Large Hadron Collider

8 07 2008

The gigantic scientific instrument called Large Hadron Collider has to be started up today in a world’s largest and most respected centre for scientific research near Geneva at the border Switzerland and France about 100 m underground. This grand scientist experiment will help physicists to learn more about the laws of Nature. What is the result we should expect from such grandioso human’s practical activities on the Earth? There are many theories and discussions about. But the main goal is finding out what the Universe is made of and how it works.

Do you think the answer will be found soon? I don’t so. But no doubt today is the beginning of the process.


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Categories : Future, Nature, News, Science, Secrets, Space, Technology

Last 3 Days Earthquakes.

25 05 2008

It became known that yesterday at least six people were killed when a shallow, 5.6-magnitude earthquake hit Colombia, destroying homes and shaking buildings in the capital Bogota, where panicked residents fled into the streets. The quake blocked a highway out of Bogota and flattened ten houses and a church near the epicenter, authorities said.

Francisco Gomez, a geology professor at the University of Missouri who has studied the New Madrid Seismic Zone in southeast Missouri and other “intraplate” zones that cause mid-continent earthquakes, said the quake was strong, but it doesn’t necessarily mean there are more to come.

“There always is the concern with something like this that there may be the potential for larger earthquakes in the Wabash River Valley,” he said of the Indiana-Illinois region. “But there’s also the high probability that this is just a moderate earthquake that happened and now they’ll return to the normal level of activity which is pretty infrequent.”

He added: “Does this mean there’s a big one yet to come? Well, not necessarily.”

Gomez said intraplate quakes like this and the massive 7.5-magnitude events that struck Missouri in 1811 and 1812, levelling buildings in St. Louis and reportedly causing the Mississippi River to flow backwards, are very “enigmatic.” They can’t be easily explained or monitored like California earthquakes, which occur when tectonic plates push against each other.

“There are different possibilities. Some of it has to do with the fact that the crust of the earth in continental areas is old and it has a lot of old fractures and cracks within it,” said Gomez. “Sometimes stress gets concentrated and it produces an earthquake. But what causes stress to build? That’s one of the big debates right now.”

As is generally known earthquakes as a natural phenomenon is everyday occurrence. Here you can check the list of Worldwide Earthquakes that happened only in the Last 3 Days.

25-MAY-2008 09:34:09 33.07 104.96 4.9 10.0 GANSU, CHINA
25-MAY-2008 08:21:48 32.58 105.46 5.8 10.0 SICHUAN, CHINA
25-MAY-2008 05:45:12 15.24 -91.70 5.0 193.1 MEXICO-GUATEMALA BORDER REGION
25-MAY-2008 04:27:06 31.92 104.50 4.6 10.0 SICHUAN, CHINA
25-MAY-2008 04:17:06 14.51 -91.43 4.3 82.8 GUATEMALA
25-MAY-2008 03:25:40 46.52 153.32 4.7 39.3 KURIL ISLANDS
25-MAY-2008 02:07:52 -12.76 -14.66 4.8 10.0 SOUTHERN MID-ATLANTIC RIDGE
24-MAY-2008 23:23:07 44.24 -129.31 4.6 10.0 OFF COAST OF OREGON
24-MAY-2008 23:20:39 44.33 -129.76 4.2 10.0 OFF COAST OF OREGON
24-MAY-2008 22:29:15 18.37 -105.37 4.2 10.0 OFF COAST OF JALISCO, MEXICO
24-MAY-2008 19:48:12 -23.45 -179.71 4.9 530.7 SOUTH OF FIJI ISLANDS
24-MAY-2008 19:20:42 4.45 -73.63 5.7 3.6 COLOMBIA
24-MAY-2008 13:24:11 -7.27 156.02 5.9 67.1 SOLOMON ISLANDS
24-MAY-2008 13:21:28 -0.31 -19.01 5.1 10.0 CENTRAL MID-ATLANTIC RIDGE
24-MAY-2008 10:28:43 -19.32 169.51 5.1 281.6 VANUATU ISLANDS
24-MAY-2008 09:24:05 -22.11 -179.53 4.9 591.8 SOUTH OF FIJI ISLANDS
24-MAY-2008 08:18:18 71.49 -3.06 4.5 10.0 JAN MAYEN ISLAND REGION
24-MAY-2008 07:40:39 -8.78 124.03 5.3 45.6 TIMOR REGION, INDONESIA
24-MAY-2008 06:53:32 -42.01 -71.77 4.7 83.4 S. CHILE-ARGENTINA BORDER REGION
24-MAY-2008 06:26:31 -41.90 -71.81 5.0 69.7 S. CHILE-ARGENTINA BORDER REGION
24-MAY-2008 04:58:19 42.44 -30.55 5.5 10.0 AZORES ISLANDS REGION
24-MAY-2008 02:43:46 -41.95 -71.88 5.3 78.9 S. CHILE-ARGENTINA BORDER REGION
24-MAY-2008 01:59:35 53.13 172.69 4.4 75.1 NEAR ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS
23-MAY-2008 22:50:30 -7.03 129.57 5.7 62.2 BANDA SEA
23-MAY-2008 20:46:18 -22.59 -68.55 5.0 99.8 NORTHERN CHILE
23-MAY-2008 19:35:35 7.26 -34.88 6.4 10.0 CENTRAL MID-ATLANTIC RIDGE
23-MAY-2008 16:10:22 32.25 105.10 4.5 10.0 SICHUAN, CHINA
23-MAY-2008 12:27:16 -23.60 178.99 5.0 524.2 SOUTH OF FIJI ISLANDS
23-MAY-2008 11:42:14 65.21 -133.94 4.1 5.0 NORTHERN YUKON TERRITORY, CANADA
23-MAY-2008 03:35:06 -8.03 106.89 4.9 10.0 SOUTH OF JAWA, INDONESIA
23-MAY-2008 03:33:07 51.69 177.92 5.2 35.0 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS
23-MAY-2008 01:07:46 -20.46 -179.34 5.1 652.5 FIJI ISLANDS REGION
23-MAY-2008 00:13:11 7.59 -78.07 4.4 10.0 PANAMA
23-MAY-2008 00:05:06 31.26 103.95 4.6 10.0 SICHUAN, CHINA


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Categories : Nature, News

Do We Have a Future?

5 02 2008

Recent scientific researches argued that a new epoch in the planet’s geologic history has begun. It seams that we have to say goodbye to the 10,000-year-old Holocene Epoch and hello to the Anthropocene. Our world is in trouble.
Among the major changes heralding this two-century-old man-made epoch:
Vastly altered sediment erosion and deposition patterns.
Major disturbances to the carbon cycle and global temperature.
Wholesale changes in biology, from altered flowering times to new migration patterns.
Acidification of the ocean, which threatens tiny marine life that forms the bottom of the food chain.
In the February issue of the journal GSA Today, a publication of the Geological Society of America, Jan Zalasiewicz and Mark Williams of the University of Leicester and colleagues at the Geological Society of London argue that industrialization has wrought changes that usher in a new epoch, livescience.com. reports. Scientists of the future will have no trouble deciding if the proposal was timely. All they’ll need to do is dig into the planet and examine its stratigraphic layers, which reveal a chronology of the changing conditions that existed as each layer is created. Layers can reflect volcanic upheaval, ice ages or mass extinctions.
“Sufficient evidence has emerged of stratigraphically significant change (both elapsed and imminent) for recognition of the Anthropocene — currently a vivid yet informal metaphor of global environmental change — as a new geological epoch to be considered for formalization by international discussion,” Zalasiewicz’s team writes.
Up to half of Earth’s land has been transformed by human activity, wrote Crutzen and Eugene F. Stoermer of the University of Michigan. They also noted the dramatic increase in greenhouse gases and other chemicals and pollutants humans have introduced into global ecosystems.
As early as the late 1800s scientists were writing about man’s wholesale impact on the planet and the possibility of an “anthropozoic era” having begun, according to Crutzen, who is credited with coining the term Anthropocene (anthropo = human; cene = new) back in 2000. That year, Crutzen and a colleague wrote in the scientific newsletter International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme about some of the dramatic changes:
“Urbanization has … increased tenfold in the past century. In a few generations mankind is exhausting the fossil fuels that were generated over several hundred million years.”
Up to half of Earth’s land has been transformed by human activity, wrote Crutzen and Eugene F. Stoermer of the University of Michigan. They also noted the dramatic increase in greenhouse gases and other chemicals and pollutants humans have introduced into global ecosystems.
The epochal idea has merit, according to geologist Richard Alley of Pennsylvania State University.
“In land, water, air, ice, and ecosystems, the human impact is clear, large, and growing,”Alley told ScienceNow, an online publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. “A geologist from the far distant future almost surely would draw a new line, and begin using a new name, where and when our impacts show up.”

Calling things by their right the main and only cause of dramatic change is a critical mass of humanity that influences change at a global scale. What is the solution?


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Categories : Ecology, Future, Nature, News, Science, Space, Technology

Stop the World, I Want to Get Off.

7 10 2007

There was fantastically curious article titlled “Our Lives, Controlled From Some Guy’s Couch ” in August’s NY Times. The article about the omniscient, that omnipotent who is the creator of the heavens and earth. So, why the omniscient could not be an advanced version of a guy who spends his weekends building model railroads or overseeing video-game worlds like the Sims? Such a funny idea isn’t it? But now it seems quite possible. In fact, if you accept a pretty reasonable assumption of Dr. Bostrom’s, it is almost a mathematical certainty that we are living in someone else’s computer simulation.

This simulation would be similar to the one in “The Matrix,” in which most humans don’t realize that their lives and their world are just illusions created in their brains while their bodies are suspended in vats of liquid. But in Dr. Bostrom’s notion of reality, you wouldn’t even have a body made of flesh. Your brain would exist only as a network of computer circuits.
You couldn’t, as in “The Matrix,” unplug your brain and escape from your vat to see the physical world. You couldn’t see through the illusion except by using the sort of logic employed by Dr. Bostrom, the director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford.

Unfortunately one has not any opportunity to choose principally another “station” but however one has to try, what if?
By the way the complete text of the article you can find in my library.


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Categories : Computers, Library, Mystery, Nature, Science, Secrets, Technology

Meteorite in Peru.

19 09 2007

This afternoon scientists which went to the town of Carancas in the Region of Puno, Peru, have confirmed that the glowing object which fell from the sky on Saturday afternoon was indeed a meteorite. Health Directorate reported that doctors and nurses found it necessary to establish auxiliary medical tents near the health center in Carancas because at least 150 people had been seen after having stated they had dermal injuries, were dizzy, nauseous or vomiting and at least seven police officers were affected after they collected samples from the landing site of what is thought to be meteorite.

Scientists confirmed that the meteorite that caused a 17 meter (55 foot) wide and 5 meter (16 foot) deep crater in Puno, Peru was a chondrite meteorite. The water in the crater is to be drained and several teams of scientists from different countries will take samples from the crater itself and from surrounding areas. We just have to wait for the scientists inal decision what it was exactly.


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Categories : Nature, News, Science, Space

My secret hands.

26 08 2007

In 2005 the grope of German scientists from Essen University observed 40 volunteers both men and woman found out the natural phenomenon of interdependency between ability of in finding one’s bearings on the ground and the amount of testosterone in the blood that had gotten in mother’s belly yet.

It’s interesting that in outward appearance such ability show it’s worth in difference in lengthy human’s fingers - the shorter the index finger relative to the ring finger, the higher the amount of prenatal testosterone and carbon trading. Scientists have known for that the finger-length ratio differs between men and women. The new study found such a fetus is more likely to be a physically aggressive adult, according to Peter Hurd and his graduate student Allison Bailey. Hurd says that he first thought the idea was “a pile of hooey,” but he changed his mind when he saw the data, which is published in the March issue of the journal Biological Psychology. “More than anything, I think the findings reinforce and underline that a large part of our personalities and our traits are determined while we’re still in the womb,” Hurd said. The connection was found only with physically aggressive behavior, not with verbal aggression or other forms of hostility. Another study by Hurd, to be published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, find that men with more feminine finger ratios are more prone to depression.
“Finger lengths explain about 5 percent of the variation in these personality measures, so research like this won’t allow you to draw conclusions about specific people. For example, you wouldn’t want to screen people for certain jobs based on their finger lengths,” Hurd said. “But finger length can you tell you a little bit about where personality comes from, and that’s what we are continuing to explore.”


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Categories : Mystery, Nature, Science

Hurricane Dean

20 08 2007

NACA reports that at 06:56 CDT, shuttle Endeavour undocked from ISS, officially ending the joint operations phase of STS-118.

It was a successful mission from the ISS standpoint.
The $11 million, 11′x14′x15′ S5 truss segment was installed on the ISS main truss.
[EVA] Replacement of an ISS gyroscope.
4 EVAs performed.
A 7500 lb external stowage platform was installed on the ISS main truss.
~2 tons of cargo (food, clothing, and hardware) was transferred from Endeavour to ISS.

Hurricane Dean is now tracking well south of Houston, and barely going to touch TX. So its unlikely MCC-Houston will have to evacuate. That’s good news.

Attached some photos of Hurricane Dean, taken by the ISS crew. To give you an idea of the size of Dean, its approximately 650 miles across. For reference, the storm would almost completely cover the states of Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah.


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Categories : Nature, Space

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