Science & TechnologyS


Telescope

Cluster Satellites Listen To The Sounds Of Earth


Volcano Ashes Blog
Tue, 01 Jul 2008 15:20 UTC


Image
©Unknown

The first thing an alien race is likely to hear from Earth is chirps and whistles, a bit like R2-D2, the robot from Star Wars. In reality, they are the sounds that accompany the aurora. Now ESA's Cluster mission is showing scientists how to understand this emission and, in the future, search for alien worlds by listening for their sounds.

Scientists call this radio emission the Auroral Kilometric Radiation (AKR). It is generated high above the Earth, by the same shaft of solar particles that then causes an aurora to light the sky beneath. For decades, astronomers had assumed that these radio waves travelled out into space in an ever-widening cone, rather like light emitted from a torch. Thanks to Cluster, astronomers now know this is not true.
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Black Cat

SOTT Focus: Neil Entwistle: Psychopath

Harrison Koehli
sott.net
Wed, 02 Jul 2008 18:55 UTC


Entwistle
©Reuters
The face of evil.

You've probably heard the story, or at least one like it. Husband kills wife and child, seemingly without remorse, then attempts to pass it off as a murder/suicide. And, remarkably, people believe him. The latest such example is Neil Entwistle, a British computer programmer, who murdered his American wife and 9-month-old daughter in 2006. He was recently sentenced to life in prison.

The trial made for a fascinating and disturbing spectacle. Aptly described by jurors as a complete narcissist, Entwistle put on quite the display during the presentation of a video of the bloody crime scene. But before we see his reaction for ourselves, let's see what the media tells us we see.
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Arrow Up

High density vertical growth technology


Valcent Products Inc
Wed, 02 Jul 2008 13:32 UTC


Veggie grower
©Valcent Products Inc
Veggies growing on an overhead conveyor system

Valcent Products Inc. (OTCBB: VCTPF) introduces its revolutionary High Density Vertical Growth (HDVG) system, now producing vegetables within its greenhouse production plant in El Paso, Texas. The HDVG technology provides a solution to rapidly increasing food costs caused by transportation/fuel costs spiraling upwards with the cost of oil. Together with higher cost comes a reduction in availability and nutritional values in the food we consume.

Comment: Maybe individuals could incorporate some of these ideas in increasing the yields of their own growing efforts.

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Attention

Earth Not Ready for Meteors or Comets

Brian Handwerk
National Geographic
Tue, 01 Jul 2008 23:23 UTC
A hundred years after a mysterious and massive explosion struck Russia, experts are warning that Earth is ill prepared to face a cosmic catastrophe that could do similar damage.

The blast, known as the Tunguska event, leveled some 770 square miles (2,000 square kilometers) of forest with the power of nearly 200 Hiroshima-size atomic bombs.

Image
© Chris Foss
An explosion rips through the Siberian wilderness in an artist's conception. A hundred years after a mysterious blast leveled some 770 square miles (2,000 square kilometers) of forest in Siberia, experts are saying that Earth is unprepared to face a similar blast caused by a meteor strike.

Remarkably few people witnessed the event, and debate has raged for decades about its cause.

One of the leading theories is that a comet or asteroid hit Earth or exploded upon entering the atmosphere above remote western Siberia.

"Had that same object exploded over a metropolitan area, there would have been millions of people killed," U.S. Representative Dana Rohrabacher (a Republican from California) said yesterday at a briefing at the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California.

"Right now we have no plan in place to detect these objects far enough out to deflect them."

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Display

"Virtual man" may ease drug R&D woes: report

Ben Hirschler
Reuters
Thu, 19 Jun 2008 18:48 UTC
Paris - New computing technologies and the evolution of a "virtual man" to predict the effects of new drugs before they enter clinical trials could transform the fortunes of pharmaceutical research, a report said on Friday.
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Life Preserver

1780 warship found intact under lake


ZeeNews.com
Tue, 01 Jul 2008 17:54 UTC
The 22-gun British warship 'HMS Ontario' that went down with as many as 130 people aboard during a gale in 1780, was discovered astonishingly well-preserved in the cold, deep water of Lake Ontario in the United States.

According to a report in the daily express today, Jim Kennard and Dan Scoville used side-scanning sonar and an unmanned submersible to locate the 80-ft sloop that sank during the American Revolution.

It is the oldest shipwreck and the only fully intact British warship found in the great lakes, Scoville and Kennard said.
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Nuke

Russian expert says nuclear devices can defend against asteroids


RIA Novosti
Tue, 01 Jul 2008 14:36 UTC
Nuclear explosive devices are the most effective means of protecting Earth from possible collisions with space bodies, including comets and asteroids, a Russian nuclear physicist told RIA Novosti on Tuesday.

Scientists around the world have long been seeking means of protecting the Earth from the threat of dangerous Near Earth Objects (NEOs). Scientists say such collisions pose a threat on average once every 200-1,000 years.

Vadim Simonenko, deputy head of the Russian Federal Nuclear Center, believes that nuclear explosive devices are more energy efficient, compact and less heavy than lasers or the so-called "gravitational tractors" in terms of their practical application as "weapons against NEOs."

"We in Russia have a wealth of experience in the controlled use of nuclear explosions for peaceful purposes," Simonenko said. "A nuclear device in skilful hands is like a scalpel in the hands of a surgeon."

The scientist said special nuclear devices must be created for effective use against NEOs. In order to disperse an asteroid with diameter of up to 100 meters, these devices must have a yield of about one megaton of TNT equivalent, and weigh several hundred kilograms.
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Einstein

Physicists Create Millimeter-sized 'Bohr Atom'


Science Daily
Tue, 01 Jul 2008 11:04 UTC
Nearly a century after Danish physicist Niels Bohr offered his planet-like model of the hydrogen atom, a Rice University-led team of physicists has created giant, millimeter-sized atoms that resemble it more closely than any other experimental realization yet achieved.

localized electron
©Jeff Mestayer / Rice University
Using laser beams and electric fields, Rice physicists coaxed a point-like, "localized" electron to orbit far from the nucleus of a potassium atom.

Bohr offered the first successful theoretical model of the atom in 1913, suggesting that electrons traveled in orbits around the atom's nucleus like planets orbiting a star. Bohr's model led to a deeper understanding of both the chemical and optical properties of atoms and won him a Nobel Prize in 1922. But his notion of electrons traveling in discrete orbits was eventually displaced by quantum mechanics, which revealed that electrons don't have precise positions but are instead distributed in wave-like patterns.

"In a sufficiently large system, the quantum effects at the atomic scale can transition into the classical mechanics found in Bohr's model," said lead researcher Barry Dunning, Rice's Sam and Helen Worden Professor of Physics and Astronomy. "Using highly excited Rydberg atoms and a series of pulsed electric fields, we were able to manipulate the electron motion and create circular, planet-like states."
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Book

Flashback History of Ancient Indian Conquest


Trinicenter.com
Thu, 01 Jul 1999 10:14 UTC
India's caste system is perhaps the world's longest surviving social hierarchy. A defining feature of Hinduism, caste encompasses a complex ordering of social groups on the basis of ritual purity.
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Info

The Tunguska Event and the 2 million acre Metz Wildfire - Can We See a Connection? Historical Novel Suggests There Might Have Been


Press Release Newswire
Tue, 01 Jul 2008 12:16 UTC
One hundred years ago, a large asteroid or comet exploded over sparsely populated Tunguska in Siberia. Ash soared 40 miles high and spread around the world, causing atmospheric, seismic, and magnetic disturbances worldwide. A drought ensued in northern Michigan that led to a devastating two-million-acre wildfire. The historical novel "Devil in the North Woods" suggests a possible connection between these events.

Lake Linden, MI -- July 1, 2008 -- You may have heard of the June 30, 1908, explosive event that took place over Tunguska in the remote interior of Siberia. But have you heard about the two-million-acre wildfire that incinerated that huge chunk of northeastern Michigan's farm and timber land in October of 1908? A century later, does the evidence indicate a possible connection?
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