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
Sunday, 10 January 2010
Tuesday, 15 December 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.
Friday, 11 December 2009
Spiral
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
Thursday, 3 December 2009
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."
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."
Tuesday, 10 November 2009
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
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
Friday, 2 October 2009
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.
"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
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
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