The nation intends to launch space labs, manned ships and space freighters

Beijing - China plans to launch space labs and manned ships and prepare to build space stations over the next five years, according to a plan released Thursday that shows the country's space program is gathering momentum.

China has already said its eventual goals are to have a space station and put an astronaut on the moon. It has made methodical progress with its ambitious lunar and human spaceflight programs, but its latest five-year plan beginning next year signals an acceleration.

By the end of 2016, China will launch space laboratories, manned spaceship and ship freighters, and make technological preparations for the construction of space stations, according to the white paper setting out China's space progress and future missions.

China's space program has already made major breakthroughs in a relatively short time, although it lags far behind the United States and Russia in space technology and experience.

The country will continue exploring the moon using probes, start gathering samples of the moon's surface, and "push forward its exploration of planets, asteroids and the sun."

Given the incredible amounts of energy in a supernova explosion -- as much as the sun creates during its entire lifetime -- another erroneous doomsday theory is that such an explosion could happen in 2012 and harm life on Earth. However, given the vastness of space and the long times between supernovae, astronomers can say with certainty that there is no threatening star close enough to hurt Earth.

Astronomers estimate that, on average, about one or two supernovae explode each century in our galaxy. But for Earth's ozone layer to experience damage from a supernova, the blast must occur less than 50 light-years away. All of the nearby stars capable of going supernova are much farther than this.

Any planet with life on it near a star that goes supernova would indeed experience problems. X- and gamma-ray radiation from the supernova could damage the ozone layer, which protects us from harmful ultraviolet light in the sun's rays. The less ozone there is, the more UV light reaches the surface. At some wavelengths, just a 10 percent increase in ground-level UV can be lethal to some organisms, including phytoplankton near the ocean surface. Because these organisms form the basis of oxygen production on Earth and the marine food chain, any significant disruption to them could cascade into a planet-wide problem.

The reader should probably be getting the idea by now: the approach SOTT.net takes to the Cassiopaean Experiment really is a case of 10% inspiration, 90% perspiration. One question asked, or one answer given, is often enough to inspire a whole line of research leading to data and conclusions that might only be tangentially related to the original question. That's the whole point: discovery, and in that sense, the data in the Cs transmissions is more like the thread of Ariadne than a book of 'Divine Revelation'. The clues given lead those interested to take up the search through a vast labyrinth of information and 'disinformation' to what I like to think of as the heart of the matter: those areas of study that are not only highly relevant to coming to an understanding of the human condition and the nature of the cosmos, but which are also closely interrelated and always seemingly one step beyond what is currently accepted as 'common knowledge'. In other words, one mystery reveals another, then another. It's a never-ending journey of discovery, which is what I think lies at the heart of science and mysticism. Anything else, like the belief that 'we finally know all there is to know on this subject', only leads to intellectual stagnation and the death of curiosity. As we like to say around here, there's no such thing as free lunch... nor infallible texts.

For those curious to know, the research inspired by the Cs experiment has led the SOTT team to many of the topics that we focus on. Without them, and the life experiences that we surely wouldn't have had if not engaged in this project, we probably never would have learned what we have about the history and danger of cometary catastrophe, the electrical nature of the universe, psychopathy, ponerology, polyvagal theory, and separating the wheat from the chaff when it comes to the vast number of 'conspiracy theories' on the market. Or at least, it would have taken us a lot longer. After all, all of these fields have their respective authorities and advocates, those scientific mavericks who have come to the conclusion all was not right in their particular field of study, whether in history, politics, psychology, ufology, astrophysics, meteorology, or any other science. But this is usually done on their own, disconnected from the bigger picture and how to tie it all together. Often a lifetime of research will go into this process, with the downside that other possible areas of research are left untouched. (Witness researchers into the paranormal who deride 'conspiracy theories', or '9/11 conspiracy theorists' who deride ufologists.) But we try to bring as many of them as possible together, to give as comprehensive as possible a view of reality as we can. One of these areas, the one I'll deal with below, has to do with genetics, and the possibilities inherent in that mysterious building block of life: DNA.

Researchers at John Hopkins University have come up with a new, simpler 12-month calendar.

The team used computer programs and mathematical formulas to create the new calendar in which each new 12-month period is identical to the one before.

Under the new calendar, if Christmas fell on a Sunday in 2012, it would also fall on a Sunday in 2013, 2014 and beyond.

Also, the months September, March, June and December would have 31 days, while the rest would have 30.

"Our plan offers a stable calendar that is absolutely identical from year to year and which allows the permanent, rational planning of annual activities, from school to work holidays," Richard Conn Henry, an astrophysicist in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, said in a press release.

"Think about how much time and effort are expended each year in redesigning the calendar of every single organization in the world and it becomes obvious that our calendar would make life much simpler and would have noteworthy benefits."

They said the new calendar would also be convenient for birthdays and holidays by making them fall on the same day of the week every year.

Time in the womb is obviously important for the development of the fetal brain. But pregnancy is also a time for changes in Mom's brain - changes that may prepare women to become better mothers.

These changes still are little-understood, concludes a review published in the December issue of the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science.

Pregnant women often complain about "pregnancy brain" or "mommy brain," a memory fog that seems to produce lost car keys and misplaced cell phones. One 2010 study suggested that high levels of sex hormones could be to blame for the frustrating lapses in concentration. But in many ways, the changes that happen in a mom-to-be's brain during pregnancy remain mysterious.

"Pregnancy is a critical period for central nervous system development in mothers," review author Laura Glynn, a psychologist at Chapman University in California, said in a statement. "Yet we know virtually nothing about it."

Trade group expects industry to 'survive'

The United States has ended a 30-year tax subsidy for corn-based ethanol that cost taxpayers $6 billion annually, and ended a tariff on imported Brazilian ethanol.

Congress adjourned for the year on Friday, failing to extend the tax break that's drawn a wide variety of critics on Capitol Hill, including Sens. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., and Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. Critics also have included environmentalists, frozen food producers, ranchers and others.

The policies have helped shift millions of tons of corn from feedlots, dinner tables and other products into gas tanks.

Environmental group Friends of the Earth praised the move.

"The end of this giant subsidy for dirty corn ethanol is a win for taxpayers, the environment and people struggling to put food on their tables," biofuels policy campaigner Michal Rosenoer said Friday.

Close your eyes. Picture your closest friend. Maybe you see her blue eyes, long nose, brown hair. Perhaps even her smile.

If you saw her walking down the street it would match your imagined vision. But what if you saw nothing at all?

James Cooke, 66, of Islip, N.Y., can't recognize other people. When he meets someone on the street, he offers a generic "hello" because he can't be sure if he's ever met that person before. "I see eyes, nose, cheekbones, but no face," he said. "I've even passed by my son and daughter without recognizing them."

Software developed for closed-circuit television systems can identify individuals and track them across entire networks of cameras.

In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue, but when he returned from 'cross the seas, did he bring with him a new disease?

New skeletal evidence suggests Columbus and his crew not only introduced the Old World to the New World, but brought back syphilis as well, researchers say.

Syphilis is caused by Treponema pallidum bacteria, and is usually curable nowadays with antibiotics. Untreated, it can damage the heart, brain, eyes and bones; it can also be fatal.

The first known epidemic of syphilis occurred during the Renaissance in 1495. Initially its plague broke out among the army of Charles the VIII after the French king invaded Naples. It then proceeded to devastate Europe, said researcher George Armelagos, a skeletal biologist at Emory University in Atlanta.

"Syphilis has been around for 500 years," said researcher Molly Zuckerman at Mississippi State University. "People started debating where it came from shortly afterward, and they haven't stopped since. It was one of the first global diseases, and understanding where it came from and how it spread may help us combat diseases today."

It came suddenly from the distant reaches of the Constellation Sagittarius, some 50,000 light years away. For a brief instant, a couple of tenths of a second, on December 27, 2004 an invisible burst of energy the equivalent of half a million years of sunlight shone on Earth. Many orbiting satellites electronics were zapped and the Earth's upper atmosphere was amazingly ionized from a massive hit of gamma ray energy.

The source of the invisible attack was a rare magnetar SGR 1806-20 on the other side of the Milky Way. These soft gamma ray repeaters, SGRs, occur when twisted magnetic fields attempt to re-align themselves and crack the magnetar's crust releasing the awesome burst or pulse of energy with a death-zone of a few light years. Magnetars have magnetic fields 1000 times those of ordinary pulsars -so powerful as to be lethal at a distance of 1000 kilometers.

Astronomers have cataloged well over 1000 pulsars, and estimate the number of quiet neutron stars to be vastly more at some 100 million given the 10-billion-year life of the Milky Way's disk. The odds are that one is nearby, gliding silently past Earth, of no danger. The tonest fraction of neutron stars have morphed into magnetars, believed to be the offspring of the most massive stars, hypergiants that don't have enough mass to evolve into black holes.

Fortunately for Earth, the nearest GRB candidate seems to be thousands of light-years away. Maybe... Data from satellites and observatories around the globe showed a jet from a powerful stellar explosion witnessed on March 19, 2008 aimed almost directly at Earth.

NASA's Swift satellite detected the explosion - formally named GRB 080319B - at 2:13 a.m. EDT that morning and pinpointed its position in the constellation Bootes. The gamma-ray burst became bright enough for human eyes to see. Observations of the event are giving astronomers the most detailed portrait of a burst ever recorded.