Science & TechnologyS


Meteor

Flashback Mystery Spot on Jupiter Baffles Astronomers

Robert Roy Britt
Space.com
Mon, 10 Mar 2003 12:00 UTC
Astronomers have spotted a strange, obvious and inexplicable black spot near the equator of Jupiter. A picture of the object was circling this planet electronically this week as researchers scratched their heads about what they'd found.

A second image, taken on another day by a different photographer, contains a similar looking spot. As of early Thursday, the second image had deepened the mystery. Some astronomers were at first puzzled over whether the two photos show the same thing or not. As it turns out, they do not.

Researchers said the second image reveals a transit of one of Jupiter's moons across the face of the planet. In the end, the two pictures represent an interesting coincidence.

What follows is a story of raw discovery, a behind-the-scenes look at what goes on in the Internet Age when astronomers find something unexpected.
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Bomb

"Imagine a world of no more privacy."


DemocracyNow
Thu, 02 Mar 2006 12:00 UTC
We speak with Liz McIntyre, author of "Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track your Every Move with RFID" that examines radio frequency identification - a technology that uses tiny computer chips to track items at distance. Major corporations are working right now to install RFIDs on all consumer products.
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Cloud Lightning

When aliens rained over India

Hazel Muir
New Scientist
Thu, 02 Mar 2006 12:00 UTC
I'VE heard plenty of tales about freak weather that are strange, but nonetheless true. In August 2000, a shower of sprats, dead but conveniently still fresh, fell from the skies onto the English port of Great Yarmouth just after a thunderstorm. A torrent of live toads pelted a Mexican town in June 1997. And in 2001, 50 tonnes of alien life forms rained down from the clouds over India.

Actually, I'm not sure that the alien story is true. But it is surprisingly persistent. I first saw it in 2003 in a scientific paper written by Godfrey Louis, a physicist working in the Indian state of Kerala, on the country's southern tip. He described how, during two months in 2001, red rain fell sporadically right across the state. No one could explain it, but after lengthy studies of red particles in the rainwater, Louis came to the extraordinary conclusion that they were alien microbes that hitched a ride to Earth on a comet.
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Meteor

New asteroid at top of Earth-threat list

Kimm Groshong
New Scientist
Thu, 02 Mar 2006 12:00 UTC
Observations by astronomers tracking near-Earth asteroids have raised a new object to the top of the Earth-threat list.

The asteroid could strike the Earth in 2102. However, Don Yeomans, manager of NASA's Near Earth Object Program at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, US, told New Scientist: "The most likely situation, by far, is that additional observations will bring it back down to a zero."
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Green Light

Green Comet


Spaceweather.com
Wed, 01 Mar 2006 12:00 UTC
"Comet Pojmanski (C/2006 A1) has a bright green head," says Chris Schur who took this picture yesterday at dawn from Payson, Arizona.
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Evil Rays

Smoking Nearly Doubles Root Canal Requirements

Judith Groch
MedPage Today
Fri, 24 Feb 2006 12:00 UTC
New York - Men who smoke cigarettes are about twice as likely to require root canal treatment as those who have never smoked, according to a prospective cohort study lasting for almost three decades.

The risk for cigarette smokers increased with more years of smoking and decreased with length of abstinence, suggesting a dose-response relationship.

Comment: At the beginning of this article, there are some "Medpage Today Action Points":
* Explain to patients that even though this study was limited to men, similar risks are likely for women, including those exposed to second-hand smoke.

* When talking with pipe and cigar smokers, suggest that despite the limited findings in this study that show no increased risk in these patients, they may still be at risk for root canal treatment along with other periodontal risks.
As a public service to our cherished readers, we thought we would add the following "warnings":
* When talking with anyone at all, be sure to warn them that smoking is also the cause of every other major and minor illness that has ever existed and that will ever exist.

* If they object to any of your statements - which are based on studies with extraordinarily small and exclusive groups, and then later generalized to encompass the entire world - tell them that it is your expert opinion that none of the other three million different cancerous chemicals that they ingest each day has anything to do with the illnesses for which everyone blames smoking. If you own stock in a company that makes non-stick frying pans, be sure to mention that Teflon is mostly certainly not a carcinogen, and that you even recommend Teflon-coated pacifiers for babies.

* As always, push as many pharmaceuticals as you can so that you can get some nice kickbacks from your "retirement plan", aka Big Pharma.


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Star

Brightest Galactic Flash Ever Detected Hits Earth

Robert Roy Britt
Space.com
Fri, 17 Feb 2006 12:00 UTC
"We have observed an object only 20 kilometers across [12 miles], on the other side of our galaxy, releasing more energy in a tenth of a second than the Sun emits in 100,000 years."

A huge explosion halfway across the galaxy packed so much power it briefly altered Earth's upper atmosphere in December, astronomers said Friday.

No known eruption beyond our solar system has ever appeared as bright upon arrival.

But you could not have seen it, unless you can top the X-ray vision of Superman: In gamma rays, the event equaled the brightness of the full Moon's reflected visible light.

The blast originated about 50,000 light-years away and was detected Dec. 27. A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, about 6 trillion miles (10 trillion kilometers).
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Cult

SOTT Focus: Abovetopsecret: Ethics and Google Bombs

Laura Knight-Jadczyk
Sott.net
Tue, 24 Jan 2006 12:00 UTC
Image
Despite its claims about ETHICS, the bottom line is that Abovetopsecret.com is its own Google Bomb. ATS is an example of everything self-serving in our current reality - it is a microcosm of the Free market system, of corrupt government, democracy, business, almost everything that is wrong with this reality; all this is expressed in how abovetopsecret.com operates.

If the site is not directly handled by COINTELPRO, if the Abovetopsecret.com "Amigos" are not conscious COINTELPRO agents, then they are by default; it serves the same purpose because the infection of pathological elements reigns supreme there.

The 3 Amigos (Owners) manipulate everything about this site. They have figured out a way to manipulate google (that is why they put a thread link called "CoIntelPro" in the banner of every thread page, to push any search results for cointelpro and abovetopsecret deep into the google search pages behind them).

They do much behind closed doors but they show their arrogance freely throughout the site. They push their rules right and left, but they, as owners and moderators break them freely and regularly, seemingly as they please.

In short, it is all one giant marketing manipulation and the owners do not give a flip about the members or what is actually produced as a public consumable, so as long as it serves what is obviously their targeted purpose : To suck in more members to post which creates more indexed pages, to attract more readers, to vector their thinking and make money, and around and around it goes. It is rather amazing how the entire thing is designed and how most posters there haven't got a clue.
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Pharoah

Mummies found just yards from Tutankhamun's tomb

Peter Popham
Independent
Fri, 10 Feb 2006 12:00 UTC
The newly discovered 18th-dynasty tomb contains five mummies in intact sarcophagi with coloured funerary masks, along with more than 20 large storage jars sealed with pharaonic seals, according to Zahi Hawass, head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities.

The sarcophagi are carved in human form, like Tutankhamun's. The tomb is rectangular, and the wooden sarcophagi are surrounded by the jars, which seem to have been placed haphazardly, suggesting that the burial had been completed quickly, according to Dr Hawass.
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Bad Guys

Doctoring the past - Wiki style

Patrick Barkham
Guardian.co.uk
Fri, 10 Feb 2006 12:00 UTC
We are all Alastair Campbells now. Spin doctors antennae whirred around this week when the volunteers who run Wikipedia discovered that staff of US senators and congressmen had been busy burnishing their bosses entries in the internet encyclopedia.

Millions of people turn to the reference site to look up facts - and change them. The non-profit making project to build an internet encyclopedia is the 19th most-visited site in the world. Three per cent of all webpages visited are Wikipedia pages. Its guiding, and democratic, principle: anyone can anonymously edit it. Increasingly, it seems, politicians and their staff are among the most dedicated editors.
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