2012

The new creeps in........

Climate change is not just earth bound

By measuring the temperature of the gas present between galaxies, using quasar light that was more than ten billion years old by the time it reached Earth, astronomers have found evidence of a climate change  in our Universe. In the beginning the Universe went through a warming trend which was  caused by the huge amount of energy output from young, active galaxies. The vast majority of matter was not in stars or galaxies University of Cambridge astronomer George Becker explains but was spread out in a very thin gas that filled up all of space. Just as Earth's climate can be studied from ice cores and tree rings, the quasar light contains a record of the climate history of the cosmos. There is a connection between temperature, time and expansion of the Universe. As the cosmos expands, the gas should get colder and the Universe is expected to cool down over time. "The likely culprits in this intergalactic warming are the quasars themselves", explains fellow team member Martin Haehnelt, who is also at Cambridge University's newly-established Kavli Institute for Cosmology.  "Over the period of cosmic history studied by the team, quasars were becoming much more common.  These objects, which are thought to be giant black holes swallowing up material in the centres of galaxies, emit huge amounts of energetic ultraviolet light.  These UV rays would have interacted with the intergalactic gas, creating the rise in temperature we observed." "One of the lightest and most abundant elements in these intergalactic clouds, helium, played a vital role in the heating process.  Ultraviolet light stripped the electrons from a helium atom, freeing the electrons to collide with other atoms and heat up the gas.  Once the supply of fresh helium was exhausted, the universe started to cool down again. Astronomers believe this probably occurred after the cosmos was one quarter of its present age."

Did you know?

A molecule called fulvalene diruthenium can store and release heat on demand, in effect making it possible to produce a "rechargeable heat battery" that can repeatedly store and release heat gathered from sunlight or other sources.
I want one!

Way to go Jetman

Yves Rossy, the Swiss adventurer who has flown across the English Channel using a winged jet-pack, pulled off another exploit on Friday, flying two aerial loops in a new version of his invention. Rossy, who was testing a new, more aerodynamic model of the jet-pack, jumped from a hot-air balloon at 2400 metres and performed the stunt during an 18-minute flight before making a parachute landing."He flew a few minutes to stabilise his wing and find the optimal angle to begin two loopings," said a statement on his website, www.jetman.com.Rossy, 51, said his new model of the jet-pack, which has a two-metre wingspan instead of the 2.5-metre model and no unfoldable parts, was both more aerodynamic and stable.He designed it along with Swiss collaborators, the RUAG Company."It was fantastic," Rossy said in comments posted on the website after the test flight, which was carried out in the skies above the Swiss canton of Vaud."The flight went well, despite a little problem when starting my engines. I was able to do my two loopings and I am very happy."The Swiss newspaper 20 Minutes reported that Rossy had not, however, gone through with an initial plan to fly a complete circuit of the hot-air balloon for "technical and security reasons".In September 2008 Rossy, whose jet-pack can reach speeds of about 200km/h, gained international attention when he became the first winged person to make a successful crossing of the Channel.He took about 10 minutes to cover the 35 kilometres.

Italian gem

Nestling in the foothills of the Alps in northern Italy, 30 miles from the ancient city of Turin, lies the valley of Valchiusella. Peppered with medieval villages, the hillside scenery is certainly picturesque.
But it is deep underground, buried into the ancient rock, that the region's greatest wonders are concealed.
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Hall of the Earth: An amazing room built on the 'supernatural' visions of its creator

Here, 100ft down and hidden from public view, lies an astonishing secret - one that has drawn comparisons with the fabled city of Atlantis and has been dubbed 'the Eighth Wonder of the World' by the Italian government.
For weaving their way underneath the hillside are nine ornate temples, on five levels, whose scale and opulence take the breath away.
Constructed like a three-dimensional book, narrating the history of humanity, they are linked by hundreds of metres of richly decorated tunnels and occupy almost 300,000 cubic feet - Big Ben is 15,000 cubic feet.
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Light fantastic: The giant glass dome of the Hall of Mirrors

Play time: Children look happy in the amazing surroundings

Few have been granted permission to see these marvels.
Indeed, the Italian government was not even aware of their existence until a few years ago.
But the 'Temples of Damanhur' are not the great legacy of some long-lost civilisation, they are the work of a 57-year-old former insurance broker from northern Italy who, inspired by a childhood vision, began digging into the rock.
It all began in the early Sixties when Oberto Airaudi was aged ten. From an early age, he claims to have experienced visions of what he believed to be a past life, in which there were amazing temples.
Around these he dreamed there lived a highly evolved community who enjoyed an idyllic existence in which all the people worked for the common good.
More bizarrely still, Oberto appeared to have had a supernatural ability: the gift of "remote viewing" - the ability to travel in his mind's eye to describe in detail the contents of any building.
"My goal was to recreate the temples from my visions," he says.
Oberto - who prefers to use the name 'Falco' - began by digging a trial hole under his parent's home to more fully understand the principals of excavation.
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Breathtaking: The miles of tunnels enable air to circulate

House of secrets: Below this house is the Damanhurian temple which is one of the largest temple complexes in the world

But it was only as he began a successful career as an insurance broker that he began to search for his perfect site.
In 1977, he selected a remote hillside where he felt the hard rock would sustain the structures he had in mind.
A house was built on the hillside and Falco moved in with several friends who shared his vision. Using hammers and picks, they began their dig to create the temples of Damanhur - named after the ancient subterranean Egyptian temple meaning City of Light - in August 1978.
As no planning permission had been granted, they decided to share their scheme only with like-minded people.
Volunteers, who flocked from around the world, worked in four-hour shifts for the next 16 years with no formal plans other than Falco's sketches and visions, funding their scheme by setting up small businesses to serve the local community.
By 1991, several of the nine chambers were almost complete with stunning murals, mosaics, statues, secret doors and stained glass windows. But time was running out on the secret.
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Hall of Spheres: Creator Oberto Airaudi based his creation on wonderful visions

Bright window: The window decorations have a church-stained window theme

The first time the police came it was over alleged tax evasion and still the temples lay undiscovered. But a year later the police swooped on the community demanding: "Show us these temples or we will dynamite the entire hillside."
Falco and his colleagues duly complied and opened the secret door to reveal what lay beneath.
Three policemen and the public prosecutor hesitantly entered, but as they stooped down to enter the first temple - named the Hall of the Earth - their jaws dropped.
Inside was a circular chamber measuring 8m in diameter.
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Hall of mirrors: The hall has a classical Greek feel

Egyptian wall paintings: Damanhurian art is greatly influenced by both Egyptian and Celtic sytles

A central sculpted column, depicting a three dimensional man and woman, supported a ceiling of intricately painted glass.
The astonished group walked on to find sculpted columns covered with gold leaf, more than 8m high.
Stunned by what they had found, the authorities decided to seize the temples on behalf of the government.
"By the time they had seen all of the chambers, we were told to continue with the artwork, but to cease further building, as we had not been granted planning permission," says Esperide Ananas, who has written a new book called Damanhur, Temples Of Humankind.
Retrospective permission was eventually granted and today the 'Damanhurians' even have their own university, schools, organic supermarkets, vineyards, farms, bakeries and award-winning eco homes.
They do not worship a spiritual leader, though their temples have become the focus for group meditation.
'They are to remind people that we are all capable of much more than we realise and that hidden treasures can be found within every one of us once you know how to access them,' says Falco.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-495538/Eighth-wonder-world-The-stunning-temples-secretly-carved-ground-paranormal-eccentric.html#ixzz0xWY1vLiP

Levels of consciousness

According to measurements taken the world's collective consciousness quantitatively, as outlined in the book POWER vs. FORCE by David R. Hawkins, M.D., Ph.D. © 1995 - 2002.), the average number for scientifically measured world collective consciousness has shot up from 223 in September 2005, to 500 as of June 26, 2009, at which time everyone in the world was placed into a consciousness acceleration program that had previously been available ONLY to a few select people with personal consciousness measuring 500 and up.  The world's AVERAGE consciousness number, as of today, is almost 600!  This "AVERAGE" is not an arithmetic average, but rather is a number that calculates the net effect of everyone's consciousness interacting with each other, wherein people with higher consciousness neutralize the negative influence of many thousands or millions of people with low consciousness.

 

This means that people with high consciousness, presumably including those reading this post, are so effective at neutralizing those with low consciousness (many billions of "new souls" once described colorfully as being for the "first time on two legs"), that the net effect is to drag ALL the precious souls of Earth into a very high level of deserving ability implied by the consciousness number 600, once the province of only 1 in 10 million people.

 

To put this in context, when David Hawkins wrote POWER vs. FORCE © 1995 - 2002, only 15% of the world's population was above the critical consciousness level of 200, where "Power" in the sense of power for good first appears as the critical point in human development that distinguishes positive and negative influences of life.  A consciousness measurement of 200 or higher marks the point in development of human consciousness at which a person is capable for the first time of beginning to embrace positive influences and not be attracted to negative influences. (when we have negative thoughts from time to time this is a reference to embracing negativity, not occasional lapses.)

 

The 500 level of consciousness development is characterized by the development of a love that is unconditional.

 

The 600 level is associated with an experience of life in which transcendence, self-realization, and God-consciousness start to be available as conscious experiences, as distinguished from things one can only read about, for example in sacred literature like the Bible.

 

When a person is developing consciously below the 600 level, they can read and take to heart expressions such as,"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thyself."

However, no matter how much one reads the Bible and takes everything one reads completely to heart, the kind of love Jesus was describing is simply not available as a conscious experience when consciousness measures under 500.  It starts to be conceivable when consciousness develops to 600, and it is fully realized when consciousness develops to 1545.

Dr. Hawkins said in his book that as of the time when he took the measurements that went into his book, the 600 consciousness level was extremely rare, attained by only 1 in 10 million people.  Now this is completely changed!  As mentioned above, the world's scientifically measured "average consciousness number" as defined above, as of today" is almost 600 and rising fast - just under 100 points of rise in little more than a year!

This is a rocket ship, and it has implications for world events is huge!

An interstellar discovery

December 23, 2009: The solar system is passing through an interstellar cloud that physics says should not exist. In the Dec. 24th issue of Nature, a team of scientists reveal how NASA's Voyager spacecraft have solved the mystery. "Using data from Voyager, we have discovered a strong magnetic field just outside the solar system," explains lead author Merav Opher, a NASA Heliophysics Guest Investigator from George Mason University. "This magnetic field holds the interstellar cloud together and solves the long-standing puzzle of how it can exist at all."The discovery has implications for the future when the solar system will eventually bump into other, similar clouds in our arm of the Milky Way galaxy.Astronomers call the cloud we're running into now the Local Interstellar Cloud or "Local Fluff" for short. It's about 30 light years wide and contains a wispy mixture of hydrogen and helium atoms at a temperature of 6000 C. The existential mystery of the Fluff has to do with its surroundings. About 10 million years ago, a cluster of supernovas exploded nearby, creating a giant bubble of million-degree gas. The Fluff is completely surrounded by this high-pressure supernova exhaust and should be crushed or dispersed by it."The observed temperature and density of the local cloud do not provide enough pressure to resist the 'crushing action' of the hot gas around it," says Opher.So how does the Fluff survive? The Voyagers have found an answer. "Voyager data show that the Fluff is much more strongly magnetized than anyone had previously suspected—between 4 and 5 microgauss*," says Opher. "This magnetic field can provide the extra pressure required to resist destruction."
NASA's two Voyager probes have been racing out of the solar system for more than 30 years. They are now beyond the orbit of Pluto and on the verge of entering interstellar space—but they are not there yet. The Voyagers are not actually inside the Local Fluff," says Opher. "But they are getting close and can sense what the cloud is like as they approach it."The Fluff is held at bay just beyond the edge of the solar system by the sun's magnetic field, which is inflated by solar wind into a magnetic bubble more than 10 billion km wide. Called the "heliosphere," this bubble acts as a shield that helps protect the inner solar system from galactic cosmic rays and interstellar clouds. The two Voyagers are located in the outermost layer of the heliosphere, or "heliosheath," where the solar wind is slowed by the pressure of interstellar gas.Voyager 1 entered the heliosheath in Dec. 2004; Voyager 2 followed almost 3 years later in Aug. 2007. These crossings were key to Opher et al's discovery.The size of the heliosphere is determined by a balance of forces: Solar wind inflates the bubble from the inside while the Local Fluff compresses it from the outside. Voyager's crossings into the heliosheath revealed the approximate size of the heliosphere and, thus, how much pressure the Local Fluff exerts. A portion of that pressure is magnetic and corresponds to the ~5 microgauss Opher's team has reported in Nature. The fact that the Fluff is strongly magnetized means that other clouds in the galactic neighborhood could be, too. Eventually, the solar system will run into some of them, and their strong magnetic fields could compress the heliosphere even more than it is compressed now. Additional compression could allow more cosmic rays to reach the inner solar system, possibly affecting terrestrial climate and the ability of astronauts to travel safely through space. On the other hand, astronauts wouldn't have to travel so far because interstellar space would be closer than ever. These events would play out on time scales of tens to hundreds of thousands of years, which is how long it takes for the solar system to move from one cloud to the next."There could be interesting times ahead!" says Opher.
To read the original research, look in the Dec. 24, 2009, issue of Nature for Opher et al's article, "A strong, highly-tilted interstellar magnetic field near the Solar System."Author: Dr. Tony Phillips Credit: science@NASA

Earth's upper atmosphere cooling dramatically

New research shows that the outermost layer of the atmosphere will lose 3 percent of its density over the coming decade, a sign of the far-reaching impacts of greenhouse gas emissions. As the density declines, orbiting satellites experience less drag.
© UCAR
When the sun is relatively inactive - as it has been in recent years - the outermost layer of Earth's atmosphere cools dramatically, new observations find.
The results could help scientists better understand the swelling and shrinking of our planet's atmosphere, a phenomenon that affects the orbits of satellites and space junk.
The data, from NASA's TIMED mission, show that Earth's thermosphere (the layer above 62 miles or 100 km above the Earth's surface) "responds quite dramatically to the effects of the 11-year solar cycle," Stan Solomon of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., said here this week at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union.
Knowing just how the energy flowing out from the sun naturally impacts the state of the thermosphere also will help scientists test predictions that man's emissions of carbon dioxide should cool this layer. (While that may seem to contradict the idea of global warming, it has long been known that carbon dioxide causes warming in the lowest part of the atmosphere and cooling in the upper layers of the atmosphere.)
Earth's thermosphere is one of the least explored parts of the atmosphere, but it is important because "the thermosphere is where the sun first interacts with our atmosphere," said James Russell III of Hampton University in Hampton, Va.
http://news.mobile.msn.com/en-us/articles.aspx?afid=1&aid=34479085 Space.com 10:48 AM EST December 18, 2009

New planets discovered

Three new planets have been found orbiting a nearby star that is almost identical to the sun.The planets, forming a mini-solar system, circle the star 61 Virginis which is just 27.8 light years away and can be seen with the naked eye.They have masses ranging from 5.3 to 24.9 times that of the Earth.Astronomers hope to discover even smaller potentially habitable worlds within a few years.The same international team also found a fourth planet orbiting another sun-like star 84 light years away called 23 Librae.61 Virginis lies in the constellation of Virgo, visible from both hemispheres. It has 0.96 of the sun's mass and is only slightly less bright.The star's family of planets was discovered by British, Australian and US astronomers using the Anglo-Australian Telescope in New South Wales, Australia, and the Keck telescope in Hawaii.The new worlds were identified by measuring the "wobble" effect of their gravity tugging on their parent star, a standard planet-finding technique.Professor Chris Tunney, one of the astronomers from the University of New South Wales, said: "These planets are particularly exciting. Neptune in our Solar System has a mass 17 times that of the Earth. It looks like there may be many sun-like stars nearby with planets of that mass or less. They point the way to even smaller planets that could be rocky and suitable for life."The findings on 61 Virginis are to appear in The Astrophysical Journal. The fourth planet is a Jupiter-sized "gas giant" orbiting 23 Librae in the constellation of Libra. Another planet was found orbiting this star in 2006. It takes 14 Earth-years to circle its star, only slightly more than Jupiter's 12-year orbit.

Spiral

well this is a great story one that needs to be recorded and kept for posterity.

Speculation was increasing today that the display was the result of an embarrassing failed test launch of a jinxed new Russian missile.
The Bulava missile was test-fired from the Dmitry Donskoi submarine in the White Sea early on Wednesday but failed at the third stage, say newspapers in Moscow today.

Strange spiral: Residents in northern Norway were left stunned after the lightshow, which almost looked computer-generated, appeared in the skies above them

Curious: A blue-green beam of light was reported to have come shooting out the centre of the spiral
This emerged despite earlier reports denying a missile launch yesterday. Even early today there was no formal confirmation from the Russian Defence Ministry.
The light appears to be unconnected with the aurora borealis, or northern lights, the natural magnetic phenomena that can often be viewed in that part of the world.
The mystery began when a blue light seemed to soar up from behind a mountain in the north of the country. It stopped mid-air, then began to move in circles. Within seconds a giant spiral had covered the entire sky.

Then a green-blue beam of light shot out from its centre - lasting for ten to 12 minutes before disappearing completely.
Onlookers describing it as 'like a big fireball that went around, with a great light around it' and 'a shooting star that spun around and around'.
Yesterday a Norwegian defence spokesman said the display was most likely from a failed Russian test launch.

Tromsō Geophysical Observatory researcher Truls Lynne Hansen agreed, saying the missile had likely veered out of control and exploded, and the spiral was light reflecting on the leaking fuel.
But last night Russia denied it had been conducting missile tests in the area.
A Moscow news outlet quoted the Russian Navy as denying any rocket launches from the White Sea area.
Norway should be informed of such launches under international agreements, it was stressed.
However this morning media reports claimed a missile had indeed been launched from the White Sea. Test firings are usually made from the White Sea, close to the Norwegian Arctic region.
Kommersant newspaper reported today that a test-firing before dawn on Wednesday coincided with the light show in the northern sky.
It also emerged today that Russia last week formally notified Norway of a window when a missile test might be carried out.

This included a seven hour period early on Wednesday at the time when the lights were seen.
The submarine Dmitry Donskoy went to sea on Monday, ahead of the test, and some reports suggest the vessel is now back in port.
A Russian military source said today that 'the third stage of the rocket did not work'.
The Russian Defence Ministry, with characteristic secrecy, has so far been unavailable for comment.

The Bulava, despite being crucial to Russia's plans to revamp its weaponry, is becoming an embarrassment after nine failed launches in 13 tests, prompting calls for it to be scrapped.
In theory, it has a range of 5,000 miles and could carry up to ten nuclear weapons bound for separate targets.
A previous failure in July forced the resignation of Yury Solomonov, the director of the Moscow Institute of Thermal Technology which is responsible for developing the missile.
However, he is now working as chief designer on the jinxed project.
The Norwegian Meteorological Institute was flooded with telephone calls after the light storm yesterday morning.
Totto Eriksen, from Tromsø, told VG Nett: 'It spun and exploded in the sky,'
He spotted the lights as he walked his daughter Amalie to school.
He said: 'We saw it from the Inner Harbor in Tromsø. It was absolutely fantastic.
'It almost looked like a rocket that spun around and around and then went diagonally down the heavens.
'It looked like the moon was coming over the mountain, but then came something completely different.'
Celebrity astronomer Knut Jørgen Røed Ødegaard said he had never seen anything like the lights.
He said: 'My first thought was that it was a fireball meteor, but it has lasted far too long.
'It may have been a missile in Russia, but I can not guarantee that it is the answer.'
Air traffic control in Tromsō claimed the light show lasted 'far too long to be an astronomical phenomenon'.

here's the link to view the whole show
http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1562587976?bctid=55946023001

article
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1234430/Mystery-spiral-blue-light-display-hovers-Norway.html

Meteo-tsunami

Abnormal tides reported in northern Tasmania last week are being attributed to a rare atmospheric disturbance, known as a meteo-tsunami.
The Weather Bureau took several calls from people in Stanley, Port Sorell and Bridport who noticed particularly high and fast moving tides on November the 22nd.The bureau says they was caused by a rare rissaga, or meteo-tsunami, but spokesman Brendan McMahon says it is not known what triggered the event.
"Unlike the conventional tsunami which we've come to know which is produced by a seismic activity, so an undersea earthquake or some sort of earthquake...this is produced by an atmospheric phenomenon.""So a deep low pressure system, the passage of a front moving through quite vigorously."
Bridport shack owner Tony Power witnessed the event.He says in a matter of minutes the tide came up to his shack and then went back out dragging two trees with it.
"I reckon within 10 minutes it was up over the sand bar coming towards us," he said."Fairly forceful, you probably wouldn't have stood up in it.
"It was pretty strange and eerie because you sort of didn't know how far it was going to come."We didn't know whether to retreat to higher ground."

LHC, revving up again

A piece of cable was responsible last year for the world's most expensive short-circuit. More than £30m-worth of damage was done to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the most advanced particle accelerator ever built, a few days after its ceremonial opening. It has taken Myers – and hundreds of other Cern scientists – more than a year to pinpoint the guilty piece of cable and repair the wreckage. "It was a very small piece, but it did immense damage," he said. It remains to be seen whether Myers can fix Cern's tattered technological reputation in the process – when his team restart their great machine in a few weeks. "I am not a nervous person," said the 63-year-old Belfast-born engineer. "And that is probably just as well."
The LHC had been inaugurated at 9.30am on 10 September 2008 to a barrage of global media attention. This was the God Machine that would unravel the secrets of the universe, it was claimed. Beams of protons, one of the key constituents of the atom's nucleus, were successfully fired round the machine's subterranean 18-mile circular tunnel under the Jura mountains outside Geneva.
Over the following weeks, it was predicted, scientists would recreate conditions that existed a trillionth of a second after the universe's birth and start making sensational discoveries as they smashed beams of protons into each other.
Discoveries would include the God Particle, a tiny entity also called the Higgs Boson, which is believed to give objects – including people – their mass. In addition, dark matter, a mysterious, invisible form of matter that permeates the universe, would be uncovered, along with a host of other revolutionary discoveries.
"It was all looking so good," said Myers. Then, at 11.45am on 19 September, things went spectacularly wrong. Faulty soldering in a small section of cable carrying power to the machine's huge magnets caused sparks to arc across its wiring and send temperatures soaring inside a sector of the LHC tunnel.
A hole was punched in the protective pipe that surrounds the cable and released helium, cooled to minus 271C, into a section of the collider tunnel. Pressure valves failed to vent the gas and a shock wave ran though the tunnel.
"The LHC uses as much energy as an aircraft carrier at full speed," said Myers. "When you release that energy suddenly, you do a lot of damage."
Firemen sent into the blackened, stricken collider found that dozens of the massive magnets that control its proton beams had been battered out of position. Soot and metal powder, vaporised by the explosion, coated much of the delicate machinery. "It took us a long time to find out just how serious the accident was," said Myers.
A 400-metre chunk of the £2.5bn device had been wrecked, it was discovered. Worse, when scientists traced the cause to a tiny piece of soldering, they realised that they would have to redesign major parts of the collider's entire safety systems to prevent a repeat event. That has taken more than a year to achieve.
Now Cern scientists have begun firing protons round one small section of the collider as they prepare for its re-opening. Over the next few weeks, more and more bunches of protons will be put into the machine until, by Christmas, beams will be in full flight and can be collided.
The LHC will then start producing results – 13 years after work on its construction began.
"There was so much expectation that we were about to make great discoveries last year and then the accident occurred," said Cern researcher Alison Lister. "Morale was very low when we found out just how bad it was. However, we should now be getting results by Christmas, and you couldn't get a better present than that."
When fully operational, the LHC will soak up 10 times more power than any other particle accelerator on Earth, consuming 120 megawatts of electricity – enough for an entire Swiss canton – to accelerate bunches of protons, kept in two beams, each less than a hair's breadth in diameter, to speeds that will come "within a gnat's whisker of the speed of light", according to Myers.
One beam will circulate clockwise, the other anti-clockwise. Then, at four points along the collider's tunnel, the beams will cross.
Bunches of protons – each containing 100bn particles – will slam into other oncoming bunches, triggering collisions that will fling barrages of sub-atomic detritus in all directions.
These explosive interactions will form the core of the great collider's operations and will generate new types of particle, including the Higgs, that will pop fleetingly into existence before disintegrating into a trail of other sub-atomic entities. New physics will be uncovered with Nobel prizes following in their wake. And that is not all, say sceptics. They argue that miniature black holes will be created and one of these could eventually grow to swallow up the Earth. The LHC would then not only be the world's biggest experiment – but its last. This fear has led protesters to make legal attempts to close down the LHC, one even making it to the European Court of Human Rights. All have failed, though one case – in Germany – has still to be resolved.
Even stranger is the claim by another group of physicists who say the production of Higgs bosons may be so abhorrent to nature that their creation would ripple backwards through time to stop the collider before it could make one, like a time traveller trying to halt his own birth.
"All Higgs machines shall have bad luck," said Dr Holger Bech Nielsen of the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen. Thus the cable meltdown that afflicted the LHC was an inevitable effect of the laws of time, a notion that leaves most Cern scientists scratching their heads in bafflement.
In fact, the real problem facing the LHC is simple. It is a vast device the size of London's Circle Line but is engineered to a billionth of a metre accuracy. Ensuring that no flaws arise at scales and dimensions like these pushes engineering to its absolute limits.
Cern almost succeeded last year. Now it is convinced that it has got it right this time. "All I can say is that the LHC is a much safer, much better understood machine than it was a year ago," said Myers.
Most physicists believe he is right. "If it works, we will have built the most complex machine in history," said one. "If not, we will have assembled the world's most expensive piece of modern art."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/nov/01/cern-large-hadron-collider

October 1, 2009

Latest entry from Brians Dreams is:
"new crack runs straight through earth on opposite ends of world - look at epicenters? W Orbital tilt 23.44 to 5.27 in 779 days?"
that leads us to the date of December 2011.

Tectonic plate cracking is bigtime for all the planet If anything is to survive, there would be no seasons with a tilt of only 5.27 degrees. The summation would also be that climates would become far more stable, less extreme, bringing in an entirely new epoc.

The world quakes

The principal research interest of Prof Sieh is earthquake geology, which uses geological layers and landforms to understand the geometries of active faults, the earthquakes they generate, and the crustal structure their movements produce. His early work on the San Andreas fault led to the discovery of how often and how regularly it produces large earthquakes in southern California.
More recently, his students and colleagues along with himself investigated Taiwan's multitude of active faults and figured out how their earthquakes are creating that mountainous island. they are currently exploring the earthquake geology of Myanmar (Burma). their principal current research interest is the subduction megathrust that produced the devastating giant Sumatran earthquakes and Indian Ocean tsunamis of 2004 and 2005. That research suggests that the megathrust is poised to produce yet another giant earthquake in western Sumatra.
Prof. Kerry SiehDirector, Earth Observatory of SingaporeProfessor of Geology

South Australian cyclone

A tornado which tore across farming areas of Eyre Peninsula in South Australia has been filmed on a mobile phone. Local Billy Branson captured the footage, while another ABC listener Mark, at Cummins, also photographed the tornado on his mobile phone.Matt Collopy from the Bureau of Meteorology said it was an unusual weather event for South Australia ."To actually get a report of a tornado itself is very rare," he said. Senior forecaster Mark Anolak said storms were likely to continue throughout the state into Thursday."With the thunderstorms we are expecting generally five to 10 millimetres across eastern parts of the state, probably less than five millimetres over the western parts of the state, but in the far east with the thunderstorms, local heavy falls are possible, getting up to 20, 30 millimetres," he said.Local resident Darren Kelly said the wild weather came without warning."We just see a bit of cloud an lightning kicking around out west, or north-west from here, from Cummins and then it sort of just come in and dumped a fair amount of rain in a short amount of time," he said.

WA quakes

There's been a whole lot of shaking going on, of the earthquake variety, in a small West Australian wheatbelt town.Beacon, 320km north-west of Perth, has had roughly 100 earthquakes in the last month, Geoscience Australia seismologist Phil Cummins said on Sunday.
Between three and six earthquakes registering three and above on the Richter Scale had been detected in the area in the last month."A few of those have been in the mid to high fours," Mr Cummins said.The largest, which registered nearly five on the Richter Scale came within 24 hours of earthquakes in Melbourne and off the coast near Broome on Friday."That could be felt over a wide area, it could even cause damage if you were right on top of it, minor damage," Mr Cummins said."Certainly these were as big as the ones that shook all of Melbourne."I think for the people in the wheatbelt who are used to earthquakes, they probably don't get too upset about it but you take the same earthquake and put it in Melbourne where people haven't experienced it and people can be very upset."The earthquake clusters, known as swarms, were not unusual for the wheatbelt area but what was unusual was the migration of the swarms around the wheatbelt.Similar patterns were noted in Koorda in 2003 to 2005 and Burrakin between 2000 and 2002."These ones like the Beacon case where you seem to get several moderate earthquakes and then lots and lots of smaller quakes, it is a bit unusual," Mr Cummins said."It's called a swarm because it doesn't follow the typical foreshock, minishock, aftershock pattern or at least it doesn't seem to," he said."That's this migrating swarm, I'm not sure I've ever heard of that before."For that area it would seem that this behaviour is not typical."Seismologists were uncertain if the swarms were related to larger earthquake events such as the wheatbelt's Meckering earthquake in 1968, which registered 6.8 on the Richter scale.
The seismic activity could be relieving stresses and avoiding larger earthquakes or it could result in a big rupture."We just don't know ..." Mr Cummins said."The big question really is whether it has any relationship to larger earthquakes which occur."How long the seismic activity lasts for the residents of rural Beacon is anyone's guess, Mr Cummins said."They seem to die out gradually, we don't really know that much of what to expect, I mean Burrakin went on for a couple of years, Koorda sort of gradually started up and faded out," he said."It could continue for a while."

South western oz rock & roll

The earth tremor that rocked the centre of Melbourne was one of three quakes that hit Australia in the one day, a seismologist says.Melbourne residents reported buildings shaking across the metropolitan area when a tremor struck at 8.55pm (AEDT) on Friday.Geoscience Australia, which monitors earthquake activity, said the tremor measured magnitude 4.6 on the Richter scale , with the epicentre at Korumburra, about 90km southeast of Melbourne .The US Geological Survey reported on its website the tremor measured 4.7.Geoscience Australia's duty seismologist Phil Cummins said residents across a wide area felt the Melbourne tremor - one of three quakes to hit Australian that day."There were many reports from across a wide area - this was felt across a 100km radius," he told AAP on Friday."It was certainly a moderate earthquake that was likely to be felt across a wide area but is unlikely to have caused any damage, except possibly some minor damage near the epicentre."He said tremors were also felt near Broome in WA and near Beacon in WA's wheatbelt."Those were both close to magnitude five," he told ABC radio on Saturday."They occurred in remote areas so they were felt by far fewer people than this (the Melbourne ) one."But it is quite remarkable that we get three of roughly the same size in the one day."Victorian State Emergency Service (SES) spokesman Allen Briggs said the service was inundated with phone calls from the public after the Melbourne tremor but there had been no reports of any damage."It was certainly enough to rattle windows and we've had reports it was felt in metropolitan Melbourne and as far down as Warragul and Leongatha in Gippsland," Mr Briggs said on Friday.Ron Smith, who lives in Kew, in Melbourne's inner northeast, said he was relaxing at home when he felt the building shake."Jeez, it came as a bit of a surprise. We were just sitting around when all of a sudden the place starts vibrating," he said.Residents in Reservoir, in Melbourne's north, and householders in the Dandenong Ranges east of the city, reported feeling the tremor shortly before 9pm."It felt like a large truck driving past the house," Charisse Ede, of Monbulk, said, adding she felt a second, smaller tremor a few minutes later.A spokeswoman for Victoria Police said the incident had also been reported to the police but she advised members of the public to only dial triple-0 in an emergency situation.

comments from people who experienced the quake were:rumbling shook my house, the wooden floors were what made the most noise, squeaking nails and creaking wood; I heard a deep rumbling sound; We live in a two-storey home with a concrete slab in Ringwood North. Upstairs I was laying in bed and felt the tremor. Sliding doors were knocking together, bed shaking, lasting at least a minute. Interestingly enough I came down stairs to see what was going on and those downstairs on the slab felt nothing; as the rumbling reached its peak, everything started to shake back and forth and slightly up and down; we heard a wind-like sound; it felt like a wave passing through the house

HQJOC opens officially

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has officially opened the new Australian Defence Force (ADF) headquarters near Canberra, today.

Up to 750 ADF staff will work at the $300 million centre in Bungendore, NSW.

"This is a great and good day for the Australian defence community," Mr Rudd told the crowd at the opening ceremony on Saturday.

Gamma ray burst from Eta Carina

The US Fermi telescope has detected a massive explosion in space which scientists say is the biggest gamma-ray burst ever detected, a report published on Thursday in Science Express said.The spectacular blast, which occurred in the Carina constellation, produced energy ranging from 3,000 to more than five billion times that of visible light, astrophysicists said."Visible light has an energy range of between two and three electron volts and these were in the millions to billions of electron volts," astrophysicist Frank Reddy of US space agency NASA told AFP."If you think about it in terms of energy, X-rays are more energetic because they penetrate matter. These things don't stop for anything - they just bore through and that's why we can see them from enormous distances," Reddy said.Gamma-ray bursts are the universe's most luminous explosions, which astronomers believe occur when massive stars run out of nuclear fuel.As a star's core collapses into a black hole, jets of material powered by processes not yet fully understood blast outward.The jets bore through the collapsing star and continue into space, where they interact with gas previously shed by the star, generating bright afterglows that fade with time.Using the Gamma-Ray Burst Optical/Near-Infrared Detector (GROND) on a telescope at the European Southern Observatory in Chile, a team led by Jochen Greiner of Germany's Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics determined that the huge gamma-ray burst occurred 12.2 billion light years away.The sun, by comparison, is eight light minutes from earth.With the extraordinary distance taken into account, scientists worked out that the blast exceeded the power of nearly 9,000 ordinary supernovae, some of the most energetic explosions known, which occur at the end of a star's life time.The gas jets emitting the initial gamma rays moved at one-ten-thousandth of a percentage point less than the speed of light, the scientists said."This burst's tremendous power and speed make it the most extreme recorded to date," a statement issued by the US Department of Energy said.

Google Earth's find

No, the lost city of Atlantis has not been found.according to Google.Google Earth images showing what appeared to be a grid of streets on the ocean floor off the coast of Africa were actually tracks left by boat sonar.Britain's Daily Telegraph caused the brief flurry of excitement among Atlantis hunters by publishing Google Earth pictures on Friday of an unexplained grid on the seabed 1000km off the northwestern coast of Africa.An Atlantis expert told the paper that the grid was located at one of the possible sites of Atlantis, the legendary city described by Greek philosopher Plato.Google, however, had another explanation."It's true that many amazing discoveries have been made in Google Earth — a pristine forest in Mozambique that is home to previously unknown species, a fringing coral reef off the coast of Australia, and the remains of an Ancient Roman villa, to name just a few," Google said in a statement."In this case, however, what users are seeing is an artifact of the data collection process."Bathymetric (or seafloor terrain) data is often collected from boats using sonar to take measurements of the seafloor. The lines reflect the path of the boat as it gathers the data," Google said. Truth or coverup?