A Mini "Big-Bang" at the LHC. First collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) NASA BIGGEST KEPT SECRET ABOUT 2012 - EARTH BECOMING A STAR. LHC, particle accelerator, CERN » Large Hadron Collider LHC, CERN particle accelerator.
A Beginner's Guide to Plate Tectonics. Some people think that the earth has always been the way it is, with many oceans and the seven continents, but it’s not true. In fact, the continents used to be joined together in one giant continent. The name plate tectonics comes from the Latin phrases tectonicus, which means building. The theory of plate tectonics states that there are eight major plates and many minor plates in the earth’s lithosphere, which are constantly shifting (at about 50-100 mm per year).
All the continents used to belong to one super continent now called Pangaea. Then, they drifted apart into Laurasia, which became North America and Eurasia, and Gondwana, which became the other continents. From there, they broke apart again. The earth’s outer layers are divided into the lithosphere and the asthenosphere. The theory was actually built on an older theory of the continental drift. Animations: Multiple animations to show how the plates have been shifting for past 750 million years. Space Science. A Cloaked Alien Spaceship Orbiting Mercury?
While watching a coronal mass ejection traveling from the sun, one of NASA's solar observatories would appear to have discovered a massive alien spacecraft docked in orbit next to the tiny planet Mercury! As described by YouTube user siniXster, who used the U.S. Navy's SECCHI website to gather the images and create a video of the extraordinary extraterrestrial encounter on Dec. 3, it is "definitely some sort of manufactured object.
" "It's cylindrical on either side, has a shape in the middle … It definitely looks like a ship to me. Very obviously it's cloaked," he continued. "There's really, absolutely no other explanation for that than some sort of ship. " Here's the video: ANALYSIS: UFOs Filmed Over London — Or Not Sadly for siniXster, conspiracy theorists, ufologists and Star Trek buffs, there's no Klingons off Mercury's starboard bow. Those pesky scientists have done it again; why do they have an answer for everything? What? ANALYSIS: Jerusalem UFO 'Almost Certainly a Hoax' Can Severe Weather Trigger Earthquakes? Extreme weather events may set off quakes and recognizing those patterns may help us better forecast tremors.
Cyclones, hurricanes and monsoons add stresses that can interact with the timing of tectonic stresses triggering earthquakes. Someday, scientists may be able to use weather patterns to help forecast the timing of impending earthquakes. Monsoons, hurricanes and other extreme weather events may trigger earthquakes when faults are ready to rumble. The new research presented this week at the American Geophysical Union's annual meeting in San Francisco does not suggest that all earthquakes are caused by storms or that all storms cause quakes.
But by identifying some of the many conditions that put stress on faults, the new work may help scientists better forecast future tremors. Experts hope to develop more accurate ways to warn the public before massive devastation ensues. "If you push on a fault, how is it going to respond? " SCIENCE CHANNEL: Top 10 Natural Disasters. Full lunar eclipse visible on Saturday. Top 5 REAL Cosmic Doomsday Events of 2011. Boson de Higgs. The Higgs boson and the LHC: at last, a clue to the universe? Boson de Higgs. What is a Higgs Boson? Possible Higgs boson signals, but we won't know for sure until next year. This morning, the spokespeople for the two main detectors at the Large Hadron Collider, ATLAS and CMS, gave talks on their teams' latest results in the search for the Higgs boson. As expected, the results were a bit ambiguous, as the signals that are consistent with the presence of the Higgs didn't rise much above two standard deviations away from background noise.
But the details were even more confusing. Although both teams see signals in roughly the same area, CMS sees two of them, and appears to exclude the area where ATLAS' signal peaks. The Higgs boson is predicted to be the last undetected particle of the Standard Model. It's a necessary outcome of the Higgs field, which provides the other particles mass. But doing so may require several years worth of collisions (and if you don't understand why, see yesterday's article). The Higgs can be produced by a variety of mechanisms (my personal favorite: "gluon fusion"), and falls apart by many more. How significant are these results? Singularity-Emergence A.I.
Building the Universe Inside a Supercomputer. As my grandfather once told me, to truly understand how something works, “you need to build it yourself.” And he knew what he was talking about. As a skilled toolmaker for all his working life he actually built the tools used to build things like jet engines to automated factory machinery. So, as I read Monday’s article about South Korean physicists building a program on one of the world’s most powerful computers to simulate the evolution of our Universe, although he wasn’t an astrophysicist himself, I knew my grandfather would instantly understand what they were hoping to achieve.
SCIENCE CHANNEL VIDEO: Through the Wormhole: Dark Matter In an arXiv preprint publication submitted on Dec. 8, Juhan Kim and colleagues from the Korea Institute for Advanced Study in Seoul have completed the largest simulation of the universe ever attempted. These are staggering numbers and the calculations required a stupidly fast supercomputer — called Tachyon II — to process them. The Complex Beauty of Solar System Navigation. So you want to fly to another planet? Well, you'd better prepare for a roller-coaster ride. Last night I drove from a small village in the Cotswolds (UK) back to my home in Norfolk. The journey took a good three hours, sticking to the national speed limit at all times (of course) and, ignoring the rather torturous windy English lanes and city bypasses, I had to head in a general easterly direction. My home was due east when I left and was due east just as I arrived. Yet in our everyday lives, we don't realize how handy that is.
But imagine if the place you want to get to keeps moving! That's the problem space scientists are constantly faced with when trying to send spacecraft to the planets, just like the recently launched NASA Mars Science Laboratory and ill-fated Russian Mars Phobos-Grunt mission. SCIENCE CHANNEL: Cassini Mission Timeline You only have to look at the night sky over a period of a few hours to notice that things are moving. ANALYSIS: Spacecraft Sets Sail For Jupiter. Microsoft Kinect used to map asteroids, glaciers, other scary things. Hubble Discoveries - Dark Energy. No Doomsday Supernova in 2012, Says NASA. Really? There are people out there who predict — with an unbelievable degree of accuracy — that December 2012 will herald a rare stellar explosion that will wipe out (or at least cripple) life on Earth? Well, if my email inbox is anything to go by, then yes, I'm sure this little doomsday scenario is doing the rounds.
And by the sound of things, NASA is also getting fed up with messages from individuals needlessly worrying about a star that's about to go "BOOM! " SCIENCE CHANNEL VIDEO: 10 Ways the World Might End In an impromptu public space service announcement from the U.S. space agency on Friday, Francis Reddy, of NASA's Goddard Spaceflight Center, went on the record to say: "…astronomers can say with certainty that there is no threatening star close enough to hurt Earth.
" But before you rush to Barnes & Noble to buy the next crappy "Doomsday in 2012" book and put your house up for sale, take a hint: You are being conned! Guess what? ANALYSIS: DON'T PANIC! But here's the kicker. David Hewlett: Missing McKay, that Stargate: Atlantis movie and more! If David Hewlett cracked you up as Dr. Rodney McKay on Stargate: Atlantis, wait'll you meet the REAL David Hewlett! We're thrilled that he's agreed to join us regularly here at Blastr to answer your questions and share whatever happens to be on his mind.
Greetings, people of Earth... and the rest of you! The friendly folks at Blastr have asked me to return and natter, once again, about sci-fi and my geeky world of nerd ... I've just surfaced from more writing-induced exile, clutching the latest draft of my Debug script and wondering why people outside my head don't do what I command of them.
Me and my Stargate sibling Kate Hewlett (I'm in legal proceedings to have her change her name ... people keep thinking we're related!?) Still working all the angles on Starcrossed as well! Now to your questions... What was your favorite book of 2011? Sharp Teeth by Toby Barlow was the novel that really stuck with me last year. Do you miss McKay? Not really, I'm around him every day! That's easy! Yes! Could Starships Use Cold Fusion Propulsion? Voyager 1 is now leaving solar system, making it the first manmade probe to enter interstellar space. That's quite an achievement, and it only took 30+ years. But if we're going to get serious about boldly going where no man has gone before, and send humans beyond the solar system, we're gonna need a cheap and plentiful energy source to help us get there.
Exactly how much energy are we talking about? Well, back in January, a paper appeared on the arXiv by Marc Millis, a former head of NASA's Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Project, calculating the costs -- in terms of energy -- of a truly interstellar manned space mission. And it wasn't good news. For one scenario, he assumed a 500-person space ship on a one-way trip to establish a human colony on some distant exoplanet.
That would require an exajoule of energy, or 1018 J, i.e., just about the same amount of energy consumed by everyone on Earth in one year. A Cloaked Alien Spaceship Orbiting Mercury? Michio Kaku | UFOs Are Real. Nobel Peace Prize Honors Three Women. Liberia's president, a fellow Liberian "peace warrior" and a Yemeni activist were awarded the prize on Saturday in Oslo. The three were honored for showing how women facing oppression can lead the way to peace and democracy. The ceremony took place in Oslo city hall, with Norway's royal family and other dignitaries in attendance. Liberia's president, a fellow Liberian and a Yemeni activist received the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo Saturday for showing how women facing war and oppression can shed the mantle of victimhood and lead the way to peace and democracy.
"You represent one of the most important motive forces for change in today's world: the struggle for human rights in general and the struggle of women for equality and peace in particular," Norwegian Nobel Committee president Thorbjoern Jagland said before handing out the prestigious award.Thorbjoern "You give concrete meaning to the Chinese proverb which says that 'women hold up half of the sky'," Jagland told the laureates. First Earth-Sized Planets Orbit Distant Star. The worlds are a part of a "jam-packed" star system called Kepler-20 where rocky and gaseous planets co-mingle. Kepler-20e and Kepler-20f are the first confirmed "Earth-sized" exoplanets to be discovered. The worlds live in a five-planet star system, all of which orbit their star very closely. Although the planetary duo are Earth-sized, they are thought not to be habitable. The first two Earth-like worlds orbiting another star have been detected, although neither are believed to be suitable for life.
But if the planets had water in the past, there's a good chance they could have hung on to it long enough for life to take hold, Linda Elkins-Tanton, with the Carnegie Institution in Washington DC, told reporters on a conference call Tuesday. The planets, known as Kepler-20e and 20f, are the smallest planets found so far by NASA's Kepler telescope, which was launched three years ago to look for Earth-sized worlds around other stars. SCIENCE CHANNEL VIDEO: Lonely Planet.