If you love animals, visit us at EVOLVE! Campaigns and learn about a cruelty-free lifestyle: http://www.evolvecampaigns.org.uk
Interspecies Friendships (Better Together) by EVOLVE! Campaigns Beautiful animals making friends with other animals. Oh, what animals can teach us! "Animals are such agreeable friends - they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms." ~George Elliot
If you love animals, visit us at EVOLVE! Campaigns and learn about a cruelty-free lifestyle: http://www.evolvecampaigns.org.uk
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CHANCE OF STORMS: NOAA forecasters estimate a 25% chance of polar geomagnetic storms on August 7/8. That's when a coronal mass ejection (CME) hurled into space by a filament eruption on Aug. 4 could deliver a glancing blow to Earth's magnetic field. CURIOSITY LANDS ON MARS/IMAGES FROM MARS: NASA's "seven minutes of terror" ended with cries of joy from mission control at the Jet Propulsion Lab on August 6th when Curiosity sucessfully landed on Mars. Curiosity landed at 10:32 p.m. PDT Aug. 5, (1:32 a.m. EDT Aug. 6) inside Gale Crater near the foot of a layered mountain three miles tall and 96 miles in diameter. Observations from orbit have identified clay and sulfate minerals in the mountain's lower layers, indicating a wet history. For the next two years (at least) the rover will search the layers for ancient habitats that might have supported Martian microbial life. Curiosity carries 10 science instruments. Some are the first of their kind on Mars, such as a laser-firing instrument for checking the chemical make-up of rocks from a distance. The rover will use a drill and scoop at the end of its robotic arm to gather soil and powdered samples of rock interiors, then sieve and parcel out these samples into analytical laboratory instruments inside the rover. To handle this science toolkit, Curiosity is twice as long and five times as heavy as Spirit or Opportunity. NASA has just released a spectacular new image of Curiosity descending to Mars. Taken by the HiRISE camera onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the snapshot shows the parachute fully inflated about one minute before touchdown: NASA commentary: "The parachute appears fully inflated and performing perfectly. Details in the parachute, such as the band gap at the edges and the central hole, are clearly seen. The cords connecting the parachute to the back shell cannot be seen, although they were seen in the image of NASA's Phoenix lander descending, perhaps due to the difference in lighting angles. The bright spot on the back shell containing Curiosity might be a specular reflection off of a shiny area. Curiosity was released from the back shell sometime after this image was acquired." Stay tuned for more images. SUN SERPENT: Amateur astronomers around the world are monitoring a gigantic filament of magnetism on the sun. If one end of the filament were on Earth, the other end would reach all the way to the Moon. The dimensions of the structure make it an easy target for amateur solar telescopes. Richard Fleet sends this picture from his backyard observatory in Wiltshire, England: This filament is filled with billions of tons of plasma, yet it has remained suspended above the surface of the sun for days. Such a massive structure, buffeted as it is by winds and currents in the sun's atmosphere, is unlikely to remain stable much longer. If the filament collapses, it could crash into the surface of the sun and spark a powerful type of explosion called a Hyder flare. Amateur astronomers are encouraged to monitor developments.
www.spaceweather.com Mars Landing Sky Show : When the sun goes down tonight, Sunday 5 August, step outside and look southwest. Mars, Saturn and the blue-giant star Spica have converged to form a 1st-magnitude triangle not far above the horizon. The eye-catching arangement makes it easy to find the Red Planet on the night of the Mars Landing. Only a few hours before the Mars Science Lab spacecraft reaches the red planet and drops Curiosity on a hair-raising descent, which mission planners have dubbed the "seven minutes of terror", Mars itself will put on a special show in the sunset skies of Earth. Together with Saturn and Spica (a blue giant star in the constellation Virgo) the Red Planet will form a "Martian Triangle" visible from almost all parts of our planet. Go outside after sunset on August 5th and look west where the setting sun has just disappeared. As soon as the sky fades to black, a triangle of first-magnitude lights will pop out of the twilight. The vertices are Mars, Saturn, and Spica. Together, they form an equilateral triangle about 5 degrees on each side. This means you could hide the Martian Triangle behind your outstretched palm. It would also fit comfortably inside the bowl of the Big Dipper. The tightness of the triangle makes it extra eye-catching.
The three objects are very different: Mars is a small rocky planet relatively close to Earth; Saturn is a ringed gas giant halfway across the solar system; Spica is a massive binary star on the other side of our galactic spiral arm. Nevertheless, they shine with the same intensity as seen from Earth. On the scale of astronomical brightness, all three are ranked first magnitude. This makes them easy to see with the unaided eye. Not long after the Martian Triangle follows the sun below the horizon, the real action begins. At approximately 10:30 pm Pacific Daylight Time, Curiosity's entry capsule will slam into the upper atmosphere of Mars, raising temperatures around the heat shield to 2100 C--more than twice as hot as basaltic lava. What happens next seems almost unbelievable. Because Curiosity is so much bigger and heavier than any previous rover, old ways of landing, such as air bags, wouldn't work. Mission planners had to come up with something new and unorthodox. Reporter Scott Gold of the LA Times described it this way: "In the time it takes to drive to the grocery store, the spacecraft will change shape like a toy Transformer six times, slowing from 13,000 mph to 1.7 mph while using 76 pyrotechnic devices, ropes, knives and the largest supersonic parachute ever built." At the end of the maneuver, a "Sky Crane" gently lowers the rover onto the floor of Gale Crater. If the rover survives the hair-raising descent and lands intact as planned, it will mark the beginning of an extraordinary mission of discovery. Bristling with the most advanced sensors ever sent to Mars, the one-ton rover will spend the next two years (at least) finding out whether one of the most intriguing places in the solar system ever offered an environment favorable for microscopic life. For the full story and updates about Curiosity's mission, visit NASA's Mars Portal. For more news about Mars--as seen from your backyard and Curiosity's--visit science.nasa.gov. FLYING SAUCER CLOUDS : On August 1st, Ken Rotberg observed a pair of rainbow-colored saucers over Delray Beach, Florida --but they weren't UFOs. The technical term is pileus clouds: Atmospheric optics expert Les Cowley explains how they form: "On sunny afternoons, cumulus clouds boil upwards, pushing layers of moist air above them even higher where they cool and condense to form cloud caps or 'pileus' (Latin for cap). When pileus clouds form very quickly, their water droplets tend to be all the same size--the perfect condition for iridescent colors."
"I noticed the sun dropping behind a huge storm cloud in the west and ['the saucers' appeared]," says Rotberg. "I was just amazed at what I was witnessing, watching it slowly change. There was nobody near me at the time to share it with!" Consider it shared. www.spaceweather.com Spirit Science 2 - Chakras Uploaded by TheSpiritScience on 29 Dec 2011
In this lesson, we take a look at Chakras, and how your body picks up energy on a vibratory level. Last week, a few people didn't understand HOW thoughts affected you, but did you know that your body has a system for doing so? Everything is vibration, and if you study musical octaves, you see that all of the vibrations in existence have a harmonic pattern that they all flow through. The Chakra system is merely the exact same system that runs through your body. It picks up on all of the energies and vibrations all around you, as well as emits what you are feeling to the universe through what we call 'Auras' (Not discussed here, but still very relevant). (Reiki is spelt "Reiki", for the many people who have asked about that.) Namaste! A filament of magnetism connecting sunspots AR1538 and AR1540 rose up and erupted on August 4th. Look for the extreme UV glow of hot plasma in this movie recorded by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory: [go to : www.spaceweather.com] As the filament ripped through the sun's atmosphere, it propelled a massive CME into space: movie. The expanding cloud does not appear to be on a collision course with Earth, although a glancing blow might be possible 2 to 3 days hence. Stay tuned for further analysis. www.spaceweather.com
Spirit Science 1 - Thoughts Uploaded by TheSpiritScience on 20 Jan 2012 http://thespiritscience.net/spirit/thoughts/
You can have, do, or be, ANYTHING you want. This week, Patchman dives into the unknown by discussing a very simple topic; Thoughts, Emotions, and the power that they bestow upon you. Or rather, how you can empower yourself to live in the moment by controlling your thoughts and emotions, and guiding yourself the way that you want to be guided, rather than allowing modern society to tell you how to feel and what to think. Just as you create your own reality, we are also co-creating our realities together. We are a collective! As a community, a city, a country, and a species, we decide where we want to go and how we want to flow. It is up to us to decide what happens next in the epic tale that is the human race, but change has to start from an individual level. MINOR GEOMAGNETIC STORM: A minor geomagnetic storm is underway. The cause is a knot of south-pointing magnetism drifting past Earth. The IMF is opening a crack in Earth's magnetosphere, allowing solar wind to enter and fuel the storm. CURIOSITY & SOLAR FLARES: Mars rover Curiosity has been hit by multiple solar flares en route to the Red Planet, giving NASA planners an idea of what faces human astronauts in the Earth-Mars expanse. [full story] PERSEID METEORS: 1 August 2012 : Earth has entered a broad stream of debris from Comet Swift-Tuttle, source of the annual Perseid meteor shower. Meteoroids in the outskirts of the stream are now hitting Earth's atmosphere, producing as many as 10-15 meteors per hour according to worldwide counts from the International Meteor Organization. NASA's network of all-sky meteor cameras captured 17 Perseid fireballs on the nights of July 28th through 30th. Here are their orbits: The position of Earth is denoted by the red starburst; all of the meteoroid orbits intersect at that point. The purple line traces the orbit of the parent Comet Swift-Tuttle. Fortunately, the comet itself does not intersect Earth. In the days ahead, Earth will plunge deeper into the meteoroid stream, and meteor rates will increase accordingly. Forecasters expect the shower to peak on August 12-13 with as many as 100+ meteors per hour visible from dark-sky sites. Monitor the realtime meteor gallery for sightings. 2 August 2012 : As Earth enters a broad stream of debris from Comet Swift-Tuttle, more and more Perseid meteors are appearing in the night sky. "Last night, I captured a Perseid fireball ripping through the ionosphere over New Mexico," reports amateur astronomer Thomas Ashcraft. "It was travelling pretty fast - 133,000 miles per hour!" Click to see and hear the meteoroid disintegrate: [go to www.spaceweather.com] The movie's sound track comes from Ashcraft's dual-frequency meteor radar. It works like this: Radio signals from distant VHF transmitters bounce off the meteor's ion trail. Ashcraft's antennas can pick up those reflections, which sound like ghostly echoes in the loudspeaker of his VHF receiver.
At the moment, Perseid meteor rates are low--no more than about 10 per hour. In the days ahead, however, Earth will plunge deeper into the comet's debris stream, and meteor activity will increase accordingly. Forecasters expect the shower to peak on August 12-13 with as many as 100+ meteors per hour visible from dark-sky sites. Stay tuned for Perseids. www.spaceweather.com
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