Just a thought about creation

The Book of Genesis (from the Latin Vulgate, in turn borrowed or transliterated from Greek γένεσις, meaning "origin"; Hebrew: בְּרֵאשִׁית‎, Bərēšīṯ, "In [the] beginning") is the first book of the Hebrew Bible (the Tanakh) and the Christian Old Testament.^[1][2]
The basic narrative expresses the central theme: God creates the world (along with creating the first man and woman) and appoints man as his regent, but man proves disobedient and God destroys his world through the Flood.

And so forth in the article  as i am not that  intelligent to know the bible and the cration. But lets look at other religions. Hinduism for instance. Even though Hinduism do not realy there was only one creation but creation after another creation, Some hindu texts say this:

..........Vishnu spoke to his servant: "It's time to begin", Brahma vowed. Vishnu commanded: "Create the world". A wind swept the waters. Vishnu and the serpent vanished...........

Read the rest here  

Now we go to Islam

Surely, your Lord is Allah. Who created the heavens and the earth in six periods; then He settled Himself on the Throne. He makes the night cover the day, pursuing it swiftly. He has created the sun and the moon and the stars, all made subservient by His command…
He it is Who sends the winds… Good land brings forth vegetation plentifully by the command of the Lord.
Surah 7:55-59

I have created men, high and low, that they may worship Me. I desire no support from them, nor do I desire that they should feed Me. Surely, it is Allah who is the Great Sustainer, the Lord of Power, the Strong.
Surah 51:56

 taken from    

ow how about an middle eastern Judaism going back few millennia before Jesus

.........The Creation
The word of G-d brought everything into being: heaven and earth, mountains and rivers, and every living thing. In the beginning, G-d called into existence the heaven and earth. Within six days He shaped a world of order and beauty.
The First Day
On the first day, G-d said, “Let there be Light” -- and there was Light.
The Second Day
On the second day G-d made the sky, and called it Heaven.
The Third Day
On the third da.........

Read the rest here

Some of you will say, Yeah but....". The genesis says different.

here

[1:1] In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth,
[1:2] the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.
[1:3] Then God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light. 

I do not question or dispute the above statements of the idea of creation by various religions of the world. My question is how many religious leaders have told the scientists to keep the creation theory in line with the religions. Hold on m8, I know Pope invited all the prominent scientists one time in '60s or '70s (1900 of course) for an audience. He ordered them not to research beyond Big Bang. Wonder why?

Then i wonder how many other denominations of religious leaders said the same.

I do not believe in the Big Bang. I do not think that the speed of electromagnetic waves have a limit. We can measure all frequencies of waves by the limited capacity of our tools. They all depend on the speed of light. Lasers etc. Ok I am not a physicist but I am a logician.I see the whole world in a very different spectrum of waves. Gravity is a wave. Now we know it as a fact. Did we put gravity into equations to verify the light emitted by the light sources from the so called edge of the universe.

When I was little I heard that the universe was 5 billion years old as: that was as far as they could see. Now they say it is 13.5 billion years. That is if the centre of the universe is us the fecking Earth. So we can easily say, if we are not the centre, then there is more to it. The scientists are keeping us in the dark. Why?

My feeling is that the scientists want to make money. They want to understand and learn an antiquated system of mathematics, which has been fudged and updated. remember the latin and greek texts of the bible? And the pali and sanskrit gathas of buddhism? They all were made difficult to understand by priests. Now we have learned boffins, who say we do not understand. Shit init?, 

What weighs more a pound of feathers or a pound of gold?

Psychiatry, Political Abuse?

From our history as a human kind, we have been mislead by many politicians, religious leaders and media (newspapers, tv, radio and books)

How do I know? I read a lot of articles ha ha hee hee.

I have no problem with my mental state except when I get angry. so don't! There seems to be quite a few people who suffer from mental illness in UK according to the boffins.

The facts and figures around Mental Health in the UK are alarming.
 

•1 in 4 people will experience some kind of mental health problem in the course of a year
•Mixed anxiety and depression is the most common mental disorder in Britain
•Women are more likely to have been treated for a mental health problem than men
•About 10% of children have a mental health problem at any one time
•Depression affects 1 in 5 older people
•Suicides rates show that British men are three times as likely to die by suicide than British women
•Self-harm statistics for the UK show one of the highest rates in Europe: 400 per 100,000 population
•Only 1 in 10 prisoners has no mental disorder

Now lets take them one by one.
 1 in 4 have mental problems in the last year. Hurray I am not one of them.
 Anxiety and depression is an on going mental problem for me. Just before I try to chat up a bird I have anxiety. When I get the thumbs down from her I feel depressed. So I have a problem.
 I am male.
 So when I concider these I must be either sufferer or not.

In US it is similar but there are more names for these disorders in the mental capacity.

So in the past history of human kind we have seen psychiatry and politics go hand in hand. And I wrote this in my other blogsphere.

Drones Are Here To Stay And Kill

We are in the 21st century and we are getting better at killing more and more people. Now we do not need human beings to be in the front line. We are proud to present the drones. The killing of innocent civilians are just collateral damage. Now I present to you a very well researched article about US action in Pakistan.

After nine months of research and more than 130 interviews, in what is being called one of the most exhaustive attempts by academics to evaluate Washington’s drone wars, the Stanford and New York universities’ law schools have finally put out a damning report.

According to the new study, just one in fifty victims of the CIA program of “targeted” drone strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas are known militants, while between 2,562 and 3,325 people were killed in Pakistan between June 2004 and mid-September this year – of whom between 474 and 881 were civilians, including 176 children.

Based on these and other figures, the report calls the strikes politically counterproductive and damaging, concluding they have killed innocent civilians, ruined the local economy, undermined respect for international law and left the people of the tribal areas psychologically battered, constantly living under the daily threat of annihilation from the air.

The report especially focuses on children becoming collateral damage of strikes, and comes down particularly hard on the common tactic of the “double-tap” strike where initial strikes are followed up by further missiles, killing an even greater number of civilians, and putting fear into the hearts of rescuers who often wait for hours before daring to visit the scene of an attack.

You can read all the article here.

Now we in the free world has a new toy called the Sea Drone. it is an underwater toy which responses to a computer in a far far away land. Are you getting excited now. I tell you this one costs a lot of money.If you want to buy one you can always contact this place: The Naval Undersea Warfare Center. Here it is:

Nice init?

The US Navy is currently experimenting with a new breed of drone submarines in the waters next to Newport, Rhode Island. Their hope is that these drones will take the first steps (or the first doggy paddle, if you will) into a future of autonomous submarines.

These drones, which are technically known as Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (of course) could be a “game changer” for the Navy, said Christoper Egan, a program manager at the Naval Undersea Warfare Center. Every single thing that makes aerial drones so effective can just as easily be applied to submarines.

One of the biggest advantages is size — if you have a pilot in a submarine, then you automatically have a minimum size requirement. You need a control system, air, and a supply of food and water if you expect the submarine to remain submerged for days at a time. Once you remove a person from a submarine, you can shrink the submersible down to the size of, say, an adult tuna or a torpedo. That makes for more efficient, stealthier submarines that cost only a fraction of the cost of a conventional one-man submersible.

These drones could be used to map the ocean floor, detect enemy mines, gather surveillance, or assist in anti-submarine warfare. For example, one clever little drone is the Razor, which uses stealthy, flipper-like devices to drift through the ocean, kind of like a sea turtle. The Navy hopes that the Razor would be virtually undetectable by enemy systems.

I plucked above from this article. 

So as stated it is for peaceful work for us humans as well as the oceans. Oceanographers are clapping their hands and shouting"Bravo". But we war like people do not stop there. They state in the article something called the Razor. That cannot be detected by the enemy. May be they are thinking about sharks and big whales. No my friend there is more to it than that. We introduce to you The Large Displacement Unmanned Underwater Vehicle (LDUUV). 

The LDUUV will have a large payload bay, making it capable of releasing sensors, communication buoys, smaller UUS and weapons. The Navy's current emphasis is on persistent surveillance “over the horizon.” However, its most significant impact could be in mine warfare, both offensive and defensive.

In the counter-mine role, the LDUUV will be able to detect and locate mines, then engage and neutralize them safely. And the LDUUV could make offensive mine laying more controllable and clandestine. In the transformational mine concept, the LDUUV lays networked sensors across a wide area. These track and identify every vessel within range. Depending on the situation, any vessel can be engaged, by either an anchored weapon or a torpedo from the UUV itself. The advantage of using an LDUUV is that the minefield can be switched on or off, or changed in size. It can be emplaced in advance, and never activated. De-mining and clear-up do not pose the major problem that they do with traditional mines.

The Navy plans to release a request for proposals for the LDUUV in 2014. Last October Rear Adm. Barry Bruner, the Navy's undersea warfare director, indicated that up to 10 LDUUVs would be procured. The LDUUV is being pitched as a helper to complement manned submarines. However, if it achieves the technology goals for endurance and autonomy, it will pose serious questions of what exactly large unmanned craft could not ultimately do.

I pay respect to this article

Here is a map of the seas around Middle East.

Straight of Hormuz is a narrow shipping lane, just 34 k wide at the narrowest point. each side of authority has 3 k and a buffer zone of 3k. Iran has laid mines in the area and in 1988, one of which injured 10 when it blew a hole in the guided missile frigate USS Samuel B. Robert. So last month (September 2012)there was a big Naval Exercise in the seas around Iran.

The admiral in charge of the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet on Thursday defended the large American-led naval exercises in the Persian Gulf and other strategic Mideast waterways as a way to ensure stability and security in the region, rebutting Iran’s concerns about what it sees as foreign military meddling.

More than 30 countries are involved in the anti-mine exercises. Although the Navy says the maneuvers are purely defensive and not directed at any country, they are widely seen as a message to Iranian officials who have threatened to block the Strait of Hormuz at the mouth of the Gulf.

Yes I found these article, one, two. 

Then we connect the dots from far far above this blog about the underwater drones.

The USS Ponce is to serve as a “staging and command post for mine hunting operations”.  USS Ponce (See above) is also carrying an “underwater drone” .  “The BAE Systems Plc (BA/) 25mm guided ‘‘Mark 38 Mod 2,” and Kingfish unmanned underwater vehicle are among the programs the Pentagon this year accelerated under a “Fast Lane” initiative to counter Iranian naval weapons. One of the most serious threats, the Navy says, are Iranian speedboats that can employ “swarming” tactics.” (Bloomberg, September 19, 2012)

There are questions about all this when we read this bit in that article.

These war games serve essentially two related purposes.

1. To threaten and intimidate Iran with a massive display of military might.

2. To deliberately create conditions within proximity of Iran’s territorial waters, which could lead to a Gulf of Tonkin type incident. The latter would involve military provocation conducive to confrontation and/or response by Iran.  This incident, would in turn provide a justification for attacking Iran on the grounds of self-defense.

The unspoken objective of warship diplomacy is to trigger an all out war. The objective is to portray Iran as the aggressor, as a threat to peace and security. Already insinuations abound in the Western media  to the effect that Iran may attempt to “draw the Americans into a conflict”. Confrontation in the Strait of Hormuz is part of the simulations and scenarios contemplated by US and allied military planners:

“Western leaders are convinced that Iran will retaliate to any attack by attempting to mine or blockade the shipping lane through which passes around 18 million barrels of oil every day, approximately 35 per cent of the world’s oil traded by sea.” (Ibid )

 I am not trying to scare people but it would be wise for all to consider not having any arms for attacking other countries. Ah yes we can always have some arms for defense, yes?

I thank this well researched article byJulie Lévesque

Global Research, September 28, 2012

Url of this article:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/american-drones-for-covert-underwater-warfare-against-iran/

Babies And Feeding

About ten years ago a friends visited me with their little son. Few weeks old. they were at my place for a quite a few hours. I noticed that the mother was feeding the little one very regular. Too regular I thought? well every 15 minutes in goes the bottle in the little mouth and burp burp, cleaned undies and sleep. I did not say a word as I have no kids and no experience except looking after babies once they are toddlers.

About eight years later I bumped into the family in a festival and got introduced to the now eight year old lad. Boy! is he bouncy or what? Too bouncy I thought , my recollections going back. Now here is what the boffins say about the feeding lark.

Ba­bies who are fed when­ev­er they want may lat­er per­form bet­ter in school than those who were fed on a sched­ule, new re­search sug­gests.



The find­ing is based on the re­sults of in­tel­li­gence tests and school-based stand­ard­ized tests car­ried out be­tween the ages of five and 14. The IQ scores of eight-year-old chil­dren who had been demand-fed as ba­bies were four to five points high­er than the scores of sched­ule-fed chil­dren, the stu­dy found. IQ tests are a meas­ure of in­tel­li­gence de­signed to ex­press the dif­fer­ence be­tween a per­son’s in­tel­li­gence and the av­er­age in­tel­li­gence for their age group, roughly as a per­cent­age.


The find­ings are pub­lished in the Eu­ro­pe­an Jour­nal of Pub­lic Health.


The study was car­ried out by re­search­ers at the In­sti­tute for So­cial and Eco­nom­ic Re­search at the Uni­vers­ity of Es­sex, U.K., and at the Uni­vers­ity of Ox­ford. But the re­search­ers urged cau­tion in in­ter­pret­ing the find­ings.

Now I have to admit that these findings are not conclusive. They have to get a better spectrum of population. for a good understanding of feeding babies there are lots of fine ideas, but you can always try this as a start, because there are lots of comments at the end.

Chernobyl disaster

"It concludes that based on records now available, some 985,000 people died, mainly of cancer, as a result of the Chernobyl accident. That is between when the accident occurred in 1986 and 2004. More deaths, it projects, will follow."

Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment

Thatcher Among First to See Global Warming

2. Thatcher Among First to See Global Warming

British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was credited with being the first world leader to voice alarm over global warming — but she also became one of the earliest “climate skeptics.”

Thatcher expressed concern over climate change in 1988, calling for urgent international action and citing evidence presented to the U.S. Senate by James Hansen, head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Christopher Booker noted in Britain’s Telegraph.

She supported the establishment of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and in 1990 opened the Hadley Centre to study man-made global warming.

But in her 2003 book “Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World,” Thatcher issued “what amounts to an almost complete recantation of her earlier views,” Booker reported, and “voiced precisely the fundamental doubts about the warming scare that have since become familiar to us.”

She questioned whether carbon dioxide is the chief force influencing world climate, rather than natural factors such as solar activity, and said claims about rising sea levels were exaggerated.

“She mocked Al Gore and the futility of ‘costly and economically damaging’ schemes to reduce CO2 emissions,” Booker wrote. “She pointed out that the dangers of a world getting colder are far worse than those of a CO2-enriched world growing warmer.”

In fact, a prominent American geologist recently declared that global warming has ended and “even more harmful” global cooling has already begun.

As the Insider Report disclosed in May, Dr. Don Easterbrook, a university professor and associate editor of the Geological Society of America Bulletin, warned in a scientific paper that global cooling over the next two to three decades “will be far more damaging than global warming would have been.”

Thatcher, Booker also observed, “recognized how distortions of the science had been used to mask an anti-capitalist, left-wing political agenda which posed a serious threat to the progress and prosperity of mankind . . .

“What she set in train earlier continues to exercise its baleful influence to this day. But the fact that she became one of the first and most prominent of ‘climate skeptics’ has been almost entirely buried from view.”

Thatcher was back in the news recently when Britain’s Daily Mail reported that she had agreed to meet with Sarah Palin if the former Alaska governor visits Britain. Palin’s representatives had approached the “Iron Lady” to request the meeting.

“A meeting with Margaret Thatcher would be an enormous publicity coup for Sarah Palin,” a source in Britain told the newspaper.

“Palin’s big hero is Ronald Reagan. In U.S. Republican folklore, Thatcher and Reagan brought down the Soviet Union between them. That’s why Maggie is so important.”

The Drug Cocktail To Feel Youthful

The 30 read­i­ly avail­a­ble vit­a­min and sup­ple­ment in­gre­di­ents used in the "cock­tail" tested on mice. In­gre­di­ents are list­ed along with the near­ly ex­act per­cent­ages in which they were in­clud­ed, high­est first. Mice received about 70 mg per day of the cock­tail. This par­tic­u­lar cock­tail is not avail­a­ble on the mar­ket, al­though re­search­ers are in­ves­ti­gat­ing de­vel­op­ing new sup­ple­ments based on the re­search. Note that many of these sub­stances are not gov­ern­ment re­gu­lated and that qual­ity and pur­ity are not always guar­ant­eed with com­merc­ially avai­lable pre­par­ations.

http://www.world-science.net/othernews/100215_life

Heat Wave In 2007

All these pics are from the website:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6914490.stm#maps

In a 'normal' summer, the Atlantic jetstream directs areas of low pressure, which bring cloud and rain, to the north of the UK. High pressure systems over Europe and the Atlantic bring warm, settled conditions.
Pressure chart: 29/6/06. Source: Met Office

This summer, the jetstream is flowing further south allowing low pressure systems to sweep straight over the centre of Britain. It is also pulling in warmer air from the sub-tropics and Africa which is sweeping over south-eastern Europe.
Pressure chart: 24/07/07. Source: Met Office

Up to 500 people have died in the past week from a heatwave in Hungary, a top health official has said.

Jet Streams

When they reach a latitude of 22°, the jet streams coincide with the generation of new sunspots, and a new solar cycle begins.

'Sluggish' jet streams linked to quiet Sun

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/39525

For The Book

Earth's Upper Atmosphere Cooling Dramatically
By Andrea Thompson, Senior Writer

http://www.livescience.com/space/091217-agu-earth-atmosphere-cooling.html

posted: 17 December 2009 09:44 am ET
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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.

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.

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.)

Understanding the thermosphere

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.

NASA launched the Thermosphere-Ionosphere-Mesophere Energetics and Dynamics (TIMED) mission in 2001 to get a better picture of this outer layer. The energy that comes into it from the sun is absorbed by air molecules and reradiated to space during the normal ups and downs in solar energy that occur over a roughly 11-year time span.

The sun has been in a particularly prolonged and deep solar minimum for the last couple of years, with fewer sunspots and solar storms erupting on its surface. When the sun is in this state, it also sends less energy out in the soft X-ray and extreme ultraviolet parts of its spectrum. These wavelengths of light have a significant impact on the thermosphere, where air molecules absorb their energy and the reradiate it in the form of infrared energy.

The TIMED mission measured both the amount of incoming solar energy in the thermosphere and the amount of energy being sent back out into space from the layer and found a significant decrease in both.

"The sun is in a very unusual period," said Marty Mlynczak, a TIMED team member at NASA Langley in Virginia. "The Earth's thermosphere is responding remarkably – up to an order of magnitude decrease in infrared emission/radiative cooling by some molecules."

Less radiation in both directions means that this layer of the atmosphere also cools substantially. In fact, the thermosphere has cooled by a factor of 10 since the last solar maximum in early 2002.

"I certainly didn't expect to see this eight years ago," Mlynczak said.

The exact temperature of the thermosphere can vary substantially, but the average temperature above 180 miles (300 km) is about 800 degrees Fahrenheit (427 degrees Celsius) at solar minimum and 1,700 degrees Fahrenheit (927 degrees Celsius) at solar maximum. (Though these temperatures sound hot, you would not actually feel warm in the thermosphere, because the molecules in that layer are too far apart.)

The temperature at this extreme solar minimum is likely a few degrees colder than in an average minimum, but that small change can cause a large change in the density of the layer.

What a drag

This same cooling effect is expected to happen (somewhat counterintuitively) as carbon dioxide concentrations increase from emissions at Earth's surface. So understanding the natural variability of this layer is important to detecting any changes from carbon dioxide increases.

The cooling effect also has an effect on the orbits of satellites, because it changes the density of the atmosphere layer. For example, if the layer heats up, it expands like a marshmallow in a microwave, as several scientists described it, and lower, denser parts of the atmosphere rise to higher altitudes. Essentially, as the upper atmosphere expands, the lower atmosphere also expands to fill the space. When the thermosphere cools, the opposite happens and the layers deflate and sink to lower altitudes.

The changing density means that satellites end up with either more or less drag on them, which can change the shape of their orbits. In the case of something like the Hubble Space Telescope, this can have implications on the orbiter's lifetime, Solomon told LiveScience. Less drag during a cooler period means the satellite might live longer, he said.

The cooling also could have implications for the buildup of so-called "space junk" – old satellites and pieces of satellites that have begun to litter the upper atmosphere and can pose a threat to other orbiting spacecraft, such as the International Space Station. Less drag means this junk gets speedier and could pose more of a threat.

More work is needed to fully understand the links between the sun's energy, rising greenhouse gas emissions and the Earth's outer atmosphere, the scientists said.

For The Book

Sun May Soon Send Magnetic Storms Toward Earth
http://www.usnews.com/science/articles/2010/01/11/sun-may-soon-send-magnetic-storms-toward-earth.html

DAN ELLIOTT,
Associated Press Writer

BOULDER, Colo.—The sun may finally be awakening from its longest quiet period in about a century and powering up to solar maximum, when it could fling disruptive electromagnetic storms toward Earth.


But once the sun does ramp up, it could be a relatively quiet solar maximum, with a below-average number of eruptions, scientists say.

Some researchers argue the sun has begun to enter solar maximum; others say it's not there yet. They do agree the current quiet period, or solar minimum, is the longest since the early 1900s, but they don't know why.

"For the average person or for a technological society like ours, a hundred years is a pretty long time," said Dan Baker, director of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado.

A solar cycle usually lasts about 11 years, measured from one low point to the next. The most recent started about 13 years ago, in 1996.

Scientists won't declare the quiet period over until after a sustained stretch of activity, generally about three months, said Frank Eparvier, a scientist at the space physics lab.

"We've increased a little bit and had some strong active regions," Eparvier said, but it hasn't been long enough to say solar maximum has begun.

The sun goes through fairly regular cycles of more and fewer eruptions, averaging as many as 180 per day during solar maximum and dipping as low as zero per day during solar minimum.

The magnetic fields that cause the eruptions are themselves influenced by a mix of internal solar motions, including rotation, shears, turbulence and global circulation similar to Earth's ocean currents.

Sarah Gibson, a scientist with the High Altitude Observatory at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, calls it "a delicate mix of ordered and chaotic processes."

The consensus prediction for the next solar maximum is a small one, averaging about 90 or fewer sunspots a day in 2013, Eparvier said.

A panel of scientists convened by NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the International Space Environment Service reviewed more than 100 published forecasts and eventually coalesced around the small-maximum prediction.

Solar eruptions can send billions of tons of magnetically charged particles into space at high speed. If those particle clouds, called plasma, collide with the Earth's magnetic field, they can create dramatic effects ranging from a beautiful aurora borealis to a devastating electrical blackout.

The sun's volatile magnetic fields can become so severely twisted that they snap and then reconnect, producing a flash called a solar flare and a plasma eruption, Gibson said. If the plasma's magnetic field collides with the Earth's own magnetic field, they connect with another powerful snap.

That can add electrical current on power lines, overtax transformers and set off a rapid collapse of parts of the power grid. It can disrupt radio signals, cause Global Positioning System devices to be off by the distance of a football field and cut off communication between ground controllers and jetliners flying over polar regions. That forces airlines to send planes on longer routes that take more time and burn more fuel.

United Airlines diverted 26 flights from their normal polar routes in January 2005 to avoid communications blackouts during solar storms.

In March 1989, a geomagnetic storm triggered the collapse of a power grid in Quebec, leaving an estimated 6 million people without electricity for nine hours. And in 2006, a burst of solar radiation disoriented virtually all GPS receivers on the lighted half of the Earth, the National Weather Service said.

Baker said radiation from solar flares could be harmful to space travelers and even airline crews who are repeatedly exposed to it on flights over the Earth's poles.

Solar plasma can also physically compress the Earth's magnetic field so much that it's smaller than the orbit of some satellites. Without that magnetic field to orient themselves, those satellites can have trouble communicating with ground stations. Baker estimated that $200 billion worth of satellites are in orbits that leave them vulnerable to such disruptions.

Some satellites are more vulnerable to radiation damage than previous models. During the Cold War, many satellites were "hardened" against enemy radiation attacks, but when that threat passed, designers took fewer protective measures.

___

On the Net:

Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics: http://lasp.colorado.edu/

High Altitude Observatory: http://www.hao.ucar.edu/

Gold­en Ra­tio

The “pitch” of these notes, or their fre­quen­cies of vibra­t­ion, are in a ra­tio of about 1.618, the same “the gold­en ra­tio fa­mous from art and ar­chi­tec­ture,” he con­tin­ued. If two num­bers are re­lat­ed by the gold­en ra­tio, their sum is al­so re­lat­ed to the larg­er of them by the gold­en ra­tio. In oth­er words, if A di­vid­ed by B is that spe­cial num­ber, then A+B di­vid­ed by A is the same num­ber.

US Food Waste

http://www.world-science.net/othernews/091125_waste

For ex­am­ple, food waste is now es­ti­mat­ed to ac­count for more than one quar­ter of the to­tal freshwa­ter
con­sump­tion and more than 300 mil­lion bar­rels of oil per year rep­re­sent­ing about 4 per­cent of the to­tal U.S. oil con­sump­tion.

The re­search­ers found that pe­r-capita food waste has pro­gres­sively in­creased by about 50 per­cent since 1974, reach­ing more than 150 tril­lion Calo­ries year­ly. Pre­vi­ous cal­cula­t­ions are likely to have un­deres­ti­mat­ed the waste by as much as 25 per­cent, the group said.

Battery Life

History of Battery Development



1600 Gilbert (England) Establishment electrochemistry study
1791 Galvani (Italy) Discovery of ‘animal electricity’
1800 Volta (Italy) Invention of the voltaic cell
1802 Cruickshank (England) First electric battery capable of mass production
1820 Ampère (France) Electricity through magnetism
1833 Faraday (England) Announcement of Faraday’s Law
1836 Daniell (England) Invention of the Daniell cell
1859 Planté (France) Invention of the lead acid battery
1868 Leclanché (France) Invention of the Leclanché cell
1888 Gassner (USA) Completion of the dry cell
1899 Jungner (Sweden) Invention of the nickel-cadmium battery
1901 Edison (USA) Invention of the nickel-iron battery
1932 Shlecht & Ackermann (Germany) Invention of the sintered pole plate
1947 Neumann (France) Successfully sealing the nickel-cadmium battery
Mid 1960 Union Carbide (USA) Development of primary alkaline battery
Mid 1970 Development of valve regulated lead acid battery
1990 Commercialization nickel-metal hydride battery
1992 Kordesch (Canada) Commercialization reusable alkaline battery
1999 Commercialization lithium-ion polymer
2001 Anticipated volume production of proton exchange membrane fuel cell




Figure 1-5: History of battery development.
The battery may be much older. It is believed that the Parthians who ruled Baghdad (ca. 250 bc) used batteries to electroplate silver. The Egyptians are said to have electroplated antimony onto copper over 4300 years ago.

Your Car and Home Could Soon Be Powered By Urine

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/07/28/Your-Car-and-Home-Could-Soon-Be-Powered-By-Your-Urine.aspx

Urine-powered cars, homes and personal electronic devices could be available in six months.
Using a nickel-based electrode, scientists can create large amounts of cheap hydrogen from urine that could be burned or used in fuel cells. One cow can provide enough energy to supply hot water for 19 houses.
One molecule of urea, a major component of urine, contains four atoms of hydrogen bonded to two atoms of nitrogen. If you place a special nickel electrode into a pool of urine and apply an electrical current, hydrogen gas is released.
A urine-powered vehicle could theoretically travel 90 miles per gallon.Sources:
MSNBC July 8, 2009

“theory of everything”

http://www.world-science.net/othernews/090707_string

A “theory of everything” is said to solve its first real-world problem

July 8, 2009
Courtesy University of Leiden
and World Science staff

For the first time, re­search­ers say they have solved a real-world prob­lem us­ing a very ab­stract “the­ory of ever­ything” that of­ten has been crit­i­cized as un­test­a­ble.

Now, the sci­en­tists claim, the crit­ics may have to re­think their po­si­tion.

The sci­en­tists at­tempted to use the con­tro­ver­sial doc­trine, known as string the­o­ry, to ex­plain an as­pect of super-conducti­vity—a phe­nom­e­non in which elec­tric cur­rent zooms through an ob­ject with­out meet­ing any of the nor­mal re­sist­ance.



‘AdS/CFT’ cor­resp­ond­ence that relates a gra­vity-de­ter­mined world in a higher dimension to 'quan­tum-cri­ti­cal' worlds formed, for ex­am­ple, by elec­trons in a lower-dim­en­sion­al world on the 'out­side' of the first world. (Cour­tesy Sci­ence)


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String the­o­ry is a bid to re­solve al­most all the mys­ter­ies of phys­ics at a b­low by bridg­ing the gap be­tween the two most suc­cess­ful the­o­ries of the 20th cen­tu­ry, gen­er­al rel­a­ti­vity and quan­tum me­chan­ics. Each has been suc­cess­ful at ex­plaining how the un­iverse be­haves over vast dis­tances and in ti­ny spaces, re­spec­tive­ly. But they con­flict in some ways; both can’t be right.

String the­o­ry claims all the par­t­i­cles of na­ture are ac­tu­ally dif­fer­ent vibra­t­ions of un­seen, ti­ny loops called “strings.” The the­o­ry math­e­mat­ic­ally fixes the ma­jor in­con­sis­ten­cies be­tween the oth­er two. In the pro­cess, if it’s cor­rect, it would show the un­der­ly­ing un­ity of na­ture’s forc­es.

But it only works if the strings have sev­er­al ex­tra di­men­sions in which to vi­brate be­yond the di­men­sions we see. Dif­fer­ent ver­sions of string the­o­ry pro­pose 10 or 26 di­men­sions, some of which are in­vis­i­ble be­cause they are rolled up in­to ti­ny balls.

Sci­en­tists at the Un­ivers­ity of Lei­den in the Neth­er­lands used the math­e­mat­ics of string the­o­ry to un­der­stand so-called high-tem­per­a­ture su­per­con­duc­tiv­ity. The ef­fort­less shoot­ing of cur­rent through “su­per­con­duct­ing” ma­te­ri­als was once be­lieved to oc­cur only at tem­per­a­tures so ab­surdly cold as to make prac­ti­cal ap­plica­t­ions of the phe­nom­e­non un­like­ly. But more and more ex­am­ples are com­ing up where it al­so oc­curs at high­er tem­per­a­tures, ac­cord­ing to the Lei­den phys­i­cists.

Elec­trons, the sub­a­tom­ic par­t­i­cles that car­ry elec­tric cur­rent, can form a spe­cial kind of state, a so-called quan­tum crit­i­cal state, that plays a role in this high-tem­per­a­ture super-conducti­vity.

“It has al­ways been as­sumed that once you un­der­stand this quan­tum-crit­i­cal state, you can al­so un­der­stand high tem­per­a­ture super-conducti­vity. But, al­though the ex­pe­ri­ments pro­duced a lot of in­forma­t­ion, we had­n’t the faintest idea of how to de­scribe this phe­nom­e­non,” said Lei­den phys­i­cist Jan Za­a­nen.

String the­o­ry now of­fers a so­lu­tion, he added. “This is su­perb. I have nev­er ex­perienced such eu­pho­ria,” he re­marked, ex­plaining that the num­bers fit so pre­cisely that he was as­ton­ished. The find­ing is re­ported this week in the re­search jour­nal Sci­ence.

Za­a­nen de­scribes the quan­tum-crit­i­cal state as a “quan­tum soup,” where­by the elec­trons form a col­lec­tive in­de­pend­ent of dis­tances, and show the same be­hav­iour at tiny scales or at the roughly hu­man scale.

Be­cause of Za­a­nen’s in­ter­est in string the­o­ry, he and string the­o­reti­cist Koen­raad Schalm be­came ac­quaint­ed af­ter Schalm’s ar­ri­val at Lei­den Un­ivers­ity. Za­a­nen had an un­solved prob­lem and Schalm was an ex­pert in the field of string the­o­ry. Their com­mon in­ter­est brought them to­geth­er, and they de­cid­ed to work jointly.

The pair used the as­pect of string the­o­ry known as Ad­S/CFT cor­re­spond­ence. This al­lows situa­t­ions in a large, so-called rel­a­tivistic, world to be trans­lated in­to a de­scrip­tion at mi­nus­cule, so-called quan­tum phys­ics lev­el. This cor­re­spond­ence bridg­es the gap be­tween these two dif­fer­ent worlds. By ap­ply­ing the cor­re­spond­ence to the the­o­ret­i­cal situa­t­ion where a black hole vi­brates when an elec­tron falls in­to it, they ar­rived at a de­scrip­tion of elec­trons that move in and out of a quan­tum-crit­i­cal state.

This is the first time a cal­cula­t­ion based on string the­o­ry has been pub­lished in Sci­ence, even though the the­o­ry is widely known, Za­a­nen said.

“There have al­ways been a lot of ex­pecta­t­ions sur­round­ing string the­o­ry,” Za­a­nen ex­plained, hav­ing him­self stud­ied the the­o­ry to sat­is­fy his own cu­ri­os­ity. “String the­o­ry is of­ten seen as a child of Ein­stein that aims to de­vise a rev­o­lu­tion­ary and com­pre­hen­sive the­o­ry, a kind of ‘the­o­ry of ever­ything.’ Ten years ago, re­search­ers even said: ‘Give us two weeks and we’ll be able to tell you where the Big Bang came from.’ The prob­lem of string the­o­ry was that, in spite of its ex­cel­lent maths, it was nev­er able to make a con­crete link with the phys­i­cal real­ity—the world around us.”

“Ad­S/CFT cor­re­spond­ence now ex­plains things that col­leagues who have been bea­ver­ing away for ages were un­able to re­solve, in spite of their enor­mous ef­forts,” he went on. “There are a lot of things that can be done with it. We don’t fully un­der­stand it yet, but I see it as a gate­way to much more.”

Adverticing

A surprising new way to discourage risky behaviors
http://www.world-science.net/othernews/080825_outgroup

Aug. 25, 2008
Courtesy University of Chicago Press Journals
and World Science staff

Ad cam­paigns aimed at re­duc­ing un­healthy be­hav­iors like binge drink­ing of­ten fo­cus on the health risks.

But new re­search sug­gests a sur­pris­ing new tac­tic ex­ploit­ing so­cial psy­chol­o­gy might work bet­ter. The trick: link a risky be­hav­ior with some oth­er group of peo­ple that the tar­geted au­di­ence would­n’t want to be con­fused with.



Researchers have long cast about for new and better ways to re­duce un­healthy be­hav­iors like binge drink­ing. (Image: U.S. CDC)


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Such a cam­paign, in oth­er words, would “at­tend to how be­hav­iors act as mark­ers or sig­nals of ident­ity,” wrote the sci­en­tists, Jo­nah Berger of the Uni­ver­s­ity of Penn­syl­va­nia and Lind­say Rand of Stan­ford Uni­ver­s­ity in Cal­i­for­nia, in the newly pub­lished find­ings.

The pair organized their own ex­pe­ri­men­tal pub­licity cam­paigns. These were aimed at col­lege stu­dents—but with an eye to­ward anoth­er group whom these par­ti­ci­pants had noth­ing against, but would­n’t want to be con­fused.

Groups of peo­ple seen as some­how sep­a­ra­te by anoth­er are known as “out­groups” in so­cial psy­chol­o­gy jar­gon. The “in­group” of­ten sees out­groups as in­fe­ri­or, but not always.

Berger and Rand con­ducted two in­i­tial stud­ies based on a pre­sump­tion that col­lege stu­dents would con­sid­er “grad­u­a­te stu­dents” an out­group.

In one stu­dy, col­lege stu­dents were led to be­lieve that grad­u­a­te stu­dents con­sumed more junk food. Stu­dents ex­posed to this mes­sage chose 28 per­cent few­er junk-food items than par­ti­ci­pants who thought their group ate more junk food, the re­search­ers re­ported.

In anoth­er stu­dy, re­search­ers put fli­ers in fresh­man col­lege dor­mi­to­ries. In one dorm, the fli­ers em­pha­sized the health risks of binge drink­ing. In anoth­er dorm, the fli­ers linked binge drink­ing to grad­u­a­te stu­dents. Par­ti­ci­pants in the dorm with the sec­ond fli­er drank at least 50 per­cent less al­co­hol than those who saw the health risk fli­ers, the in­ves­ti­ga­tors found.

In a third stu­dy, stu­dents on their way to a cam­pus ea­tery were sur­veyed about per­cep­tions of the me­dia. One group read an ar­ti­cle about pol­i­tics and pop cul­ture. A sec­ond group read an ar­ti­cle as­so­ci­at­in junk-food eat­ing with on­line gamers. When re­search as­sis­tants watched the two groups or­der­ing food, they found that the group who had read the ar­ti­cle about on­line gamers made health­i­er choices.

“De­ci­sions are not only based on risks and ben­e­fits, but al­so the ident­ity that a giv­en choice com­mu­ni­cates to oth­ers,” Berger and Rand wrote. Thus “shift­ing per­cep­tions of the ident­ity associa­ted with a risky be­hav­ior can help make bet­ter health a real­ity.” The find­ings are pub­lished in the Jour­nal of Con­sum­er Re­search.

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