google has to offer? What - isn't Blogger sexy enough for Google to keep outages down to a minimum?

If this is the case, Google's shine is losing its luster.

This excerpted from Blogger's Status Link:

Blogger Status

Friday, May 13, 2011

We’ve started restoring the posts that were temporarily removed and expect Blogger to be back to normal soon.

Posted by at 06:07 PDT

To get Blogger back to normal, all posts since 7:37am PDT on Weds, 5/11 have been temporarily removed. We expect everything to be back to normal soon. Sorry for the delay.

Posted by at 04:25 PDT

----

UPDATE May 13, 2011 - 9:50am PT:

Blogger back online after nearly 30 hours of non-service.

Thanks, Google ... but we will be keeping an eye on you.

First Image Of Mercury From NASA Spaceship In Orbit Around Planet

2011-03-29T18:00:00.000-07:00

Image Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington

First Image Of Mercury From NASA Spaceship In Orbit Around Planet

Date acquired: March 29, 2011
Image Mission Elapsed Time (MET): 209877871
Image ID: 65056
Instrument: Wide Angle Camera (WAC) of the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS)
Center Latitude: -53.3°
Center Longitude: 13.0° E
Resolution: 2.7 kilometers/pixel (1.7 miles/pixel)
Scale: Debussy has a diameter of 80 kilometers (50 miles)

Of Interest: Early this morning, at 5:20 am EDT, MESSENGER captured this historic image of Mercury. This image is the first ever obtained from a spacecraft in orbit about the Solar System's innermost planet. Over the subsequent six hours, MESSENGER acquired an additional 363 images before downlinking some of the data to Earth. The MESSENGER team is currently looking over the newly returned data, which are still continuing to come down. Tomorrow, March 30, at 2 pm EDT, attend the NASA media telecon to view more images from MESSENGER's first look at Mercury from orbit.

The dominant rayed crater in the upper portion of the image is Debussy. The smaller crater Matabei with its unusual dark rays is visible to the west of Debussy. The bottom portion of this image is near Mercury's south pole and includes a region of Mercury's surface not previously seen by spacecraft. Compare this image to the planned image footprint to see the region of newly imaged terrain, south of Debussy. Over the next three days, MESSENGER will acquire 1185 additional images in support of MDIS commissioning-phase activities. The year-long primary science phase of the mission will begin on April 4, and the orbital observation plan calls for MDIS to acquire more than 75,000 images in support of MESSENGER's science goals.

On March 17, 2011 (March 18, 2011, UTC), MESSENGER became the first spacecraft to orbit the planet Mercury. The mission is currently in its commissioning phase, during which spacecraft and instrument performance are verified through a series of specially designed checkout activities. In the course of the one-year primary mission, the spacecraft's seven scientific instruments and radio science investigation will unravel the history and evolution of the Solar System's innermost planet. Visit the Why Mercury? section of this website to learn more about the science questions that the MESSENGER mission has set out to answer.

UPDATES To Follow ...

Anti-Laser - The "Coherent Perfect Absorber" Is Born

2011-02-18T08:00:00.000-08:00

In the anti-laser, incoming light waves are trapped in a cavity where they bounce back and forth until they are eventually absorbed. Their energy is dissipated as heat. Image Credit: Yidong Chong/Yale University

Anti-Laser - The "Coherent Perfect Absorber" Is Born

Everyone is familiar with laser light emitting devices such as pointers used in presentations and lectures, lightshows performed at events, openings, and concerts, even with the red-light that hits a barcode on the front of one's morning newspaper and pastry purchase at the corner 7-11 ... but this was not the case 51 years ago.

Now there is a new tool that has been developed through the the use of focused wavelength of light but unlike with the laser, where the focused wavelength is passed through a material that amplifies the light, the anti-laser utilities the opposite concept of passing a focused wavelength of light through material that absorbs the light. The process has been given the name "Coherent Perfect Absorber" giving a new, future meaning to the an-acronym "CPA".

In an anti-laser, or coherent perfect absorber, the outgoing laser beams are replaced by incoming ones, and light flows into a light-absorbing material instead of out of a light-amplifying one. Image Credit: Science/AAAS

When the laser was first conceptualized and developed into a working device, no one knew that it would eventually lead to replacing records and needles when one listens to music or film projectors when one watches a home movie transferred from a computer to a laser/DVD disc. The same could be said at the dawn of the anti-laser CPA process, No one knows what this new tool will bring to the tool-box, and what new applications can be developed, to solve the many problems we encounter that make our lives easier and more efficient.

Coherent light is incident on an absorbing material in a resonator formed by two parallel reflective surfaces or mirrors. The interplay of absorption and interference leads to perfect absorption of the incoming radiation and its conversion into other forms of energy1. The schematic of a laser would be entirely analogous, with only the arrows for light and energy reversed: energy pumped in would result in coherent light out. Image Credit: Nature Volume: 467, Pages: 37–39 Date published: (02 September 2010)

Dr. Wenjie Wan, a Phd from Princeton University, is a post-doctoral associate in applied physics at Yale. In photo, Wan works with the optical set up for an anti-laser experiment in the applied physics lab at Yale which involves prisms, mirrors and silicon. An anti-laser (or, in technical terms, "coherent perfect absorber") works in the reverse of a conventional laser. Instead of emitting a beam of light, it absorbs it. Two laser beams with the exact same frequencies are emitted into a silicon wafer. The silicon aligns the light waves so that they become interlocked and oscillate until they are absorbed and transformed into heat. The concept is in it's infancy and may be adapted to new computer technology down the road. Image Credit: STEPHEN DUNN, Hartford Courant (2011)

This excerpted and edited from the Hartford Courant -

The Anti-Laser Is Here
Yale researchers butild device that absorbs light
By William Weir - Hartford Courant - Feb. 17, 2011

A. Douglas Stone, a physicist, and his team describe the anti-laser in Friday's issue of Science.
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The possibility of an anti-laser had been suggested by other scientists, but only in passing, Stone said. And other physicists have stumbled upon the basic premise while working on other projects, he said, but they did not follow through.

"Nobody took it serious, until us," Stone said. "It was literally a footnote."
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Any dark material can absorb light — a car's black interior on a summer day, for instance — but to absorb near 100 percent of the light of a laser beam requires a bit more precision. The difference in the anti-laser is that instead of using an amplifying material, it uses one that absorbs it — or a "loss medium." After his research team did the math, Stone said, they decided that silicon was the best choice.

The anti-laser is set up to split a single laser beam into two and direct the two beams to head toward each other, meeting at the paper-thin silicon wafer. The light's waves are precisely tuned to interlock with each other and become trapped. They then dissipate into heat.

Perhaps the most novel part of the device is that it allows the operator to tune the light's wavelengths and determine how much of the laser light is absorbed. That allows the device to work as an on-off switch for light.

Stone first proposed the idea last year, in a paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters. But it's one thing to write about it and do the math, and it's another to actually create it. That's where Stone's collaborators came in, a team of applied physicists headed by Hui Cao and Wenjie Wan. The divide between theoretical physics and applied physics is a stark one. As of Wednesday, Stone hadn't yet seen the finished device, built in another building on campus
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Wan said it took about a year to build the device. Pointing at the mirrors, prism, beam splitter and the silicon wafer that make up the device's basic components, he said the design is fairly simple. But achieving the necessary level of precision was a challenge. Even now, they're fine-tuning it.
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Now that the anti-laser has been built, what exactly do you do with it? Its best potential use, so far, appears to be in optical switches, used in the next generation of computers, which operate on light as well as electrons. Cao also has suggested that it could be useful in radiology, capturing images of human tissue normally too deep to see.

But as with much of science, the practical applications will be for others to figure out.
Reference Here>>

The Circular Nature Of Homo Sapiens

2010-12-01T08:32:00.000-08:00

The Circular Nature Of Homo Sapiens

Humans can't walk in a straight line. If there's no fixed point of reference, our species just walk in circles and inevitably … get lost. Nobody knows why, but researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics have confirmed this tendency in several experiments.

If one walks, drives or sails wearing a blindfolded, in the middle of a fog occurrence, or at night without stars in sight, a human will not be able to keep moving in a direction that would be a straight line. No matter how hard one tries, humans will end up going in a circular direction because, for some mysterious reason, humans always have the tendency to lean (and thereby move) toward one side more than the other.

Some people speculate that this is because one side of the brain is dominating the other one. While other people speculate that the reason may be purely mechanical reasoning (with their reasoning side of the brain) that one of our legs is always sightly shorter than the other. But, according to the results of the study, these are not the causes for this unique behavior. At least, there's not one single explanation and it may be a combination of many.

Whatever the reasons are, don't get placed into a dark forest blindfolded and without a compass – however … screw the GPS when navigating around this Oblate Spheroid.

Virgin Galactic - Commercial Space Flight Celebrates Two Milestones

2010-10-28T05:48:00.000-07:00

The Virgin Galactic VSS Enterprise spacecraft, carried by Mothership Eve, prepares to during the Spaceport America runway dedication ceremony near Truth or Consequences and Las Cruses, N.M. Image Credit: Mark Rakston/AFP/Getty Images

Virgin Galactic - Commercial Space Flight Celebrates Two Milestones

Richard Bransom's dream to bring space flight to paying customers just notched two milestones this month over the deserts of California and New Mexico.

Launched from Mojave, California where the Virgin Galactic SpaceShip2 (VSS Enterprise) and its launch platform "mothership", WhiteKnight2 (Eve) were created, the first test flight took place on October 11, 2010. Virgin Galactic's space tourism rocket airship achieved its first solo glide flight marking another step in the company's eventual plans to fly paying passengers.

The rocket airship was carried aloft by its mothership to an altitude of 45,000 feet and released on a sunny Sunday day over the Mojave Desert. After the separation, SpaceShipTwo, manned by two test pilots, flew freely for 11 minutes before landing at an airport runway followed by the WhiteKnight2 mothership. The entire test flight process lasted about 25 minutes.

The Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo, "VSS Enterprise", married up with the WhiteKnightTwo mothership "Eve", flies over its new hangar as it prepares to land during the Spaceport America runway dedication in the southern New Mexico desert on October 22, 2010. Image Credit: Mark Rakston/AFP/Getty Images

Eleven days later, on October 22, 2010 near Las Cruces and Truth Or Consequences , N.M., the New Mexico Spaceport Authority dedicated the nearly two-mile-long runway at Spaceport America. Spaceport America has been providing commercial launch services for rockets since 2006 and is scheduled to become fully operational with the inclusion of the Virgin Galactic operation next year.

Virgin Galactic's new terminal hangar at Spaceport America is seen during the Spaceport America runway dedication ceremony near Truth or Consequences, N.M. Image Credit: Mark Rakston/AFP/Getty Images

Officials from Virgin showed off its new terminal hangar, which is nearing completion. The building is designed to house up to two WhiteKnightTwo motherships, five SpaceShipTwo space flight airships , Virgin's astronaut preparation facilities, and SpaceShip2 mission control operations.

The event featured Billionaire and Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson haming it up with New Mexico Govenor Bill Richardson, for whom the "Governor Bill Richardson Spaceway" is named.

"We are celebrating the world's first spaceway at the world's first purpose-built, commercial spaceport," Richardson said, according to a news release. "New Mexico is not only helping to launch the commercial spaceflight industry, but we are launching new jobs and opportunities for the people of southern New Mexico."

Branson said: "Our spaceship is flying beautifully and will soon be making powered flights, propelled by our new hybrid rocket motor, which is also making excellent progress in its own test program. The investment deal with our new partners Aabar has successfully closed, securing funding for the remainder of the development program and we are seeing unprecedented numbers of people coming forward to secure their own reservations for this incredible experience."

Tickets to ride aboard SpaceShipTwo cost $200,000. It is understood that 370 customers have already plunked down deposits totaling about $50 million, according to Virgin Galactic.

NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver said: "With the recent signing of the NASA Authorization Act of 2010 by President Obama, it is clear that our nation's future space efforts will be working even more closely than with the growing commercial space transportation industry. Innovative approaches that foster this new commercial industry will bring more competition and opportunities that will lower the costs of spaceflight and payload services for America's aerospace programs, and introduce new human space transportation systems."

Virgin Galactic plans to fly commercial customers into space from the Spaceport and landed its SpaceShipTwo, the "VSS Enterprise," carried by WhiteKnightTwo mothership "Eve," during the ceremony held here at the New Mexico desert on this Oblate Spheroid.

ADDITIONAL PHOTOS>>

Earth 2.0 ... Life Possible On Gliese 581g, 20.5 Light-Years Away

2010-09-30T06:17:00.000-07:00

A planet, as depicted in this rendering, orbits the habitable zone of a star 20 light years from Earth, meaning it could have water on its surface. Image Credit: National Science Foundation and NASA

Earth 2.0 ... Life Possible On Gliese 581g, 20.5 Light-Years Away

Astronomers at the Keck telescope in Hawaii, during a study that has been underway for more than a decade, have identified a solar system that has a planet they suspect could support life as we know or understand it here on our Oblate Spheroid.

Let's call it Earth 2.0. It is a planet that is circling a Sun named Gliese, that is located a little over twenty light years away (the time it would take to get there if one could travel in a craft at the speed of light and carry enough food and etc. to sustains one's life to arrive and observe this suspect orb on site).

Carbon copy? The Gliese 581 solar system resembles our own but on a much smaller scale. Planet "G" is located in the "Goldilocks" zone of this sun's solar system [CTRL-CLICK photo to launch YouTube video]. Image Credit: Zina Deretsky/National Science Foundation

This excerpted and edited from All Voices news webportal -

Discovered Planet Zarmina (Gliese 581g) Is 'Habitable' For Human Life
By ryangeneral - Honolulu : HI : USA | Sep 30, 2010

The planet lies near the middle of the Goldilocks zone, or habitable zone of its parent star, and the presence of liquid water is considered a strong possibility. The discovery of Gliese 581 g was announced in September 2010, and is believed to be the first Goldilocks planet ever found, the most Earth-like planet, and the best exoplanet candidate with the potential for harboring life found to date.

The planet was detected using radial velocity measurements combining the data from the HIRES instrument of the Keck 1 telescope and the HARPS instrument of ESO's 3.6m telescope at La Silla Observatory. The planet is believed to have a mass of three to four times that of the Earth and an orbital period of just under 37 days.

Steven Vogt, the co-discoverer, unofficially named the planet "Zarmina", after his wife.
Reference Here>>

The Goldilocks zone refers to a story that parents read to their children that goes by the formal title "The Story Of The Three Bears". This fable, often referred to as "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" is a children's story first recorded in narrative form by English author and poet Robert Southey and first published in a volume of his writings in 1837. The same year, writer George Nicol published a version in rhyme based upon Southey's prose tale, with Southey approving the attempt to bring the story more exposure. Both versions tell of three bears and an old woman who trespasses upon their property.
(ht: wikipedia)

In the fable, Goldilocks is hungry and stumbles upon a home of Bears where three bowls of soup or porridge are on the table. Goldilocks helps herself to eating some of the porridge and discovers that one bowl of the food mixture is too hot, one is too cold, and one ... the one she presumably eats all up is ... Just Right!

This planet discovery is in a solar system zone that is just right given our knowledge of the origins of life as we know it here on Earth.

We wonder if the shape of this Gliese 581g orb is the same Oblate Spheroid shape of our own Earth. Welcome Zarmina ... welcome Earth 2.0.

Of Neanderthals & Homosapiens - The Nanderthal In Most All Of Us

2010-05-06T21:29:00.000-07:00

The Neanderthal project, which took four years and involved 57 scientists, is the latest and most astonishing example of the recovery of scientifically useful information from ancient DNA. Image Credit: Sydney Morning Herald

Of Neanderthals & Homosapiens - The Nanderthal In Most All Of Us

When someone makes a simple mistake, some people call out the person making the mistake by saying, "You Neanderthal!" Growing up this was a typical degrading accusation heard along the way but as it turns out ... this statement might have held more truth than we even knew.

It has been discovered through studies with DNA genomes that interbreading between Neanderthals and Homosapiens did indeed take place and as a result, 1 to 4 percent of the genes carried by non-African people are traceable to the much-caricatured, belittled, and large-browed cavemen.

So now when one makes a mistake and gets accused of being a Neanderthal, if the person has Caucasian DNA, one has to ask ... are they the one, two, three, or four percent type of Neanderthal?

This excerpted and edited from All Headline News -

Study: Neanderthals Interbred With Homosapiens
Windsor Genova - AHN News News Writer - May 6, 2010 5:49 p.m. EST

The findings was the result of the comparison of the genomes of modern human and the burly and big-brained Neanderthal conducted by geneticist Svante Pääbo at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. The findings were published Thursday in the journal Science.
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Neanderthal originated from Europe, Russia and the Middle East. They existed 400,000 to 30,000 years ago. Modern humans are said to have originated from Africa and the two species encountered each other in the Middle East and limited interbreeding occurred.

Pääbo constructed the Neanderthal genome using fossil DNA from three Neanderthal women who lived in Croatia between 38,000 and 45,000 years ago.
Reference Here>>

All this study really proves is that it's love ... that makes the Oblate Spheroid go around, you big lugg!

Dew Drops Are Fallin' On My Head ...

2010-04-01T09:03:00.000-07:00

Stunning: Droplets of water bead on the head of this blue dragonfly as it slumbers on a leaf. Image Credit: Miroslaw Swietek

Dew Drops Are Fallin' On My Head ...

When someone mentions bugs ... flies, moths, dragonflies and the like, one congers up mental images of prickly, dirty, and somewhat mono-colored nuisances that have to be sprayed or flicked away in order for one not to be bothered while around them and in their element. They are not welcome in the house, or tent, and they definitely never exude any beauty!

The stunning micro-photography of Miroslaw Swietek from around the Polish countryside on this Oblate Spheroid might just be changing minds when they are lingered over and studied on every detail. Just beautiful.

This excerpted and edited from The Daily Mail -

Would dew believe it: The stunning pictures of sleeping insects covered in water droplets
By Daily Mail Reporter - Last updated at 11:29 AM on 31st March 2010

Glistening in the early morning, these insects look like creatures from another planet as dew gathers on their sleeping bodies.

Captured in extreme close-up, one moth appears to be totally encrusted in diamonds as it rests on a twig.

Dragonflies, flies and beetles also take on an unearthly quality as the water droplets form on them.

These remarkable photographs were taken by physiotherapist Miroslaw Swietek at around 3am in the forest next to his home.

Using a torch, the 37-year-old amateur photographer hunts out the motionless bugs in the darkness before setting up his camera and flash just millimetres from them.

Close up: Amateur photographer Miroslaw Swietek captured this common fly slumbering on top of a plant as the water condenses on its body

Bejewelled: This month looks like it has been encrusted in diamonds as it rests on a twig

Mr Swietek said: 'I took up photography as a relaxing hobby two and a half years ago and I particularly like taking pictures of insects and lizards.

'I photograph them in their natural environment in the forest next to my village.

'They all are covered in dew because I go to the forest in the morning at around 3am.

'At 3am to 4am insects are sleepy and taking photos of them is easy, but it is very difficult to find them.

Close up: The insects appear to be completely drenched in water as they rest while the sun is down

Shower time: Mr Swietek gets up at 3am to capture the insects while they are less active in a forest near his home

'You must be very fast taking the photos because the dew quickly disappears.

'It is very satisfying getting a good shot of an insect which I have had to hunt out.

'I have books which help my identify insects but because they are all covered in dew I find it almost impossible to know which types they are.'

Although insects do not 'sleep' in the same sense as humans, they enter a state of torpor where they are virtually immobile and much less sensitive to external stimuli.

Mr Swietek lives with his wife and teenage son in Jaroszow, a village in Poland around 30 miles from the city of Wroclaw.

Clinging on: The amateur photographer searches for the insects using a torch and then sets up his camera and flash right next to them

Hobby: Another dragonfly enjoys an early morning wash. Mr Swietek only took up photography two and a half years ago

Reference Here>>

Blobfish ... what's not to love?

2010-02-23T04:15:00.000-08:00

"Whadda you lookin' at?" - The rare and oddly human-looking Blobfish (Psychrolutes Marcidus) [CTRL-CLICK image to see and hear our friend speak]. Image Credit: NOAA

Blobfish ... what's not to love?

With a face only a mother could love, the Blobfish was only recently discovered this last decade when fishing trawlers using deep sea drag nets brought up a few specimen along with their intended catch.

Blobfish are found at about 2,400 feet deep where the pressure is several dozens of times higher than at sea level, which would likely make gas bladders inefficient. To remain buoyant, the flesh of the Blobfish is primarily a gelatinous mass making the body density slightly less than that of salt water; this allows the fish to float above the sea floor without expending any energy on swimming. It just floats ... to eat.

While not terribly aggressive, this fish has caught the attention and imagination of a whole class of humans recently, primarily due to the one really good photo found on the internet that had been issued by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration as a handout photo / February 15, 2010 (above). A fish with a somewhat human-looking face ... the Blobfish.

It spawned this prose from the LA Times.

This excerpted and edited from the LA Times -

Fear the blobfish
With its humanlike face, the blobfish is a creature of nightmares, and who knows what terrors it could bring upon us
By John Kass - February 17, 2010

As you can see from the accompanying photograph, the cunning blobfish (Psychrolutes marcidus) is the most terrifying fish in the world.

And if you're not afraid of it yet, you should be, because there's always something lurking out there that can get you.

Its hideously deformed body is quite boneless, a gelatinous orb hovering in the deep, covered in slime and mucus. But there's something even worse.

Its face.
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A blobfish looks like some fat, drunken judge and may be highly intelligent. And therefore quite dangerous.

It frowns. It leers. Sometimes, it even drools.
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American journalism has a formula for stories designed to whip up panic about highly adaptive species. For "balance," you insert a quote or two from some learned biologist who tells readers not to worry.

Some marine biologist might reassure readers that the blobfish lives far away, in the deep waters off the coast of Tasmania — some 9,600 miles away — and therefore could never find its way into the Chicago River or the ship canal.

Yeah, right.
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It's not impossible (perhaps even likely) that schools of bloodthirsty blobfish may be blobbing their way up the Mississippi River, their big noses leaving wakes behind them, and roiling trails of foam. And then they'll be oozing from your kitchen tap.
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The blobfish is boneless. It's a blob.

So, theoretically, it might squeeze through all the protective filters and screens, and then, with a grunt, pop right out of your stylish Swedish designer faucet, its ugly face first.

Or perhaps out of your toilet bowl when you're at your most vulnerable, sleepy in the middle of the night.

Or what about your pulsating-massage shower head? Just imagine the beast squeezing from the shower head, hurtling at your face, or worse, into your open mouth, your muffled screams unheard by your loved ones.

So don't give me the pious ramblings of scientific bureaucrats telling us not to panic over the dreaded beast.
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Sadly, information regarding the terror of the blobfish is scarce, perhaps by design.
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"As the blobfish is comprised of a gelatinous substance, they actually have no muscles at all, and they just float in the same spot most of the time, waiting for their next meal."
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It's said the blobfish eats mostly mollusks, but it's only a matter of time until it develops a hunger for human snacks, first Cheez-Its and Slim Jims, then maybe veal chops, before lunging up the food chain.
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Yet with an imminent blobfish invasion, we'll have to come up with new recipes. Try broiled blobfish on a buttered baking sheet, sprinkled with Japanese-style breadcrumbs, the crunchiness contrasting pleasantly with all that goo underneath.

Or how about sauteed blobfish, with lemon and capers?
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So be afraid.

Be very much afraid.
Reference Here>>

Deep-sea snail shell structure yields hints for new protective body Armour

2010-01-19T07:12:00.000-08:00

Crysomallon squamiferum, commonly known as the scaly-foot gastropod, was discovered in 1999 in the Kairei “black smoker” field on the Central Indian Ridge, at a depth of 2420 metres. The shell is uniquely structured to crack when hit, but in a way that absorbs energy. Image Credit: Fisheries Meiwa

Deep-sea snail shell structure yields hints for new protective body Armour

A discovery deep in the Indian Ocean, along a volcanic rift known as a "black-smoker" is just now coming to light in its significance as a natural protective structure against pinching and piercing blows. The attention is being brought by a couple scientists doing research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on structures that could help in the development of the next generation of protective human body Armour.

What has the focus of this attention on a deep-sea snail (Crysomallon squamiferum, commonly known as the scaly-foot gastropod) is its unique shell which is made up of the snail's ability to incorporate iron sulfide particles into its shell, and in a skirt along the edges for protection against the blows it receives from predator deep-sea Crabs.

The Crysomallon squamiferum, commonly known as the scaly-foot gastropod is small. It is only about two to three centimeters in length. Image Credit: Department of Microbiology - NC State University

This excerpted and edited from the New Scientists -

Deep-sea snail shell could inspire next-gen armour
New Scientists - 20:00 18 January 2010 by Shanta Barley

Christine Ortiz at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and her colleagues studied the snail's three-layered shell to find out how it defends itself from crab attacks.

To assess the shell's strength and stiffness, they penetrated it with diamond-tipped probe – applying the same amount of force that an attacking crab's claws might use. They then used the data to model the shell's layers and launched a virtual crab attack on it.
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It turns out that the snail employs some unique tricks to protect itself. For example, the shell's outermost layer consists of strong particles of iron sulphide created in the hydrothermal vents, each around 20 nanometres across, embedded in a soft organic matrix secreted by the snail. This structure is designed to crack when hit, but in a way that absorbs energy.

Cracks spread only by fanning out around the iron sulphide particles. This "microcracking" not only absorbs energy, it also ensures that larger cracks do not form. What's more, the particles of iron sulphide may blunt and deform intruding claws, the study suggests.

A thick, spongy middle layer acts as padding to dissipate further the energy of the blow. This makes it less likely that the mollusc's brittle inner shell, which is made of calcium carbonate, will crack.

The middle layer may be an important adaptation to life at a deep-sea hydrothermal vent, suggests Cortiz: the acidic water near black smokers dissolves calcium carbonate and so can quickly enlarge fractures.

The three-layer design could be used to improve body armour "without the addition of excessive weight", says Ortiz.
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The idea of coating armour in iron-based nanoparticles that dissipate the energy of a blow by generating microcracks is "largely unexplored in synthetic systems" and particularly promising, says Cortiz.

Helmets, motorbikes and Arctic pipelines that collide with icebergs, leading to costly oil spills, could also benefit, says Cortiz, who is also exploring the armour systems deployed by the marine molluscs known as chitons, sea urchins, beetles and a fish known as the Senegal bichir.
Reference Here>>

So, in the not so distant future ... here on this Oblate Spheroid, one will be riding their Harley-Davidson at a speed something other than a snail's pace, not clad in "leathers" but sporting the colors of rust cast off from embedded iron-based nanoparticles.

Dinosaur find in New Mexico tells of greater migration, evolution

2009-12-20T06:29:00.000-08:00

Looking over some recently found bones. Randy Irmis, the curator of paleontology at the University of Utah Natural History Museum, has identified a new species, Tawa hallae. The find seems to shed light on early dinosaur migrations. Image Credit: FRANCISCO KJOLSETH I The Salt Lake Tribune

Dinosaur find in New Mexico tells of greater migration, evolution

A study of bones and skeletons recovered in the Colorado Plateau's Chinle formation, Northern New Mexico, that was published Friday, December 18, 2009, in Science, finds that South America may not have been the birthplace of Dinosaurs after all.

A new species of predatory dinosaur, named "Tawa hallae" to honor the region's rich Native American heritage, could provide an evolutionary link between primitive dinosaurs found in South America, where scientists believe dinosaurs first appeared, and more evolved meat-eaters found in North America here, on this Oblate Spheroid.

An artist's rendering of Tawa hallae, from bone fragments - full body , a newly identified primitive meat-eating dinosaur discovered in New Mexico. Image Credit: Jorge Gonzalez, Utah Museum of Natural History

The study contends the 213-million-year-old specimen provides evidence that early dinosaurs roamed far across the Earth's megacontinent Pangea, before North and South America separated.

Tawa halle was a 6-foot, long-snouted theropod ... a bipedal animal with long claws and serrated teeth that sustained itself on fish, amphibians and reptiles whose fossils were recovered in the same bone bed.

An artist's rendering of Tawa hallae's head from skull fragments, a newly identified primitive meat-eating dinosaur discovered in New Mexico. Image Credit: Jorge Gonzalez, Utah Museum of Natural History

This excerpted and edited from The Salt Lake Tribune -

New Mexico find sheds light on early dinosaur dispersal
Tawa hallae » Triassic-era meat-eater has primitive South American kin
By Brian Maffly, The Salt Lake Tribune - Updated: 12/11/2009 07:26:24 AM MST

A team of young paleontologists has identified a new species of predatory dinosaur that sheds new light on early dinosaur evolution and movements before the continents separated 200 million years ago.
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Randall Irmis, the Utah Museum of Natural History's curator of paleontology, helped excavate the bones in northern New Mexico while a graduate student at Berkeleyand published the study with lead author Sterling Nesbitt, of the University of Texas at Austin.
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Irmis and Nesbitt's team includes co-authors Nathan Smith of the Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago; Alan Turner of Stony Brook University in New York; and Mark Norell of the American Museum of Natural History, New York City. Also named is Alex Downs, the curator of the paleontology museum at Ghost Ranch, a 21,000-acre spread near Abiquiu made famous by painter Georgia O'Keeffe. But Ghost Ranch is also famous as the world's richest trove of fossil remains of coelophysis, another small theropod.

Paleontologists Randall Irmis, left, and Sterling Nesbitt work to extract dinosaur bones at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico. Image Credit: Alan Turner

Downs said a visiting group in 2004 came across a hip and thigh that did not belong to a coelophysis. He notified Irmis and his colleagues, all graduate students then under 30, known to have an interest in early dinosaur evolution. The group converged on New Mexico the following year and struck pay dirt in the Chinle's colorful clay deposit at Ghost Ranch.

This formation is common across southern Utah, presenting as talus slopes beneath Windgate sandstone cliffs. At the time the formation was deposited, the Colorado Plateau was near the equator and its climate was warm and wet.

The scientists recovered five to seven sub-adult specimens that together built a complete skeleton of a previously unknown creature. Scientists believe these individuals were swept up in a flood and quickly interred together with other Triassic animals and plants.
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"The preservation of tawa is exquisite. Tawa was in soft rock and very easy to prepare," Nesbitt said. The "nearly pristine" detail on the articulated bones was so fine, the team could make out muscle scars, construct a complete skull and see how ligament attached to bone and how thighs engaged with hips.

As a result, Tawa is now among the most completely known Triassic theropods and a real gift to science, Irmis said. With such a clear view of this animal's anatomy, the team could perform reliable morphological comparisons with other theropods from around the world. This is where things got interesting.

The specimens were found in the same deposits as two other early predators, coelophysis and chindesaurus. But these three are not each others' closest relatives. Tawa's next-of-kin appears to be a South American proto-theropod called herrerasaurus.
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The team was most intrigued with what this suggests about the trans-Pangea movements of dinosaurs.

"The discovery of multiple dinosaur species in one place that emigrated from elsewhere got us wondering whether other Late Triassic reptiles show similar patterns," said Irmis. "It turns out a variety of other reptile groups made multiple trips from the northern and southern continents [then parts of Pangea] and back again during the Late Triassic, including other dinosaurs."
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Why were theropods dispersing into North America, but not their plant-eating cousins? Perhaps differences in plant life made this terrain uninhabitable for early vegetarian dinosaurs, Irmis speculates.

"Because so many other reptile groups were crisscrossing Pangea just fine, it suggests there were no big physical barriers like mountain ranges," he said. "Instead, the absence in North America of plant eating dinosaurs during the Triassic suggests that the barriers related to climate."
Reference Here>>

Anthropogenic Global Warming Scientists, The New “Flat Earth” Society?

2009-11-28T11:17:00.000-08:00

Top UN scientists have been forced to admit that natural weather occurrences are having a far greater effect on climate change than CO2 emissions as a continued cooling trend means there has been no global warming since 1998. But despite overwhelming signs of global cooling - China's coldest winter for 100 years and record snow levels across Northeast America - allied with temperature records showing a decline - global warming advocates still cling to the notion that the world is cooling because of global warming! Caption Credit: PrisonPlanet.com Image Credit: blahblahblog

Anthropogenic Global Warming Scientists, the new “Flat Earth” society?

Last week, a hacker revealed that a group of powerful, government-backed European scientists are controlling the results of developing global warming theory, and preventing clear debate or the development of opposing scientific evidence to AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming). It appears that certain more objective scientists run the risk --- if they present solid evidence contrary to the popular global warming theories --- realize they run the risk of being made objects of ridicule and marginalized in efforts to gain monies from Governments for research projects designed to discover facts ... that lead to the truth.

So on one side we have the “flat earther” powerful old-world scientists … and on the other side we have the “world is round” scientific-method based researchers who are continuing to discover facts … and thereby, the truth.

Powerful forces within the scientific community have been purposely shaping information in order to bolster a concept that, at best, is speculative and seems designed to lead to one human activity that these people think is perfectly suitable for their point-of-view ... a one-world Government, based upon a socialist model of CONTROL. This CONTROL is initially focusing on calling us to “Save the Earth From Destruction”, since a fear-based program is the only way to get free people to forsake their rights and their freedoms in the concept of climate stabilization and saving humanity from imminent destruction.

South Park's depiction of Al Gore giving a lecture that will give him greater riches through the selling of "Carbon Credits" based upon a flat Earth, AGW paradigm. Image Credit: Malagent

This excerpted and edited National Review Online –

Krauthammer's Take
On the announcement that President Obama will attend the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen
NRO Staff, Friday, November 27, 2009

Comments From Wednesday's Fox News All-Star Panel:

The global warming science is not junk science, but it's speculative. It's based on incomplete data. It's based on computer models that rest on assumptions — that, in turn, rest on an understanding of how the globe’s climate controls itself — that [are] extremely incomplete.

So its projections are speculative. But it pretends that, of course, that it is the hardest of all sciences and anybody who is skeptical is a denier — using a term used normally about the Holocaust, which is of course an event that actually happened as opposed to projections in global warming, which are speculative science.

So what you see in the [leaked global-warming] emails are people that are on somewhat shaky grounds. It is not as if there is no science at all in this, but there is contradictory evidence, such as the flattening of the rise in temperatures, which they cannot explain.

And their response is either suppression or manipulation or, even worse, the delegitimizing of — the personal attacks on — skeptics in an attempt to write them out of the journals, to get them fired, and all kinds of nasty stuff. … It puts a lot of their research in question.

I think what's interesting about Obama is he is going to be at the U.N. [conference in Copenhagen] to announce the [new] policy about climate change on the basis of — nothing. He is going to be proposing what the House has passed — that he knows is not going to pass in the Senate.

And we are actually a constitutional democracy where the president can't announce a policy unilaterally. It actually has to pass the two houses of the Congress, and our allies abroad know that, and they’re going to look at this announcement he is going to make and think it … extremely strange.
Reference Here>>

The United States has established no formal policy, yet our President, if allowed to do so, will gladly sign away our sovereignty in order to achieve the socialist political objectives of control found in the Copenhagen accords.

Further, scientists and Government forces who choose to use or believe in their conclusions that the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) is a fact, are no better than previous generations of leaders in their insistence that this Oblate Spheroid (the actual shape of the Earth) is flat. These people should be known from this moment forward as ... "Flat-Earthers"!

From The Free Dictionary:

1) flat-earth·er (flatûrther)
n.

One who stubbornly adheres to outmoded or discredited ideas: "If you don't accept the ideas derived from Adam Smith ... then you are [considered] a flat-earther" (James Fallows).

[From the long-discredited belief that the earth is flat.]

2) flat-earther

Informal - a person who does not accept or is out of touch with the realities of modern life

African Rift Creation Observed: New Aqua Landscape Predicted

2009-11-05T05:46:00.000-08:00

A view taken from Da'Ure's (Dabbahu's) new pumice dome looking S down the fissure vent on 16 October 2005, with people for scale. Part of the outer flank of Dabbahu is visible on the right side of the photo; Dabbahu's central area lies farther to the right off the margin of the photo. Image Credit: Anthony Philpotts.

African Rift Creation Observed: New Aqua Landscape Predicted

In 2005, a volcano eruption in the northeast corner of the African continent created a land feature that was once assumed to take millions and millions of years to form.

Geologists generally assumed that large cracks in the Earth's crust form when two techtonic plates move over each other, and at a pace of less than an inch per year, creates a depression that would eventually fill with water to form a sea or ocean. This process was thought to take at least tens of millions of years.

A map showing Dabbahu volcano in the Afar triangle, along with epicenters from the earthquake swarm of 14 September to 4 October 2005 The solid triangles indicate Holocene volcanoes, although the one for Dabbahu is swamped by the pattern of epicenters. The Alayta shield volcano (labeled "A") sits 32.7 km NNE of Dabbahu's summit and erupted several times in the early 1900's. Epicenters were compiled from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) National Earthquake Information Center website. Image Credit: U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) National Earthquake Information Center

This depression, crack, or rift in the Earth's crust created by a volcano named Dabbahu, located in the northern part of Ethiopia, formed when it began to erupt and push magma up through the landscape, effectively unzipping a large portion of this Oblate Spheroid in just days. This rift has now grown to be measured at about 35 miles long and as wide as 20 feet and is expected to become an ocean or sea in about one million years.

Feleke Worku, a surveyor from the Ethiopian Mapping Agency, examines a ground rupture created during the September 2005 rifting event. Image Credit: Tim Wright, University of Leeds

This excerpted and edited from Life Science -

Giant Crack in Africa Will Become New Ocean
Life Science, Tuesday, November 03, 2009

A new study involving an international team of scientists and reported in the journal Geophysical Research Letters finds the processes creating the rift are nearly identical to what goes on at the bottom of oceans, further indication a new sea is in the region's future.

The same rift activity is slowly parting the Red Sea, too.

A red thumbtack locates Dabbahu, a volcano at the northern end of a rift geophysicists say will become an ocean. Image Credit: Google Maps

Using newly gathered seismic data from 2005, researchers reconstructed the event to show the rift tore open along its entire 35-mile length in just days. Dabbahu, a volcano at the northern end of the rift, erupted first, then magma pushed up through the middle of the rift area and began "unzipping" the rift in both directions, the researchers explained in a statement today.

"We know that seafloor ridges are created by a similar intrusion of magma into a rift, but we never knew that a huge length of the ridge could break open at once like this," said Cindy Ebinger, professor of earth and environmental sciences at the University of Rochester and co-author of the study.

The result shows that highly active volcanic boundaries along the edges of tectonic ocean plates may suddenly break apart in large sections, instead of in bits, as the leading theory held. And such sudden large-scale events on land pose a much more serious hazard to populations living near the rift than would several smaller events, Ebinger said.
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Looking NNW from the central part of the Dabbahu rift segment towards the Dabbahu volcano (~30 km away). Image Credit: Cindy Ebinger, University of Rochester, USA

The African and Arabian plates meet in the remote Afar desert of Northern Ethiopia and have been spreading apart in a rifting process — at a speed of less than 1 inch per year — for the past 30 million years. This rifting formed the 186-mile Afar depression and the Red Sea. The thinking is that the Red Sea will eventually pour into the new sea in a million years or so. The new body of water would connect to the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, an arm of the Arabian Sea between Yemen on the Arabian Peninsula and Somalia in eastern Africa.

Central section of 60 km-long rift zone that opened south of Dabbahu volcano. Image Credit: Julie Rowland, University of Auckland

Atalay Ayele, professor at the Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia, led the investigation, gathering seismic data with help from neighboring Eritrea and Ghebrebrhan Ogubazghi, professor at the Eritrea Institute of Technology, and from Yemen with the help of Jamal Sholan of the National Yemen Seismological Observatory Center.
Reference Here>>

Largest New Nephila Spider Discovery In 130 Years

2009-10-22T13:27:00.001-07:00

A giant golden orb-web exceeding 1 meter in diameter, spun by a Nephila inaurata spider. Image Credit: Matjaz Kuntner

Largest New Nephila Spider Discovery In 130 Years

Scientists, Jonathan Coddington of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and Matjaz Kuntner of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, have found the world’s largest species of golden orb-weaver spider in the tropics of Africa and Madagascar. The discovery marks the first identification of a new Nephila spider since 1879.

Codding stated in a press release, “We fear the species might be endangered, as its only definite habitat is a sand forest in Tembe Elephant Park in KwaZulu-Natal. Our data suggest that the species is not abundant, its range is restricted, and all known localities lie within two endangered biodiversity hotspots: Maputaland and Madagascar.”

Tiny male Nephila spiders are dwarfed by their female counterparts. Image Credit: Matjaz Kuntner and Jonathan Coddington/PLoS ONE

This excerpted and edited from Wired Science -

Even-More-Gigantic Giant Orb Spider Discovered
By Hadley Leggett, Wired Science - October 20, 2009, 8:00 pm

Females of the new species, Nephila komaci, measure a whopping 4 to 5 inches in diameter, while the male spiders stay petite at less than a quarter of their mate’s size. So far, only a handful of these enormous arachnids have been found in the world.
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The first potential specimen of the new species was uncovered by Coddington and his colleague Matjaz Kuntner in 2000. They found a huge female orb-weaver among a museum collection of spiders in Pretoria, South Africa, and she didn’t match the description of any known spider. Although they hoped the unusual-looking giant represented a new species, several dedicated expeditions to South Africa failed to find any live spiders of a similar description.

Then, in 2003, a second specimen from Madagascar was found at a museum in Austria, suggesting that the first spider hadn’t been a fluke. But despite a comprehensive search through more than 2,500 samples from 37 museums, no additional specimens turned up.
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Finally, three live spiders have been found to prove the scientists wrong: A South African researcher found two giant females and one male in Tembe Elephant Park, proving that the new species was not extinct, just incredibly rare.

“Only three have been found in the past decade,” Kuntner wrote in an e-mail to Wired.com. “None by our team, despite focused searches. Only an additional two exist in old museum collections. Compared to thousands of exemplars of other Nephila species in museums, that is disproportionately rare.”
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Like all Nephila spiders, females of the new species spin huge webs of golden silk, often more than 3 feet in diameter. In the report of the discovery of this rare spider, published Tuesday in PLoS One, the researchers also addressed the evolution of the dramatic size difference between male and female orb-weavers.
Reference Here>>

Oblate Spheroid's Solar System Expands to 32 Exoplanets

2009-10-20T05:21:00.000-07:00

Artist’s impression of Gliese 667C, a six Earth-mass exoplanet that circulates around its low-mass host star at a distance only 1/20th of the Earth-Sun distance. The host star is a companion to two other low-mass stars, which are seen here in the distance. Image Credit: ESO/L. Calçada

Oblate Spheroid's Solar System Expands to 32 Exoplanets

Astronomers have expanded the list of planets outside the solar system with their discovery of 32 new exoplanets using the European Southern Observatory's telescope in La Silla, Chile.

The expansion of The Earth's family was found through technology known as the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS). HARPS is a spectrometer that can find planets by detecting a twitch in a star caused by the gravity of an orbiting planet.

This finding revealed Monday by the scientists who operate HARPS adds to the more than 400 as the number of planets seen outside of our previously defined Solar System.

This excerpted and edited from Wired Science -

Exoplanets Galore! 32 Alien Planets Discovered, Including Super-Earths
By Hadley Leggett, Wired Science - October 19, 2009, 2:12 pm

Thirty-two new alien orbs have just been added to the growing list of exoplanets, including several that qualify as “super-Earths,” meaning they have a mass only a few times that of our planet and could potentially harbor Earth-like environments.

In the past five years, a special exoplanet-hunting device attached to a 3.6-meter telescope in La Silla, Chile, has spotted more than 75 alien planets, including 24 of the 28 known exoplanets with a mass less than 20 times that of Earth.
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“These findings consolidate the results of simulations of planet formation predicting a large population of super-Earths,” astrophysicist Stephane Udry of Geneva University wrote in an email to Wired.com. “The formation models furthermore predict an even larger population of Earth-mass planets, providing solid scientific justifications for the development of ambitious programs (in space and on the ground) to look for those Earth-type planets.”

Udry’s announcement of the HARPS team’s findings Monday at an exoplanet conference in Portugal marks the end of the first phase of HARPS research, and scientists say the project has been even more successful than they originally expected.
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The HARPS scientists focused their exoplanet-hunting efforts on certain kinds of stars, including stars similar to our sun and those with low mass (called Mdwarfs) or low metal content.

“By targeting M dwarfs and harnessing the precision of HARPS, we have been able to search for exoplanets in the mass and temperature regime of super-Earths,” co-author Xavier Bonfils of the Joseph Fourier University in France said in a press release, “some even close to or inside the habitable zone around the star.”
Reference Here>>

The HARPS scientists aim to find an Earth-like planet capable of supporting life outside of our Oblate Spheroid.

So, in signing off - it's "Exo, Exo" ... not "XO, XO"!

All Frogs Smile - Some Have Fangs

2009-09-27T06:38:00.000-07:00

Khorat ... Limnonectes megastomias - A frog who's smile hides it best weapon ... fangs! Image Credit: siamensis.org

All Frogs Smile - Some Have Fangs

Ever notice that all frogs just seem to sit there, perched their springy hind legs ... and smile? Well it turns out that some hide more than their thoughts with a perpetual smile, some hide FANGS!

Just weeks after discovering a frog with fangs in Papua New Guinea, the World Wildlife Federation (WWF) is reporting another 163 new species in southeast Asia, including another frog with fangs. This new frog, discovered in Thailand, apparently feeds on birds.

The fanged frog is the highlight of the WWF report. It's been classified as Limnonectes megastomias, and it's Modus Operandi is to wait in Thailand's many streams and attack when a bird comes near. The scientists also discovered that the males of the species use these fangs in combat, sometimes scarring or even dismembering their opponents here on this wild and wonderful Oblate Spheroid.

Thailand interior landscape that would be typical of where the Khorat "fanged" frog might make its home. Image Credit: siamensis.org

This excerpted and edited from FOX News -

Fanged Frog Found in Bangkok
FOX News / AP - Friday, September 25, 2009

A gecko with leopard-like spots on its body and a fanged frog that eats birds are among 163 new species discovered last year in the Mekong River region of Southeast Asia, an environmental group said Friday.

WWF International said that scientists in 2008 discovered 100 plants, 28 fish, 18 reptiles, 14 amphibians, two mammals and one bird species in the region. That works out to be about three species a week and is in addition to the 1,000 new species catalogued there from 1997 to 2007, the group said.

"After millennia in hiding these species are now finally in the spotlight, and there are clearly more waiting to be discovered," said Stuart Chapman, director of the WWF Greater Mekong Program.
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A Khorat big-mouthed frog, known by its scientific name Limnonectes megastomias, at an unknown location in Thailand. Image Credit: David S. McLeod, WWF Greater Mekong

Among the stars in the new list is a fanged frog in eastern Thailand. Given the scientific name Limnonectes megastomias, the frog lies in wait along streams for prey including birds and insects.
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Simon Mahood, a conservation adviser for BirdLife International in Indochina, welcomed WWF's attention to the new species and said more could be discovered if additional money is put into conservation and countries make it easier to do field work.

"We are seeing more reports of new discoveries and populations because this region is relatively poorly known, particularly when it comes to cryptic and less fashionable groups like fish and amphibians," said Mahood, whose group this year announced finding the first nest of white-eared night heron in Vietnam and the discovery of a baldheaded song bird in Laos called the barefaced Bulbul Pycnonotus hualon.
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Experts said a range of factors contributed to the upsurge in new species, including better access to regions that have seen decades of war and political unrest and more spending by governments on research to protect and identify plants and animals.
Reference Here>>

Nessie Sighting - Web Search Technology Win

2009-08-27T21:49:00.000-07:00

Jason Cooke spotted "Nessie" while browsing the Google Earth's satellite photos. Image Credit: Google Earth - Latitude 57°12'52.13"N, Longitude 4°34'14.16"W - Image Credit: Google Earth

Nessie Sighting - Web Search Technology Win

The elusive Loch Ness Monster may finally have been sighted ... but not with human eyes. Google Earth and satellite technology combined with an astute observer of an image may have found what scientists, locals, and tourists have been claiming to exist here on this Oblate Spheroid over the centuries.

The earliest on record is from 565 when St. Columbia saved the life of a local who was being attacked by a monster in the river Ness (though some spoilsports insist it was actually a wild boar).

The modern Nessie era began in 1933 when a local paper - the Inverness Courier - reported a sighting by a local a couple, the Spicers. Whilst driving along the loch side between Dores and Inverfarigaig they spotted a large creature crossing the road in front of them. The creature disappeared into the bushes in the direction of the Loch.

This report was taken up by the national press in London and the Nessie ball began to roll.

Loch Ness is huge - the largest fresh water body in Britain. It is over twenty two miles in length and over a mile and a half at its widest. Total surface area is approximately 21 square miles. Loch Ness is also deep and goes down almost 800 feet. It has been estimated that the loch is large enough to hold the entire population of the world ten times over. Caption Credit: wyrdology.com - Image Credit: Ciclee

The next year, 1934, the most famous photograph of Nessie was allegedly taken by surgeon R. K. Wilson. This, the "surgeon's photo" has been the focus of intense debate since it was first taken. Over the years several people have "confessed" to being involved in faking the surgeon's photo.

Sightings continue to be reported and every few years an expedition obtains funding to "prove" the truth once and for all. In 2003 a BBC expedition surveyed the entire Loch using sonar. They concluded that no monster exists.

It should be remembered that it is logically impossible to prove that something does not exist - only that it has not been found.

Nessie sightings continue to be reported every year, some backed by photographic evidence. Many of the reports come from tourists who have been enjoying the justly famous Scottish hospitality.

That is, until now!

Plesiosaurus - Plesiosaurus inhabited the oceans 200 million years ago. "flying" underwater with four wing like limbs. Its sharp teeth and snapping jaws formed a deadly trap for small aquatic animals. The long necked Plesiosaurus gave its name to the plesiosaurs, a group of flesh eating marine reptiles that are extinct. Along with the dolphin like ichthyosaurs and other marine reptiles, plesiosaurs were the "sea dragons" that inhabited the seas from 200 to 65 million years ago, while the dinosaurs were dominant on land. Image Credit: Carl Buell

This excerpted and edited from FOX News -

Proof That the Loch Ness Monster Exists?
SUN Online - Wednesday, August 26, 2009

This amazing image on Google Earth could be the elusive proof that the Loch Ness Monster exists.

Sun reader Jason Cooke spotted "Nessie" while browsing the Web site's satellite photos.

The shape seen on the surface of the 22-mile Scottish loch is 65ft long and appears to have an oval body, a tail and four legs or flippers.

Some experts believe Nessie may be a Plesiosaur, an extinct marine reptile with a shape like the Google image.
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To see the object, enter co-ordinates Latitude 57°12'52.13"N, Longitude 4°34'14.16"W in Google Earth.
Reference Here>>

British Steam Car Challenge "Vaporizes" World Land Speed Record - 139.843mph

2009-08-25T13:06:00.000-07:00

One important milestone was passed successfully when the British Steam Car was inspected by representatives from the Southern Timing Association and the FIA (the international governing body of motor sport) and declared eligible to attempt the world steam car record. The record runs commenced this morning at 6am (USA time) - ctrl-click to launch in car video of a test run on Rogers Dry Lake Bed - Image & Video Credit: Don Wales – Test Driver, BSCC

British Steam Car Challenge "Vaporizes" World Land Speed Record - 139.843mph

The British Steam Car Challenge is a mission formed to make something solid out of controlling, well ... vapor. The mission is to capture a world land speed record that has stood the test of time for well over one-hundred years (106 to be more definitive) ... a world land speed record set with boiling water, a world land speed record set with using directed steam to power a vehicle.

The project actually started when Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, Great Britian was impressed by a project created by students at Southampton University. To date, the British Steam Car Challenge Team has now successfully carried out 5 full test runs in excess of 100mph ahead of today's bid to break the century-old world land speed record for steam-powered vehicles.

Primary Test Driver, Don Wales - Replacing Don Wales for the actual record attempt will be the project's brainchild and main financier, Charles Burnett III. "It's his project, so he gets to drive it on the day," Mr Wales added. "I just hope to break the world record during the test run - he can then break it after me. If I can help a British team get a world record, then I'm happy." Image Credit: Murry Sanders

Last week, after numerous setbacks, the team was rewarded with their preparations on Saturday having unofficially posted a mark greater than Fred Marriott record set in the Stanley Steam Racer - called the "Stanley Rocket". The BSCC team's own calibrated equipment measured the two way average at 137.14mph, and a 48min 52 second turn-around.

Then, of course, there was the additional unofficial success of Monday's mark of 148mph. This was significant because the mark eclipses the fastest speed ever recorded by any human driven, steam powered vehicle, official or unofficial ... a mark set by Bob Barber in 1985 on the salt flats at Bonneville, Utah (unofficial) stood at 145.607mph.

British Steam Car Challenge Logo - Image Credit: BSCC

The BSCC team have acknowledged the achievements of the "Barber-Nichols Team" and their vehicle "Steamin' Demon". On 18th August 1985 The Barber-Nichols Team carried out three successful passes and achieved an American National Record at 145.607mph. There was no attempt, however, to establish an FIA record by the Barber-Nichols Team and it is the goal of the British Steam Car Challenge to recognize this speed, or better, as the target FIA record mark to set.

The FIA is the sanctioning body and now recognizes a world land speed record as the average speed of two passes made across the same measured distance in opposing directions within 60 minutes of each other. The time of the two runs is then averaged to obtain the official recorded speed.

The principle driver of the BSCC is the nephew of Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, Charles Burnett III. Burnett was born in England in 1956 and educated in South Africa and America, and as a legitimate tri-national (his mother was Canadian and his father American) he inherited a love for travel and all things mechanical from his father, who raced hydroplanes and restored Hudson automobiles.

A long-time powerboat enthusiast, Charles set up Vulture Ventures, a UK-based offshore racing team, which soon became known as the world’s most successful team in the sport. During this time, Charles took a variety of world records using catamarans and monohulls powered by diesel, petrol and LPG. He was included in the Guinness Book of World Records in 1999 for an offshore water speed record of 137mph.

The steam car is fitted with 12 boilers, which work like a kettle on a stove. LPG in the vehicle’s tanks ignite in order to produce about three megawatts of heat, to boil 140 litres of distilled water which produces the requisite steam. The water’s then pumped into the boilers at 50 litres a minute to superheat steam to 400C, which is then transmitted to the supercar’s turbines at twice the speed of sound to gather enough momentum and thrust to push the car to mesmerizing speeds of over 200mph. Image Credit: BSCC

UPDATES:

Wednesday 19th August
The team made the first official attempt at the world record today, but decided to abort the second run after a slight problem with the throttle was detected. It is understood that the throttle was letting water through the turbine rather than bypassing it. The team will investigate the problem this afternoon with the intention of attempting the record again tomorrow morning.

Thursday 20th August
We had a successful first run today, peak speed 130mph, but unfortunatly on the return pass the rear right hand side tyre suffered a slow punture at 75mph - 4.2 miles in to the course. Back to the lakebed again tomorrow. I have to say these guys on the team are working their butts off to make this happen. Its not until you are here that you can appreciate the conditions. Six days a week, 14 hours a day in over 100 degrees.

Friday 21st August
We arrived on the lakebed full of anticipation and optimism. The air was still, it was a beautiful sunrise and we were all on schedule.

The first run peaked at 133.491 but picked up speed when exiting the measured mile. The measured mile was 128.628. The turnaround crew was on target at approximately 40 minutes in preparation for its return run.

Whilst the car was being refilled there was pressure problem with the water rigs. The second run was aborted and we all returned to base.

The temperature soared to over 104f, and over 40% humidity. Having tracked down the route of the problem to a minor electrical fault, the team continued to work and source spares to rectify it.
Clouds began to roll in, a storm kicked up with over over 45-50 mph gusts, we had had to rescue the marquee as things began to fly away.

It became impractical and dangerous to work, the team battened down the hatches and called it a day. The weather forecast has predicted bad storms and lightening. It is really howling out there!

The team will continue to work on the car tomorrow (Saturday) and carry out a static test for more runs on Monday, when I will bring you more news.

Saturday 22nd August
The weather was stormy, and noticeably cooler. The team worked in earnest to rectify the electrical fault, but the part arrived two hours late. They carried out a static test, which was the best they have ever had running at 380degrees, demonstrating that the car now has more power. Typically on a 130mph run it is operating between 300-320, so this was good news.

However the static test detected a fault with the water bladder, which had been damaged by the flow of pressure being pushed through the flowmisers. There was little more that the team could do, time was ticking on, so it was decided that they would carry out the bladder repair (which typically take 2-3hours) on Monday. They would utilise this time to carry out maintenance, such as flushing through the flowmisers and mechanically setting them, and clearing the car of any contaminated water.

The World Land Speed Record holding British Steam Car Challenge team, Rogers Dry Lake, Edwards Air Force Base, Mojave, California, United states of America [ctrl-click to launch BBC Video of record breaking run!]. Image Credit: BSCC (2009)

Edward’s Air Force Base, California: Tuesday August 25th
Today at 8.19am (California time) Charles Burnett III successfully broke the land speed record for a steam-powered car – which has stood for more than 100 years – achieving an average speed of 139.843mph on two runs over a measured mile.

Driver Charles Burnett III piloted the car for both runs reaching a peak speed of 136.103mph on the first run and 151.085 mph on the second. The new international record, which is subject to official confirmation by the FIA, breaks the previous official FIA record of 127mph set in 1906 by American, Fred Marriott, driving a Stanley steamer at Daytona Beach.

As he was congratulated by his jubilant crew, principal driver, Charles Burnett III said: "It was absolutely fantastic I enjoyed every moment of it. We reached nearly 140mph on the first run before I applied the parachute. All systems worked perfectly, it was a really good run. The second run went even better and we clocked a speed in excess of 150 mph. The car really did handle beautifully. The team has worked extremely hard over the last 10 years and overcome numerous problems. It is a privilege to be involved with such a talented crew, what we have achieved today is a true testament to British engineering, good teamwork and perseverance”

Project Manager Matt Candy said: "The first run took place at 7.27am when the air temperature was a cool 63 degrees Fahrenheit, the team turned around the car in 52minutes (with just 8 minutes spare) in preparation for its return run. The British Steam Car takes 2.5 miles to accelerate and after the measured mile, a further 2.5 miles to decelerate – so each run was over 6.5 miles. The FIA requires that the return run takes place within 60 minutes. The times of the two runs are then averaged to obtain the official recorded speed. Compared to the testing we did in Britain, the British Steam Car ran 12 times the distance and twice the maximum speed – all within one hour. It’s been a huge challenge for all.

Pam Swanston wife of the late project manager Frank Swanston was overcome with emotion after seeing Charles power the supercar across the dry lake bed, she said: "If only Frank was here today, it was his vision that made it a reality. He would be incredibly proud of the team's achievements and always believed we would succeed. Today we celebrate this record for Frank"

Three cheers to the perseverance and planning of the British Steam Car Challenge team in it's effort to successfully set a new recognized world speed mark that had stood for one-hundred and six years, here on this spinning Oblate Spheroid.

The SUN, Not AGW, Is The Thing

2009-06-08T07:18:00.000-07:00

The Greeks named the sun Helios, but the Romans used the name Sol, which is still in use today. Due to the important role the sun plays in our lives, it has been studied, perhaps, more than any other object in the universe, outside our own planet Earth. Image Credit: SOHO/Extreme Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (EIT) consortium

The SUN, Not AGW, Is The Thing

Riding here on the Oblate Spheroid, it is easy to get lost in and amongst all the humanity and forget the connections to the natural cycles that have formed the orb we populate.

Take Climate Change (aka - Global Warming and Climate Stabilization), for example - many are putting forth a concept the the major influence on why the climate of this planet varies is related to human activity.

The hypothesis focuses upon the effects for accumulations of "Green House Gasses" as in CO2 ... the used air we exhale. In none of these calculations, however, do these people (many who look to control human behavior and profit off of business activity centered upon this control) take into account that plants take in CO2, and through osmosis give off Oxygen, and further, none of these hypothesis account for the largest functioning body in our specific solar system ... The SUN!

Past studies have shown that sunspot numbers correspond to warming or cooling trends. The twentieth century has featured heightened activity, indicating a warming trend. Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Solar activity has shown a major spike in the twentieth century, corresponding to global warming. This cyclic variation was acknowledged by a recent NASA study, which reviewed a great deal of past climate data. Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

This excerpted and edited from Daily Tech -

NASA Study Acknowledges Solar Cycle, Not Man, Responsible for Past Warming Report indicates solar cycle has been impacting Earth since the Industrial Revolution
Michael Andrews - June 4, 2009 9:37 AM

Some researchers believe that the solar cycle influences global climate changes. They attribute recent warming trends to cyclic variation. Skeptics [read this as control profiteers], though, argue that there's little hard evidence of a solar hand in recent climate changes.

Now, a new research report from a surprising source may help to lay this skepticism to rest. A study from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland looking at climate data over the past century has concluded that solar variation has made a significant impact on the Earth's climate. The report concludes that evidence for climate changes based on solar radiation can be traced back as far as the Industrial Revolution.

Past research has shown that the sun goes through eleven year cycles. At the cycle's peak, solar activity occurring near sunspots is particularly intense, basking the Earth in solar heat. According to Robert Cahalan, a climatologist at the Goddard Space Flight Center, "Right now, we are in between major ice ages, in a period that has been called the Holocene."

Thomas Woods, solar scientist at the University of Colorado in Boulder concludes, "The fluctuations in the solar cycle impacts Earth's global temperature by about 0.1 degree Celsius, slightly hotter during solar maximum and cooler during solar minimum. The sun is currently at its minimum, and the next solar maximum is expected in 2012." According to the study, during periods of solar quiet, 1,361 watts per square meter of solar energy reaches Earth's outermost atmosphere. Periods of more intense activity brought 1.4 watts per square meter (0.1 percent) more energy.
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The inconvertible fact, here is that even NASA's own study acknowledges that solar variation has caused climate change in the past. And even the study's members, mostly ardent supports of AGW [anthropogenic global warming] theory, acknowledge that the sun may play a significant role in future climate changes.
Reference Here>>

Oldest Profession? - The Urge To Carve!

2009-05-15T05:59:00.000-07:00

The 2.4-inch-tall (6-centimeter) figurine was carved from a mammoth's tusk. Carbon dating indicates that it is at least 35,000 years old. "It's the oldest known piece of figurative sculpture in the world," said Jill Cook, a curator of Paleolithic and Mesolithic material at the British Museum in London. Image Credit: University of Tubingen / H. Jensen

Oldest Profession? - The Urge To Carve!

Many say the world's oldest profession centers on sex for money. This may be true, but a recent discovery unearthed around some caves in Germany has come up with an ancient substitute for the real thing.

A carving sculpture of a female form carbon dated to be about 40,000 years old is believed to be the world's oldest human sculpture of any form ever found around here on the Oblate Spheroid.

Mammoth Sculpture: The piece was found in sediment originally excavated from the Vogelherd Cave in 1931. A total of five mammoth figurines have been found there. Image Credit: Universität Tübingen

A couple of years ago, Archeologists dug up sculptures of Mammoths and other animal forms, but the Mammoth ivory carving of an anatomically correct female, found in six fragments in Germany's Hohle Fels cave which depicts a woman with a swollen belly, wide-set thighs and large, protruding breasts, is the most profound in that it may be the oldest found human form sculpture.

Dig Site At The Vogelherd Cave: The pieces came from soil layers estimated to be between 28,000 and 36,000 years old. That makes the figurines some of the oldest known pieces of art and coincide with the time when the first modern humans settled Europe. Image Credit: Universität Tübingen

This excerpted and edited from Spiegel -

Oldest Known Human Sculpture Found in Germany
Spiegel Online - 05/14/2009

The birthplace of human art. If indeed there is such a place, researchers are increasingly inclined to believe that it is to be found in the hills -- and caves -- of southern Germany.

Already, archaeologists have unearthed a number of miniature mammoth ivory carvings -- and on Wednesday, Nicholas Conard, a professor of prehistory at the University of Tübingen, presented his most recent sensational discovery: a tiny figure of a shockingly anatomically correct woman carved out of mammoth ivory that is at least 35,000 years old and perhaps as old as 40,000.

The female figure has a swollen stomach and a large, protruding chest. Some have suggested that it should be seen as a symbol of fertility, while others see a more sexual nature. According to an article on the statue in the journal Nature, it could be seen "by 21st-century standards ... as bordering on the pornographic." Image Credit: University of Tubingen / H. Jensen

The carving, called the "Venus of the Fels Cave," is thought to be the oldest human depiction ever found and one of the most ancient pieces of representational art in the world. "I was speechless," Conard told reporters, describing the first time he laid eyes on the figurine.

The find was made in September of last year in one of the numerous caves in the southern German region of Swabia, not far from the Danube River valley.
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Archaeologists have found some 25 small ivory carvings in the region, including depictions of mammals, horses, bison and birds. Researchers have also found the world's oldest music instruments -- a kind of flute made out of the bones of birds.

The most recent discovery is notable for its explicit depiction of the female form -- one which "by 21st century standards could be seen as bordering on the pornographic," according to an article in the journal Nature.
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Beyond that, though, Conrad and his team are hesitant to guess what the figure, which is just six centimeters from head to toe, might have symbolized.
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The figure will be shown to the public for the first time at an Ice Age exhibit in Stuttgart which is scheduled to run from Sept. 18 to Jan. 10, 2010.
Reference Here>>

TRIALS - Two Wheels, Pedals, And A Chain

2009-04-28T15:16:00.000-07:00

Inspired Bicycles was registered as a Limited company early in 2007 by former TartyBikes founder, Dave Cleaver. Set up initially as a business to contract out time and creative ideas to Mountain Cycle (legendary US mountain bike company concentrating in freeride and DH), this venture has recently given birth to an all new trials brand. Bearing the same name as the parent company, Inspired aims to bring some fresh design and product creativity to the trials market, both in the UK and ultimately World wide! (double-click photo to launch video) Caption & Image Credit: Inspired Bicycles

TRIALS - Two Wheels, Pedals, And A Chain

Living here on this God given environment known as an Oblate Spheroid, one finds many ways to transport oneself through the space that lies from here ... to there.

Case In Point: Trials Biking (as performed by Danny MacAskill of the Trials bicycle team, Inspired Bicycles)

Filmed over the period of a few months in and around Edinburgh by Dave Sowerby, this video of Inspired Bicycles team rider Danny MacAskill features probably the best collection of street/street trials riding ever seen.

There's some huge riding, but also some of the most technically difficult and imaginative lines you will ever see.

Without a doubt, this video pushes the envelope of what is perceived as possible on a trials bike.
(ht: inspiredbicycles)

This excerpted and edited from Danny MacAskill -

The response I've had to the video has been amazing!

I never expected to get anywhere near the reaction it has. I hoped that other riders would like the video, and maybe a few riders outside trials, but when people started contacting me about interviews for TV and things it was crazy.

The last few days have been a blur!

I can't say thanks enough to all the people who have commented on the video or contacted me, it's definitely motivated me to push my riding and videos even more.
Reference Here>>

A Post-Op Tweet-end In The Life Of Lance Armstrong

2009-03-29T15:48:00.000-07:00

Tweet: About to head in. See y'all in a few. Livestrong. Image Credit: Lance Armstrong via TwitPic account

A Post-Op Tweet-end In The Life Of Lance Armstrong
A Tweet-end is a weekend of journal entries (called "Tweets") on Twitter at 140 characters (or less) at a time.

As Lance Armstrong lives his life, he keeps those who are interested in checking in, a view of a slice in the life of an American sports legend and healthcare advocate. Through "Tweets" on Twitter and the posting of photos at TwitPic, his 447,774 followers at Twitter view some of what is going on with Lance as he prepares for his participation in this summer's Tour de France ... this portal becomes a virtual community of observers.

Tweet: A short video message from me to you all.

Exclusive Post-Op Interview with Lance --Lance talks to LIVESTRONG.COM members about his injury and surgery.

Lance Armstrong spends his first weekend in recovery from the spill he suffered in Spain in a warm-up race leading up to the Tour de France. By any measure, Lance is taking it all in stride, one day at a time.

Tweet: Deer in the headlights.. Image Credit: Lance Armstrong via TwitPic account

Tweet: Close up. Image Credit: Lance Armstrong via TwitPic account

Tweet: Got on the spin bike for half an hour today. Image Credit: Lance Armstrong via TwitPic account

LanceArmstrong Twitter Feed:

Heading to my son's Pinewood Derby. Big day for the Lukestrong car!

The "LukeStrong" car qualified 2nd. On to the finals tonight!!

The "LukeStrong" Pinewood Derby car entered by Luke Armstrong, crosses the electronic timing array on the track, first - to win. Image Credit: Kreutz Photography via Lance Armstrong's TwitPic account

LukeStrong car finishing strong!

LukeStrong did great. Finished 3rd (for all classes). Had the fastest run of the day too. Got beat by 2 others on avg times. So proud of him

Comment from fan at TwitPic:

Luke Armstrong in yellow crossing the line 1st! Like father like son. Great stuff....Go Luke!
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Communication and community have become virtually strange, yet enjoyable here in the technology world riding on this Oblate Spheroid!

Deepwater Barreleye Fish Sports A Clear Canopy

2009-02-25T06:54:00.000-08:00

The barreleye (Macropinna microstoma) has extremely light-sensitive eyes that can rotate within a transparent, fluid-filled shield on its head. In this image, although the barreleye is facing downward, its eyes are still looking straight up. This barreleye is about 6 inches (14 cm) long. The fish's tubular eyes, well inside the head, are capped by bright green lenses. The eyes point upward (as shown here) when the fish is looking for food overhead. They point forward when the fish is feeding. The two spots above the fish's mouth are not eyes: those are olfactory organs called nares, which are analogous to human nostrils. Image Credit: © 2004 MBARI

Deepwater Barreleye Fish Sports A Clear Canopy

Imagine, if you will, the ability to have a line of sight directly behind you as you walk down the street.

If a human were built like a Barreleye Fish, a strata of clear liquid and transparent skin at about ear level would replace hair, bone and flesh-tone skin and the eyes would be able to swivel 180 degrees. Bingo ... rear-view vision.

The Barreleye has a clear membrane skin cover for its forehead region and the upper front part of the fish's head is filled with a clear fluid. The eyes are set back inside and are positioned to be able to look forward, but more importantly, look up and see the light given off by deep water creatures as they ply the deep ocean trenches of our Oblate Spheroid.

Bruce Robison and Kim Reisenbichler of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute use videos from the institute's remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) to study barreleyes off Central California. At depths of 2,000 to 2,600 feet (600 to 800 meters), the ROV cameras typically showed these fish hanging motionless in the water, their eyes glowing a vivid green in the ROV's bright lights. The video also revealed a previously undescribed feature of these fish — its eyes are surrounded by a transparent, fluid-filled shield that covers the top of the fish's head. [double-click image to launch video of the Barreleye fish in action] Image Credit: © 2004 MBARI

This excerpted and edited from LiveScience -

Strange Fish Has See-Through Head
By LiveScience Staff - posted: 23 February 2009 03:01 pm ET

A bizarre deep-water fish called the barreleye has a transparent head and tubular eyes. Since the fish's discovery in 1939, biologists have known the eyes were very good at collecting light. But their shape seemed to leave the fish with tunnel vision.

Now scientists say the eyes rotate, allowing the barreleye to see directly forward or look upward through its transparent head.

The barreleye (Macropinna microstoma) is adapted for life in a pitch-black environment of the deep sea, where sunlight does not reach. They use their ultra-sensitive tubular eyes to search for the faint silhouettes of prey overhead.

Scientists had thought the eyes were fixed in an upward gaze, however. This would make it impossible for the fish to see what was directly in front of them, and very difficult for them to capture prey with their small, pointed mouths.
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Most existing descriptions and illustrations of this fish do not show its fluid-filled shield, probably because this fragile structure was destroyed when the fish were brought up from the deep in nets.
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Barreleyes, just a few inches long, are thought to eat small fishes and jellyfish. The green pigments in their eyes may filter out sunlight coming directly from the sea surface, helping the barreleye spot the bioluminescent glow of jellies or other animals directly overhead. When it spots prey (such as a drifting jelly), a barreleye rotates its eyes forward and swims upward, in feeding mode.
Reference Here>>

Breakthroughs In Bird Flu Vaccine

2009-02-09T05:00:00.000-08:00

Researchers in Japan said yesterday they had developed a flu vaccine that works against multiple viruses and could prevent a deadly pandemic of bird flu mutations. Image Credit: Hokkaido University, Saitama Medical University, and NOF Corp.

Breakthroughs In Bird Flu Vaccine

The process of producing a vaccine to counter the spread of influenza is a tricky business.

Global trends must be analyzed, three separate strains of the current, most prolific flu virus must be chosen, and enough vaccine prepared months in advance of that year’s flu season in order to have ample supplies in stock to be distributed nationwide.

Once this effort has been put forth, there are no guarantees that the strains used to produce the vaccine will be the actual strains that spread illness during any given year.

Basically, this process has been a crap shoot … until now. A group of researchers in Japan has figured out a way to come up with a vaccine that will address all strains of influenza virus regardless of which one becomes the actual virus for that year.

A universal vaccine will guard against an Oblate Spheroid (world) wide pandemic.

About 250 people have died of avian flu since 2003. While only a small number of those cases were traced to human-to-human transmission, public health officials fear it's only a matter of time before the virus mutates into a more easily transmitted form and sparks a global outbreak. Image Credit: xenoMED

This excerpted and edited from medHeadlines -

Universal Flu Vaccine Breakthrough
medHeadlines, February 6, 2009

Researchers in Japan have announced a breakthrough that may put them one step closer to developing a universal flu vaccine.

Today’s flu vaccines target proteins on the outer surface of the virus, where mutations in the protein’s shape occur often and quickly. These mutations are one reason the vaccine and the virus actually wreaking havoc are not always a match.

The Japanese researchers looked inside the virus instead of outside it to find proteins that aren’t likely to mutate the way those on the outside do. The research team targeted three strains of the influenza virus for their study - the H5N1 bird flu, Hong Kong A, and Soviet A strains.

A commercially available universal flu vaccine is still years away as the research continues.
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Thus far, the universal vaccine has been tested on animals only.
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The Japanese Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry directed the research on the universal flu vaccine, with teams from its National Institute of Infectious Diseases, Hokkaido University, Saitama Medical University, and the chemical company, NOF Corporation, participating.
Reference Here>>

A veterinarian vaccinates a duckling in Shangsi county of the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, February. 4th. Central and local authorities have stepped up preventive measures against a bird flu outbreak. Image Credit: China Daily

About 250 people have died of avian flu since 2003, WHO figures showed.

Indonesia is the country worst-hit by avian influenza, with 115 deaths officially recorded since 2003. Five people have fallen victim in China this year.

Human victims consist mostly of people in close contact with sick birds.

There is no evidence so far that the deadly strain of bird flu has mutated into a form that could set off a pandemic.

Secrets Of Human Fingerprint Patterns And Ridges

2009-02-06T14:13:00.000-08:00

A fingerprint from contact with a flat surface. The contact occurs only along the summits of the epidermal ridges. This contact pattern results in a particular filtering of tactile information during active exploration of a surface. Image Credit: Science/AAAS)

Secrets Of Human Fingerprint Patterns And Ridges

Two articles about fingerprints and their patterns hold unique secrets and understanding about humans on this Oblate Spheroid.

One study released last week addresses why they are what they are, why and how ridges and receptors combine to give a person a more detailed understanding of feel and touch.

The other discusses how the print pattern of a group of fingers (laid out in patterns defined as whorls and waves) might say about a person and his/her destiny uncovered in an ancient Asian belief.

Do identical twins have identical fingerprints? - Identical twins have fingerprints that can be readily distinguished on close examination. However, the prints do have striking similarities. In fact, before the arrival of modern genetic testing, similarity of fingerprints was often used to determine whether twins were identical or fraternal. Image Credit: Nick McGlynn

This excerpted and edited from CBC News -

Fingerprints key to ability to process fine textures: study
Fingerprints don't exist simply to improve gripping ability or identify cat burglars - they may also act as a type of touch filter that improves perception, according to a new study.
CBC News - 30/01/2009 5:12:12 PM

The study, published in [last] Friday's edition of Nature, suggests that fingerprints may help perceive very fine textures more efficiently. Specifically, fingerprints can tune out vibrations outside a certain frequency so only very specialized touch receptors can pick them up.

These receptors, called Pacinian fibres, are involved in detecting fine features. But they also have the lowest spatial resolution of any of the receptors involved in touch. This means that, taken alone, they are the least able to distinguish between two closely spaced pressure points, a characteristic that appears to be a contradiction for a receptor involved with fine touch, the study says.

The researchers from the University of Paris think this is where fingerprints come into play. They said there is no way to experimentally measure stress under the skin on a finger, so they created a synthetic mechanical sensor instead. They then placed two types of rubber caps on top of the sensor - one smooth, and the other ridged like a fingerprint.

The sensor was then rubbed across a glass surface covered with patterned textures. They found that the sensor covered with the smooth cap picked up a large variety of vibrations. But in the case of the ridged sensor, it filtered out many of the vibrations picked up by the smooth cap and amplified them.

The researchers concluded that a typical set of fingerprints would produce vibrational frequencies in the range of 200 to 300 Hz. Pacinian fibres respond best to frequencies around 250 Hz, and would therefore be able to pick up these filtered vibrations.

"Fingerprints thus allow for a conditioning of the texture-induced mechanical signal which facilitates its processing by specific [touch receptors]," the study says.
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Amplification of the vibrations depends strongly on the orientation of ridges with respect to the movement of the finger. In the study, the ridges had to be oriented perpendicular to the direction of movement.

But the authors note that fingerprints are arranged in swirls, so that each region of the fingertip can achieve optimal orientation.

"Further studies are needed in order to elucidate how this may reflect on the exploratory procedures [such as fingertip trajectory and contacting zone] used by humans during texture evaluation tasks," the study says.
Reference Here>>

So, the study opines that the difference in a pattern and how it presents itself may effect the actual filtering sensation of touch.

On the actual way a group of patterns are laid out, the Chinese have devised a way to read personality & destiny traits by studying the waves and the circles that appear at the tips of everyone’s fingers.

Patterns for men are always analyzed from their left hands while women are analyzed from their right hands.

To make a reading, look at ones thumb print first, then the index finger, middle finger, ring finger and then the little finger, always in that order. This is the sequence that offers clues to ones destiny & fortunes of a life lived.

Chinese societies were so convinced that in earlier times the fingers of prospective daughters-in- law were carefully scrutinized by prominent families to ensure they did not unwittingly welcome women who had fingers that showed alternate whorls and waves on their fingers, as it was commonly believed that such women would bring trouble into the family, being particularly difficult to control and usually very aggressive. Image Credit: pcworx

This excerpted and edited from pcworx -

Finger Prints
By pcworx

Check yours…. It’s interesting

It is already an accepted fact that every single person in the world has a different set of fingerprints.
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For ease of reference we shall refer to whorls (aka, circles) as “O” and to waves as “W”.

Fingers: OOOOO (all whorls)
Means: This person is very confident, has a strong character and a hot temper. He/she is an independent person. The luck of this person changes dramatically in life from one period to the next. The undoing of this person will be his/her hot temper so it is vital that this person must learn to be patient and calm.

Shape: WWWWW (all waves)
Means: This person is a straightforward honest person who goes with the flow. The fingers indicate someone very sensitive, who is especially suited to design and creative work. People with these fingerprint patterns tend to be shy and uncomfortable in social situations, so are not suited to work in PR, politics or any kind of work requiring them to meet people.

Shape: OWWWO
Means: If you can choose a prestigious working career, you will be very successful. However, you should avoid the tendency to get big-headed and you must never take your career for granted. You should also watch your back, as you tend to attract jealousy into your life and could get betrayed. Always look for long-term benefits.

Shape: OWWOW
Means: You will need to work harder during the early days of your career. When you reach middle and older age, you will get recognition and wealth luck. So your life gets better the older you get.

Shape: OWOWW
Means: It is vital that you resist the tendency to be narrow-minded in your attitudes and in the way you think and work. Try to be humble and learn as much as possible. This is how you will get influential help that brings you to the peak of your business and career life.

Shape: WOOOO
Means: You are a very clear-minded person. As long as you work hard, you are guaranteed to be
successful. Even though you tend to be in a hurry, there will be those who help you along. You are also a person with a kind heart.

Shape: OOOOW
Means: Because you are kind and have an in-built polite attitude, you will easily get help from older persons and friends. You will enjoy great success in your working life and your only weakness is you don’t trust people too easily. This can make you too conservative.

Shape: OOOWW
Means: You have a tendency to be bad tempered, and rather quick to judge. This is a shallow attitude and could easily get you onto the wrong path. If you can correct this tendency of yours, you will have great success. The potential is in you, so try to be calm in your approach.

Shape: OWWWW
Means: You have good character but can only become really successful in older age. Be prepared to have to work really hard during your younger and middle age periods, but you will become a successful person in older years.

Shape: WOWWW
Means: You are very good in the social skills. No matter what industry you are in, you like to take risk and you will always face uncertainty. Be careful as the later years of your life could bring yet more challenges. Take less risk as you get older.

Shape: WWOWW
Means: You are a person who has high vision and heavy responsibility. Be careful. Your visions could get you into serious difficulty. Better to stay more grounded, then your life will have greater success.

Shape: WWWOW
Means: You are very intelligent and will enjoy a lot of scholastic honors. You will have a smooth life and benefit from wealth luck. If you can work hard, you will become a great and successful person.

Shape: WWWWO
Means: You will inherit a business or property from your parents or from an older person. Even though you are a capable person and can be successful in your own business, your tendency towards impatience could get you into a lot of difficulty.

Shape: OOWWW
Means: You have a tendency to be proud and snobbish, although deep inside you are a kind-hearted person. Your social skills however need improving. Your relatives tend to take advantage of you.

Shape: WOWWO
Means: You are a deep thinking person. At a young age, you are already thinking of your future. You will enjoy a smooth and peaceful life; you will be very happy in your old age.

Shape: WOWOO
Means: You are a very sociable person and you enjoy the carefree kind of life going out, partying and clubbing. When you reach middle and older age, you will rely on people to support you. Be warned, if you do not prepare yourself, you might have a hard time during your older years.

Shape: WOWOW
Means: You are not an easy person to control or to convince, as you are something of a rebel. If you can stay focused on what you want from life, you will be successful. The problem is that you can be fickle and vague in what you really want from life.

Shape: WWOWO
Means: Your whole life is full of ups and downs, successes and failures. However, if you can

move steadily step-by-step, you can enjoy a peaceful life as you grow into maturity.

Shape: WWWOO
Means: You are very kindhearted person and there will be good people in your life, as you will attract these kinds of people towards you. Work hard and you will easily reap your just rewards. You will definitely become successful.

Shape: OWWOO
Means: You will get recognition and become famous. Even though your life appears unstable during your earlier years of working life and you need to work hard in your thirties, when you reach maturity, your life gets better and better.

Shape: WWOOW
Means: You are a very capable person, but you tend to lack good judgment. You also tend to start something and then lose interest. Stay focused if you want to succeed.

Shape: OWOOW
Means: You are a noble person with a good character. You tend to be very helpful towards colleagues and friends so you are a popular person. Because you can think in-depth and have sensitivity towards others, you will enjoy success in the creative fields.

Shape: OWOWO
Means: You are blessed with a fast and formidable intellect. You work very quickly and with great effectiveness. However, your character is very aggressive and people tend to be intimidated by you. If you can correct this trait, you can rise to great heights.

Shape: WWOOO
Means: You are a very straightforward person. But your thinking tends to be rather naïve and shallow. Even though your suggestions are good, if you don’t think through what you say, you should not be surprised if people tend to ignore your views. Your speech tends to lack power.

Shape: OOWOW
Means: You are a high-minded person, able to see and grab opportunities. You are best suited to work in the financial and investment fields. Your luck gets better as you grow older.

Shape: OOWWO
Means: You are a very honest and reputable person. You have little urge to get rich or pursue material wealth. But watch it, if you don’t know how to take care of yourself, you can easily get conned and taken advantage of by people.

Shape: OOOWO
Means: Your social skills are good, so you attract guidance and help from influential people. Many people help you in your rise to prominence, and your luck turns fabulous in later years.

Shape: OOWOO
Means: You are a very brave and hardworking person. A lot of people trust you when you are young. However, unless you work at preserving your reputation, you could make enemies on your rise up and find that life becomes harder as you get older.

Shape: OWOOO
Means: You are a kindhearted character and easily get along with others. You are not good at doing business, but you are good as a teacher or even as a spiritual master. You can enjoy success in the academic world.

Shape: WOOWW
Means: You are reputable and have a peaceful character. So you are definitely someone who can become successful and recognized. However, because of your tendency towards pride, you could end up offending the wrong people.

Shape: WOOWO
Means: You are a simple but logical person. If you can focus on the fundamentals of life and adopt a step-by-step approach in your climb up the success ladder and not be too impatient, you will benefit from wealth luck and be honored by people.

Shape: WOOOW
Means: You are a straight talking person who is forthright in your approach. You are strong in character, playful but you also easily offend people. But you are also lucky because when you reach middle age, you will rise to a prominent position and your luck really changes for the better.
Reference Here>

Clean Air Adds Half Of One Year – Almost

2009-01-23T06:52:00.000-08:00

Mexico City -- View from Castillo de Chapultepec, back down the Paseo de la Reforma, the monument in the distance, the Angel del la independencia, is exactly one mile away. Now that is some serious pollution and this is in the morning, it is worse in the afternoon! Caption and Image Credit: rdstoker/flickr

Clean Air Adds Half Of One Year – Almost

The cleaning up of particulate air pollution brought on through emissions from automobiles, factories, aerosols, smoking and etc. has yielded citizens of the United States an extension of 21 weeks in the average life lived from the one lived 20 years ago.

The largest contributing factor to the reduction of air pollution track back to changes in smoking habits. More people are smoking less and those who do smoke are not smoking in confined spaces … they are taking their habit out of doors.

Overall, since the beginning of the effort to reduce fine particles given off by automobiles, diesel engines, steel mills and coal-fired power plants, life expectancy has risen as much as 15 percent of the overall 2.72 years of extra longevity seen in the United States since the early 1980s.

Particulate Air Pollution in Selected Cities, 1990-1995 -- Despite these efforts, however, air pollution remains an extremely serious environmental health problem in China. In fact, a host of recent studies have found China to have some of the worst air pollution in the world. A recent World Bank report, for example, includes four Chinese cities in its list of the 10 urban centers with the lowest air quality. The map also gives a sense of the severity of China's air pollution problem, even when compared with other major polluting cities here on the Oblate Spheroid. Caption (edited) and Image Credit: EarthTrends

This excerpted and edited from Reuters -

Cleaner air equals 21 more weeks of life
By Gene Emery - Thu Jan 22, 2009 3:36pm GMT

BOSTON (Reuters) - Dramatic improvements in U.S. air quality over the last two decades have added 21 weeks to the life of the average American, researchers reported on Wednesday.
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Improved socioeconomic conditions, judged partly by the proportion of high school graduates living in an area, rank next. But cleaner air was a big factor.

"It's stunning that the air pollution effect seems to be as robust as it is after controlling for these other things," said Arden Pope, an epidemiologist at Brigham Young University in Utah who led the study, in a telephone interview.

Haze in Seoul, South Korea. 2007 -- It became obvious very quickly that the air quality in Seoul was very poor. Seoulites were frequently coughing and it's no wonder, with the worst air pollution levels in the OECD, Seoul's air quality is worse than other major urban centres such as Rome and Mexico City. Both of which are notorious for high levels of air pollution. Caption and Image Credit: lamkevin/flickr

Using life expectancy, economic, demographic and pollution data from 51 metropolitan areas, Pope and his colleagues found when fine-particle air pollution dropped by 10 micrograms per cubic meter, life expectancy rose by 31 weeks.

Areas such as Akron, Ohio, and Philadelphia showed that kind of drop in air pollution.

The bigger the decline, the longer people began living.

In some areas where fine-particle counts dropped by 13 to 14 micrograms -- such as Buffalo, New York and Pittsburgh -- people typically started living about 43 weeks longer.

The findings show there has been a real dividend from the efforts since the 1970s to improve air quality, said Pope.

In a commentary, Daniel Krewski of the University of Ottawa said the study "provides direct confirmation of the population health benefits of mitigating air pollution and greatly strengthens the foundation of the argument for air-quality management."

Based on earlier research, the World Health Organization has estimated that 1.4 percent of all deaths around the world are caused by air pollution particles.
Reference Here>>

This should be held up as bad news for nations such as China, Korea, India and Mexico due to the lack of particulate controls and personal smoking habits found there.

Methane On Mars – Tracks Of Life?

2009-01-18T09:53:00.000-08:00

Methane atmospheric abundance spectrometry overlay on Martian surface. Image Credit: NASA

Methane On Mars – Tracks Of Life?

NASA has issued a press release describing the detection of methane gas on Mars and how this may be evidence of life on the red planet.

NASA cautions, "Right now, we do not have enough information to tell whether biology or geology -- or both -- is producing the methane on Mars," said Michael Mumma of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.. "But it does tell us the planet is still alive, at least in a geologic sense. It is as if Mars is challenging us, saying, 'hey, find out what this means.' "

If microscopic Martian life is producing the methane, it likely resides far below the surface where it is warm enough for liquid water to exist. Liquid water is necessary for all known forms of life, as are energy sources and a supply of carbon.

The process of how the methane gas was detected is in itself a good story.

Conceptual animation demonstrating the process of spectroscopy and how it was applied to the discovery of methane in Mars’ atmosphere (click photo). Image Credit: Chris Smith/NASA

This excerpted and edited from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration –

Discovery of Methane Reveals Mars Is Not a Dead Planet
By: Dwayne Brown - NASA, Nancy Neal-Jones, and Bill Steigerwald of the Goddard Space Flight Center - Jan. 15, 2009

WASHINGTON -- A team of NASA and university scientists has achieved the first definitive detection of methane in the atmosphere of Mars. This discovery indicates the planet is either biologically or geologically active.

The team found methane in the Martian atmosphere by carefully observing the planet throughout several Mars years with NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility and the W.M. Keck telescope, both at Mauna Kea, Hawaii. The team used spectrometers on the telescopes to spread the light into its component colors, as a prism separates white light into a rainbow. The team detected three spectral features called absorption lines that together are a definitive signature of methane.

"Methane is quickly destroyed in the Martian atmosphere in a variety of ways, so our discovery of substantial plumes of methane in the northern hemisphere of Mars in 2003 indicates some ongoing process is releasing the gas," said Michael Mumma of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "At northern mid-summer, methane is released at a rate comparable to that of the massive hydrocarbon seep at Coal Oil Point in Santa Barbara, Calif." Mumma is lead author of a paper describing this research that will appear in Science Express on Thursday.

Methane, four atoms of hydrogen bound to a carbon atom, is the main component of natural gas on Earth. Astrobiologists are interested in these data because organisms release much of Earth's methane as they digest nutrients. However, other purely geological processes, like oxidation of iron, also release methane.
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Animation depicting two processes (geochemical and biological) that may have produced the methane plumes now seen in Mars’ atmosphere (click photo). Image Credit: Susan Twardy/NASA

"We observed and mapped multiple plumes of methane on Mars, one of which released about 19,000 metric tons of methane," said co-author Geronimo Villanueva of the Catholic University of America in Washington. "The plumes were emitted during the warmer seasons, spring and summer, perhaps because ice blocking cracks and fissures vaporized, allowing methane to seep into the Martian air."
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One method to test whether life produced this methane is by measuring isotope ratios.

Isotopes of an element have slightly different chemical properties, and life prefers to use the lighter isotopes.

A chemical called deuterium is a heavier version of hydrogen. Methane and water released on Mars should show distinctive ratios for isotopes of hydrogen and carbon if life was responsible for methane production.

It will take future missions, like NASA's Mars Science Laboratory, to discover the origin of the Martian methane.

Additional photo and animation assets here.
Reference Here>>

MRI Breakthrough - Volume Resolution 100 Million X's Finer

2009-01-14T07:50:00.000-08:00

NanoMRI, close-up view graphic - Image Credit: IBM

MRI Breakthrough - Volume Resolution 100 Million Times Finer

Nearly 60 years after IBM played a major role in developing the heart lung machine, scientists and engineers from IBM Research continue to break new ground in modernizing healthcare.

IBM Research scientists, in collaboration with the Center for Probing the Nanoscale at Stanford University, have demonstrated magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) with volume resolution 100 million times finer than conventional MRI.

This result signals a significant step forward in tools for molecular biology and nanotechnology by offering the ability to study complex 3D structures at the nanoscale.

NanoMRI of Virus Particles 1 - Image Credit: IBM

NanoMRI of virus particles 2 - Image Credit: IBM

By extending MRI to this resolution, the scientists have created a microscope that, with further development, may ultimately pave the way for new advances in personalized healthcare and targeted medicine.

In the 1960s, IBM invented the first continuous blood separator, used to treat critically ill leukemia patients. IBM has also helped develop the field of relaxometry, which plays a role in medical magnetic resonance imagery (MRI), and invented the method for using excimer lasers that eventually became photorefractive (LASIK) eye surgery.

And this was just the beginning; to this day, IBM continues to make significant contributions to healthcare through technology innovations.

Video Explanation Of IBM's NanoMRI Technology Breakthrough:

Ten Strangest Things About Our Universe - 2008

2008-12-30T06:07:00.000-08:00

Artist's rendition of a hypervelocity star leaving a galaxy. Image Credit: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

Ten Strangest Things About Our Universe - 2008

At the end of any year, one is confronted with many bottom up lists describing the important events, people, discoveries, and etc. over the course of the past year just lived.

This exercise always allows one to pause and reflect on what has been learned and to ponder what might be useful for the New Year ahead.

WE at Oblate Spheroid, marvel at how different life and the place the Earth has in the universe becomes the more we learn about the space we occupy.

The more we look among the stars and galaxies, the weirder things seem to get.

Even space itself is puzzling, for example; Recent studies suggest that the fabric of the universe stretches more than 150 billion light-years across -- in spite of the fact that the cosmos is 13.7 billion years old.

This excerpted and edited from The Discovery Channel –

Hypervelocity stars were first theorized to exist in 1988. The theory was that binary star systems at the galaxy's center would occasionally wander too close to the massive black hole looming there, which would disrupt their orbital dance. While one of the pair was captured by the black hole, the other would be sent rocketing off at an incredible speed. Caption: MSNBC - Image Credit: ESO

TOP 10 STRANGEST THINGS IN THE UNIVERSE
By Dave Mosher for The Discovery Channel - Article originally posted October 31, 2008.

10. Hypervelocity Stars

If you've ever gazed at the night sky, you've probably wished upon a shooting star (which are really meteors).

But shooting stars do exist, and they're as rare as one in 100 million.

In 2005, astronomers discovered the first "hypervelocity" star careening out of a galaxy at nearly 530 miles per second (10 times faster than ordinary star movement).

We have ideas about what flings these rare stars into deep space, but aren't certain; anything from off-kilter supernova explosions to supermassive black holes might be responsible.

9. Black Holes

Conception of a black hole pulling gas off of a nearby star. Image Credit: ESA/NASA

Speaking of black holes, what could be stranger?

Beyond a black hole's gravitational border -- or event horizon -- neither matter nor light can escape. Astrophysicists think dying stars about three to 20 times the mass of the sun can form these strange objects. At the center of galaxies, black holes about 10,000 to 18 billion times heavier than the sun are thought to exist, enlarged by gobbling up gas, dust, stars and small black holes.

What about mid-sized types? Perhaps surprisingly, evidence is both scarce and questionable for their existence.

8. Magnetars

Artist's rendition of a magnetar with magnetic fields shown. Image Credit: NASA

The sun spins about once every 25 days, gradually deforming its magnetic field.

Well, imagine a dying star heavier than the sun collapsing into a wad of matter just a dozen miles in diameter.

Like a spinning ballerina pulling his or her arms inward, this change in size spins the neutron star -- and its magnetic field -- out of control.

Calculations show these objects possess temporary magnetic fields about one million billion times stronger than the Earth's. That's powerful enough to destroy your credit card from hundreds of thousands of miles away, and deform atoms into ultra-thin cylinders.

7. Neutrinos

Construction of the NuMI neutrino source underway. Image Credit: BNL

Pull out a dime from your pocket and hold it up for a second... guess what? About 150 billion tiny, nearly massless particles called neutrinos just passed through it as though it didn't even exist.

Scientists have found that they originate in stars (living or exploding), nuclear material and from the Big Bang. The elementary particles come in three "flavors" and, stranger still, seem to disappear on a whim.

Because neutrinos occasionally do interact with "normal" matter such as water and mineral oil, scientists hope they can use them as a revolutionary telescope to see beyond parts of the universe obscured by dust and gas.

6. Dark Matter

False-color depiction of dark matter around a star cluster. Image Credit: J.-P. Kneib/ESA/NASA

If you put all of the energy and matter of the cosmos into a pie and divvy it up, the result is shocking.

All of the galaxies, stars, planets, comets, asteroids, dust, gas and particles account for just 4 percent of the known universe. Most of what we call "matter" -- about 23 percent of the universe -- is invisible to human eyes and instruments.

For now.

Scientists can see dark matter's gravitational tug on stars and galaxies, but are searching feverishly for ways to detect it first-hand. They think particles similar to neutrinos yet far more massive could be the mysterious, unseen stuff.

5. Dark Energy

Computer simulation of dark matter filaments. Image Credit: Science Magazine

What really has everyone on the planet confused -- including scientists -- is dark energy.
To continue with the pie analogy, dark energy is a Garfield-sized portion at 73 percent of the known universe. It seems to pervade all of space and push galaxies farther and farther away from one another at increasingly faster speeds.

Some cosmologists think this expansion will leave the Milky Way galaxy as an "island universe" in a few trillion years with no other galaxies visible.

Others think the rate of expansion will become so great that it will result in a "Big Rip." In this scenario, the force of dark energy overcomes gravity to disassemble stars and planets, the forces keeping particles sticking together, the molecules in those particles, and eventually the atoms and subatomic particles. Thankfully, humankind probably won't be around to witness to cataclysm.

4. Planets

Illustration of terrestrial, extrasolar planets. Image Credit: R. Hurt/NASA/JPL-Caltech

It might sound strange because we live on one, but planets are some of the more mysterious members of the universe.

So far, no theory can fully explain how disks of gas and dust around stars form planets -- particularly rocky ones.

Not making matters easier is the fact that most of a planet is concealed beneath its surface. Advanced gadgetry can offer clues of what lies beneath, but we have heavily explored only a few planets in the solar system.

Only in 1999 was the first planet outside of our celestial neighborhood detected, and in November 2008 the first bona fide exoplanet images taken.

3. Gravity

Artist depiction of gravity waves around merging black holes. Image Credit: NASA

The force that helps stars ignite, planets stay together and objects orbit is one of the most pervasive yet weakest in the cosmos

Scientists have fine-tuned just about every equation and model to describe and predict gravity, yet its source within matter remains a complete and utter mystery.

Some think infinitesimal particles called gravitons exude the force in all matter, but whether or not they could ever be detected is questionable.

Still, a massive hunt is on for major shake-ups in the universe called gravitational waves. If detected (perhaps from a merger of black holes), Albert Einstein's concept that the universe has a "fabric" of spacetime would be on solid ground.

2. Life

E. coli bacteria. Image Credit: NIH

Matter and energy abound in the universe, but only in a few places is the roll of the cosmic dice perfect enough to result in life.

The basic ingredients and conditions necessary for this strange phenomenon are better understood than ever before, thanks to abundant access to life here on Earth.

But the exact recipe -- or recipes -- to go from the basic elements of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur to an organism is a prevailing mystery.

Scientists seek out new areas in the solar system where life could have thrived (or still may, such as below the surface of watery moons), in hopes of arriving at a compelling theory for life's origins.

1. The Universe

Illustration showing the creation and expansion of the universe. Image Credit: NASA

The source of energy, matter and the universe itself is the ultimate mystery of, well, the universe.

Based on a widespread afterglow called the cosmic microwave background (and other evidence), scientists think that the cosmos formed from a "Big Bang" -- an incomprehensible expansion of energy from an ultra-hot, ultra-dense state.

Describing time before the event, however, may be impossible.

Still, atom smasher searches for particles that formed shortly after the Big Bang could shed new light on the universe's mysterious existence -- and make it a bit less strange than it is today.
Reference Here>>

Tracking Santa The NORAD Way Christmas 2008

2008-12-19T07:59:00.000-08:00

Illustrators’ Visions of Santa Claus - Over the years, great illustrators have created and shaped the popular vision of Santa Claus. Clockwise from top, left: Thomas Nast, who gave Santa Claus a form almost like the modern idea in the mid-1800’s, with his clay pipe and arm full of toys (including a sword). You can see some of his visions of Santa here. /// J. C. Leyendecker, who really created the modern vision of Santa, and painted a number of memorable Saturday Evening Post covers featuring the jolly elf over the years. You can find them in the SEP cover archive. /// Norman Rockwell, along with Leyendecker, provided numerous SEP covers with images of Santa, often with clever takes on the vision of his traditional role. The SEP cover archive has a section devoted to Rockwell Christmas covers. /// Haddon Sundblom was an American illustrator who became noted for his yearly portrayals of Santa Claus for the Coca-Cola company. There is a section on the Coca-Cola site, and an album of Sundblom Santas here. Image Credit: Charley Parker

Tracking Santa The NORAD Way Christmas 2008

Christmas is a time we come together to celebrate forces that are beyond our own experience. On December 25, the birth of the son of God is the source of the excuse for additional forces we know are beyond our own experience to come to life.

The one force that creates the most wonder and awe is the force of Santa Claus and his amazing journey around the world as he drives his Reindeer powered Sleigh. The Sleigh, loaded with gifts, stops at every home throughout the world where Santa knows people believe in giving and the amazing grace of God and his power.

Santa is even known to stop and leave a gift where some people are not even aware they actually believe in him and/or God’s power because he knows what resides deep in all people who wish for a better world but have not found a conscious way to its understanding.

Technology and the internet were made for times like these.

This from the How Stuff Works website -

How Santa's Sleigh Works
by John Fuller – How Stuff Works

On Christmas Eve, millions of children around the world will settle uneasily into bed, hardly able to contain themselves. What vision could possibly dance through their heads, turning them into twitchy, restless insomniacs for just one night? Is it the Sugar Plum Fairy from Tchaikovsky's ballet "The Nutcracker" or the sugarplums from Clement Clarke Moore's poem "The Night Before Christmas"? Can sugarplums really do such a thing?

Chances are the children are thinking about toys, Santa Claus and his team of reindeer -- if the children have been nice this year, jolly old St. Nick should be landing his sleigh on their roofs sometime late in the night.

Everyone has their own traditional image of Santa's sleigh, but could there be more to it than just a sled and a team of reindeer? Although no one may ever know for sure just how Santa operates, we at HowStuffWorks have what we think are the most logical explanations for how the big guy accomplishes all that he does: science and technology.

Sure, demystifying Santa's modus operandi puts us at risk of getting nothing but coal in our stockings this year, but it's all for the noble pursuit of yuletide knowledge. After all, have you ever wondered how Santa's sleigh flies? What about the reindeer? And how does Santa fit all of those presents into one bag? In the next section, we'll look at the possible technology behind Santa's sleigh.

Rustic on the outside and state-of-the-art on the inside, Santa's sleigh would have to be a marvel in engineering. These are the main parts of the sleigh that would be needed to get Santa across the world in one night.

The Sleigh's Interior

The front of the sleigh's dashboard would be dominated by Santa's own GPS navigator -- the elves would map out millions of destinations before Christmas Eve, just to make sure Santa doesn't miss anyone. The device would also have a built-in Naughty-or-Nice sensor that keeps Santa updated on children's activities. This is important, as even the most minor of naughty deeds committed within the last few hours of Dec. 24 can determine whether or not a child receives a shiny lump of coal.

A speedometer on the far left of the dashboard would allow Santa to monitor his flying speeds. On the far right would be a radio communicator -- Mrs. Claus sends broadcasts, and the elves update Santa with weather reports and toy inventory.

For in-flight entertainment, we'd like to the think that the elves would have installed an iPod dock -- perhaps even a red-and-green iPod, which would come with enough memory to play Christmas songs for the entire year through. There would also be a hot cocoa dispenser in the middle of the console, and fuel for the reindeer (in the form of carrots) in a compartment located on the left side of the sleigh.

Transdimensional Present Compartment (The Bag)

Ever wonder how Santa fits all of those presents into one bag? Think of a transdimensional present compartment in the form of a traditional gift sack, which would act as a portal between the sleigh and the North Pole. However, we'd also like to think that Santa may have harnessed the power of nanotechnology and found a way to miniaturize millions of presents into one large bag. But this information remains unconfirmed.

The Stardust Antimatter Propulsion Unit

What is antimatter? Is it some kind of magical substance Santa uses to power his sleigh?

Antimatter is the opposite of regular matter -- the mirror image of normal particles that make up everything we can see or touch. The big draw to antimatter is the amount of energy it helps create. When antimatter and matter come into contact, they annihilate each other -- breaking apart into tons of smaller particles -- and 100 percent of their masses convert into energy.

Although antimatter propulsion rockets are mainly used in science-fiction shows to allow spaceships to travel at warp speed, the possibility of designing one is very real -- NASA is currently developing one that would get us to Mars within a matter of weeks. [source: NASA]
Santa's would have to be way ahead of the game, however, and we'd like to imagine that he has his own custom Stardust Antimatter Rocket. It would be small enough to install in the back of his sleigh and fast enough to deliver every present to all good children across the globe. Of course, if the rocket ever malfunctions, the reindeer would be there to back Santa up.
References Here>>

Track Santa Claus across the globe as he performs his amazing task and journey -

Santa maintains a huge list of children who have been good throughout the year. The list even includes addresses, ZIP codes and postal codes. The list, of course, gets bigger each year by virtue of the world's increasing population. This year's population right now is 6,634,570,959!

Santa has had to adapt over the years to having less and less time to deliver his toys. If one were to assume he works in the realm of standard time, as we know it, clearly he would have perhaps two to three ten-thousandths of a second to deliver his toys to each child's home he visits!

The fact that Santa Claus is more than 15 centuries old and does not appear to age is our biggest clue that he does not work within time, as we know it. His Christmas Eve trip may seem to take around 24 hours, but to Santa it could be that it lasts days, weeks or months in standard time. Santa would not want to rush the important job of bringing Christmas happiness to a child, so the only logical conclusion is that Santa somehow functions on a different time and space continuum.

We believe, based on historical data and more than 50 years of NORAD tracking information, that Santa Claus is alive and well in the hearts of children throughout the world.

Santa Claus is known by many names, but his first recorded name was Saint Nicholas. Historians claim that the history of Santa starts with the tradition of Saint Nicholas, a 4th Century Christian priest who lived in the Middle East in an area of present day Turkey.

Saint Nicholas became famous throughout the world for his kindness in giving gifts to others who were less fortunate. Typically, he placed gifts of gold down people's chimneys - sometimes into stockings. It may be that the Santa we know and love emerged from the legacy of Saint Nicholas. Clearly, Santa's basic approach to gift giving is strikingly similar to that of Saint Nicholas. What we know from history is that the tradition of Santa Claus and Saint Nicholas merged.

Could they be the same person? Only Santa Claus can tell us for sure.

Long before the Wright brothers flew the first airplane or the Montgolfier brothers flew the first hot air balloon, Santa knew he had to find a way to travel quickly from house to house at great speed. We know from our Santa Cam images that Santa's choice for quick transportation was a herd of flying reindeer. Of course, to this day, detailed information on these reindeer remains a mystery. We do know, however, that Santa somehow found a way to get the reindeer to help him with his worldwide mission of gift giving. A veil of sweet mystery hides the rest.

Virginia's letter, written in December 1897, is the most famous example of a child wanting to know about Santa.

Editor’s Response>>

TRACK SANTA CLAUS's JOURNEY AROUND THE WORLD HERE

We at MAXINE, Symblogogy, ... notes from The EDJE, & Oblate Spheroid wish each and everyone a "Merry Christmas To All And To All A Good Night!"

It’s Was All Relative, ‘Till Now … E=mc2 Proven

2008-11-21T08:57:00.000-08:00

People walk past a giant sculpture featuring Albert Einstein's formula "E=mc2" in front of Berlin's Altes Museum in 2006. It's taken more than a century, but Einstein's celebrated formula e=mc2 has finally been corroborated, thanks to a heroic computational effort by French, German and Hungarian physicists. Image Credit: AFP/File/John Macdougall

It’s Was All Relative, ‘Till Now … E=mc2 Proven

The Albert Einstein Special Theory of Relativity which he hypothesized over one century ago, was suspected as being correct but was never totally proven until now.

In a study published in the US Journal Science, a brainpower consortium led by Laurent Lellouch of France's Centre for Theoretical Physics, using some of the world's mightiest supercomputers, have set down the calculations for estimating the mass of protons and neutrons, the particles at the nucleus of atoms … which proves the equation Einstein laid down back in 1903.

The Albert Einstein Memorial with its 21 foot bronze statue was dedicated in 1979. It is across the street from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on Constitution Avenue. A star map at Einstein's feet is embedded with more than 2,700 metal studs representing the positions of the sun, moon, planets and stars on April 22, 1979 when the memorial was dedicated. In Einstein's left hand is a paper with mathematical equations summarizing three of his most important scientific contributions including the theory of relativity. Image Credit: VisitingDC.com

This excerpted and edited from AFP -

e=mc2: 103 years later, Einstein's proven right
AFP - Thu Nov 20, 6:56 pm ET

It's taken more than a century, but Einstein's celebrated formula e=mc2 has finally been corroborated, thanks to a heroic computational effort by French, German and Hungarian physicists.
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According to the conventional model of particle physics, protons and neutrons comprise smaller particles known as quarks, which in turn are bound by gluons.
The odd thing is this: the mass of gluons is zero and the mass of quarks is only five percent. Where, therefore, is the missing 95 percent?

The answer, according to the study published in the US journal Science on Thursday, comes from the energy from the movements and interactions of quarks and gluons.

In other words, energy and mass are equivalent, as Einstein proposed in his Special Theory of Relativity in 1905.
Reference Here>>

Triboluminescence – Xrays From A Natural Property, Unnaturally

2008-10-23T06:15:00.000-07:00

Sticky Science A finger's x-ray taken with a tape-powered device. The sticky tape setup is in the background. Image Credit: Carlos Camara, Juan Escobar and Seth Putterman - UCLA

Triboluminescence – Xrays From A Natural Property, Unnaturally

Some of the craziest discoveries are found through happenchance or just simply by accident. In an edition of the latest of these discoveries, it has been perfected that through a process as simple as peeling transparent tape (commonly known as Scotch Tape popularized by 3M) one can capture and develop an xray image on film.

This property of excited electron activity when peeling transparent tape was first noticed about fifty (50) years ago in Russia. Some Russian scientists reported evidence of X-rays from peeling sticky tape off of glass.

Fast forward to California and work done by graduate students and staff researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA).

The result of this process when recorded by radiographic film is a fuzzy x-ray of the finger bone of physicist Seth Putterman, who runs the lab in which it was made. This undated composite image provided by the UCLA Laboratory of Low Temperatures and Acoustics, shows an image of an x-ray made with Scotch tape superimposed on a hand on top of a vacuum chamber with a roll of Scotch tape mounted on ball bearings inside. Image Credit: AP Photo/ UCLA Laboratory of Low Temperatures and Acoustics, Carlos Camara, Juan V. Escobar and Seth J. Putterman

This excerpted and edited from Scientific American –

Science Friction: An X-Ray Machine Energized by Adhesive Tape
Researchers take an image of a finger using film and some tape
By Susannah F. Locke, Scientific American - October 22, 2008

It may sound bizarre—or like some kind of high school science fair project, but it's not: Researchers have discovered that peeling adhesive tape ejects enough radiation to take an x-ray image. If they stick, the findings could set the stage for a less expensive x-ray machine that does not require electricity.

Lead researcher Carlos Camara, a physicist at the University of California, Los Angeles, reports in Nature today that his team captured x-rays of a finger on film (positioned behind it) by using a simple tape-peeling device (placed in front of it).

How is that possible? It turns out that radiation is released when tape is ripped from a surface. The reason, says Camara: electrons (negatively charged atomic particles) leap from a surface (peeling off of glass or aluminum works, too) to the adhesive side of a freshly yanked strip of tape, traveling so fast that they give off radiation, or energy, when they slam into it.
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"We have high hopes that this can be a very inexpensive alternative source of x-rays good enough to take x-ray images," Camara tells ScientificAmerican.com.Conventional x-ray machines require expensive electrical components to create a beam of high-energy electrons that is aimed at a metal target.
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Worried about radiation from the tape dispenser on your desk? Don't. In both a conventional and the experimental x-ray machine, electrons travel unhindered by air molecules through a vacuum chamber; that allows them to produce the higher energy needed to make x-rays. Normal air, comprised of nitrogen and oxygen and other gases, slows the electrons to a pace that is so sluggish there is only enough energy left to produce a faintly visible, benign blue light.
Reference Here>>

Funny what God leaves for us to discover here on this Oblate Spheroid. Check out the property called triboluminescence yourself by peeling tape in the dark.

Little ‘NoHo’ Model Draws Some Attention

2008-10-13T15:06:00.000-07:00

"Little NoHo" as shown at the NoHo Scene festival last weekend. The "Little NoHo" project was created using common objects such as Lego building blocks, bottle caps, game pieces, dominoes, mahjong tiles, jewelry and lapel pins. The model featured parks, bridges, bike paths, plazas, streetcar lines and public art. Image Credit: Mark Kellam – Daily News

Little ‘NoHo’ Model Draws Some Attention

Artist and urban planner, James Rojas, who had built model planning projects which allow for viewer interactive input for the city of Los Angeles before, came up with a 3-D model and plan for the North Hollywood arts district and surrounding neighborhoods.

The model asks people viewing it to participate in the display by adding elements and discuss the project with Rojas so that the L.A. Community Redevelopment Agency, the sponsor of the model display, can benefit from ideas shared through the brainstorm process of the interactivity.

Will any of the ideas placed in the Rojas ‘NoHo’ model ever see the light of day? Only time will tell; it is not known if any of the models that James Rojas has built have ever been adopted as a serious blueprint for urban development.

This excerpted and edited from the Daily News via vallynews.com -

Residents get to give input about 'Little NoHo'
Contributed by: Mark Kellam - 10/10/2008

Man-made streams along Lankershim Boulevard. More benches and a children's playground in North Hollywood Park. Improvements along Vineland Avenue.

Those were some of the changes proposed in an interactive art/urban development model that was on display at the NoHo Scene festival last weekend. Visitors also got to provide their own input.
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"Little NoHo" was created by L.A. urban planner James Rojas, who was at the North Hollywood festival. He said visitors of all ages got into the act.

The feedback was varied. For example, some people said the buildings were too tall, while others said they'd like more tall buildings.

The model showed North Hollywood from Burbank Boulevard to Camarillo Street (north/south) and from Tujunga Avenue to Vineland (east/west).

He saw one woman doing something with model pieces at Camarillo and Vineland. "She said she was recreating all the traffic accidents that happen there," Rojas said, chuckling.

As part of the model, Rojas put a man-made stream running down the center of Lankershim, which got lots of positive comments.

He also created traffic roundabouts along Burbank, Tujunga and Camarillo. "There are super long streets in the Valley," Rojas said. "The roundabouts break things up and make the streets more pedestrian friendly."

Rojas made a park with a lake off Tujunga, which kids enjoyed and provided whimsical input. "They put mermaids in the lake," he said.

Rojas has done interactive models before, including a model for the L.A. River project last year and at an event in Watts a few weeks ago.

The models are sponsored by the L.A. Community Redevelopment Agency, but Rojas does his work on the models as a volunteer.

"This is an exercise to get people thinking about the city and urban planning and break down barriers people have about the city," Rojas said. "It gets people comfortable. It's not contentious."
Reference Here>>

Urban Sprawl Grid Discovered In Xingu Amazonia

2008-08-31T08:51:00.000-07:00

Newly discovered traces of ancient roads, bridges and plazas in Brazil's tropical forest may help dispel the once-popular impression of an 'untouched' Amazon before the Europeans' arrival. In southern Brazil, archeologists have found the remains of a NETWORK or urban communities that apparently hosted a population many thousands strong. Reporting their findings in the journal SCIENCE, published by AAAS, the science society, the researchers say the people who dwelled there dramatically changed their local landscape.' /// Michael Heckenberger of the University of Florida and his colleagues were 'baffled' at the discovery. 'There was this cherished image that the Amazon was pure nature...archeologists are compelled to revise their views of ancient Brazil. Image Credit: Michael Heckenberger & Jim Bailey – Science (September 18, 2003)

Urban Sprawl Grid Discovered In Xingu Amazonia

Deep in the heart of the Amazon forest, evidence of an extensive network roads, plazas, and infrastructure that suggests vast human activity has been discovered in a area once thought to be only virgin rain forest.

Image Credit: BBC NEWS

Due to the overgrowth of the forest, it is estimated that the peoples who designed and populated the region may have been wiped out with the introduction of European born diseases introduced to Brazil when Explorers from Europe fist set foot in the Americas.

The research that has been conducted over the course of the past decade, was aided with the use of satellite imagery and GPS to discover the extent of the urban sprawl associated with the network of past human development and activity.

The researchers found evidence of 28 prehistoric residential sites. Initial colonization began about 1,500 years ago, and the villages they studied were dated to between 750 and 450 years ago. The local population declined sharply after Europeans arrived. /// Villages were distinguished by surrounding ditches, with berms on the inside made from material dug from the ditch and topped with a wooden palisade wall, Heckenberger reported. Image Credit: BBC NEWS

This excerpted end edited from the BBC -

'Lost towns' discovered in Amazon
A remote area of the Amazon river basin was once home to densely populated towns, Science journal reports.
Story from BBC NEWS - Published: 2008/08/28 21:37:07 GMT

The Upper Xingu, in west Brazil, was once thought to be virgin forest, but in fact shows traces of extensive human activity.

Researchers found evidence of a grid-like pattern of settlements connected by road networks and arranged around large central plazas.

Roads and canals connected walled cities and villages. The communities were laid out around central plazas. Nearby, smaller settlements focused on agriculture and fish farming. Pictured is evidence of dams used to funnel fish into holding ponds. Image Credit: BBC NEWS

There are signs of [field] farming, wetland management, and possibly fish farms.
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The ancient urban communities date back to before the first Europeans set foot in the Upper Xingu region of the Brazilian Amazon in the 15th Century.

Urban planning

Professor Mike Heckenberger, from the University of Florida, in Gainesville, said: "These are not cities, but this is urbanism, built around towns."
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The tell-tale traces included "dark earth" that indicated past human waste dumps or farming, and concentrations of pottery shards and earthworks.
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The communities consisted of clusters of 60-hectare (150-acre) towns and smaller villages spread out over the rainforest.

Road network

Like medieval European and ancient Greek towns, those forming the Amazonian urban landscape were surrounded by large walls. These were composed of earthworks, the remains of which have survived.

Each community had an identical road, always pointing north-east to south-west, which are connected to a central plaza.

The roads were always oriented this way in keeping with the mid-year summer solstice.

Evidence was found of dams and artificial ponds - thought to have been used for fish farming - as well as open areas and large compost heaps.
Reference Here>>

The more we learn about this Oblate Spheroid we populate, the more we become amazed at the depth assumption plays in our approach to understanding, and the more, through discovery, we begin to understand the depth of what we do not know here in the 21st Century.

Lack Of Drift Indicated In Forearm Fossil Find

2008-06-10T20:06:00.000-07:00

Megaraptors found in South America now have a "cousin" that was revealed living in Australia. Image Credit: fahad.com

Lack Of Drift Indicated In Forearm Fossil Find

A Dinosaur forearm bone fossil find in Australia has startled scientists in that it may shatter theories on how the Oblate Spheroid’s continent’s were formed.

As the theory goes, the Earth had only one very large land mass. This mass broke up and large chunks drifted apart over a one-hundred million year plus timeframe.

This bone puts this theory into question because of the type of bone that it is and the age at which the continent of Australia was to be formed and drift away from its suspected origin.

Cape Otway, Victoria, Australia - Image Credit: motelmarengo.com

This excerpted and edited from The Australian via AFP -

Australian dinosaur matches South American raptor
The Australian (AFP) June 11, 2008
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The 19cm bone was found in southeastern Australia but it comes from a very close cousin to Megaraptor, a flesh-ripping monster that lorded over swathes of South American some 90 million years ago.

The extraordinary similarity between the two giant theropods adds weight to a dissident view about the breakup of a super-continent, known as Gondwana, that formed the continents of the southern hemisphere, the authors say.
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The standard theory is that the first continents to go were South America and Africa, which pulled away from Gondwana around 120 million years ago.

Australia remained attached to Antarctica before the two entities drifted apart around 80 million years ago, according to this theory. Australia began an insular existence that incubated flora and fauna which remain unique to this day.

The forearm bone, found near Cape Otway in Victoria, is the first link ever found between a non-flying therapod - or two-footed dinosaur - in Australia and another component of Gondwana.

The investigators, led by Nathan Smith of the University of Chicago, say the two dinosaurs are so similar the two land masses of South America and Australia could not have been separated for so many millions of years beforehand.
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They speculate that land bridges must have persisted between southern South America and the Western Antarctic Archipelago "until at least the Late Eocene," a period that began some 40 million years ago.
Reference Here>>

"Ride the Mountain" Brings Choppers Into Big Bear Lake

2008-06-07T10:48:00.000-07:00

Ride The Mountain event comes to Snow Summit resort parking lot for two days. Image Credit: Big Bear Choppers

"Ride the Mountain" Brings Choppers Into Big Bear Lake

This weekend will see an abundance (thousands) of rolling two-wheeled pieces of art traveling throughout Big Bear Valley and the San Bernardino mountains.

Big Bear Choppers brings their 6th annual Ride the Mountain event to Snow Summit Resort and have two days of custom bikes and antique choppers on display, as well as vendors and live music.

Bikes on display at Big Bear Choppers showroom. Image Credit: BBC

Bands featured include 82 Fifty with Rob Piazza and the Mighty Flyers on Saturday afternoon and Vince Neil of Mötley Crüe following the awards show on Sunday.

Image Credit: KBHR 93.3FM

This from the Big Bear Grizzly –

BBC rides into two days of fun
By JUDI BOWERS - Wednesday, June 4, 2008 5:51 PM PDT

Six years ago, Kevin and Mona Alsop decided to branch out. Their business was growing, so why not share it. The first Ride the Mountain was born.

Ride the Mountain brought hundreds of motorcycle and chopper enthusiasts to the mountains. The first and second shows were at the Big Bear Convention Center. Big Bear Choppers grew and so did Ride the Mountain. The show moved to the Big Bear City Airport on the tarmac. Thousands of bikes rolled in, braved the summer thunderstorms and enjoyed a day riding the mountain.

Bikes on display at Big Bear Choppers showroom. Image Credit: BBC

Growth continued, and it was time to move the show again to Snow Summit Mountain Resort. Ride the Mountain took over the main parking lot and the Brownie Lane lot as well.
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It’s time to grow again, but Ride the Mountain is staying put. Instead of a new location, the show expands to two days this year. Ride the Mountain is Saturday and Sunday, June 7 and 8.
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Also on Saturday, is the Ride the Mountain Poker Run [2007 video below].
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The run takes participants around the lake and throughout Big Bear Valley. The Baker Drivetrain Bike Show is also Saturday, with awards on Sunday.
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Kevin Alsop and his crew judge the show. There are three categories, Big Bear Choppers Builder, Big Bear Choppers Factory Built and Open classes. The Big Bear Choppers Builder and Factory Built classes are free to enter. The fee for the open class is $25.
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Proceeds from Ride the Mountain benefit Big Bear Valley Recreation and Park District’s Teen Center.
Reference Here>>

Visually Amazing Japanese Moss Phlox Flower Park

2008-05-05T06:45:00.000-07:00

Moss pink flowers are in full bloom in Hitsujiyama Park in Chichibu, Saitama Prefecture. Image Credit: SANKEI PHOTO

A young couple relaxes in a field of moss phlox at Hitsujiyama park in Chichibu, west of Tokyo, Friday, May 2, 2008. More than 200,000 moss phlox are now in full-bloom at the park. Image Credit: AP Photo/Katsumi Kasahara

Visually Amazing Japanese Moss Phlox Flower Park

Shibazakura, or Phlox … or Thrift in English can be a really nice ground cover in small patches of a garden. They work great as a compliment to other plants, but this display at Hitsujiyama park in Chichibu, west of Tokyo, Japan has to take the cake for the Oblate Speroid’s largest display of a flowering complementary plant for landscaping.

Praise must be given to the gardeners though, who have to look after this garden for the rest of the year. Tending the garden, pest control, and the ability to maintain the consistency of the bloom has to be hard work with the amount of pests (wild and human) that lurk around Hitsujiyama park.

Visitors view a field of moss phlox at Hitsujiyama park in Chichibu, west of Tokyo, Friday, May 2, 2008. More than 200,000 moss phlox are now in full-bloom at the park. Image Credit: AP Photo/Katsumi Kasahara

Visitors look at landscaped fields of Shibazakura (Moss Phlox) flowers at Hitsujiyama Park in Chichibu, Saitama Prefecture April 30, 2008. Image Credit: REUTERS/Issei Kato (JAPAN)

This type of visual display reminds us here at Oblate Spheroid of what the environmental artist Christo would do with his artistic approach.

His displays were temporary and designed to be a one time only event. This park in Japan is a year round display and changes with the ebb and flow of the seasons.

Hangzhou Bay Bridge - World’s Longest Span Across The Ocean

2008-05-03T06:59:00.000-07:00

China has formally opened what it says is the world's longest sea bridge with a ceremony and fireworks. The six-lane bridge was built to address traffic congestion in the booming region, and will cut the driving time between Shanghai and Ningbo to two-and-a-half hours from four. Image Credit: BBC NEWS

Hangzhou Bay Bridge - World’s Longest Span Across The Ocean

Hangzhou Bay Bridge is an S-shaped stayed-cable bridge linking both sides of the Hangzhou Bay. It is the longest sea-crossing bridge on this Oblate Spheroid! The bridge is 22.37 Miles long; it has six lanes in both directions and shortens the distance between Shanghai and Ningbo by 74.56 Miles.

MAP - Hangzhou Bay is a gulf in the East China Sea. For the Zhejiang province this is a first class project as both ends of the Hangzhou Bay Bridge are in the province´s cities of Cixi and Zhapu. The bridge is the main project of the 5.200 kilometres national highway between Heilongjiang Province in the north toi the Hainan Province in the south. Graphic Credit: hangzhoubaybridge.com

Although the bridge is already linked and the opening ceremony was held on 26th June 2007, it opened to the public transport May 1, 2008.

First preparations for planning the bridge started a decade ago; close to 600 experts spent nine years on designing the Hangzhou Bay Bridge. Chief Commander of the Hangzhou Bay Bridge project is Mr Wang Yong.

Hangzhou Bay is known both in China and internationally for it´s fantastic tides, a natural wonder that is a major tourist attraction. . The tides are moving in a speed that can reach 30 kilometres (19 miles), sounds like thunder and the waves can be up to 8 meters (25 feet) high. One reason for the study of the project for a decade is the tide which will make the construction process complicated. Image Credit: hangzhoubaybridge.com

This excerpted from Times Online -

China opens world's longest road bridge
Jane Macartney in Beijing - Times Online - May 2, 2008

“If you want to grow rich, you must first build roads,” an old Chinese saying goes. The opening yesterday of the world’s longest road bridge over the sea should swell still further the coffers of the glittering metropolis that is Shanghai.

The £840 million [1.66 billion dollars] bridge, measuring 36km, spans Hangzhou Bay to link China’s financial hub and the port city of Ningbo to the south. It will reduce travel time between the two key cities in the Yangtze delta from four hours to two and a half.

A ceremony was held in the middle of the cable-stayed bridge to mark the official opening. The bridge has been built to withstand the typhoons that sweep in from the Pacific to batter the east coast each summer. Its steel pylons are 89m long, reaching beneath a sea as deep as 60m in some places. In addition, the sections of the bridge had to be winched into position over expanses of quicksand-like mudflats.
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In a break with tradition, private firms provided almost a third of the investment needed for the project. Image Credit: hangzhoubaybridge.com

State television greeted the start of traffic on the bridge with great fanfare, devoting almost the first ten minutes of the evening news of the Labour Day holiday to the subject. Wen Jiabao, the premier, visited the southern end of the bridge in Ningbo.Private investors funded almost 30 per cent of the project, the first time that China’s private sector had been allowed to put money into a major public infrastructure work. Officials say that the capital costs should be recovered in 15 years.
Reference Here>>

Please note that the title of the Times Online article referenced here is in error, in that the longest "ROAD BRIDGE" is located in the United States. The world's longest road bridge on this Oblate Spheroid is in Louisiana: the Lake Pontchatrain Causeway near New Orleans links Metairie to Mandeville, and spans 24 miles (~40 km). It is not an engineering marvel, but it is longer by almost a couple of miles ... Sorry China.

Pinball Wizard And Body Table King

2008-04-27T07:17:00.000-07:00

Mr. Gary Stern, the last pinball machine magnate, is a wise-cracking, fast-talking 62-year-old with a shock of white hair, matching white frame glasses and a deep tan who eats jelly beans at his desk and recently hurt a rib snowboarding in Colorado. Gary says half of his company’s machines now go into homes and not a corner arcade. Image Credit: Sally Ryan - NYT

Pinball Wizard And Body Table King

There was a time in America where pinball could be played almost anywhere … corner shops, markets, bars, arcades and bowling alleys to mention a few. The game was so popular that dozens of companies popped to produce the machines and fill the demand.

Today, however, demand for new machines is down and instead of dozens of manufacturers, there is only one on this Oblate Spheroid that remains true to the goal of providing the stand-up flipper and ball game machine.

Many assume the luster is off of the rose of mechanical gaming devices like pinball machines but the problem may be more than competition from electronic alternatives provided by home computers, dedicated hand held touch-screen PDA’s, and cellphones. The problem with the demand being down might be more in having to do with footprint and the availability of spaces that were once pinball friendly.

There are pachinko machines at the museum, which the curator of the museum keeps working on, so he has always has some spare parts he doesn’t need. So: when you visit the museum, don’t forget to take home your complimentary piece of pachinko history! Or better yet, indulge your burgeoning gambling addiction with a personal pachinko machine at home. Caption and Image Credit: pingmag.jp

Pinball enthusiasts believe that the pendulum will swing back and space available will come back for these grand body table amusement devices (not to be confused with the Asian game, Pachinko) … the pinball machine.

GameSetWatch has a wonderful gallery up showing off some of the amazing pinball machines that can be found at the Pinball Hall of Fame in Las Vegas. In their second set of pictures, the site concentrates on some of the "classic" pinball machines found in the collection. The grooviest by far has got to be Bally's Tommy-themed pinballer Capt. Fantastic, though there are plenty more to see on the site. Caption and Image Credit: Brian Crecente

This excerpted from the New York Times -

For a Pinball Survivor, the Game Isn’t Over
By MONICA DAVEY - New York Times - Published: April 25, 2008

Being inside a pinball machine factory sounds exactly as you think it would. Across a 40,000-square-foot warehouse here, a cheery cacophony of flippers flip, bells ding, bumpers bump and balls click in an endless, echoing loop. The quarter never runs out.

But this place, Stern Pinball Inc., is the last of its kind in the world. A range of companies once mass produced pinball machines, especially in the Chicago area, the one-time capital of the business. Now there is only Stern. And even the dinging and flipping here has slowed: Stern, which used to crank out 27,000 pinball machines each year, is down to around 10,000.
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“There are a lot of things I look at and scratch my head,” said Tim Arnold, who ran an arcade during a heyday of pinball in the 1970s and recently opened The Pinball Hall of Fame, a nonprofit museum in a Las Vegas strip mall. “Why are people playing games on their cellphones while they write e-mail? I don’t get it.”

“The thing that’s killing pinball,” Mr. Arnold added, “is not that people don’t like it. It’s that there’s nowhere to play it.”
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Though pinball has roots in the 1800s game of bagatelle, these are by no means simple machines. Each one contains a half-mile of wire and 3,500 tiny components, and takes 32 hours to build — as the company’s president, Gary Stern, likes to say, longer than a Ford Taurus.
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The manufacturing plant is a game geek’s fantasy job, a Willy Wonka factory of pinball.

Some designers sit in private glass offices seated across from their pinball machines.

Some workers are required to spend 15 minutes a day in the “game room” playing the latest models or risk the wrath of Mr. Stern. “You work at a pinball company,” he explained, grumpily, “you’re going to play a lot of pinball.” (On a clipboard here, the professionals must jot their critiques, which, on a recent day, included “flipper feels soft” and “stupid display.”)

Pachinko Balls - Pachinko is a game where the player floods a verticle board with hundreds of balls that bounce off of pins. Some balls find there way to accrue poins or money. Image Credit: pingmag.jp

A Box Of Pinballs - The typical machine has only six balls where the player keeps one ball in play as long as possible to accrue points for extra game plays. Image Credit: Sally Ryan - NYT

And in a testing laboratory devoted to the physics of all of this, silver balls bounce around alone in cases for hours to record how well certain kickers and flippers and bumpers hold up.
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The creation of the flipper — popularized by the Humpty Dumpty game in 1947 — transformed the activity, which went on to surges in the 1950s, ’70s and early ’90s.

“Everybody thinks of it as retro, as nostalgia,” Mr. Sharpe said. “But it’s not. These are sophisticated games. Pinball is timeless.”
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Jovita Maravilla uses a soldering iron to attach wires to the game board of a pinball machine. Each one contains a half-mile of wire and 3,500 tiny components, and takes 32 hours to build. Image Credit: Sally Ryan - NYT

“The whole coin-op industry is not what it once was,” Mr. Stern said.

Corner shops, pubs, arcades and bowling alleys stopped stocking pinball machines. A younger audience turned to video games. Men of a certain age, said Mr. Arnold, who is 52, became the reliable audience. (“Chicks,” he announced, “don’t get it.”)
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In the United States, Mr. Stern said, half of his new machines, which cost about $5,000 and are bought through distributors, now go directly into people’s homes and not a corner arcade. He said nearly 40 percent of the machines — some designed to appeal to French, German, Italian and Spanish players — were exported, and he added that he had been working to make inroads in China, India, the Middle East and Russia.
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“Look, pinball is like tennis,” said Mr. Stern, noting that a tennis court could never, for instance, be made round and that certain elements of a pinball play field are equally unchangeable and lasting. “This is a ball game. It’s a bat and ball game, O.K.?”
Reference Here>>

Shasta’s Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence

2008-04-26T07:17:00.000-07:00

Dotting a rocky plain north of Mount Lassen, 42 radio antennas are cocked like ears toward the sky, being readied for an expanded hunt for life beyond Earth. The Allen Telescope Array is slowly coming together as the new listening post for SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Graphic Credit: The Sacramento Bee

Shasta’s Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence

In some of the most Northern reaches of California sits one of the most beautiful stretches of wilderness known as Shasta County.

The wilderness is exactly why this part of the state has become the site where man’s latest attempt to search for life in the universe that surrounds our Oblate Spheroid.

By installing an array of 350 antennas that will be point out into the sky from wilderness located just North of Lassen Volcanic National Park, it is hoped through no-profit support, an understanding of the origins and prevalence of life throughout the universe can be achieved.

The SETI Institute so far has been able to install only 42 of an anticipated 350 - or even 500 - radio antennas at the Hat Creek observatory north of Mount Lassen, at a cost of $50 million. And each one had to be disassembled and blasted with baking soda to dull the surface, when they showed up shinier than promised. Image Credit: Seth Shostak / SETI Institute

This excerpted from The Sacramento Bee -

If E.T. calls, these 'ears' will be listening
Nonprofit aims antennas at sky in Shasta County
By Carrie Peyton Dahlberg - Sacramento Bee, Published 12:00 am PDT Saturday, April 26, 2008

HAT CREEK – Dotting a rocky plain north of Mount Lassen, 42 radio antennas are cocked like ears toward the sky, being readied for an expanded hunt for life beyond Earth.

The Allen Telescope Array is slowly coming together as the new listening post for SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.

Here at the Hat Creek Radio Observatory, silver-snouted antennas soon will take up the quest for a technological culture that is audacious or lonely or hopeful enough to deliberately beam a signal into the beyond.

It would be a sort of cosmic "Hey, is anybody out there?"

This summer, when the alien-hunting function of the telescope array is expected to start coming online, only a powerfully blasted or very close message would get through.

The array is missing 308 of the 350 antennas that the SETI Institute once hoped to have installed by this year. And equipment is still arriving to enable SETI operators to simultaneously focus on key stars while the antennas are also used in other research.

The Bay Area-based SETI Institute is dedicated to understanding the origins and prevalence of life throughout the universe. The scrappy nonprofit, which decorates some antennas with donor names and advertises an "adopt a scientist" program on its Web site, is scrambling for $35 million to $40 million needed to finish the array.

Even then, "finish" isn't quite the right word. Beyond 350 antennas, some researchers speak wistfully of what they might do with 500.
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SETI runs on hope, fueled by yearning for the breathtaking long shot of alien contact. But its telescope is grounded in pragmatism.
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"Even with 42 antennas, it will be an impressive survey instrument … really a uniquely powerful instrument," Carilli [a radio astronomer with the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in New Mexico, who is currently involved in telescope development in Chile] said.
The Allen array relies on multiple, small antennas to create a bigger picture. The complex electronic "back end" of the telescope can be turned into four different instruments, all using the same antennas for different purposes.

Only one of those instruments is devoted to the SETI search. Others are aimed at mapping galaxies, probing how stars are formed, and capturing the distant drama of black holes feeding and supernovas exploding.

Unlike optical telescopes, which measure stars and other objects in the visible spectrum, radio telescopes tune into the wavelengths emitted by solid objects, gases and electrons whirling through space.
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Among astronomers, the telescope's progress is being followed closely because its solutions to technical problems could be incorporated into the next generation of much larger radio telescopes.
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The radio dishes don't need to gleam, and astronomers had promised the Forest Service that they wouldn't, so that reflected sunlight would not hamper the wilderness experience for hikers on the Pacific Crest Trail just three miles east of the observatory.

When the equipment showed up shinier than expected, technicians began a tedious process of disassembling each antenna, blasting the curved dish with baking soda to dull the surface, then putting its delicate innards back in place. This week, the ground below some antennas was still dusted white with baking soda.

It has cost about $50 million so far to design, create and install the 42 antennas that make up the first phase of the Allen Telescope Array, named for Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, whose foundation donated $25 million to the effort.

Other funds have come from private donors, UC Berkeley and the National Science Foundation.

Because so much expensive design and development work has been done, the remaining 308 antennas will be much cheaper, probably coming in under $40 million, said Jill Tarter, SETI director.

There is no firm timetable for completion, because that money is not in hand.

"If I had a check today, it would be two years," Tarter said.
Reference Here>>