Moon vs. Earth

Moon wins.

Cyclones, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions....

Nothing to see here ... move it along...

Killing Blue Tuna

credit:washpo

Blue tuna's going extinct. Guess why:

For years, Europeans have been overfishing bluefin tuna that breed in the Mediterranean. In fact, for the past four years European Union officials have set catch quotas at nearly double the levels their scientists recommended, and fishermen have exceeded those already-elevated quotas by 50 percent each year. In the United States, the federal government has imposed greater restrictions, but fishermen can still bring home bluefin tuna they incidentally catch as the fish are spawning each spring in the Gulf of Mexico.

Great lede, btw.

For centuries, humans have mythologized the bluefin tuna, an elite, warmblooded fish that can traverse the Atlantic basin in less than a month and a half and grow to weigh three-quarters of a ton. Romans put bluefin on their coins; Salvador Dali painted them.

Newton: World Ends in 2060

In a letter from 1704 which has gone on show in Jerusalem's Hebrew University, Newton uses the Bible's Book of Daniel to calculate the date for the Apocalypse.

Newton, who died 280 years ago, wrote that the end of days would see "the ruin of the wicked nations, the end of weeping and of all troubles, the return of the Jews (from) captivity and their setting up a flourishing and everlasting Kingdom".

The Van Allen Belt Flip

For those of you who had Mrs. Henley in Freshman year science class at ole CGHS, from the AP :::

JAMES VAN ALLEN, 91

Found fame, honor in space

BY TODD DVORAK
Associated Press
IOWA CITY, Iowa - Physicist James A. Van Allen, a leader in space exploration who discovered the radiation belts surrounding the Earth that now bear his name, died Wednesday. He was 91.

In a career that stretched over more than a half-century, Van Allen designed scientific instruments for dozens of research flights, first with small rockets and balloons, and eventually with space probes that traveled to distant planets and beyond.

Van Allen gained global attention in the late 1950s when instruments he designed and placed aboard the first U.S. satellite, Explorer I, discovered the bands of intense radiation that surround the earth, now known as the Van Allen Belts.

The bands spawned a whole new field of research known as magnetospheric physics, an area of study that now involves more than 1,000 investigators in more than 20 countries.

The discovery also propelled the United States in its space exploration race with the Soviet Union and prompted Time magazine to put Van Allen on the cover of its May 4, 1959, issue.
The folksy, pipe-smoking scientist, called ''Van'' by friends, retired from full-time teaching in 1985. But he continued to write, oversee research, counsel students and monitor data gathered by satellites. He worked in a large, cluttered corner office on the seventh floor of the physics and astronomy building that bears his name.

Though he was an early advocate of a concerted national space program, Van Allen was a strong critic of most manned space projects, once dismissing the U.S. proposal for a manned space station as ``speculative . . . and poorly founded.''

Explorer 1, which weighed just 31 pounds, was launched Jan. 31, 1958, during an emotional time just after the Sputnik launches by the Soviet Union created new Cold War fears. The instruments that Van Allen developed for the mission were tiny Geiger counters to measure radiation.

The success of the flight created nationwide celebration. Equally exciting for the scientists was the discovery of the radiation belts, a discovery that happened slowly over the next weeks and months as they pieced together data coming from the satellite.

Later in 1958, another scientist proposed naming the belts for Van Allen. His later projects included the Pioneer 10 and 11 flights, which studied the radiation belts of Jupiter in 1973 and 1974 and the radiation belts of Saturn in 1979.

Van Allen was born Sept. 7, 1914, in Mount Pleasant, Iowa. He got his master's and Ph.D. from the University of Iowa.

Conversion by sweat

Shesh, so it's hot for a few days Pat ... Lol.
How else can you explain this doozy of a hed :Heat makes Pat Robertson a global warming "convert"

Thu Aug 3, 2006 2:27 PM ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Conservative Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson said on Thursday the wave of scorching temperatures across the United States has converted him into a believer in global warming.

"We really need to address the burning of fossil fuels," Robertson said on his "700 Club" broadcast. "It is getting hotter, and the icecaps are melting and there is a buildup of carbon dioxide in the air."

This week the heat index, the perceived temperature based on both air temperatures and humidity, reached 115 Fahrenheit in some regions of the U.S. East Coast. The 76-year-old Robertson told viewers that was "the most convincing evidence I've seen on global warming in a long time."

Bring it on

Yah, yeah, yeah, yeah.....

'End Times' Religious Groups Want Apocalypse Soon

By Louis Sahagun, Times Staff Writer
June 22, 2006

'End times' religious groups want apocalypse sooner than later, and they're relying on high tech -- and red heifers -- to hasten its arrival.

For thousands of years, prophets have predicted the end of the world. Today, various religious groups, using the latest technology, are trying to hasten it.

Their endgame is to speed the promised arrival of a messiah.

For some Christians this means laying the groundwork for Armageddon.

With that goal in mind, mega-church pastors recently met in Inglewood to polish strategies for using global communications and aircraft to transport missionaries to fulfill the Great Commission: to make every person on Earth aware of Jesus' message. Doing so, they believe, will bring about the end, perhaps within two decades.

In Iran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has a far different vision. As mayor of Tehran in 2004, he spent millions on improvements to make the city more welcoming for the return of a Muslim messiah known as the Mahdi, according to a recent report by the American Foreign Policy Center, a nonpartisan think tank.

To the majority of Shiites, the Mahdi was the last of the prophet Muhammad's true heirs, his 12 righteous descendants chosen by God to lead the faithful.

Ahmadinejad hopes to welcome the Mahdi to Tehran within two years.

Conversely, some Jewish groups in Jerusalem hope to clear the path for their own messiah by rebuilding a temple on a site now occupied by one of Islam's holiest shrines.

Artisans have re-created priestly robes of white linen, gem-studded breastplates, silver trumpets and solid-gold menorahs to be used in the Holy Temple — along with two 6½-ton marble cornerstones for the building's foundation.

Then there is Clyde Lott, a Mississippi revivalist preacher and cattle rancher. He is trying to raise a unique herd of red heifers to satisfy an obscure injunction in the Book of Numbers: the sacrifice of a blemish-free red heifer for purification rituals needed to pave the way for the messiah.

So far, only one of his cows has been verified by rabbis as worthy, meaning they failed to turn up even three white or black hairs on the animal's body.

Linking these efforts is a belief that modern technologies and global communications have made it possible to induce completion of God's plan within this generation.

Though there are myriad interpretations of how it will play out, the basic Christian apocalyptic countdown — as described by the Book of Revelation in the New Testament — is as follows:

Jews return to Israel after 2,000 years, the Holy Temple is rebuilt, billions of people perish during seven years of natural disasters and plagues, the antichrist arises and rules the world, the battle of Armageddon erupts in the vicinity of Israel, Jesus returns to defeat Satan's armies and preside over Judgment Day.

Generations of Christians have hoped for the Second Coming of Jesus, said UCLA historian Eugen Weber, author of the 1999 book "Apocalypses: Prophecies, Cults and Millennial Beliefs Through the Ages."

"And it's always been an ultimately bloody hope, a slaughterhouse hope," he added with a sigh. "What we have now in this global age is a vaster and bloodier-than-ever Wagnerian version. But, then, we are a very imaginative race."

Apocalyptic movements are nothing new; even Christopher Columbus hoped to assist in the Great Commission by evangelizing New World inhabitants.

Some religious scholars saw apocalyptic fever rise as the year 2000 approached, and they expected it to subside after the millennium arrived without a hitch.

It didn't. According to various polls, an estimated 40% of Americans believe that a sequence of events presaging the end times is already underway. Among the believers are pastors of some of the largest evangelical churches in America, who converged at Faith Central Bible Church in Inglewood in February to finalize plans to start 5 million new churches worldwide in 10 years.

"Jesus Christ commissioned his disciples to go to the ends of the Earth and tell everyone how they could achieve eternal life," said James Davis, president of the Global Pastors Network's "Billion Souls Initiative," one of an estimated 2,000 initiatives worldwide designed to boost the Christian population.

Deep Impact

(Spotted by the Friendly Stranger)

New asteroid at top of Earth-threat list

* 11:52 01 March 2006
* NewScientist.com news service
* Kimm Groshong

Observations by astronomers tracking near-Earth asteroids have raised
a new object to the top of the Earth-threat list.

The asteroid could strike the Earth in 2102. However, Don Yeomans,
manager of NASA's Near Earth Object Program at the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory in Pasadena, California, US, told New Scientist: "The most
likely situation, by far, is that additional observations will bring
it back down to a zero."

He adds: "We're more likely to be hit between now and then by an
object that we don't know about."

On 23 February, new observations allowed researchers to more
accurately calculate the orbit of the asteroid, named 2004 VD17, which
was originally detected by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's
LINEAR project. Since the improvement did not rule out a potential
collision with the Earth on 4 May 2102, they increased the asteroid's
rating to level 2 on the Torino Scale, a relatively rare event.

Degrees of danger

The Torino Scale, adopted in 1999, is akin to a Richter scale for
asteroid impacts. The vast majority of the 4000 or so near-Earth
objects (NEOs) detected so far have been assigned to level zero on the
Torino scale, meaning they have "no likely consequences".

Level 1, colour-coded green, suggests a possible impact that "merits
careful monitoring". Beyond that, the risk continues to rise along the
scale – levels 2, 3 and 4 are yellow; 5, 6 and 7 are orange; while 8,
9 and 10 earn red.

The highest level ever reached by an asteroid was level 4 by Apophis
(2004 MN4) in December 2004, but subsequent calculations downgraded
that concern to a level 1. So VD17 currently claims the top spot on
NASA's online list of potential asteroid impacts.

Despite the rarity of the yellow designation, Yeomans says "Torino 2
is not very alarming." He notes that the scale does not take account
of how soon an impact may occur, unlike its rival, the Palermo Scale.

Based on current observations, he says the asteroid has a 1 in 1600
chance of striking the Earth in 2102 and a 1 in 500,000 chance of
hitting two years later. But further observations will soon refine the
orbit calculation for VD17 – and hopefully ease minds.

NEO hunter, Andrea Milani Comparetti of the University of Pisa, Italy,
says VD17 "is a serious problem, but not for our generation". He also
notes that VD17 is dim and distant and is not projected to pass close
by the Earth before 2102. "You will need fairly powerful telescopes to
see it before it arrives," he told New Scientist.
Smaller threats

Since 1998, NASA has had a US Congressional mandate to locate 90% of
all NEOs of 1 kilometre or larger by 2008. Yeomans says that 830 out
of a predicted 1100 have been found so far, along with thousands of
smaller objects.

In the NASA Authorization Act of 2005, Congress directed the space
agency to study and report back on the best way to cost-effectively
locate 90% of all asteroids down to a diameter of just 140 metres.
Yeomans says there are likely to be about 100,000 such NEOs.

Yeomans and Bill Bottke of the Southwest Research Institute in
Boulder, Colorado, were both members of a team that reported in 2003
that a survey to locate such small asteroids would be cost-effective,
considering the damage an impact could cause. Bottke says the group
found that to find 90% of the remaining hazard would cost roughly $300
million.

2004 VD17 is estimated to have a diameter of about 580 metres. An
asteroid of that size would produce an impact crater about 10
kilometres wide and an earthquake of magnitude 7.4 if it struck land.

Icecaps Melting

Climate change: On the edge

Greenland ice cap breaking up at twice the rate it was five years ago, says scientist Bush tried to gag

By Jim Hansen

Published: 17 February 2006
A satellite study of the Greenland ice cap shows that it is melting far faster than scientists had feared - twice as much ice is going into the sea as it was five years ago. The implications for rising sea levels - and climate change - could be dramatic.

Yet, a few weeks ago, when I - a Nasa climate scientist - tried to talk to the media about these issues following a lecture I had given calling for prompt reductions in the emission of greenhouse gases, the Nasa public affairs team - staffed by political appointees from the Bush administration - tried to stop me doing so. I was not happy with that, and I ignored the restrictions. The first line of Nasa's mission is to understand and protect the planet.


I think sea-level rise is going to be the big issue soon, more even than warming itself.

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