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Tracking hurricane Sandy: As storm ‘zigs’, it’s also changing dramatically

Posted: October 29, 2012 by phaedrap1 in News
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Hurricane Sandy has lurched westward as it heads toward landfall late Monday. It’s also swapping energy sources as it becomes extratropical. The process sometimes gives storms a boost of power.

By Peter Spotts, Staff Writer

Rough surf of the Atlantic Ocean breaks over the dunes Monday morning, Oct. 29, in Cape May, N.J., as high tide and Hurricane Sandy begin to arrive.

Mel Evans/AP

With hurricane Sandy on final approach to formally making landfall near the southern tip of New Jersey late Monday evening, the storm is on the verge of an unusual shift.

Even as it makes a left turn to head toward the coast, it also is swapping energy sources to become an extratropical cyclone.

Such transitions occur several times a year to typhoons in the western Pacific, notes Clifford Mass, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Washington at Seattle, in an e-mail exchange.

“But to have it occur over the western Atlantic and then to recurve inland with such a major effect is extraordinary,” Dr. Mass adds.

Hurricane preparedness: 5 things you can do to keep safe

The shift from tropical to extratropical tends to intensify the storm for a period, as well as redistribute winds and rainfall in ways that can shift the regions most heavily affected by wind and rain.

In Sandy’s case, such changes already have been factored into forecasts from the National Hurricane Center and local National Weather Service forecast offices in the eastern US.

Indeed the hurricane’s vast size – tropical-storm-force winds extend up to 420 nautical miles from Sandy’s center – has prompted federal officials to warn people not to focus on where the storm makes landfall because the areas affected by coastal surges, heavy rains, and high wind remain extensive.

Indeed, the full range of winds associated with Sandy spans a diameter of more than 1,000 miles.

Sandy intensified slightly Monday morning as it passed over a sliver of warm water associated with the Gulf Stream. Atmospheric pressure at the center of Sandy – a key measure of the storm’s strength – has hit a low of 27.85 inches, or 943 millibars. If Sandy retains that reading, or it drops further, at landfall, the location would go into the record books as experiencing the lowest barometric pressure of any spot in the US north of Cape Hatteras, according to data compiled by the Weather Underground.

The previous record, 946 millibars, was set in 1938 at Bellport Coast Guard Station on Long Island during an infamous hurricane that crossed Long Island and slammed into New England.

As of 11:00 a.m., the center of Sandy was located some 213 miles southeast of Cape May, N.J.

Sandy’s pending shift to an extratropical cyclone comes as the storm trades heat sources.

Tropical storms and hurricanes draw their energy from warm seawater in the tropics. The water evaporates and rises. As the water vapor rises, cools, and condenses to form the storm clouds, the heat needed to evaporate the water in the first place returns to the atmosphere. The heat reinforces the cloud-building process, especially at the storm’s core. Thus, warm cores are the hallmark of tropical cyclones.

Outside the tropics, extratropical cyclones are large-scale low-pressure systems that bring the typical storms that travel across mid and high latitudes. These storms draw their energy from the contrast in temperature between warm air moving north from the tropics and cold air coming down from the north.

Hurricane Sandy is slated to merge with an extratropical cyclone as it makes landfall, with its core gradually shifting from warm to cold, as it changes heat sources from ocean water to the atmosphere itself.

This shift can have a profound change in the location of rain and winds in the storm, forecasters say. With tropical cyclones, surface winds reach their highest speeds closest to the core, and to the right of its center as seen from above the storm. Rainfall in a tropical cyclone appears in pinwheel-like bands spreading out from the core.

As the storm goes extratropical, maximum winds can appear far from the storm’s center. And the most intense rain tends to migrate to a large patch to the left of the storm’s track, while the highest winds and waves tend to appear to the right of the track.

Moreover, a tropical cyclone working its way through the merger with another storm can strengthen for a time, feeding off of heat brought by the extratropical cyclone it’s joining.

Once Sandy makes landfall, forecasters expect the storm to weaken rapidly. The center of the system is projected to work its way north through Pennsylvania and New York through Thursday morning, then head northeast through Quebec and out into the Gulf of St. Lawrence over the weekend.

The Christian Science Monitor

Paintballs may deflect an incoming asteroid

Posted: October 28, 2012 by phaedrap1 in News, Science
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Paintballs may deflect an incoming asteroid
An artist’s rendering of the asteroid Apophis.
Image: European Space Agency
October 26, 2012

With 20 years’ notice, paint pellets could cause an asteroid to veer off course.

In the event that a giant asteroid is headed toward Earth, you’d better hope that it’s blindingly white. A pale asteroid would reflect sunlight — and over time, this bouncing of photons off its surface could create enough of a force to push the asteroid off its course.

How might one encourage such a deflection? The answer, according to an MIT graduate student: with a volley or two of space-launched paintballs.

Sung Wook Paek, a graduate student in MIT’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, says if timed just right, pellets full of paint powder, launched in two rounds from a spacecraft at relatively close distance, would cover the front and back of an asteroid, more than doubling its reflectivity, or albedo. The initial force from the pellets would bump an asteroid off course; over time, the sun’s photons would deflect the asteroid even more.

Paek’s paper detailing this unconventional strategy won the 2012 Move an Asteroid Technical Paper Competition, sponsored by the United Nations’ Space Generation Advisory Council, which solicits creative solutions to space-related problems from students and young professionals. Paek presented his paper this month at the International Astronautical Congress in Naples, Italy.

The challenge put forth by this year’s U.N. competition was to identify novel solutions for safely deflecting a near-Earth object, such as an asteroid. Scientists have proposed a wide variety of methods to avoid an asteroid collision. Some proposals launch a projectile or spacecraft to collide with an incoming asteroid; the European Space Agency is currently investigating such a mission.

Other methods have included detonating a nuclear bomb near an asteroid or equipping spacecraft as “gravity tractors,” using a craft’s gravitational field to pull an asteroid off its path.

Paek’s paintball strategy builds on a solution submitted by last year’s competition winner, who proposed deflecting an asteroid with a cloud of solid pellets. Paek came up with a similar proposal, adding paint to the pellets to take advantage of solar radiation pressure — the force exerted on objects by the sun’s photons. Researchers have observed that pressure from sunlight can alter the orbits of geosynchronous satellites, while others have proposed equipping spacecraft with sails to catch solar radiation, much like a sailboat catches wind.

In his proposal, Paek used the asteroid Apophis as a theoretical test case. According to astronomical observations, this 27-gigaton rock may come close to Earth in 2029, and then again in 2036. Paek determined that five tons of paint would be required to cover the massive asteroid, which has a diameter of 1,480 feet. He used the asteroid’s period of rotation to determine the timing of pellets, launching a first round to cover the front of the asteroid, and firing a second round once the asteroid’s backside is exposed. As the pellets hit the asteroid’s surface, they would burst apart, splattering the space rock with a fine, five-micrometer-layer of paint.

From his calculations, Paek estimates that it would take up to 20 years for the cumulative effect of solar radiation pressure to successfully pull the asteroid off its Earthbound trajectory. He says launching pellets with traditional rockets may not be an ideal option, as the violent takeoff may rupture the payload. Instead, he envisions paintballs may be made in space, in ports such as the International Space Station, where a spacecraft could then pick up a couple of rounds of pellets to deliver to the asteroid.

Paek adds that paint isn’t the only substance that such pellets might hold. For instance, the capsules could be filled with aerosols that, when fired at an asteroid, “impart air drag on the incoming asteroid to slow it down,” Paek says. “Or you could just paint the asteroid so you can track it more easily with telescopes on Earth. So there are other uses for this method.”

Lindley Johnson, program manager for NASA’s Near Earth Objects Observation Program, says Paek’s proposal is “an innovative variation” on a method used by others to capitalize on solar radiation pressure. For example, MESSENGER, a spacecraft orbiting Mercury, is equipped with solar sails that propel the craft with solar radiation pressure, reducing the fuel needed to power it.

“It is very important that we develop and test a few deflection techniques sufficiently so that we know we have a viable ‘toolbox’ of deflection capabilities to implement when we inevitably discover an asteroid on an impact trajectory,” Johnson says.

William Ailor, principal engineer for Aerospace Corp. in El Segundo, Calif., adds that the potential for an asteroid collision is a long-term challenge for scientists and engineers.

“These types of analyses are really timely because this is a problem we’ll have basically forever,” Ailor says. “It’s nice that we’re getting young people thinking about it in detail, and I really applaud that.”

Jennifer Chu, MIT News Office

Scientists believe they have come close to solving the ‘Matrix’ theory

Posted: October 27, 2012 by phaedrap1 in News, Science
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The question of whether we live in a real world or a simulated one has plagued philosophers for centuries – but now scientists believe they finally have found a way to test the theory.

The Matrix

The successful film franchise, The Matrix, also helped spawn the idea that we may be living in a computer generated universe

Professor Silas Beane, a theoretical physicist at the University of Bonn in Germany said that his group of scientists have developed a way to test the ‘simulation hypothesis’.

The idea has been debated by the greats of philosophy, from Plato to Descartes, who speculated that the world we see around us could be generated by an ‘evil demon’.

The successful film franchise, The Matrix, also helped spawn the idea that what we think is our everyday life is in fact a simulation generated by an all-powerful computer.

But now more than two thousand years since Plato suggested that our senses only give us a poor reflection of objective reality, experts believe they have cracked the riddle.

Professor Beane told Radio 4’s Today programme that his proposal could be the beginning of a new period of discovery.

To identify what these constraints would be, scientists would have to build their own simulation of the universe.

They hope to see whether such an exercise would be theoretically possible – and what the constraints on the ‘evil demon’ might be.

Lattice QCD is a complex approach that that looks at how particles known as quarks and gluons relate in three dimensions.

Professor Bean said: “We consider ourselves on some level universe simulators because we calculate the interactions of particles by basically replacing space and time by a grid and putting it in a box.”

“In doing that we face lots of problems for instance the box and the grid size breaks Einstein’s special theory of relativity so we know how to fix this in order to get physical predictions that are meaningful.”

“We thought that if we make the assumption that the so-called simulators face some of the same problems that we do in terms of finite resources and so on then, if they are doing a simulation and even though their box size of course is enormous and the grid size can be very small, as long as the resources are finite then the box size will be finite, the grid size will be finite.”

“And therefore at some level for instance there would be violations of Einstein’s special theory of relativity.”

Philosophers have cautioned that there is still some way to go before we find out whether the universe is simulated. Dr Peter Millican of Hertford College, Oxford told the programme: “There are two main issues, one is whether the speculation even makes sense and the other is supposing it makes sense whether there is any good reason to think it is plausible.

“The other problem is evidence. It seems to me that the evidence that is looked for is not that convincing.”

Descartes said the evil demon that he believed controlled the universe is “as clever and deceitful as he is powerful, who has directed his entire effort to misleading me.”

But he countered that his ability to think was, at least, proof enough that he was real, writing: “I think, therefore I am.”

Plato said that reality may be no more than shadows in a cave but the cave dweller, having never left the cave, may not be aware of it.

Lucy Kinder

The Telegraph

Why Some People See Sound

Posted: October 26, 2012 by phaedrap1 in Science
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illusion background
Brain anatomy may be key to explaining why some people see sound in a flash illusion.
CREDIT: Handy Widiyanto | shutterstock

Some people may actually see sounds, say researchers who found this odd ability is possible when the parts of the brain devoted to vision are small.

These findings points to a clever strategy the brain might use when vision is unreliable, investigators added.

Scientists took a closer look at the sound-induced flash illusion. When a single flash is followed by two bleeps, people sometimes also see two illusory consecutive flashes.

Past experiments revealed there are strong differences between individuals when it comes to how prone they are to this illusion. “Some would experience it almost every time a flash was accompanied by two bleeps, others would almost never see the second flash,” said researcher Benjamin de Haas, a neuroscientist at University College London.

These differences suggested to de Haas and his colleagues that maybe variations in brain anatomy were behind who saw the illusion and who did not. To find out, the researchers analyzed the brains of 29 volunteers with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and tested them with flashes and bleeps. [Animation of Illusion and Photos of Other Illusions]

On average, the volunteers saw the illusion 62 percent of the time, although some saw it only 2 percent of the time while others saw it 100 percent of the time. They found the smaller a person’s visual cortex was — the part of the brain linked with vision —the more likely he or she experienced the illusion.

“If we both look at the same thing, we would expect our perception to be identical,” de Haas told LiveScience. “Our results demonstrate that this not quite true in every situation — sometimes what you perceive depends on your individual brain anatomy.”

The researchers suggest this illusion could reveal a way the brain compensates for imperfect visual circuitry.

“The visual brain’s representation of what hits the eye is very efficient but not perfect — there is some uncertainty to visual representations, especially when things happen quickly, like the rapid succession of flashes in the illusion,” de Haas said. “We speculate that this kind of uncertainty is bigger in brains that dedicate a smaller proportion of neurons to visual areas, just like a camera with fewer megapixels will give you a lower image quality.”

“If this speculation holds, it would make perfect sense for smaller visual brains to make more use of the additional information provided by the ears,” de Haas explained. “In the real world, sources of light and sound are often identical, and combining them will be advantageous. Imagine you take a twilight walk in a forest and scare up some animal in the undergrowth. The best strategy for finding out whether you are dealing with a hedgehog or a bear will involve combining visual information, like moving twigs and branches, with auditory information, like cracking wood.”

Much remains unknown about the roots of this illusion. For instance, only about a quarter of the individual differences regarding the illusion could be explained by brain anatomy. “We still haven’t explained the rest,” de Haas said.

Future research can also explore “whether the relationship between visual cortex size and audiovisual perception is specific to this illusion or holds for other audiovisual illusions as well,” de Haas said.

Other such illusions include the so-called McGurk effect, when the visual component of one sound is paired with the auditory component of another sound, leading people to mysteriously perceive a third sound — for instance, when the syllables “ba-ba” are spoken over the lip movements for “ga-ga,” the perception is of “da-da.”

“Seeing feels like an objective, immediate way to access the world, but it can be shaped by so many things — hearing, individual brain anatomy, who knows what else?” de Haas said.

The scientists detailed their findings online Oct. 24 in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Live Science

MARY MAGDELENE

Posted: October 25, 2012 by phaedrap1 in Occult, Spirituality
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According to Sir Laurence Gardner, Mary Magdalene was known in the Languedoc as the ‘Mistress of the Waters’. This title aligns her with the Mother Goddess Acca (Isis). As the Miriam, she was the Head Sister of the Order of Dan. Her order appears to be the continuation of the mysterious tribe of Daniel. Daniel (‘God is my judge’) was not a personal name. It was a group of people. The question who or what then are the Daniel takes on paramount importance.

In her Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, Barbara Walker answers this question by saying ‘Daniel’ was a title used to distinguish “a person of the Goddess Dana or Diana.”

Diana is the same as D’Inanna or Inanna.

There’s your trouble. That is exactly the same meaning as the Celtic Tuatha De’ Danann (‘Children of the Goddess Danu’).

Tuat is the root for also:

  • Tuat, the Egyptian name for the Inner World 
  • the root of Taautus, another name for Thoth 
  • Taaut the Egyptian name for the great serpent (soul) encircling the Earth,  whom Gnostics identified with Jesus.

This is no coincidence. There are plenty of historical connections between the people of Daniel, the Tuatha De’ Danann (pronounced thoo-AH-huh duh-DAH-nun), and the Egyptian tribe of Thoth. As we will see, they were later known as the David and later as the Druids.

In Irish history, the M-Istical Tuatha De’ Danann, are described as heaven-sent ‘gods, and not-gods’. They are compared with the Sanskrit deva (shining one, god) and adeva (Devil), which became daeva (devil) in Persian. The Old English divell (devil) can be traced to the Roman derivative divus, divi: gods.

This confusion may explain why the writers of the Old Testament didn’t particularly care for the Danites, whom they said would judge (balance) the people and were called Serpents by Jacob,  a title typically (and erroneously) reserved for Satan, whom the Egyptians called Sata, serpent.

According to Celtic/Druid legend, on Beltane or May Day, in a fog, the Tuatha De’ Danann came ‘through the air’ to Ireland to teach young men sacred wisdom. Their arrival was so profound it was said to have covered up the sun for three days (just like happens in the book of Revelation). The Tuatha De’ Danann were generous too. They brought with them four treasures or power tools:

  • the (S)tone of Destiny
  • the (S)word of Destiny
  • the Cup of Destiny
  • the Staff or Spear of Destiny

They placed these treasures on a silver platter called the Talleior. These treasures were housed in the so-called Cave of Treasures, inside the Mountain of God, where burns a perpetual flame.

To me, this description rang of the Temple of Solomon at-op Mount Moriah. Especially since the Anu were known to have occupied the site of the Temple Mount back in the pre-Jewish days when it was called Op-Hel.

After conquering Ireland, the Tuatha De’ Danann were themselves conquered in a shoot out with another tribe, the Sons of Mil (the Gaels). At the armistice meeting with their conquerors, a poet named Amergin (or Amorgen) split the land into an upper and lower part (like Egypt, which was reunited by Thoth, the Peacemaker).

Amergin is someone to keep an eye on. In one of his famous poems, The Song of Amergin, he repeatedly identified himself as ‘I Am’, the name of the Hebrew god Yahweh, the god of Daniel. (The fact that the name of the god of these stories is identical certainly links them.) That same poem refers to Amergin as “the Word of Science.”

Per this agreement, the people of Daniel were required to leave the surface of the Earth and live in an underground kingdom accessed only through the sidh-mounds (pronounced “she”) or ‘hollow hills’ of Ireland.

Correspondingly, the Egyptian Tuat, the ‘Place of Ascending’, was an inner realm accessed through a ‘mound’ we call the Great Pyramid.

In the sidh-mounds the Tuatha de’ Danann assumed invisibility, with the power to reappear in human form at will or ascend to higher plane(t)s. This is one of the 8 magic powers or the ashta-siddhis, of the yogi masters. The Buddhist title Siddhartha literally means “rich in magic.”   This title was claimed by Siddhartha Guatama, the seventh in a line of reincarnated Buddhas.

These 8 spiritual blessings are a mystery. Do they correspond with the 8 Beatitudes of Jesus?

From their sidh-mounds the Tuatha De’ Danann, the continued to teach their forbidden mysteries.

It was the special duty of the Druids, writes W.Y. Evans-Wentz in The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries, to act as intermediaries between the world of men and the invisible or underground world of the Tuatha de’ Danann. They are considered to be direct descendents or reincarnations of the early gods of Sumeria, the Anu.

Wentz notes that these sidhe people are described as a race of majestic appearance and marvelous beauty, in form human, yet in nature divine.  They are divided into two classes: those which are shining, and those which are opalescent and seem lit up by a light within themselves.

The word sidh informs us of the nature of these forbidden teachings the Daniel had access to. Sidh appears to be related to the Latin sedes and the Sanskrit siddha, both words meaning power. Some of these sidh-mounds or power vortexes, particularly those of Rosses Point country in Ireland,  gained renown as possible locations for stargates or interdimensional gateways to and from the innerworld home of the Tuatha De’ Danann.

King Arthur of the Grail legend is considered to be one of these reincarnated Anu siddh heroes. After his death he was taken to live in the Otherworld of Sacred Apple-Groves, Avalon, and was prophesied to reincarnate as a Messiah.

As noted, Siddh-Artha Guatama Buddha (a name which rings of Siddh Arthur) is the seventh in a line of reincarnated Buddhas who is prophesied to appear on Earth at the end of the world as the avatar Maitreya. Tantric texts claim Maitreya will be able to walk on water, make himself invisible, create and destroy matter, and transmute base metals into gold.

After their banishment to the interior world, the Tuatha de’ Danann were transformed into devils by the Catholic Church. Their stature was considerably shrunk in size, too. This is evidenced by the term henceforth applied to them, fairy folk.

The Tuatha de’ Danann were described as tall, blond and fair-skinned. By adding a ‘y’ suffix to their name, a demonic or diminutive image was created.

The Church is understandably reluctant to admit this (just as the Japanese are sheepish about discussing their ancestors the Ainus — the Children of Diana — who were fair, tall and blond and came from the sky, left for the skies, and will return from the skies).

As they withdrew, the Tuatha de’ Danann prophesied that man would eventually destroy himself through lust and sin.

Despite their apparent contempt, the ancients accepted the Dan-El or Daniel, as wise people and prophets of immense importance. As judges they were the Messiahs or ‘balancers of Heaven and Earth’.


THE ALL
Connecting Mary Magdalene, the Head Sister of the Order of Dan, with the Biblical people of Daniel and the Tuatha De’ Danann slips the ‘decoder ring’ of Rennes back on our finger. It ‘opens the book’ on her secrets: the existence of the Dan’s stargate at Rennes-le-Chateau linking Earth with AMOR.

The fact that in the Hindu Vedas the word Anu or Danu means “the waters of heaven or space,”   and is only one letter away from the Egyptian goddess Nu or Nut, returns us to Egypt and the secrets of the gods.

As noted, early Christian texts describe Mary Magdalene as ‘the woman who knew the All’. Cross-checking Egyptian mythology, we discover an astonishing Egyptian description of ‘the All’. 

The side posts of Egyptian temple’s entrance doors are often ornamented with horizontal bands of bas-reliefs portraying the three symbols:

  • Uas — the tree branch, commonly called the ‘Key of the Nile’
  • TET or Djed (center) — the Pillar of Osiris
  • Ankh — ‘life’.

Uas Djed Ankh                                                               Uas Ankh Uas

These symbols are placed on a basket. This basket is the All.

One of the key figures in Egyptian mythology associated with the All is Ptah or Ptah-Tenen, which means “risen or raised Earth.” Egyptian myth said Ptah formed and shaped the material world.

Ptah was most commonly depicted as a bearded man wearing a blue skull-cap. His close-fitting garment is made of bird feathers. In his hands he holds the forked uas (“branch”), the ankh (“life”), and the djed (“stability”).

Ptah, covered in bird feathers,

holding the combined Uas, Djed and Ankh

In Egypt “Ptah is usually regarded as a form of the Sun god,” says Egyptologist E.A. Wallis Budge, “and as the personification of the rising sun…”  Elsewhere he is described as the creative aspect of Ra. His name means “to open” by “sculpting or engraving.” He was a master at working with stone. As John Anthony West observes, no sculptor sculpts without “inspiration,” the muse. That is Ptah. Christians called him Pater (‘Father’) or Peter (‘Rock’, ‘Stone’), and assigned him the role of holding the Key to Heaven.

Ptah was also a great worker of metals. According to Budge, he was also both a smelter and a caster, and sculptor, as well as the master architect and designer of everything which exists in the world.

The Greeks and the Latins claimed Hephaistos and Vulcan as his later names. Hephaistos was an early smith god, cast down from the Olympian’s heaven by Zeus, for trying to protect his mother Hera (Earth). Like Asclepius, he was associated with lightning.  A lightning bolt from Zeus killed Asclepius because he was afraid that such a skillful physician could make all men immortal.

The Staff of Asclepius shows a serpent wound around a staff.

It is the symbol for medicine.

From the back of Ptah’s neck hangs the menat, a symbol of magical fertility in earthly happiness that promoted fruitfulness and health.

He stands on a pedestal made in the shape of the sign maat, “Truth,” “Mother.”   Maat’s symbol was the feather of Truth against which she weighed each man’s heart-soul in her underworld Hall of Judgment. Thus Ptah, the bird-man, is clothed in the feathers of the Truth of Maat.

Those who lived by Maat took a sacramental drink, comparable to the Holy Grail, which conferred ritual purity.

Maat is probably Tiamat, one of the Pleiades. There is an intimate connection in the early legends of this group of seven stars with a flock of birds, especially doves, and the Grail. In the Odyssey Homer tells us that,

“No bird of air, no dove of swiftest wing,
that bears ambrosia to the ethereal king.”

The doves of Nestor’s cup described by Homer in the Iliad are also thought to refer to the Pleiades.

Fascinatingly, the Pleiades have also been likened to a bunch of grapes or Blue Apples. Ancient coins depict doves with bodies formed by bunches of grapes. The dove appeared in migration at the time of vintage, its purple-red breast like wine reminding the wine makers of their grapes.

Suddenly, the story of Jesus’ “curing” Mary Magdalene, his chief apostle, of “possession” by “seven demons” takes on New meaning. These seven demons may well be the seven stars of the Pleiades. His “curing” would therefore represent him mystically attuning her soul or telling her stories about the seven stars (or Blue Apples) of the Pleiades.

The grapes of the Pleiades (the Blue Apples) may be the same as the seven demons which “possessed” Mary Magdalene, figures prominently in the mystery of Rennes.

.bibliotecapleyades.net

 

Strange UFO Observed Over Kentucky Remains Unexplained

Posted: October 24, 2012 by phaedrap1 in Conspiracy, News
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On Tuesday, October 21, a strange UFO was observed in the skies over Pike County and Virgie, Kentucky, USA. The object’s origin remains unexplained for the moment.

The unknown flying object was seen over several places by a number of people. Among them was amateur astronomer Allen Epling who filmed the object with his telescope.

“This object is like nothing I have ever seen before,” Epling says. At first he thought it was a helicopter or a plane, but when he looked through his binoculars he was stunned.

Very soon it became clear this was no helicopter or plane. Epling photographed the object for two and half hours in the air until it eventually vanished out of sight.

 

This strange UFO was filmed by amateaur astronomer Allan Epling. Image credit: Allan Epling
During his sighting, the Kentucky State Police received a number of calls from people who were puzzled by the strange flying object in the cloudless sky.

 

Puzzling object in the skies over Kentucky. Image credit: Allan Epling

Allan Epling was able to film the object for more than two hours before it vanished. Video credit: Allan Epling
According to witnesses’ reports the UFO hovered roughly in the same location for over 2 hours, not drifting more than 10 degrees in any direction. It was sighted approximately 60 degrees above the horizon.

Allan Epling and the local newspaper made calls to the Air Force and to local airports, but so far no-one has claimed responsibility for the object and it remains unidentified.

MessagetoEagle.com

Wind shift could affect sea ice loss and bring more extreme weather to North America and Europe

Posted: October 24, 2012 by phaedrap1 in News, Science
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The Watchers Tweet Tweet Arctic has been experiencing a shift in the general patterns of high and low pressures recently, as well as the direction and speed of the winds. These changes may explain some of the dramatic sea ice loss experienced in the Arctic regions. Wind speed and direction are driven by differences in atmospheric pressure. Generally, air moves from areas of high to low pressure – the greater the pressure difference between two areas, the faster...

    Arctic has been experiencing a shift in the general patterns of high and low pressures recently, as well as the direction and speed of the winds. These changes may explain some of the dramatic sea ice loss experienced in the Arctic regions. Wind speed and direction are driven by differences in atmospheric pressure. Generally, air moves from areas of high to low pressure – the greater the pressure difference between two areas, the faster the air moves.

    According to a new NOAA-led study published on October 10,2012 in Geophysical Research Letters, changes in summer Arctic wind patterns contribute not only to an unprecedented loss of Arctic sea ice, but could also bring  shifts in North American and European weather. As Arctic warms at twice the global rate, scientists expect more extreme weather events like heatwaves, floodings or heavy snowfall across the temperate latitudes of the northern hemisphere, where billions of people live.

    Comparison of the atmospheric pressure (geopotential height at 700 mb) experienced during June of 2007-2012 compared to the longer term average for June from 1980-2010. Much higher pressure is found directly over the Arctic Ocean and Greenland. This difference in pressure has resulted in a change in the wind patterns. Orange arrows indicate the relative direction and strength (indicated by the arrow length) or winds during the 2007-2012 periods, whereas the white arrows are the 1980-2010 average. The most pronounced changes in winds can be seen over the Chuchki Sea, just northeast of Alaska and also east of Greenland. (NCEP Reanalysis data provided by NOAA/ESRL/PSD)

    A research team led by a NOAA research oceanographer James Overland, Ph.D., of NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle, Washington, uncovered a change in the summer Arctic wind pattern over the past six years. They point that this shift demonstrates a physical connection between reduced Arctic sea ice in the summer, loss of Greenland ice, and potentially, weather in North American and Europe.

    The team examined the wind patterns in the subarctic in the early summer between 2007 and 2012 as compared to the average for 1981 to 2010. The new study show that the previously normal west-to-east flowing upper-level winds have been replaced by a north-south undulating wave-like pattern. This new wind pattern transports warmer air into the Arctic and pushes Arctic air farther south. This may influence persistent weather conditions in the mid-latitudes. Higher pressure over the North American continent and Greenland is driving these changes in the early summer wind patterns.

    Warmer air and sea temperatures caused by global warming are rapidly changing Arctic environment but this new shift provides additional evidence that changes in the Arctic are also part of an “Arctic amplification” through which multiple specific physical processes interact to accelerate temperature change, ice variability, and ecological impacts. The effects of Arctic amplification will increase as more summer ice retreats over coming decades. Enhanced warming of the Arctic affects the jet stream by slowing its west-to-east winds and by promoting larger north-south meanders in the flow.

    Sea ice in the Chukchi Sea, on July 20, 2011. Sea ice in the Arctic has shrunk to the lowest levels ever recorded (Credit: Jeremy Potter NOAA/OAR/OER)

    Since 2007, the summer winds were found to blow through the Bering Strait, across the North Pole, more consistently from the south, out toward the Atlantic Ocean. These winds transfer additional heat from the south toward the North Pole and push sea ice across the Arctic and out into the Atlantic Ocean, contributing to record losses of summer sea ice. The 2012 Arctic summer sea ice minimum is the lowest on record.

    The study, entitled “The Recent Shift in Early Summer Arctic Atmospheric Circulation,” was co-authored by scientists from Rutgers University in New Jersey,  the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom, and the Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean, a partnership of NOAA and the University of Washington. It can be found online.

    Sources: NOAA ClimateWatch, NNVL

    Featured image credit: (NASA/Kathryn Hansen)

    By chillymanjaro – October 24, 2012

    Mysterious bear figurines baffle archaeologists October 18, 2012

    Posted: October 23, 2012 by phaedrap1 in News, Science, Spirituality
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    Small bear figurines have led researchers on the trail of hitherto unknown pre-Inuit rituals, indicating that these people practiced a bear cult.

    The headless bear figure was found lying with its neck against the back wall, as if it was diving into the fireplace This has led archaeologists to believe they are dealing with a hitherto unknown ritual practice. (Photo: The National Museum of Denmark)

    In the 1950s, the now deceased Danish archaeologist Jørgen Meldgaard made a mysterious discovery in northeastern Canada:

    A small, headless bear figurine, carved from a walrus tusk, was lying leaning up against the back wall of a stone fireplace in an old settlement. The bear had been positioned in a way that made it look as though it was ‘diving’ into the fireplace.

    At the time, this little figurine didn’t cause much of a stir. It was just one out of a long series of discoveries that Meldgaard made during his field trips to the Igloolik region of Arctic Canada and Greenland in the 1950s and 1960s.

    But when researchers at the Danish National Museum recently gained access to Meldgaard’s surviving diaries, records and photos, they realised that the discovery of the bear figurine was indeed quite sensational.

    Humans and animals were close

    Their examination of the material revealed that the small bear figurine could be an important key to understanding how people from more than 1,000 years ago viewed the relationship between animals and humans.

    ”The figurine provides us with information about some previously unknown 1,000-year-old rituals, which suggest that the Pre-Inuit, also known as the Dorset people, imagined that humans were related to certain animals in a way that’s very far from what we would imagine in today’s Western world,” says Ulla Odgaard, a senior researcher at the National Museum.

    “Apparently, the Dorset people in Greenland and Canada didn’t see any antagonism between humans and animals,” she adds.

    “Humans were not superior to animals; rather, it was a symbiotic co-existence. Bears and other animals functioned as mediators between mankind and the world of spirits.”

    The Dorset way of thinking is also known from other early cultures

    In other words, the finds reveal a belief in which animals – bears in particular – are our brothers, whose lives blend in with our own.

    The walrus tusk figurine is only 3.4 cm in length and could be an important key to understanding how people more than 1,000 years ago understood the relationship between humans and bears. The figure is thought to have disappeared now, leaving today’s archaeologists with little more than Jørgen Meldgaard’s sketches and blurry photos. (Photo: The National Museum of Denmark)

    The way the Dorset culture viewed the relationship between humans and animals is known as animism – a phenomenon also known from other cultures.

    “We know that the relationship between bears and humans has been crucial in all pre-modern cultures. This applies almost as far back in time as we can trace – all the way back to the very earliest renderings of the world that humans have created,” says Odgaard’s colleague at the National Museum, Martin Appelt.

    For instance, we see this relationship expressed in small carvings and cave paintings of humans and bears from the hunter-gatherer culture.

    “Many cultures have combined human and animal features in their illustrations – e.g. a figurine of a bear with a falcon’s body, where the underside depicts a carved human head,” he says.

    On many figurines from early cultures, the skeleton is cut so that it’s visible outside the body – and that’s also the case with Meldgaard’s bear figurine.

    According to Appelt, this bears witness to a belief that the difference between humans and animals only lies in the skin they’re wearing, so to speak.

    “So an animal is also a person – only with a different skin. And some of them have probably been regarded as spirits – i.e. people in a parallel universe to ours.”

    The bear was something special

    The apparent fact that bears were regarded as something special could be because the bear, along with man, is one of the few animals that were believed to transcend and travel between the worlds of land and sea.

    Another explanation may be that humans and bears could change roles depending on the situation: sometimes it was the man who hunted the bear and sometimes it was vice versa.

    The discovery of another bear was an eye opener

    Among the thousands of unique and spectacular objects that Jørgen Meldgaard and his colleagues excavated in the Canadian settlements in the 1950s and 60s, the many fine carvings made from walrus tusks, reindeer antler and driftwood are particularly interesting to archaeologists. These include small carvings of humans, human-like creatures and various animals, but also figures which seem to contain traits from both humans and animals. The figures reveal a belief in which animals – bears in particular – are our brothers, whose lives blend in with ours. (Photo: The National Museum of Denmark)

    Meldgaard also found another bear figurine in a nearby settlement.

    This bear stood upright with its head sticking up and the body half buried in the gravel.

    Underneath it they found a fireplace, which suggests that this bear apparently was about to rise up from the fireplace.

    The combination of both of the bear figurines’ interaction with the fireplaces led the Odgaard to believe that this could be a sign of rituals.

    Carved bear figurines and the symbolism of rising and diving bears is also known in other parts of the world, for instance in Siberia, where resurrection rituals have been performed for millennia, says Odgaard.

    Here, the bear was the mythical ancestor that every year travels to the upper world to secure the liberation of the animals’ souls, so that humans again can hunt them.

    The fireplace was the gateway to other worlds

    Legends from Siberia indicate that humans could communicate with the world of spirits through the fireplace. In other words, the fireplace may have been regarded as a gateway to other worlds.

    Bears are also known from Neolithic petroglyphs in Siberia and numerous finds of bear heads or headless bear figurines in the Arctic region. But none of these have been found in a ritual context like the two from Igloolik.

    Bear figurines could explain lack of finds of burial sites

    Since the ritual with fireplaces appears to stretch across time and space, the researchers believe the finds are of far greater importance than previously thought.

    Dorset people may have dismembered their dead

    Although there’s no shortage of ancient Inuit tales about the special relationship between humans and animals, the oral sources tend to dry out once we start moving toward the millennia before the Inuit settled in Arctic Canada and Greenland.

    “We have so far had glaringly few archaeological finds from pre-Inuit graves on other ritual elements that could increase our understanding of how the pre-Inuit people viewed their world,” says Appelt.

    “This is where the bear figurines suddenly make many pieces fall into place. Suddenly we understand the many other figures with bear heads or headless bears in a completely different way.”

    That the two bear figurines from the fireplaces have their skeletons carved on the outside of their bodies also confirms a suspicion the archaeologists have had that Dorset people probably dismembered their dead and scattered them out on the fields or sunk them in the sea, so they would end up as animal food – like we’re seeing in e.g. today’s Nepal and Tibet.

    “This suspicion is compounded by the fact that the few bones we’ve actually found from the Dorset culture are not whole skeletons, but simple elements – a jaw, a thighbone, etc.

    This suggests that the Dorset people had a completely different view of skeletons and bodies from what we have today – which the carvings of external skeletons on the bear figurines testify to.”

    Rituals transcend space and time

    Appelt says that the bear figurines from Igloolik are forcing archaeologists to think outside the box.

    Time and space not enough to understand the past

    The archaeologist explains that when you look at archaeological finds across the world, there are so many overlaps where rituals transcend across cultures, time and space that there seems to be a connection.

    “It’s very strange! And many archaeologists will surely find it unreasonable to think this way as an archaeologist – because how can things be connected in this way?” says Appelt.

    ”I don’t have the answer. There’s no answer book here. But I think the two headless bear figurines prove that it’s not always right to view history from within the narrow confines of time, space and traditions.

    The next step for Odgaard, Appelt and their colleagues is to create an overview of Meldgaard’s records and publish the most important scientific findings.

    Facts

    The Danish National Museum’s comprehensive research initiative ‘Northern Worlds’ aims to generate new insights into the relationship between man and the environment over the past 15,000 years, with a perspective on the present, where substantial climatic change is taking place.

     It will also shed light on global networks by studying Northern cultures from the Ice Age hunters to the present-day populations in the cold regions.

    ‘Northern Worlds’ consists of more than 20 projects, headed by leading researchers from all departments at the Danish National Museum.

    The bear figurines on the fireplaces are not only some of the few physical vestiges testifying to the Dorset culture’s view of life and death that archaeologist have ever come across.

    The figurines may also help explain an old mystery – why archaeologists only rarely find burial sites from the earliest settlers in Greenland and Arctic Canada.

    The Dorset people in Greenland and Canada (c. 700 to 1,200 AD) is an archaeological term for a non-Inuit people group from Greenland.

    The Dorset culture preceded the Inuit culture in Arctic North America. Archaeologists believe the people migrated from Siberia and Alaska between 4,000 years ago and until the birth of Christ.

    Iniuit legends mention Tunitt (singular Tuniq) or Sivullirmiut (‘The first inhabitants’) as a people who were displaced by the Inuit.

    Archaeologists, however, doubt whether or not the Inuit met with the Dorset culture, although there is a general consensus that the two groups have lived in the same area for a period.

    Dorset culture became extinct around 1902 – probably as a result of a change in climate and living conditions, but also because they were ousted by the Inuit.

    “We archaeologists prefer to work from the hypothesis that we can define various periods in history and that there is a clear division between space and time. But the figurines reveal that this is not the case here,” says Appelt.

    “Some phenomena, such as animism and the rituals with the fireplaces and the dismemberment of the dead, transcend time and space – which is why you simply need to view them in bits of several 100,000 years if they are to be understood and make sense.”

     

    Sciencenordic.com

    Split-Personality Elliptical Galaxy Holds A Hidden Spiral

    Posted: October 22, 2012 by phaedrap1 in Science
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    Most big galaxies fit into one of two camps: pinwheel-shaped spiral galaxies and blobby elliptical galaxies.

    Spirals like the Milky Way are hip and happening places, with plenty of gas and dust to birth new stars. Ellipticals are like cosmic retirement villages, full of aging residents in the form of red giant stars.

    Now, astronomers have discovered that one well-known elliptical has a split personality. Centaurus A is hiding a gassy spiral in its center.

     

     


    Click on image to enlarge

    M87The giant elliptical galaxy M87 shows a split personality because it hides a gaseous spiral at its core. When M87 collided with a spiral galaxy 300 million years ago, it slurped up the spiral’s gases, which formed a new spiral inside the larger galaxy. Credit: ESO
    “No other elliptical galaxy is known to have spiral arms,” said lead author Daniel Espada (National Astronomical Observatory of Japan & Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics).

    “Centaurus A may be an old galaxy, but it’s still very young at heart.”

     
    Centaurus A isn’t your typical elliptical to begin with. Its most striking feature is a dark dust lane across its middle – a sign that it swallowed a spiral galaxy about 300 million years ago.

    Centaurus A slurped that galaxy’s gases down, forming a disk that we see nearly edge on. From our point of view, any features in that disk have been hidden by the intervening dust.

    This pan video takes a close look at the peculiar galaxy Centaurus A (NGC 5128) in an image taken with by the Wide Field Imager attached to the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile. With a total exposure time of more than 50 hours this is one of the most revealing views of this peculiar and spectacular object every created. Credit: ESO

     

    This video zoom sequence starts with a broad view of the Milky Way. We close in on a region not far from the plane of a the galaxy and can soon see a strange fuzz with a dark band across it. This is the famous peculiar radio galaxy Centaurus A. The final view shows a new and very detailed image from the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile. Credit: ESO/Nick Risinger (skysurvey.org)
    To tease out the disk’s structure, Espada and his colleagues used the sharp vision of the Smithsonian’s Submillimeter Array. This radio telescope can see through dust to pick up signals from naturally occurring carbon monoxide gas.

    By mapping the gas, the team unveiled two distinct spiral arms within the galaxy’s core.

    These gaseous tendrils have sizes and shapes similar to spiral arms in galaxies like the Milky Way. Also like the Milky Way’s spiral arms, they are forming new generations of stars.

    “Centaurus A has been given a new lease on life by that past merger,” said Espada.

    Computer simulations suggest that the spiral features might endure for hundreds of millions of years to come.

    Although Centaurus A is the first elliptical galaxy found to have spiral arms, it may not be the last. Since it’s only 12 million light-years away, it’s relatively nearby and easy to study. The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) potentially can find more split-personality galaxies with its improved radio “vision.”

    “We definitely will use ALMA to search for other objects that are similar to Centaurus A,” added Espada.

    These findings were published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters and are available online.

     

    MessageToEagle.com

    Earth’s geomagnetic reversal happened 41,000 years ago, new study claims

    Posted: October 22, 2012 by phaedrap1 in News, Science
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    The Watchers Tweet Tweet 41,000 years ago, a complete and rapid reversal of the geomagnetic field occurred. As a consequence, the Earth nearly completely lost its protection shield against hard cosmic rays, leading to a significantly increased radiation exposure, a new study led by Dr. Norbert Nowaczyk and Prof. Helge Arz claims. A geomagnetic reversal is a change in the Earth’s magnetic field such that the positions of magnetic north and magnetic south are interchanged. The Earth’s field has alternated between periods...

      41,000 years ago, a complete and rapid reversal of the geomagnetic field occurred. As a consequence, the Earth nearly completely lost its protection shield against hard cosmic rays, leading to a significantly increased radiation exposure, a new study led by Dr. Norbert Nowaczyk and Prof. Helge Arz claims.

      A geomagnetic reversal is a change in the Earth’s magnetic field such that the positions of magnetic north and magnetic south are interchanged. The Earth’s field has alternated between periods of normal polarity, in which the direction of the field was the same as the present direction, and reverse polarity, in which the field was the opposite. These periods are called chrons.

      Magnetic studies of the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences on sediment cores from the Black Sea show that during this period, during the last ice age, a compass at the Black Sea would have pointed to the south instead of north.

      Moreover, data obtained by the research team formed around GFZ researchers Dr. Norbert Nowaczyk and Prof. Helge Arz, together with additional data from other studies in the North Atlantic, the South Pacific and Hawaii, prove that this polarity reversal was a global event. Their results are published in the latest issue of the scientific journal “Earth and Planetary Science Letters”.

      What is remarkable is the speed of the reversal: “The field geometry of reversed polarity, with field lines pointing into the opposite direction when compared to today’s configuration, lasted for only about 440 years, and it was associated with a field strength that was only one quarter of today’s field,” explains Norbert Nowaczyk. “The actual polarity changes lasted only 250 years. In terms of geological time scales, that is very fast.” During this period, the field was even weaker, with only 5% of today’s field strength. As a consequence, the Earth nearly completely lost its protection shield against hard cosmic rays, leading to a significantly increased radiation exposure.

      Abrupt climate changes and a super volcano

      Besides giving evidence for a geomagnetic field reversal 41,000 years ago, the geoscientists from Potsdam discovered numerous abrupt climate changes during the last ice age in the analysed cores from the Black Sea, as it was already known from the Greenland ice cores. This ultimately allowed a high precision synchronisation of the two data records from the Black Sea and Greenland. The largest volcanic eruption on the Northern hemisphere in the past 100 000 years, namely the eruption of the super volcano 39400 years ago in the area of today’s Phlegraean Fields near Naples, Italy, is also documented within the studied sediments from the Black Sea. The ashes of this eruption, during which about 350 cubic kilometers of rock and lava were ejected, were distributed over the entire eastern Mediterranean and up to central Russia.

      These three extreme scenarios, a short and fast reversal of the Earth’s magnetic field, short-term climate variability of the last ice age and the volcanic eruption in Italy, have been investigated for the first time in a single geological archive and placed in precise chronological order.

      (Helmholtz Centre Potsdam – GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences. “Ice age polarity reversal was global event: Extremely brief reversal of geomagnetic field, climate variability, and super volcano.” ScienceDaily, 16 Oct. 2012. Web. 19 Oct. 2012.)

      NASA claims geomagnetic reversals are the rule, not the exception

      Above: Supercomputer models of Earth’s magnetic field. On the left is a normal dipolar magnetic field, typical of the long years between polarity reversals. On the right is the sort of complicated magnetic field Earth has during the upheaval of a reversal.

      In November 2011, NASA published an interesting article claiming this kind of geomagnetic reversals occur as a rule, not an exception. The N-S markings of a compass would be 180 degrees wrong if the polarity of today’s magnetic field were reversed. Many doomsday theorists have tried to take this natural geological occurrence and suggest it could lead to Earth’s destruction. But would there be any dramatic effects? The answer, from the geologic and fossil records we have from hundreds of past magnetic polarity reversals, seems to be ‘no.’

      The following is a part of above mentioned article with its headline as they wrote it:

      2012: Magnetic pole reversal happens all the (geologic) time

      Earth’s polarity is not a constant. Unlike a classic bar magnet, or the decorative magnets on your refrigerator, the matter governing Earth’s magnetic field moves around. Geophysicists are pretty sure that the reason Earth has a magnetic field is because its solid iron core is surrounded by a fluid ocean of hot, liquid metal. This process can also be modeled with supercomputers. Ours is, without hyperbole, a dynamic planet. The flow of liquid iron in Earth’s core creates electric currents, which in turn create the magnetic field. So while parts of Earth’s outer core are too deep for scientists to measure directly, we can infer movement in the core by observing changes in the magnetic field. The magnetic north pole has been creeping northward – by more than 600 miles (1,100 km) – since the early 19th century, when explorers first located it precisely. It is moving faster now, actually, as scientists estimate the pole is migrating northward about 40 miles per year, as opposed to about 10 miles per year in the early 20th century.

      Another doomsday hypothesis about a geomagnetic flip plays up fears about incoming solar activity. This suggestion mistakenly assumes that a pole reversal would momentarily leave Earth without the magnetic field that protects us from solar flares and coronal mass ejections from the sun. But, while Earth’s magnetic field can indeed weaken and strengthen over time, there is no indication that it has ever disappeared completely. A weaker field would certainly lead to a small increase in solar radiation on Earth – as well as a beautiful display of aurora at lower latitudes — but nothing deadly. Moreover, even with a weakened magnetic field, Earth’s thick atmosphere also offers protection against the sun’s incoming particles.

      The science shows that magnetic pole reversal is – in terms of geologic time scales – a common occurrence that happens gradually over millennia. While the conditions that cause polarity reversals are not entirely predictable – the north pole’s movement could subtly change direction, for instance – there is nothing in the millions of years of geologic record to suggest that any of the 2012 doomsday scenarios connected to a pole reversal should be taken seriously. A reversal might, however, be good business for magnetic compass manufacturers.

      Sources: Helmholtz Centre Potsdam – GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences, sciencedaily.com, nasa.gov

      About the Helmholtz Centre Potsdam: The Helmholtz Association is dedicated to pursuing the long-term research goals of state and society, and to maintaining and improving the livelihoods of the population. In order to do this, the Helmholtz Association carries out top-level research to identify and explore the major challenges facing society, science and the economy. Its work is divided into six strategic research fields: Energy; Earth and Environment; Health; Key Technologies; Structure of Matter; and Aeronautics, Space and Transport. The Helmholtz Association brings together 18 scientific-technical and biological-medical research centres. With some 32,698 employees and an annual budget of approximately €3.4 billion, the Helmholtz Association is Germany’s largest scientific organisation. Its work follows in the tradition of the great natural scientist Hermann von Helmholtz (1821-1894).

      Featured image: Schematic illustration of Earth’s magnetic field. Credit/Copyright: Peter Reid, The University of Edinburgh

      By Adonai/The Watchers

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