Mind Controls Body

In a monastery in northern India, thinly clad Tibetan monks sat quietly in a room where the temperature was a chilly 40 degrees Fahrenheit. Using a yoga technique known as g Tum-mo, they entered a state of deep meditation. Other monks soaked 3-by-6-foot sheets in cold water (49 degrees) and placed them over the meditators' shoulders. For untrained people, such frigid wrappings would produce uncontrolled shivering.If body temperatures continue to drop under these conditions, death can result. But it was not long before steam began rising from the sheets. As a result of body heat produced by the monks during meditation, the sheets dried in about an hour.Attendants removed the sheets, then covered the meditators with a second chilled, wet wrapping. Each monk was required to dry three sheets over a period of several hours.Why would anyone do this? Herbert Benson, who has been studying g Tum-mo for 20 years, answers that "Buddhists feel the reality we live in is not the ultimate one. There's another reality we can tap into that's unaffected by our emotions, by our everyday world. Buddhists believe this state of mind can be achieved by doing good for others and by meditation. The heat they generate during the process is just a by-product of g Tum-mo meditation."Benson is an associate professor of medicine at the Harvard Medical School and president of the Mind/Body Medical Institute at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. He firmly believes that studying advanced forms of meditation "can uncover capacities that will help us to better treat stress-related illnesses."Benson developed the "relaxation response," which he describes as "a physiological state opposite to stress." It is characterized by decreases in metabolism, breathing rate, heart rate, and blood pressure. He and others have amassed evidence that it can help those suffering from illnesses caused or exacerbated by stress. Benson and colleagues use it to treat anxiety, mild and moderate depression, high blood pressure, heartbeat irregularities, excessive anger, insomnia, and even infertility. His team also uses this type of simple meditation to calm those who have been traumatized by the deaths of others, or by diagnoses of cancer or other painful, life-threatening illnesses."More than 60 percent of visits to physicians in the United States are due to stress-related problems, most of which are poorly treated by drugs, surgery, or other medical procedures," Benson maintains.The Mind/Body Medical Institute is now training people to use the relaxation response to help people working at Ground Zero in New York City, where two airplanes toppled the World Trade Center Towers last Sept. 11. Facilities have been set up at nearby St. Paul's Chapel to aid people still working on clearing wreckage and bodies. Anyone else who feels stressed by those terrible events can also obtain help at the chapel. "We are training the trainers who work there," Benson says.The relaxation response involves repeating a word, sound, phrase, or short prayer while disregarding intrusive thoughts. "If such an easy-to-master practice can bring about the remarkable changes we observe," Benson notes. "I want to investigate what advanced forms of meditation can do to help the mind control physical processes once thought to be uncontrollable." TBC from Harvard Gazette

Ukraine celebrates it's 1,020th anniversary of Christianity

In July 2008 Ukraine celebrated the 1,020th anniversary of its adoption of Christianity by holding church services and processions and welcoming foreign Orthodox Church leaders to the capital, Kiev.President Viktor Yushchenko held a reception for Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople, the head of the Eastern Orthodox Church, at the 11th century St. Sophia Cathedral on Saturday. King Volodymyr the Great was the figure who officially brought Christianity to modern-day Ukraine. In 988 A.D., King Volodymyr was baptized and then instated Christianity as the state religion of what was then known as Kievan Rus.Afterwards, Volodymyr, had his family and all the people of Kievan Rus baptized and destroyed the wooden statues of Slavic pagan gods. Ukrainian President Yushchenko said Thursday ahead of the gatherings that he hoped Ukraine’s celebrations of the adoption of Christianity will encourage unity among the country’s Orthodox communities.

The country has three major Orthodox Churches, which often compete against one another: the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church–Kiev Patriarchate, and the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church.The Ukrainian Orthodox Church is the only one with a canonical standing in Eastern Orthodoxy and has full communion with other Eastern churches. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Kiev Patriarchy broke away from the Russian Orthodox Church in 1989, while the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church obtained autonomy from Moscow.

global warming over estimated

Oh, can we blaspheme against the whole global warming and carbon emissions 'business deal' that has been set into motion by an expresidential candidate who was bought off by a nobel prize and a twisting of a truth? Well, here tis'. Enjoy the read.
A detailed analysis of black carbon -- the residue of burned organic matter -- in computer climate models suggests that those models may be overestimating global warming predictions. A new Cornell study, published online in Nature Geoscience, quantified the amount of black carbon in Australian soils and found that there was far more than expected, said Johannes Lehmann, the paper's lead author and a Cornell professor of biogeochemistry. The survey was the largest of black carbon ever published. As a result of global warming, soils are expected to release more carbon dioxide, the major greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere, which, in turn, creates more warming. Climate models try to incorporate these increases of carbon dioxide from soils as the planet warms, but results vary greatly when realistic estimates of black carbon in soils are included in the predictions, the study found. Soils include many forms of carbon, including organic carbon from leaf litter and vegetation and black carbon from the burning of organic matter. It takes a few years for organic carbon to decompose, as microbes eat it and convert it to carbon dioxide. But black carbon can take 1,000-2,000 years, on average, to convert to carbon dioxide. By entering realistic estimates of stocks of black carbon in soil from two Australian savannas into a computer model that calculates carbon dioxide release from soil, the researchers found that carbon dioxide emissions from soils were reduced by about 20 percent over 100 years, as compared with simulations that did not take black carbon's long shelf life into account. The findings are significant because soils are by far the world's largest source of carbon dioxide, producing 10 times more carbon dioxide each year than all the carbon dioxide emissions from human activities combined. Small changes in how carbon emissions from soils are estimated, therefore, can have a large impact. "We know from measurements that climate change today is worse than people have predicted," said Lehmann. "But this particular aspect, black carbon's stability in soil, if incorporated in climate models, would actually decrease climate predictions." The study quantified the amount of black carbon in 452 Australian soils across two savannas. Black carbon content varied widely, between zero and more than 80 percent, in soils across Australia. "It's a mistake to look at soil as one blob of carbon," said Lehmann. "Rather, it has different chemical components with different characteristics. In this way, soil will interact differently to warming based on what's in it."
from Newswise Science

Breaking news

26 November 2008 Spectacular Night Sky Event Happening Now

The best sky show of the year, a spectacular three-way merging of Venus, Jupiter and the crescent Moon in the night sky is happening now. At the end of the day, when the horizon is turning red, step outside and look southwest. You'll see Venus and Jupiter beaming side-by-side through the twilight. Glittering Venus is absolutely brilliant and above it, giant Jupiter is nearly as bright as Venus. Together, they're dynamite.Each night you’ll be amazed at how much the Venus-Jupiter gap has closed. The two planets are converging, not in the slow motion typical of heavenly phenomena, but in a headlong rush – almost a full degree (two full Moon widths) per night. As the gap shrinks, the beauty increases. In biblical times, a similar but closer pairing occurred and may have been mistaken for the ‘Xmas Star’ by the three wise men seeking the birthplace of baby Jesus.On November 29 the two planets will be so close you'll think to yourself "surely it can't get any better than this." And then it will. On Nov. 30th a slender 10% crescent Moon leaps up from the horizon to join the show. The delicate crescent hovering just below Venus-Jupiter will have cameras clicking around the world.

December 1st is the best night of all. The crescent Moon moves in closer to form a triangle with Venus and Jupiter. The three brightest objects in the night sky will be gathered so tightly together, you can hide them all behind your thumb held at arm's length!The celestial triangle will be visible from all parts of the world, even from light-polluted cities. People in New York and Sydney will see it just as clearly as astronomers watching from remote mountaintops. Only cloudy weather can spoil the show.Although clear with naked eyes a small telescope will make the evening even more enjoyable. In one quick triangular sweep, you can see the moons and cloud-belts of Jupiter, little over half phase of Venus), and craters and mountains on the Moon. It's a Grand Tour you won't forget!

Finally, look up from the eyepiece and run your eyes across the Moon. Do you see a ghostly image of the full Moon inside the bright horns of the crescent? That's called ‘Earthshine’ because sunlight hits Earth and ricochets off to the Moon, lighting the dark lunar surface. By itself, a crescent Moon with Earthshine is one of the loveliest sights in the heavens. Add Venus and Jupiter and, well … it's time to stop reading and go mark your calendar. courtesy of David Reneke

Oh what a night!

This asteroid turned fireball was caught on a police dash video in Canadia land last night. It streaked across the sky sparking several times before impacting. A $10,000 reward has been put up by an entrepreneur going to the first person who finds it. Wow, this is all very exciting!
I'm sure there will be more to follow.

How to add years to your life

Live long and prosper!
Researchers have found that people who go to church are likely to outlive those who spend their Sunday mornings staring vacantly at the TV. "Involvement in any kind of religion can increase your ability to cope with stress,and helps you make meaning of your life." Which means you're less likely to drink yourself into a stupor over the weekend. 3.1 yrs added if you go to church
Learning ways to strengthen and protect neural connections in your brain may help you delay cognitive decline and dementia. Keeping your brain busy every day adds 4.6 years to your life.
Flossing not only cleans teeth and gums but also unclogs furredup arteries and adds 6.4 years of life
A person's initials can apparently predict longevity, according to the Society of Behavioural Medicine. Psychologists found that people with initials such as A.P.E. didn't live as long as people with initials such as A.C.E. Pick positive initials to add 7.5 years of added life.
People with a sense of humour have a 30% higher probability of survival when severe disease strikes.Laughter produces more protective hormones, regulates blood pressure, reduces the effects of stress and boosts the immune system. Taking all these benefits into account, developing your capacity for laughter could add eight years to your life.
People who own dogs tend to have lower blood pressure and cholesterol levels than those who don't and dogs are more effective than other animals because they force their owners to take a daily walk adding 9.4 years of life.
People who measure their own blood pressure regularly at home instead of just when they visit a doctor are more likely to keep it under control. This study says add on an extra 25 years of life if you check your own blood pressure at home, this one seems somewhat blown out of proportion to me.
Bovine colostrum is cow's milk from the 24 hours after mum's popped out a calf. It's apparently nature's most potent anti-ageing supplement and many clinical studies claim it can do one or all of the following: increase energy, rejuvenate skin, reduce pain, improve allergies, build muscle, rebuild and repair the body and enhance moods adding an extra 7.2 years.
Long-term, loving relationships can make your real age as much as 6.5 years younger," says Roizen. Throw regular sex into the equation and you give yourself an extra year's worth of under-the-cover action.
A week on a beach should lift you out of a dark mood. In one study, just 30 minutes of bright-light therapy a day for five consecutive days was enough to alleviate depression in half of the participants. Add 1.7 years
All of this adds up to 101 years of extra life
so...
Live long and prosper

Climate change blunder

A surreal scientific blunder last week raised a huge question mark about the temperature records that underpin the worldwide alarm over global warming. On Monday, Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is run by Al Gore's chief scientific ally, Dr James Hansen, and is one of four bodies responsible for monitoring global temperatures, announced that last month was the hottest October on record.This was startling. Across the world there were reports of unseasonal snow and plummeting temperatures last month, from the American Great Plains to China, and from the Alps to New Zealand. China's official news agency reported that Tibet had suffered its "worst snowstorm ever". In the US, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration registered 63 local snowfall records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month, and ranked it as only the 70th-warmest October in 114 years.So what explained the anomaly? GISS's computerised temperature maps seemed to show readings across a large part of Russia had been up to 10 degrees higher than normal. But when expert readers of the two leading warming-sceptic blogs, Watts Up With That and Climate Audit, began detailed analysis of the GISS data they made an astonishing discovery. The reason for the freak figures was that scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on October readings at all. Figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated two months running.The error was so glaring that when it was reported on the two blogs - run by the US meteorologist Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre, the Canadian computer analyst who won fame for his expert debunking of the notorious "hockey stick" graph - GISS began hastily revising its figures. This only made the confusion worse because, to compensate for the lowered temperatures in Russia, GISS claimed to have discovered a new "hotspot" in the Arctic - in a month when satellite images were showing Arctic sea-ice recovering so fast from its summer melt that three weeks ago it was 30 per cent more extensive than at the same time last year.A GISS spokesman lamely explained that the reason for the error in the Russian figures was that they were obtained from another body, and that GISS did not have resources to exercise proper quality control over the data it was supplied with. This is an astonishing admission: the figures published by Dr Hansen's institute are not only one of the four data sets that the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) relies on to promote its case for global warming, but they are the most widely quoted, since they consistently show higher temperatures than the others.If there is one scientist more responsible than any other for the alarm over global warming it is Dr Hansen, who set the whole scare in train back in 1988 with his testimony to a US Senate committee chaired by Al Gore. Again and again, Dr Hansen has been to the fore in making extreme claims over the dangers of climate change. (He was recently in the news here for supporting the Greenpeace activists acquitted of criminally damaging a coal-fired power station in Kent, on the grounds that the harm done to the planet by a new power station would far outweigh any damage they had done themselves.)Yet last week's latest episode is far from the first time Dr Hansen's methodology has been called in question. In 2007 he was forced by Mr Watts and Mr McIntyre to revise his published figures for US surface temperatures, to show that the hottest decade of the 20th century was not the 1990s, as he had claimed, but the 1930s.Another of his close allies is Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, who recently startled a university audience in Australia by claiming that global temperatures have recently been rising "very much faster" than ever, in front of a graph showing them rising sharply in the past decade. In fact, as many of his audience were aware, they have not been rising in recent years and since 2007 have dropped.Dr Pachauri, a former railway engineer with no qualifications in climate science, may believe what Dr Hansen tells him. But whether, on the basis of such evidence, it is wise for the world's governments to embark on some of the most costly economic measures ever proposed, to remedy a problem which may actually not exist, is a question which should give us all pause for thought.

Black Max

Information about BlackMax's creation has been published in Physical Review Letters in the article, "BlackMax: A Black-Hole Event Generator with Rotation, Recoil, Split Branes and Brane Tension."Black holes are theorized to be regions in space where the gravitational field is so strong that nothing can escape its pull after crossing what is called the event horizon. BlackMax simulates these regions.Approximately two years in the making, the computer program enables physicists to test theories about the production and decay of black holes and takes into account new types of effects on both the creation and evaporation of black holes at the new Large Hadron Collider (LHC) currently being commissioned at the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland.For example, black holes created at the LHC would be expected to start off spinning.The spinning of the black hole increases the fraction of the black hole's mass that is dissipated as gravitons-elementary quanta of gravity, which could be used to provide a clue to the existence and structure of extra dimensions.Black holes are being studied with BlackMax by members of the ATLAS Experiment at LHC, one of the two principal large particle detectors at the new collider.Case Western Reserve physicists working with Glenn Starkman on the project are his former doctoral student Dejan Stojkovic, now a visiting professor on the faculty of the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo, and De-Chang Dai, who recently graduated with his doctoral degree in physics, and is now a postdoctoral fellow working with Stojkovic.Other collaborators are experimental physicists Cigdem Issever and Jeff Tseng of Oxford University and Eram Rizvi from Queen Mary College at the University of London.ATLAS works much like investigators who search the site of plane crash, and then piece together the debris to find the cause of the plane's disintegration.BlackMax, by predicting how those pieces will fall, should allow physicists looking at data from the ATLAS experiment to see whether the pattern of particles released into the detector matches what one would expect when a black hole is produced and then falls apart.The ordinary non-gravitational collisions predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics tend to produce fragments of the proton clumped into a small number of jets.Decays of black holes should produce more particles than usual. These particles should also come out unusually isotropically-in every direction-and the mix of particles should be more democratic - including for example electrons and similar particles that are not found within the proton.Under certain circumstances, black hole decay should also produce many gravitons that would themselves pass unnoticed out of the ATLAS, but which would make the remaining emitted particles looking asymmetric and carrying less than the full event energy.Starkman said that if black holes are found at the LHC it will enable scientists to understand the connection between gravity and quantum mechanics, resolving the inconsistency between two of the great intellectual triumphs of the 20th century - quantum mechanics and Einstein's General Theory of Relativity.It would also mean the existence of other dimensions to space, and explain why gravity is such a weak force compared to the other three fundamental forces of nature-electromagnetism and the strong and weak nuclear forces.According to Starkman, the black holes under study at LHC will be very small, extremely hot at more than billion times the temperature of the sun, and their lifespan will consequently be so short that they will decay within tiny fractions of a second of their creation.He added that there is not enough time for the black hole to cross a human hair, "never mind leaving the detector," he said."What's more important is that the universe has been doing this experiment for billions of years by bombarding the earth's atmosphere (not to mention all the myriad stars) with cosmic rays. So we know if black holes are made at the LHC, they are entirely safe," said Starkman.A team of theoretical and experimental physicists, with participants from Case Western Reserve University, have designed a new black hole simulator called BlackMax to search for evidence that extra dimensions might exist in the universe. Nov 10, 2008

Global consciousness project

this is just one of the sorts of stories that I am in awe of.
Go to http://noosphere.princeton.edu/
and then click on "global brain paintings" to see the ' image
The image changes every few minutes. I watch this and find it really stimulates my brain. It's like a caffein boost to the brain and the pictures are just stunning. I get a feeling of clarity in the brain.
The project is a way of collecting and sharing in a graphic way what the collective unconscious
is doing at any moment.
From the site:
"Collective unconscious, a pool of shared experiences among our species, is a term of analytical psychology coined by Jung. Princeton’s Global Consciousness Project (GCP) is an international collaboration of scientists and engineers recording data from over 65 sites around the world since August 1998 in an attempt to measure subtle correlations that reflect the presence and activity of consciousness in the world"

Asteroid '2008 TC3' impacting Earth Oct 7 2008

Amateur and professional astronomers all around the world are buzzing with intensity and excitement over what happened on October 7th. Just now the stories and I witness reports are flying wild. Seems asteroid '2008 TC3' was found and tracked knowing of a collision with Earth prior to its impact. The accuracy of its calculated trajectory was outstanding.Fortunately this asteroid was only about four meters in diameter, however its impact set off a 2-kiloton blast which is equal to a small nuclear bomb. It doesn't take much of an imagination to envision what a ten meter, or one hundred meter, or one thousand meter in diameter asteroid would do to this planet.Over the last 24 hours it has been tiring but exciting to watch the drama of asteroid 2008 TC3. It has happened so quickly that it's necessary to convert all times to UTC in order to see how events have unfolded across the globe.To briefly review: At 06:38 UTC on October 6, astronomers at the University of Arizona discovered an object provisionally called 8TA9D69 that appeared to be on a collision course with Earth. Three other observatories reported sightings within the next few hours -- Sabino Canyon and Siding Spring in Arizona and a Royal Astronomical Society site in Moorook, Australia.Together these four observers provided enough data on the object so that a Minor Planet Electronic Circular was issued at 14:59 UTC the same day, giving 8TA9D69 the more formal name 2008 TC3, and advising the astronomical community that "The nominal orbit given above has 2008 TC3 coming to within one earth radius around Oct. 7.1. The absolute magnitude indicates that the object will not survive passage through the atmosphere. Steve Chesley (JPL) reports that atmospheric entry will occur on 2008 Oct 07 0246 UTC over northern Sudan."The object wouldn't be more than a big meteor, but it did represent the first time ever that an object had been observed before it was to hit Earth, and, clearly, astronomers around the world scrambled to their telescopes to observe it before it was to pass into Earth's shadow (and, therefore, invisibility) just before 01:50 UTC.When the asteroid entered the Earth's atmosphere as it burnt up it left this vapour trail which was moved around by wind currents.

The question has to be asked: what would have happened if the object was much bigger than 2 meters in diameter? Reassuringly, the first thing that would have happened is that the detection most likely would have happened much earlier. The bigger and more hazardous an object is, the brighter it is, and the sooner we will detect it. We will likely have way more than 20 hours' warning of an incoming dangerous object.However, the warning time for a tens-of-meter-diameter object could only be measured in days. If we'd had three days' warning of a dangerous impacting asteroid heading for Sudan, what could the world have done? The remote location of the impact would have been fortunate for humanity in general, but disastrous for the few people who lived out in that remoteness. Could the developed world have done anything to prevent yet another humanitarian disaster from befalling the Sudanese?The observations were partly for the thrill -- seeing an object in its last hours, before it met a fiery fate in Earth's atmosphere -- but they also had a more important purpose: to refine the orbit of the object, which would, in turn, improve the predictions of where it would hit. Over the next 11 hours, fully 24 Minor Planet Electronic Circulars were issued with further observations, pinning down 2008 TC3's final path with high precision.With the object so close to Earth, the parallax of different observers on different parts of the globe allowed much greater precision than is usual, given the short observing arc. The initial impact prediction was confirmed by JPL scientist Paul Chodas at 01:45 UTC: "We estimate that this object will enter the Earth's atmosphere at around 2:45:28 UTC and reach maximum deceleration around 2:45:54 UTC at an altitude of about 14 km. These times are uncertain by +/- 15 seconds or so."After positional information, the next challenge was to obtain spectral data -- information on the color of the object, which would help to classify it and determine its origin. The first I heard of such data being captured successfully was from this item on the MPML by Alan Fitzsimmons and coworkers at Armagh"We obtained optical spectra of 2008 TC3 using the 4.2m William Herschel Telescope and ISIS spectrograph on Oct 6.93-6.94UT. The spectra cover the range 546-995nm at a resolution of 4nm. Initial analysis of the spectra via comparison with the solar analogue 16CygB reveals a featureless reflectance spectrum with no indication of the silicate absorption feature longward of 800nm." Presumably there were other observers who were able to obtain spectral data, though not as many as were gathering positional information.Time quickly ran out to observe the asteroid, however. Astronomers in Spain recorded 2008 TC3's entry into Earth's shadow, hiding it from view for its final hour of descent. The image is below:The atmospheric entry occurred over an extremely remote location on Earth, just 20 hours after it was first discovered. As yet there are no confirmed images of the fireball -- it's possible there may never be any.There is one possible sighting: one resourceful enthusiast, Jacob Kuiper, the General Aviation meteorologist at the National Weather Service in the Netherlands, called an official of the Air-France-KLM airline at the Amsterdam airport to inform him "about the possibility that crews of their airliners in the vicinity of impact would have a chance to see a fireball. And it was a success! I have received confirmation that a KLM airliner, roughly 750 nautical miles southwest of the predicted atmospheric impact position, has observed a short flash just before the expected impact time 0246 UTC. Because of the distance it was not a very large phenomenon, but still a confirmation that some bright meteor has been seen in the predicted direction."And there's more than one way to detect an asteroid impact. Even in relatively unpopulated areas, there are seismological stations scattered around the world, using infrasound to record seismic events. One such station seems to have detected a 1 to 2-kiloton blast associated with the impact. This is according to Peter Brown, of the University of Western Ontario [hey, that's the same university that's home to asteroid mapping genius Phil Stooke]. Brown said:A very preliminary examination of several infrasound stations proximal to the predicted impact point for the NEO 2008 TC3 has yielded one definite airwave detection from the impact. The airwave was detected at the Kenyian Infrasonic Array, (IMS station IS32), beginning near 05:10 UT on Oct 7, 2008 and lasting for several minutes. The signal correlation was highest at very low frequencies – the dominant period of the waveform was 5-6 seconds. The backazimuth of the signal over the entire 7 element array is shown in the attached map – it clearly points to within a few degrees of the expected arrival direction.Moreover, assuming a stratospheric mean signal speed of 0 28 km/s, the arrival time corresponds to an origin time near 02:43 UT, which is consistent with the expected impact time near 02:45:40 UT given expected variations in stratospheric arrival speeds. The dominant period of 5-6 seconds corresponds to an estimated energy (using the AFTAC period at maximum amplitude relationship from ReVelle, 1997) of 1.1 – 2.1 kilotons of TNT. The five other closest infrasound stations were briefly examined for obvious signals and showed none – more detailed signal processing of these additional data are ongoing in the search for additional signals.All in all, I think the episode of 2008 TC3 has proven that the world's astronomical community, at least, is prepared to respond when an object on a collision course is detected. Within just a few hours of its discovery, the digitally connected world knew exactly where and when the object would hit, and also that it posed no threat. It was a wonderful simulation of the first part of the call to arms when a truly threatening object is detected.

Confirmed - Alaska Glaciers Are Growing

Al Gore and the global warming army is not going to like this. In fact, dozens of climate scientists who originally signed off on the IPCC, are dropping off in groves. This is what happens when people are "lied" into a cause. Every bit in the same manner as 9-11 equals terrorism equals Iraq equals terrorist equals weapons of mass destruction. All a lie -- and now the current President of the United States sets to leave in disgrace.It's all about cycles -- Two hundred years of glacial shrinkage in Alaska, and then came the winter and summer of 2007-2008. Unusually large amounts of winter snow were followed by unusually chill temperatures in June, July and August."In mid-June, I was surprised to see snow still at sea level in Prince William Sound," said U.S. Geological Survey glaciologist Bruce Molnia. "On the Juneau Icefield, there was still 20 feet of new snow on the surface of the Taku Glacier in late July. At Bering Glacier, a landslide I am studying, located at about 1,500 feet elevation, did not become snow free until early August.In general, the weather this summer was the worst I have seen in at least 20 years."Never before in the history of a research project dating back to 1946 had the Juneau Icefield witnessed the kind of snow buildup that came this year. It was similar on a lot of other glaciers too."It's been a long time on most glaciers where they've actually had positive mass balance," Molnia said.That's the way a scientist says the glaciers got thicker in the middle.Mass balance is the difference between how much snow falls every winter and how much snow fades away each summer. For most Alaska glaciers, the summer snow loss has for decades exceeded the winter snowfall.The result has put the state's glaciers on a long-term diet. Every year they lose the snow of the previous winter plus some of the snow from years before. And so they steadily shrink.Since Alaska's glacial maximum back in the 1700s, Molnia said, "I figure that we've lost about 15 percent of the total area."What might be the most notable long-term shrinkage has occurred at Glacier Bay, now the site of a national park in Southeast Alaska. When the first Russian explorers arrived in Alaska in the 1740s, there was no Glacier Bay. There was simply a wall of ice across the north side of Icy Strait.That ice retreated to form a bay and what is now known as the Muir Glacier. And from the 1800s until now, the Muir Glacier just kept retreating and retreating and retreating. It is now back 57 miles from the entrance to the bay, said Tom Vandenberg, chief interpretative ranger at Glacier Bay.That's farther than the distance from glacier-free Anchorage to Girdwood, where seven glaciers overhang the valley surrounding the state's largest ski area. The glaciers there, like the Muir and hundreds of other Alaska glaciers, have been part of the long retreat.Overall, Molnia figures Alaska has lost 10,000 to 12,000 square kilometers of ice in the past two centuries, enough to cover an area nearly the size of Connecticut.Molnia has just completed a major study of Alaska glaciers using satellite images and aerial photographs to catalog shrinkage. The 550-page "Glaciers of Alaska" will provide a benchmark for tracking what happens to the state's glaciers in the future.Climate change has led to speculation they might all disappear. Molnia isn't sure what to expect. As far as glaciers go, he said, Alaska's glaciers are volatile. They live life on the edge."What we're talking about to (change) most of Alaska's glaciers is a small temperature change; just a small fraction-of-a-degree change makes a big difference. It's the mean annual temperature that's the big thing."All it takes is a warm summer to have a really dramatic effect on the melting."Or a cool summer to shift that mass balance the other way.One cool summer that leaves 20 feet of new snow still sitting atop glaciers come the start of the next winter is no big deal, Molnia said.Ten summers like that?Well, that might mark the start of something like the Little Ice Age.During the Little Ice Age - roughly the 16th century to the 19th - Muir Glacier filled Glacier Bay and the people of Europe struggled to survive because of difficult conditions for agriculture. Some of them fled for America in the first wave of white immigration.The Pilgrims established the Plymouth Colony in December 1620. By spring, a bitterly cold winter had played a key role in helping kill half of them. Hindered by a chilly climate, the white colonization of North America through the 1600s and 1700s was slow.As the climate warmed from 1800 to 1900, the United States tripled in size. The windy and cold city of Chicago grew from an outpost of fewer than 4,000 in 1800 to a thriving city of more than 1.5 million at the end of that century.The difference in temperature between the Little Ice Age and these heady days of American expansion?About three or four degrees, Molnia said.The difference in temperature between this summer in Anchorage - the third coldest on record - and the norm?About three degrees, according to the National Weather Service.Does it mean anything?Nobody knows. Climate is constantly shifting. And even if the past year was a signal of a changing future, Molnia said, it would still take decades to make itself noticeable in Alaska's glaciers.Rivers of ice flow slowly. Hundreds of feet of snow would have to accumulate at higher elevations to create enough pressure to stall the current glacial retreat and start a new advance. Even if the glaciers started growing today, Molnia said, it might take up to 100 years for them to start steadily rolling back down into the valleys they've abandoned."It's different time scales," he said. "We're just starting to understand."As strange it might seem, Alaska's glaciers could appear to be shrinking for some time while secretly growing. Molnia said there are a few glaciers in the state now where constant snow accumulations at higher elevations are causing them to thicken even as their lower reaches follow the pattern of retreat fueled by the global warming of recent decades.

Unknown "Structures" Tugging at Universe, Study Says

Something may be out there. Way out there. On the outskirts of creation, unknown, unseen "structures" are tugging on our universe like cosmic magnets, a controversial new study says.
Everything in the known universe is said to be racing toward the massive clumps of matter at more than 2 million miles (3.2 million kilometers) an hour—a movement the researchers have dubbed dark flow. The presence of the extra-universal matter suggests that our universe is part of something bigger—a multiverse—and that whatever is out there is very different from the universe we know, according to study leader Alexander Kashlinsky, an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. The theory could rewrite the laws of physics. Current models say the known, or visible, universe—which extends as far as light could have traveled since the big bang—is essentially the same as the rest of space-time (the three dimensions of space plus time).

Dark flow was named in a nod to dark energy and dark matter—two other unexplained astrophysical phenomena.The newfound flow cannot be explained by, and is not directly related to, the expansion of the universe, though the researchers believe the two types of movement are happening at the same time. In an attempt to simplify the mind-bending concept, Kashlinsky says to picture yourself floating in the middle of a vast ocean. As far as the eye can see, the ocean is smooth and the same in every direction, just as most astronomers believe the universe is. You would think that beyond the horizon, therefore, nothing is different."But then you discover a faint but coherent flow in your ocean," Kashlinsky said. "You would deduce that the entire cosmos is not exactly like what you can see within your own horizon."There must be an out-of-sight mountain river or ravine pushing or pulling the water. Or in the cosmological case, Kashlinsky speculates that "this motion is caused by structures well beyond the current cosmological horizon, which is more than 14 billion light-years away."
"We Found a Great Surprise"The study team didn't set out to explode physics as we know it.They simply wanted to confirm the longstanding notion that the farther away galaxies are, the slower their motion should appear.That movement is detectable in data from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), which NASA says "reveals conditions as they existed in the early universe by measuring the properties of the cosmic microwave background radiation over the full sky"—radiation thought to have been released about 380,000 years after the birth of the universe.Hot gas in galaxy clusters warms the microwave background radiation, and "a very tiny component of this temperature fluctuation also contains in itself information about cluster velocity," Kashlinsky said.If a cluster were moving faster or slower than the universe's background radiation, you'd expect to see the background heated slightly in that region of the universe—the result of a sort of electron-scattering "friction" between the cluster's hot gas and particles in the background radiation.Because these fluctuations are so faint, the team studied more than 700 galaxy clusters.The researchers had expected to find that, the farther away clusters are, the slower they appear to be moving.Instead, Kashlinsky said, "We found a great surprise."The clusters were all moving at the same speed—nearly 2 million miles (3.2 million kilometers) an hour —and in a single direction.Though this dark flow was detected only in galaxy clusters, it should apply to every structure in the known universe, Kashlinsky said.Explaining the Unexplainable.To explain the unexplainable flow, the team turned to the longstanding theory that rapid inflation just after the big bang had pushed chunks of matter beyond the known universe.The extra-universal matter's extreme mass means it "could still pull—tug on—the matter in our universe, causing this flow of galaxies across our observable horizon," said Kashlinsky, whose team's study appeared in the October 20 issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters."Strong Doubts"Not everyone is ready to rewrite physics just yet.Astrophysicist Hume Feldman of the University of Kansas has detected a similar, but weaker, flow.He said the Kashlinsky team's study is "very interesting, very intriguing, [but] a lot more work needs to be done."It's suggestive that something's going on, but what exactly is going on? It basically tells us to investigate," he said.David Spergel, an astrophysicist at Princeton University, echoed the sentiment."Until these results are reanalyzed by another group, I have strong doubts about the validity of the conclusions of this paper," he wrote in an email.He added that, if the result does hold up, "it would have an important implication for our understanding of cosmology."Study leader Kashlinsky agrees many questions remain unanswered. For starters: What exactly are these things that are apparently tugging our universe?"They could be anything. As bizarre as you could imagine—some warped space-time," Kashlinsky said."Or maybe something dull." (from National Geographic Nov 7 2008)

back to the LHC

PHYSICISTS around the world, some in their pyjamas and others with champagne, last night (Oct 21 2008)celebrated the first tests of the Large Hadron Collider which they hope will unlock the secrets of the universe and its origins. The Large Hadron Collider, or LHC, is the largest and most complex machine ever made and is expected to revamp modern physics by smashing together particles in a bid to recreate the conditions of the Big Bang.Staff in the control room on the border of Switzerland and France clapped as two beams of particles were sent silently first one way and then the other around the LHC's 27km underground chamber."Things can go wrong at any time," said project leader Lyn Evans, who wore jeans and running shoes for the LHC's debut."But this morning we had a great start."It will be weeks or months before two particles ever crash together in the giant tube, and even longer before scientists can interpret results, said Jos Engelen, chief scientific officer of CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research."Anything between a year and four years, depending on how difficult this new physics is to find," Mr Engelen said.Pyjama-clad scientists calling themselves "Nerds in Nightshirts" partied at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois as they waited late into the night for the first signals from the 10 billion Swiss franc ($11 billion) machine.The first blip came soon after the LHC was activated at 9.30am CERN time (5.30pm AEST), when it was 1.30am in Batavia, home of the Tevatron – which lays claim to being the most powerful particle collider until the LHC starts smashing protons.Physicists brushed off suggestions that the LHC, dubbed a "doomsday device" by some, could create tiny black holes that could suck in the planet."The worries that scientists had were nothing to do with being swallowed up by black holes and everything to do with technical hitches or electronic failure," said Jim al-Khalili, a physicist at Britain's University of Surrey."Now, after a collective sigh of relief, the real fun starts," Mr al-Khalili said."No matter what we find, we will be unlocking the secrets of the universe."The LHC will send beams of subatomic particles called protons whizzing around the tube at just under the speed of light.The hope is that they will smash into one another and explode in a burst of new and previously unseen types of particles – recreating on a tiny scale the heat and energy of the Big Bang that gave birth to the universe 13.7 billion years ago.At full speed the LHC will engineer 600 million collisions every second. Data will be transmitted via a network called The Grid to scientists at 170 institutions in 33 countries."It is sort of a virtual United Nations," said Michael Tuts, a physics professor at Columbia University in New York and program manager for 400 US physicists working on one LHC project.The experiments could confirm the existence of the Higgs Boson, a theoretical particle named after Peter Higgs, who first proposed it in 1964.Also referred to as the "God particle", the Higgs Boson could help explain how matter has mass."I think it's pretty likely" that it will be found, Mr Higgs told reporters at the University of Edinburgh, where he is a retired professor of physics.Scientists halted the particle beam's counter-clockwise spin temporarily last night after problems with the machine's magnets caused its temperature to warm slightly.CERN officials said such minor glitches were to be expected given the intricacy of the machine, which is cooled to minus 271.3 degrees Celsius.

Stromatolites

In the hyper-saline water of Hamelin Pool at the base of Shark Bay in W.A. the rocks aren't quite what the appear to be. They are living things, Stromatolites, which are the oldest living organisms on the planet. Some scientists believe they were the first living things on mother earth. Dr Phillip Playford is a scientist and historian who has studied every facet of stromatolites.Hamelin Pool is the location of the best example in the world of living marine stromatolites. The water of Hamelin Bay is twice as saline as usual sea water because of a bar across the Bay's entrance and rapid evaporation from the shallow water. Most living animals, which feed on the bacteria and algae of which stromatolites are composed, cannot tolerate such saline conditions. As a result stromatolites can grow here successfully, undisturbed. Most stromatolites are extremely slow growing. Those in Hamelin Pool grow at a maximum of .3mm a year, so those which are up to a metre high are hundreds if not thousands of years old. Stromatolites are formed through the activity of primitive unicellular organisms: cyanobacteria (which used to be called blue-green algae) and other algae. These grow through sediment and sand, binding the sedimentary particles together, resulting in successive layers which, over a long period of time, harden to form rock. For at least three-quarters of the earth's history stromatolites were the main reef building organisms, constructing large masses of calcium carbonate.However their most important role in the history of the earth has been that of contributing oxygen to the earth's atmosphere. The organisms which construct stromatolites are photosynthetic. They take carbon dioxide and water to produce carbohydrates, and in doing this they liberate oxygen into the atmosphere.When stromatolites first appeared on earth about 3.5 billion years ago there was little or no oxygen in the atmosphere. It was through the oxygen-generating activity of stromatolites that other animal life on earth was able to develop. Conversely, it is believed that the decline in numbers of stromatolites is related to the evolution of animals that consumed cyanobacteria and algae.Stromatolite fossils are evidence of the earliest life on the earth. Western Australia perhaps has the best stromatolite fossils, giving a record through the eons of time. Fossils of the earliest known stromatolites, about 3.5 billion years old, are to be found near Marble Bar in the Pilbara. Hamelin Pool gives an indication of what the earth may have looked like 3.5 billion years ago when stromatolites were widespread. Because of their range and numbers it is a place of great interest to botanists and geologists alike. A jetty has been constructed allowing the stromatolites to be viewed without doing them irreparable damage.It's a humbling thought that all life on this planet could have started from something so simple as the blue-green algae which created these rocks millions of years ago.Dr Playford is a consultant for the Department of Minerals and Energy, and a former Director of the Geological Survey.Stromatolite fossils can be viewed at the Western Australian Museum, Perth, W.A.

More on the Large Hadron Collider

Fears of an impending apocalypse have prompted death threats to a group of scientists working on the most expensive non-military experiment ever attempted. Particle physicists at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) will on Wednesday throw the switch on the AUS$6.6 billion Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The scientists at CERN will begin to shoot protons around a 27km ring-shaped tunnel at almost the speed of light. Within a few months they will smash the sub-atomic components into one another, generating temperatures 100,000 times hotter than the sun, but in a tiny space. The scientists hope to observe the conditions that existed in the aftermath of the Big Bang and possibly hunt down an elusive particle postulated in theoretical physics, known as the Higgs Boson. There's even a chance that the collisions could create mini black holes, which the scientists believe would quickly blink out of existence. And it's this potential for black holes that has critics of the project worried. Theoretical chemist Otto Rossler, from Germany's Tubingen University, lodged an emergency injunction with the European Court of Human Rights to prevent the LHC being turned on. Dr Rossler, who has been the experiment's foremost critic, and other signatories to the appeal said the LHC's potential to create life-sucking black holes violated the right to life under the European Convention of Human Rights. The court rejected Dr Rossler's appeal, but he still believes that a mini black hole could "eat the planet from the inside" within four years of forming. UK newspaper the Telegraph reported today that CERN scientists had received threatening telephone calls and e-mails. But team member Professor Brian Cox — once the keyboardist with pop group D:Ream — said the experiment posed no danger to the public. "Anyone who thinks the LHC will destroy the world is a twat," he told the Telegraph. The growing hysteria prompted CERN to publish a peer-reviewed report reiterating the LHC's safety. Scientists working on the project point out that cosmic rays from space slam into the earth's atmosphere, producing similar or greater collision energies to those that will be found in the LHC. These collisions happen all the time — yet mini black holes have not yet consumed the earth, CERN says. "The LHC safety review has shown that the LHC is perfectly safe,” Jos Engelen, CERN’s Chief Scientific Officer, said in a statement. "It points out that nature has already conducted the equivalent of about a hundred thousand LHC experimental programs on Earth — and the planet still exists.”

The new world starts Wednesday September 10, 2008

Particle physicists believe they will throw open a new frontier of knowledge on Wednesday when, 100 metres below ground, they switch on a mega-machine crafted to unveil the deepest mysteries of matter.
The most complex scientific experiment ever undertaken, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will accelerate sub-atomic particles to nearly the speed of light and then smash them together, with the aim of filling gaps in our understanding of the cosmos.
It may also determine the outcome of novel theories about space-time: does another dimension - or dimensions - exist in parallel to our own? After nearly two decades and 6 billion Swiss francs ($A6.6 billion), an army of 5,000 scientists, engineers and technicians drawn from nearly three dozen countries have brought the mammoth project close to fruition.At 9.30am (1730 AEST) on Wednesday, the first protons will be injected into a 27-kilometre ring-shaped tunnel, straddling the Swiss-French border at the headquarters of the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN).
Whizzed to within a millionth of a per cent of the speed of the light, the particles will be the first step in a long-term experiment to smash sub-atomic components together, briefly generating temperatures 100,000 times hotter than the Sun in a microscopic space.Analysts will then pore over the wreckage in the search for fundamental particles. "We will be entering into a new territory of physics," said Peter Jenni, spokesman for ATLAS - one of four gargantuan laboratories installed on the ring where a swathe of delicate detectors will spot the collisions.
"Wednesday is a very major milestone." The LHC is massively-muscled machine compared to its CERN predecessor, the Large Electron-Positron (LEP) collider, and an ageing accelerator at the legendary Fermilab in Illinois. It has the power to smash protons or ions - particles known as hadrons - together at a whopping 14 teraelectron volts (TeV), seven times the record held by Fermilab's Tevatron. The leviathan scale of the project is neatly juxtaposed by its goal, which is to explore the infinitely small.
Physicists have long puzzled over how particles acquire mass. In 1964, a British physicist, Peter Higgs, came up with this idea: there must exist a background field that would act rather like treacle.(the ethers LT)Particles passing through it would acquire mass by being dragged through a mediator, which theoreticians dubbed the Higgs Boson.The standard quip about the Higgs is that it is the "God Particle" - it is everywhere but remains frustratingly elusive.French physicist Yves Sacquin says that heroic work by the LEP and Fermilab has narrowed down the energy range at which the devious critter is likely to spotted.Given the LHC's capabilities, "there's a very strong probability that it will be detected," he said. Some experts are also hopeful about an early LHC breakthrough on the question of supersymmetry.The supersymmetry theory goes way beyond even the Higgs. It postulates that particles in the Standard Model have related, but more massive, counterparts.Such particles could explain the unsettling discovery of recent years that visible matter only accounts for some four per cent of the Universe. Enigmatic phenomena called dark matter and dark energy account for the rest.CERN Director General Robert Aymar is confident the massive experiment will yield a correspondingly big breakthrough in penetrating these mysteries.
"It is certain that the LHC will yield the identity and understanding of this dark matter," he said in a video statement.CERN has had to launch a PR campaign aimed at reassuring the public that the LHC will not create black holes that could engulf the planet or an unpleasant hypothetical particle called a strangelet that would turn the Earth into a lump of goo.It has commissioned a panel to verify its calculations that such risks are, by any reasonable thinking, impossible, and France too has carried out its own safety probe.Either way, the end of the world will not happen on Wednesday, for the simple reason that the LHC will not generate any collisions that day.These will probably be initiated "in a few weeks" as part of a phased programme to commission the LHC, testing its equipment and evaluating work procedures before cranking it up to full strength, said Jenni.Looking at the daily mountain of data that will have to be analysed, "it will take weeks or months before one can really hope to start discovering something new," he cautioned."The LHC is more than a machine. It is the intellectual quest of our age," the British weekly New Scientist said in this week's issue."With luck... today's physics textbooks will start to look out of date by the end of 2009."