Science & TechnologyS


Alarm Clock

Experiment moving to next phase? Air Force prepares to dismantle HAARP ahead of summer shutdown

Dermont Cole
Anchorage Daily News
Wed, 14 May 2014 00:00 UTC
Haarp antenna
© AP Photo/Mark FarmerAntennas for the newly completed High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) is seen near Gakona, Alaska on Wednesday, June 27, 2007. The world's most advanced high-energy radio physics experiment was declared fully operational in a Wednesday afternoon ribbon-cutting ceremony.
The U.S. Air Force gave official notice to Congress Wednesday that it intends to dismantle the $300 million High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program in Gakona this summer.

The shutdown of HAARP, a project created by the late Sen. Ted Stevens when he wielded great control over the U.S. defense budget, will start after a final research experiment takes place in mid-June, the Air Force said in a letter to Congress Tuesday.

The University of Alaska has expressed interest in taking over the research site, which is off the Tok Cutoff in an area where black spruce was cleared a quarter-century ago for the Air Force backscatter radar project that was never completed. But the school has not volunteered to pay $5 million a year to run HAARP.

Comment: The military and government have plenty of money to keep this part of HAARP going it they wanted to. This announcement makes one wonder what exactly they have in place to continue the experiment and what the next phase is, since "We're moving on to other ways of managing the ionosphere." Despite the articles stab at 'conspiracy theorists' and HAARP being blamed for being part of mind control activities, this is a distinct possibility. Think about it, when was the last time hundreds of millions were spent for the good and well being humanity or for the sake of science. They aren't going to come out and say "Yep, you got us. We are using HAARP for mind control."

See:
Mind Control and HAARP
HAARP and The Canary in the Mine

Read More...
Satellite

Proton-M rocket carrying Russia's most advanced satellite crashes after apparent malfunction


RT
Fri, 16 May 2014 07:22 UTC
Russian launch crashes
© RoscosmosScreenshot from Roscosmos live feed
A Russian Proton-M rocket with an advanced satellite on board crashed outside of Kazakhstan's territory on Friday, about nine minutes after lift-off. The Express-AM4R would have been Russia's most advanced and powerful satellite.

The crash was likely caused by a failure in one of the third stage's steering engines, reported Oleg Ostapenko, the head of the Russian national space agency Roscosmos.

"The exact cause is hard to establish immediately, we will be studying the telemetry. Preliminary information points to an emergency pressure drop in a steering engine of the third stage of the rocket," he said.

Fragments of the rocket and its cargo have apparently burned in the atmosphere, he added, which means they could not cause any damage on the ground.

The launch went abnormal on the 540th second of the flight, when an emergency engines shutdown kicked in in response to the rocket deviating from its intended trajectory, the Russian Federal Space Agency reported after the crash. The third stage, which is called Briz-M, was approximately 150km above the ground at that moment and had some 40 seconds to go before deploying its payload into the orbit.

Comment: A simple case of technical failure or what something else at play?

Read More...
Comet

Rosetta's comet flares as it approaches the Sun

Elizabeth Howell
Universe Today
Thu, 15 May 2014 14:58 UTC
Comet 67P
© ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDAA close-up of comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko taken from 1.24 million miles (2 million km) away. The image was obtained by the Rosetta spacecraft in April 2014 as it approached the comet for a close-up view.
Wow! This image shows the target comet for the Rosetta mission starting to develop a tail. This bodes well for the European Space Agency spacecraft, which is on its way to study Comet 67P/Churyumov - Gerasimenko later this year to learn more about the origins of the solar system.

"It's beginning to look like a real comet," stated Holger Sierks, principal investigator for OSIRIS (Optical, Spectroscopic and Infrared Remote Imaging System.)

"It's hard to believe that only a few months from now, Rosetta will be deep inside this cloud of dust and en route to the origin of the comet's activity," added Sierks, who is with the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany.

The picture was one of a series taken over six weeks, between March 27 and May 4, as the spacecraft zoomed to within 1.24 million miles (two million kilometers) of the target. You can see the full animation by clicking here.
Read More...
Jupiter

Jupiter's Red Spot shrink to smallest size ever

Bob King
Universe Today
Thu, 15 May 2014 14:49 UTC
Jupiter Red Spot_1
© NASA/ESAIn this comparison image the photo at the top was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in 1995 and shows the spot at a diameter of just under 13,050 miles (21,000 km); the second down shows a 2009 photo of the spot at a diameter of just under 11,180 miles (18,000 km); and the lowest shows the newest image from taken in 2014 with the spot at its smallest yet, with diameter of just 9,940 miles (16,000 km).
Earlier this year we reported that amateur astronomers had observed and photographed the recent shrinking of Jupiter's iconic Great Red Spot. Now, astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope concur:

"Recent Hubble Space Telescope observations confirm that the spot is now just under 10,250 miles (16,500 km) across, the smallest diameter we've ever measured," said Amy Simon of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, USA.
Read More...
Smoking

How poor science can become "a growing body of evidence"

Chris Oakley
The Free SocietySource
Mon, 12 May 2014 12:56 UTC
Image
Chris Oakley reveals how public health activists, medical journals and the UK media continue to disregard ethics and scientific integrity

One of the things that originally motivated me to write about public health was the realisation that the checks and balances that have sustained scientific progress for centuries are being undermined or simply ignored by people whose interests lie not in painstakingly testing hypotheses to reach well-argued empirical conclusions, but in torturing data to suit preconceived outcomes consistent with a narrow philosophy.

The output produced by this unfortunate perversion of science is often newsworthy as it offers public health adherents an opportunity to push their doctrine, excites certain types of politicians and potentially impacts the lives of many through socially destructive bans or restrictions.

Increasingly, the "scientists" producing the headline-grabbing articles are public health activists who simultaneously campaign for whatever policy their "science" is supposed to support. This ought to raise issues over the objectivity of their offerings but doesn't because the publishers, editors and journalists responsible for the seemingly incessant public health bombardment appear to care more about being "on-message" than they do about honesty or objectivity.
Read More...
Cloud Lightning

Solar winds linked to increased lightning strikes

Stephanie Pappas
Live Science
Wed, 14 May 2014 18:01 UTC
Lightning
© David Rankin/www.rankinstudio.comLightning electrifies the evening sky over Utah, as an intense storm charges across southern Utah and northern Arizona. Photographer David Rankin captured this incredible scene from the southern end of Lake Powell, Utah, just after sunset on Sept. 14, 2013.
Solar winds hitting Earth may trigger an increase in lightning, a new study suggests.

The research finds an increase in the number of lightning strikes after the streams of plasma and particles known as solar wind arrive on Earth from the sun. Exactly why this correlation exists is unclear, but researchers say the interaction of solar particles might somehow prime the atmosphere to be more susceptible to lightning.

"As the sun rotates every 27 days these high-speed streams of particles wash past our planet with predictable regularity. Such information could prove useful when producing long-range weather forecasts," study researcher Chris Scott, a professor in space and atmospheric physics at the University of Reading, said in a statement.
Read More...
2 + 2 = 4

Oldest fossilized sperm found and it's enormous

Jennifer Viegas
Discovery.com
Tue, 13 May 2014 15:04 UTC
Mussel-Shrimp Sperm Looks Like Angel-Hair Pasta
Image
© Renate Matzke-Karasz, Ludwig-Maximilian University and the Geo-Bio-Center
Paleontologists have just discovered the world's oldest-known petrified, fossilized sperm, according to a paper published in the latest issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

The sperm dates to at least 16 - 17 million years ago and was found in a near-perfect state of preservation. The researchers often use one word to describe it: "giant."
Read More...
Beaker

Miracle material graphene can pose danger to the environment

Andrew Griffin
The Independent
Thu, 01 May 2014 12:35 UTC
graphene
© Northwestern University
The wonder stuff could damage the environment if it is let loose, experts have warned

Graphene has been hailed as a miracle material that many believe could revolutionise many industries, but it might have more dangerous side effects as it spreads into the environment, experts say.

Researchers have found that the graphene oxide, created when the material is exposed to air, moves easily through bodies of water. Researchers worry could lead to it easily finding its way into human bodies.

That is worrying because the effects of graphene in human bodies are unknown. One recent study at Brown University found that jagged edges of the material can easily pierce cell membranes, allowing it to enter cells and disrupt their functions.

"The situation today is similar to where we were with chemicals and pharmaceuticals 30 years ago," said Jacob D Lanphere, a graduate student who worked on the new paper studying graphene in water. "We just don't know much about what happens when these engineered nanomaterials get into the ground or water."

Graphene is expected to be used for new inventions including super-fast computers, taking the place of the non-toxic silicon. The very strong and thin material is made by slicing off atom-thick layers of carbon in a lab, but can also be made using a kitchen blender.
Read More...
Info

New galaxy discovered in Leo constellation


IANS/bdnews24.com
Tue, 13 May 2014 15:30 UTC
Milky Way
© Wikimedia CommonsAn image of the Milky Way in the night sky above Paranal Observatory.
Astronomers from the Ruhr University Bochum in Germany and the Jagiellonian University in Poland have discovered a new galaxy in the constellation Leo, it was announced Tuesday.

The new galaxy, near the Milky Way, has emerged from the merger of two other galaxies, which makes it the closest recycled galaxy the researchers have observed so far. A report on the new discovery was published in the Astrophysical Journal.

With his Polish colleagues, Dominik Bomans from the Astronomical Institute at Ruhr examined a candidate for a dwarf galaxy in a nearby group of galaxies, the Leo Triplet in the constellation Leo.
Read More...
Saturn

Mysterious 'spokes' in Saturn's Rings are still there

Ian O'Neill
Discovery News
Mon, 12 May 2014 17:17 UTC
Saturn's Ring
© NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute The bright spokes in Saturn's darkest B ring appear as bright features that rotate with the planet's magnetic field.
There are many mysteries about the enigmatic ringed gas giant, but the curious mechanism behind Saturn's 'spokes' is one of the more intriguing puzzles. And in new observations from NASA's Cassini mission, these bright features seem to be persisting in Saturn's darkened B ring.

Observed first during the Voyager spacecraft flybys in the early 1980′s, it was realized that these strange features, which flare out like spokes on a bicycle wheel, were not caused by gravitational interactions with the planet, moons or ring material. Further observations were made by Cassini in 2005 when it was confirmed the spokes are likely related to the gas giant's global magnetic field.

The leading theory is that charged dust particles suspended above and below the rings are interacting with Saturn's magnetic field, causing the spokes to rotate with the planet's interior spin. They are also thought to be seasonal over Saturn's near-30 year solar orbit - they vanish during Saturn's midwinter and midwinter, only to reappear around the Saturnian equinox. As Saturn's northern hemisphere approaches summer solstice, astronomers predict the spokes will disappear.

This observation was taken when Cassini was zooming approximately 1.2 million miles (1.9 million kilometers) above Saturn's ring plane in October 2013.
Read More...