Terrific presentation on our profoundly wrong education system and its stifling effect on human creativity…with a lot of fun along the way. Bravo. – Zen http://www.zengardner.com/
Terrific presentation on our profoundly wrong education system and its stifling effect on human creativity…with a lot of fun along the way. Bravo. – Zen http://www.zengardner.com/
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AMPLIFIED GREENHOUSE EFFECT SHIFTS GROWING SEASONS: Vegetation growth at Earth's northern latitudes increasingly resembles lusher latitudes to the south, according to a NASA-funded study. "It's like Winnipeg moving to Minneapolis-Saint Paul in only 30 years," says one of the lead researchers. [full story] COMET PAN-STARRS UPDATE: Yesterday, March 10th, Comet Pan-STARRS (C/2011 L4) made its closest approach to the sun. Inside the orbit of Mercury, the comet was hit by solar rays ten times more intense than we experience on Earth. This sets the stage for a good show as Pan-STARRS, glowing brightly, moves into the night sky later this week. Dr. Fritz Helmut Hemmerich of Tenerife (Canary Islands) caught a hint of things to come last night when he photographed the comet setting just behind the sun: [click on: http://spaceweather.com/images2013/11mar13/timelapse.gif to watch animation] Although Comet Pan-STARRS is bright, somewhere between 1st and 2nd magnitude, most observers say they are still having trouble seeing it with the unaided eye in the bright evening twilight. A few seconds exposure with a digital camera, however, reveals it easily. Binoculars help, too. Visibility will improve in the nights ahead as the comet moves away from the sun. Dates of special interest include March 12th and 13th when Pan-STARRS passes not far from the crescent Moon. The tight conjunction on the 12th provides a splendid opportunity for sunset photographers. Look low and west for a beautiful view. Sky maps: March 12, March 13. More: NASA video, 3D orbit, ephemeris, light curves. STEREO-B SEES COMET PAN-STARRS: On March 10th, Comet Pan-STARRS passed by the sun just inside the orbit of Mercury. The close encounter brought it into the field of view of NASA's STEREO-B spacecraft. The sun, Earth, and comet are labeled in this low-resolution beacon image from STEREO-B's Heliospheric Imager: Comet Pan-STARRS is so bright, it is actually saturating the pixels of the imager's digital camera. The comet's luminosity is mainly due to dust. Earth-based observations show that Pan-STARRS is dustier than an average comet. Comet dust reflects sunlight, so the fan-shaped tail of Pan-STARRS, chock full of it, is especially bright.
Low-resolution beacon images will be followed in a day or so by high-resolution movies. Stay tuned for a great view of Comet Pan-STARRS passing the sun. http://spaceweather.com/ Mar 10, 2013 What highly conscious people talk about. From the film 'My Dinner With Andre'.
Source: ZenGardner.com "I saw this years ago and it’s more alive today than it ever was! Watch and pass it on…this is perhaps the best short summary of our situation available!"– Love, Zen SOLAR WIND ENERGY SOURCE DISCOVERED: Using data from an ageing NASA spacecraft, researchers have found signs of an energy source in the solar wind that has caught the attention of fusion researchers. NASA will be able to test the theory later this decade when it sends a new probe into the sun for a closer look. Get the full story from Science@NASA COMET COMET PAN-STARRS MOVES NORTH: On March 10th, Comet Pan-STARRS (C/2011 L4) makes its closest approach to the sun inside the orbit of Mercury. As the comet swings by the sun it is also crossing the celestial equator, moving from southern to northern skies. First sightings of the comet are now coming in from the northern hemisphere. Halda Mohammed sends this picture from Kulim, Kedah, Malaysia (latitude +5o N): Worldwide observers report that the comet is glowing about as brightly as a 2nd magnitude star, similar to the stars of the Big Dipper. Technically, that makes it a naked-eye object. The only problem is bright evening twilight, which competes with the glow of the comet. Look low and west after sunset; if you can't see the comet, try scanning the horizon with binoculars. Dates of special interest include March 12th and 13th when the comet passes not far from the crescent Moon. The tight conjunction on the 12th provides a splendid opportunity for sunset photographers. Sky maps: March 12, March 13, Visibility will improve next week as the comet moves away from the sun. When it is framed by darker skies, Pan-STARRS should become an easy target for naked eyes and small telescopes alike. Check the realtime comet gallery for the latest images. More: NASA video, 3D orbit, ephemeris, light curves. NEW SUNSPOT: Last week, a farside sunspot hurled a massive CME toward Mars. Now that same sunspot is turning toward Earth. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory photographed it emerging over the sun's eastern limb on March 9th: Since targeting Mars with a strong eruption on March 5th, the sunspot appears to have lost some of its potency. We shall see whether the active region still has an explosive magnetic field as it rotates around for better viewing in the days ahead.
www.spaceweather.com March 8, 2012 – SPACE – The solar system’s small bodies have been often in the news lately. There are currently two bright comets in the southern sky, one of which, Comet C/2011 L4 (PANSTARRS) will soon be moving into the northern sky. An asteroid named 2012 DA14 recently passed close to the Earth. There have been two bright meteors in the past month, one in Russia and one in California.
But these types of bodies aren’t the smallest relics of the solar system visible from here on Earth. A rare and hard to spot phenomenon called the Zodiacal Light, made from tiny solar system dust particles, can only be sighted under the best conditions. And a good time to view it is coming up soon. Most stargazers are unaware that they can actually see this interplanetary dust, when conditions are right. In some ways this disk of interplanetary dust is similar in appearance to the Milky Way. The glow of the Milky Way is the result of the combined light of millions of stars too faint to be resolved by the unaided eye. The interplanetary dust disk, called the Zodiacal Light, is the result of millions of dust particles too faint to be resolved. Unlike the Milky Way, which can be resolved with a telescope, the particles that make up the Zodiacal Light are too small to be resolved by any optical instrument. There are only a few windows of opportunity during the year to see the Zodiacal Light, and one of these is coming up over the next couple of weeks. One factor is that the moon will move out of the evening sky, leaving it darker and making fainter objects more easy to spot. A second factor is that the ecliptic, where the Zodiacal Light is brightest, will be perpendicular to the horizon in the early evening in the northern hemisphere. Wait until the sky is completely free of scattered light from the sun, at least an hour and a half after sunset. First of all, choose an observing location with a very dark sky. It must be dark enough that the Milky Way is easily visible, because the Zodiacal Light is fainter than the Milky Way. At this time of year in the northern hemisphere, the Milky Way is setting in the northwest in the early evening, marked by Cassiopeia and Cygnus. The ecliptic, marked with a green line in the chart, is due west, passing through the faint constellation of Pisces. In a dark sky, you will see the Zodiacal Light and the Milky Way as two distinct but very faint objects. The Milky Way gets wider and brighter higher in the sky, while the Zodiacal Light gets narrower and fainter. The first is a band, the second a cone. If you succeed in spotting the Zodiacal Light over the next few weeks, you will have observed one of the rarest phenomena in the night sky. -MNN http://theextinctionprotocol.wordpress.com/2013/03/08/rare-zodiacal-light-will-be-visible-in-night-sky-soon/ March 7, 2013 – SPACE – A newly discovered asteroid the size of a football field will cruise through Earth’s neighborhood this weekend, just days after another space rock made an even closer approach to our planet. The 330-foot-wide (100 meters) asteroid 2013 ET will miss Earth by 600,000 miles (960,000 kilometers) when it zips by on Saturday. The space rock flyby will come just days after the 33-foot (10 m) asteroid 2013 EC approached within 230,000 miles (370,000 km) of us early Monday. When asteroid 2013 ET passes Earth, it will be at a range equivalent to 2.5 times the distance between the planet and the moon, making it too faint and far away for most stargazers to spot in the night sky. But the Virtual Telescope Project in Italy, run by astrophysicist Gianluca Masi, will webcast a live telescope view of the space rock’s flyby on Friday, beginning at 2 p.m. EST. There is no danger that 2013 ET will hit Earth, researchers say, just as 2013 EC posed no threat. But their flybys are slightly unsettling nonetheless, since both asteroids were discovered mere days ago. Indeed, many space rocks are hurtling undetected through Earth’s neck of the cosmic woods. Astronomers estimate that the number of near-Earth asteroids tops 1 million, but just 9,700 have been discovered to date. Undetected objects can strike Earth without warning, as the surprise meteor explosion over Russia last month illustrated. The 55-foot (17 m) asteroid that caused the Feb. 15 Russian fireball detonated in the atmosphere before astronomers even knew it existed. While many scientists stress the urgent need for expanded and improved asteroid-detection efforts, there is some good news: Humanity is unlikely to go the way of the dinosaurs anytime soon. NASA researchers have identified and mapped the orbits of 95 percent of the 980 or so near-Earth asteroids at least 0.6 miles (1 km) wide, which could threaten human civilization if they hit us. None of these behemoths are on a collision course with Earth in the foreseeable future. For comparison, the asteroid believed to have wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago likely measured about 6 miles (10 km) across, scientists say. -MSNBC SOLAR ACTIVITY INCREASES: Both sides of the sun are active today. On the farside, an explosion commencing around 0400 UT hurled a massive CME into space. On the Earthside, sunspot AR1686 unleashed an M1-class solar flare at 0754 UT: movie. This uptick in global solar activity could herald a period of stormier space weather in the days ahead. Stay tuned. FARSIDE EXPLOSION: An active region on the farside of the sun exploded during the early hours of March 5th, hurling a bright CME into space. Cameras onboard the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) recorded the expanding cloud: NASA's STEREO-Behind spacecraft is stationed over the farside of the sun, directly above the blast site. An extreme UV telescope onboard the spacecraft recorded a movie of the explosion. The responsible active region will rotate onto the Earthside of the sun in less than a week, which means geoeffective solar activity is in the offing.
www.spaceweather.com Published on 5 Mar 2013
The REAL Climate Changer: http://youtu.be/_yy3YJBOw_o Ice Age Soon? http://youtu.be/UuYTcnN7TQk An Unlikely but Relevant Risk - The Solar Killshot: http://youtu.be/X0KJ_dxp170 TODAY's LINKS: Disappearing Sunspots: http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/... WUWT Sun Article: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/07/09... Ulysses Solar Data: http://ut-images.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-... Twice every year, around the time of the equinoxes, Earth can pass directly between the Sun and NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), producing a series of beautiful eclipses from the point of view of the spacecraft. SDO's vernal eclipse season began on Saturday, producing a partial blackout of the sun: During the eclipse, which was centered around 0715 UT on March 3rd, Earth covered about half of the sun. Because these eclipses typically last for only minutes each day (maximum=72 minutes), there is still plenty of uninterrupted time for SDO to monitor activity on the sun. The ongoing eclipse season will end in approximately three weeks. Between now and then, stay tuned for some rare blackouts. www.spaceweather.com
March 4, 2013 – EARTH – This is proving a freakish year for weather, but Japan is having an odder time of it than most. The country has had a record winter for snow, and northern Japan is currently coated by unprecedented volumes of the white stuff – more than five meters at higher altitudes, with houses turned into igloos and roads into snow tunnels. In the Hakkoda Mountains the depth of snow has been measured at 5.61 meters – a record for Japan. Even lower down, in the city of Aomori, snow is standing at almost 1.5 meters and bulldozers have to work round the clock. This has also been a record year for snow in parts of Russia – a couple of weeks ago snow piles of more than five meters caused gridlock in Moscow. Switzerland, too, has been experiencing dramatic snowfalls, with depths of up to three meters. These snowfalls, especially those in northern Japan, are remarkable by any standards. But they still fall well short of the all-time record-breakers. Tamarack in California claims the record for the deepest snow ever recorded: 11.5 meters on 11 March 1911. That was clearly some year in the Sierra Nevada, as Tamarack also recorded the largest snowfall in a single month in the US: almost 10 meters. -Guardian BBC News - Record snowfall in northern Japan Heaped snow in Red Square, Moscow, 21 January 2013. Most of northern Russia was buried in heavy snowfalls this winter. Texas blizzard breaks 120 year old record: The blizzard that hammered the nation’s midsection broke a 120-year-old record in Amarillo for one-day snowfall in February with 19.1 inches. The blizzard was accompanied by fierce winds in excess of 75 mph. National Weather Service meteorologist Krissy Scotten in Amarillo says the snowfall total Monday bested a record set Feb. 16, 1893, when 19 inches fell. -Abqjournal Roads in India buried under 100 ft (30 m) of snow: Ahead of them stands a 100-foot-tall wall of snow and they are slowly cutting their way through the mass to connect this Himachal Pradesh hill resort to landlocked Lahaul Valley in the Himalayan slopes. They are the dedicated men of General Reserve Engineering Force (GREF), a wing of the Border Roads Organization, working to reopen for traffic the snow-marooned Rohtang Pass located at 3,978 meters in the Pir Panjal mountain range, 51 km from here. Snow-clearing work started March 1 and it will take the men two months to reopen the 115-km road stretch between Manali and Keylong towns. Col. Yogesh Nair, commander of the 38 Task Force of GREF here, told IANS. Rohtang Pass is the gateway to Keylong from Manali in Kullu district, but it remains off-limits from the rest of the country for over five months due to heavy snow deposits on the road. This time, Rohtang shut down in mid-December and since then, people of the Lahaul region have been holed up in their region. Nair said there was record snowfall in the region this season and the snow-clearing operation was a herculean task. “The road stretch near Rohtang Pass is under 100 to 120 feet of snow. Unusually high. It normally experiences 70 to 80 feet of snow. We will try to reopen the Manali-Keylong highway by April-end,” he said. Every year, after winter, GREF opens the Manali-Rohtang-Keylong highway by deploying more than 250 personnel and laborers. The highway is also strategically important as it further connects to the forward areas of Jammu and Kashmir’s Ladakh region along the borders with China and Pakistan. “Our men are working in Arctic-like conditions where chances of snowstorms and avalanches still loom large. Last year, our laborers were caught in a snowstorm but were evacuated safely,” he said. The effort of GREF working in snowy and harsh climatic conditions is commendable since a sudden drop in temperature, even in summer, can trigger winter-like conditions. Oxygen near the Rohtang Pass is minimal and high velocity winds blow every afternoon. GREF has provided special uniforms to workers which weigh around five kg while the weight of a pair of shoes is two kg. Anti-glare sunglasses and gloves are also part of their uniform. With the help of global positioning system, engineers locate the road beneath the hill of the snow. After a bulldozer clears off the major snow, labourers manually clear the remaining snow with shovels. Residents of two dozen small and scattered villages with a population of over 20,000 in the Lahaul valley are eagerly awaiting restoration of the road traffic. A government-run helicopter, which also operates once a week between district headquarters Keylong and Manali, is the only mode of transportation for them these days. “Since late last December, we have been cut off from the rest of the world. We are awaiting reopening of roads,” Mohan Bodh, a resident of Chokhang village in Lahaul, told IANS. –Daijiworld Canada sees record February snowfall: Toronto broke a snowfall record for Feb. 27, according to Environment Canada. At Pearson International Airport, 12.4 centimeters of the heavy wet snow covered the ground, breaking the record of 7.1 centimeters set in 1967. The slush is still flooding some city streets. City officials are asking homeowners to stop shoveling the slushy snow onto the road as it’s blocking the catch basins. According to a report in the Toronto Sun, the city said the cost to clean up Wednesday’s slushy mess is around $2.5-million. -680News Ice Boulders Formed In Lake Michigan Wash Ashore
The Moon’s distance from the Earth varies between 363,104 km (225,622 miles) at perigee (closest) and 406,696 km (252,088 miles) at apogee (most distant point).
Gianluca Masi from the Virtual Telescope Project had a live view of the asteroid when it was about twice the distance of the Moon, and a replay of that webcast is available below. “That we are finding all these asteroids recently does not mean that we are being visited by more asteroids,” Masi said during the webcast, “just that our ability to detect them has gotten so much better. Our technology has improved a lot over the past decades.” –Universe Today March 4, 2013 – EGYPT – Swarms of locusts have been seen in several districts of Cairo on Saturday, including Moqatam and New Cairo. The feared ‘locust plague’ could reach Cairo, after prior sightings were reported along the Red Sea coast and in Upper Egypt. Some citizens burned tires to create a black fog to keep the locusts from settling in the city. Swarms were earlier reported to have reached Egypt’s Red Sea city of Zafarana, some 200 kilometers from Cairo, and then the Upper Egyptian city of Qena where locusts appeared in at least three major villages. There has earlier been reports of a “plague of locusts,” which some experts say could hit Egypt’s Nile Delta. Since January, swarms of the insects — originating from Sudan — have been spotted along the Red Sea coast in south-eastern Egypt, north-eastern Sudan, Eritrea and Saudi Arabia. In 2004, Egypt witnessed one of the most serious locust infestations in recent history, when farmers in 15 out of the country’s 27 governorates suffered extensive crop damage. At the time, the Land Centre for Human Rights, a local NGO devoted to agriculture issues, reported that 38 percent of the nation’s crops had been damaged as a direct result of the arrival of locusts. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), one ton of locusts eat the same amount of food in a single day as around 2,500 people. –Ahram Published on 3 Mar 2013
Mild Earthquake Strikes Castel Gandolfo, Pope Emeritus' Home, Just Days After He Arrives: Various Italian news sources reported Sunday that a mild earthquake had struck Rome and surrounding areas, including Castel Gandolfo, the former pope's temporary home. According to the Agence France-Presse, the earthquake had a local magnitude of 2.5 and was felt in Rome, Ciapino, Marino and Castel Gandolfo. So far, no reports of injury or serious damage have been relayed to the Italian Department of Civil Protection. Italian news blog Blogo reported that, according to the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology, the quake originated at a depth of 10.5 kilometers.
This latest event comes on the heels of a photo that appeared to show a bolt of lightning striking St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City just hours after Pope Benedict XVI announced his resignation on Feb. 11. Then, as now, some people speculated as to whether the act of nature was really a divine message. On Sunday, Italia Domani asked whether the earthquake wasn't a sign for the cardinals who will soon be choosing a new pope. Castel Gandolfo, a small town a few miles outside Rome, has been a longtime summer retreat for pontiffs, reports NBC News. In July 2012, a 3.6-magnitude, 6-mile-deep tremor was felt by then-Pope Benedict while he was vacationing at the retreat, according to the National Catholic Register. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/03/mild-earthquake-strikes-castel-gandolfo-pope-home_n_2801969.html Comet Pan-STARRS (C/2011 L4) is inside the orbit of Mercury, brightening as it plunges toward the sun. Observers in the southern hemisphere say they can see Pan-STARRS with the unaided eye in the evening sunset sky. Michael White sends this view from Manawatu, New Zealand: "As Comet Pan-STARRS was setting on the southwestern horizon, its nucleus was visible to the naked eye and its tail could just be seen with averted vision," says White.
Several important dates are approaching. On March 5th, Comet Pan-STARRS makes its closest approach to Earth (1.1 AU), followed on March 10th by its closest approach to the sun (0.3 AU). As Comet Pan-STARRS passes the sun, solar glare might make it difficult to see even as the nucleus vaporizes and brightens. By March 12th and 13th, the comet will reappear in the sunset skies of the northern hemisphere not far from the crescent Moon; think photo-op! Light curves suggest that the comet's brightness will peak near 2nd magnitude, similar to the stars of the Big Dipper. Check the realtime comet gallery for the latest images. More about Comet Pan-STARRS: NASA video, 3D orbit, ephemeris, light curves. www.spaceweather.com |
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