Author Archives: marcia

Stephen Hawking on the Conquest of Space

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Colonies on Mars will flourish and we will eventually conquer the universe, says Stephen Hawking

By Tamara Cohen

Last updated at 1:53 AM on 7th January 2012

Professor Stephen Hawking has predicted that humans will colonise Mars – but not for at least a century.

The physicist, who has decoded some of the greatest mysteries of the universe, said it is ‘essential’ for man to spread across the galaxy in case Earth is destroyed.

He suggested that it was ‘almost certain’ that a disaster ‘such as nuclear war or global warming’ would obliterate the planet within a thousand years.

Confident: Professor Stephen Hawking has said that we will one day colonise Mars - and beyondConfident: Professor Stephen Hawking has said that we will one day colonise Mars – and beyond

‘It is essential that we colonise space,’ he stressed.

‘I believe that we will eventually establish self-sustaining colonies on Mars and other bodies in the solar system, but not within the next 100 years.’

The Red Planet is considered to be the solar system’s most hospitable alternative to Earth. Although space agencies have made preparations for a manned mission to Mars, such an expedition is thought to be decades away.

A typical estimate of the length of a round trip is 450 days.

Adding that humanity’s extinction was ‘possible but not inevitable’, Professor Hawking said: ‘I am optimistic that progress in science and technology will eventually enable humans to spread beyond the solar system and into the far reaches of the universe.’

Professor Hawking also gave his views on the recent CERN claims that neutrinos can travel faster than the speed of light, saying that he didn’t believe the results of its experiments.

The possibility of multiple universes is something he does believe in, however, telling one listener: ‘Our best bet for a theory of everything is M-theory.

‘One prediction of M-theory is that there are many different universes, with different values for the physical constants.’

Answering questions from listeners of BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on the eve of his 70th birthday, Professor Hawking claimed that finding intelligent life elsewhere in the universe would be ‘the biggest scientific discovery ever’.

However, he warned that it would be ‘very risky to attempt to communicate with an alien civilisation’, adding: ‘If aliens decided to visit us, then the outcome might be similar to when Europeans arrived in the Americas. That did not turn out well for the Native Americans.’

Red alert: Hawking believes that we will one day colonise our cosmic neighbour. Pictured is the Disney film Mission To MarsRed alert: Hawking believes that we will one day colonise our cosmic neighbour. Pictured is the Disney film Mission To Mars

You’d be forgiven for thinking that Professor Hawking spends most of his waking hours thinking about these cosmic subjects.

But when he was asked by New Scientist recently what preoccupied him he replied: ‘Women. They are a complete mystery.’

He even hinted at regrets in his personal life after being asked about his biggest mistake.

He said that thinking information was destroyed black holes was his biggest blunder – ‘or at least my biggest blunder in science.’

Professor Hawking, who was diagnosed with motor neurone disease at 21, conducted the interview as he communicates – using a voice machine that picks up the twitching of his cheek.

His conversation with the magazine came ahead of an international conference held in his honour that started yesterday at Cambridge University, where he used to be the Lucasian professor of mathematics.

It will conclude on Sunday with talks from some of the world’s most prominent physicists, including Lord Rees, the Astronomer Royal, Saul Perlmutter, who won the Nobel prize for physics in 2011, and Kip Thorne from the California Institute of Technology.

Professor Hawking, who has made cameos in The Simpsons and Star Trek, was not expected to live for many years after being diagnosed, but has has a stellar career.

Brilliant brain: The 69-year-old, pictured at his wedding to ex-wife Elaine, said a mistake about black holes was his biggest blunder 'at least in science'Brilliant brain: The 69-year-old, pictured at his wedding to ex-wife Elaine, said a mistake about black holes was his biggest blunder ‘at least in science’

Colleagues have this week expressed their admiration for the talented cosmologist, who has contributed to theories of gravity and showed that black holes emit radiation and slowly disappear.

Professor Hawking married Jane Wilde in 1965, and she cared for him until 1991 when the couple separated, reportedly because of the pressures of fame and his increasing disability.

They had three children: Robert, Lucy – now a popular author, and Timothy.

The scientist then married his nurse, Elaine Mason (who was previously married to David Mason, the designer of the first version of Hawking’s talking computer), in 1995.

In October 2006, Hawking filed for divorce from his second wife.

In 2004, the scientist showed how a black hole’s information leaks back into our universe through an event horizon – a recantation of an earlier theory that lost him a bet made with fellow theorist John Preskill.

Professor Hawking also showed in the interview that he has not lost his passion for science, or his dreams of exciting future discoveries.

He said that if he was a young physicist starting out today, he would have a new idea that would open up an entirely new field.

PumaPunku Ruins in Bolivia

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Pumapunku, also called “Puma Pumku” or “Puma Puncu”, is part of a large temple complex or monument group that is part of the Tiwanaku Site near Tiwanaku, Bolivia. In Aymara, its name means, “The Door of the Cougar”. The processes and technologies involved in the creation of these temples are still not fully understood by modern scholars. Our current ideas of the Tiwanaku culture hold that they had no writing system and also that the invention of the wheel was most likely unknown to them. The architectural achievements seen at Pumapunku are striking in light of the presumed level of technological capability available during its construction. Due to the monumental proportions of the stones, the method by which they were transported to Pumapunku has been a topic of interest since the temple’s discovery.

Puma Punku, truly startles the imagination. It seems to be the remains of a great wharf (for Lake Titicaca long ago lapped upon the shores of Tiahuanaco) and a massive, four-part, now collapsed building. One of the construction blocks from which the pier was fashioned weighs an estimated 440 tons (equal to nearly 600 full-size cars) and several other blocks laying about are between 100 and 150 tons.

Puma Punku ruins, Tiahuanaco, Bolivia
(courtesy of www.sacredsites.com and Martin Gray)

The quarry for these giant blocks was on the western shore of Titicaca, some ten miles away. There is no known technology in all the ancient world that could have transported stones of such massive weight and size. The Andean people of 500 AD, with their simple reed boats, could certainly not have moved them. Even today, with all the modern advances in engineering and mathematics, we could not fashion such a structure.

Just out of the aerial picture (below) to the bottom left is the site of the Puma Punku. This is another ‘temple area’ with many finely cut stones some weighing over 100 tonnes. Its position to the south of the Akapana may have been important because it gave a good view to a sacred mountain far to the east.

Of course there is no certainty that this was the reason as the ancient builders left no written records.
All the legends have been handed down through the generations.

Puma Punku ruins, Tiahuanaco, Bolivia
(courtesy of www.sacredsites.com and Martin Gray)

How were these monstrous stones moved and what was their purpose?
Posnansky suggested an answer, based upon his studies of the astronomical alignments of Tiahuanaco, but that answer is considered so controversial, even impossible, that it has been ignored and censured by the scientific community for fifty years.

Carved stone block at Puma Punku. This precision-made 6 mm wide
groove contains equidistant, drilled holes. It seems impossible that this
cuts were made with use of stone or copper tools.

The so-called Gate of the Sun seen at the back side.
Made of one piece of hard rock. Possibly it was a part of a large wall.
By the courtesy of www.inkatour.com, nr. 3696

Puma Punku doesn’t look impressive: a hill as remains of an old pyramid and a large number of megalithic block of stone on the ground, evidently smashed by a devastating earthquake. However, closer inspection shows that these stone blocks have been fabricated with a very advanced technology. Even more surprising is the technical design of these blocks shown in the drawing below. All blocks fit together like interlocking building blocks.

Source: Jean-Pierre Protzen & Stella E.Nair, “On Reconstructing Tiwanaku Architecture”, Jpurnal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 59, Nr.3, 2000, pp. 358-371


Artistic interpretation © World-Mysteries.com


Artistic interpretation © World-Mysteries.com

A wall of the Akapana, the pyramid of Tiahuanacu, shows similar modular design.
Blocks that are piled one on top of the other but the underside of the upper stone is cut at an angle. The top of the standing stone is cut at the same angle, as shown on the figure below.

Source: Jean-Pierre Protzen & Stella E.Nair, “On Reconstructing Tiwanaku Architecture”, Jpurnal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 59, Nr.3, 2000, pp. 358-371

This stone technology plainly contradicts what official archaeology suggests about the general state of development of the ancient peoples of South-America.


Source:
“Die Ruinenstätte von Tiahuanaco im Hochlande des alten Peru”
(The Ruins of Tiahuanaco in the Highlands of Ancient Peru)
1892 book about Tiahanaco written by two German
discoverers and engineers Alphons Stübel and Max Uhle

The architectural achievements seen at Pumapunku are striking in light of the presumed level of technological capability available during its construction. Due to the monumental proportions of the stones, the method by which they were transported to Pumapunku has been a topic of interest since the temple’s discovery.  The largest of these stone blocks is 7.81 meters long, 5.17 meters wide, averages 1.07 meters thick, and is estimated to weigh about 131 metric tons. The second largest stone block found within the Pumapunka is 7.90 meters long, 2.50 meters wide, and averages 1.86 meters thick. Its weight has been estimated to be 85.21 metric tons. Both of these stone blocks are part of the Plataforma Lítica and composed of red sandstone. Based upon detailed petrographic and chemical analyses of samples from both individual stones and known quarry sites, archaeologists concluded that these and other red sandstone blocks were transported up a steep incline from a quarry near Lake Titicaca roughly 10 km away. Smaller andesite blocks that were used for stone facing and carvings came from quarries within the Copacabana Peninsula about 90 km away from and across Lake Titicaca from the Pumapunka and the rest of the Tiwanaku Site.

to read more, go to:    http://www.world-mysteries.com/mpl_PumaPunku.htm

Nicolya Christi on Spirituality

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Contemporary Spirituality for an Evolving World

Nicolya Christi

Breakdown Leads to Breakthrough

We are living in unprecedented times of accelerated change—change that is evident all around us and which we experience in every arena of our lives, from the political, economic and financial, to the social and religious.

More and more people are asking fundamental questions regarding their basic human rights and overall wellbeing, and beginning to question the influence that external “powers” have over our lives.

No longer content with dismissive answers from those in positions of “power,” people are beginning to recognize that they have the freedom to choose. The balance between “power” and empowerment is beginning to shift.

Humanity stands on an imminent threshold which is about to take it into a New Paradigm. We are witnessing the early stages of the birth of a New World.

As this New World emerges—as prophesied long ago by many advanced indigenous cultures, and portended by rare astronomical alignments currently taking place in our Galaxy, including the completion of a 26,000-year Galactic Cycle—everything is set to change.

We are now bearing witness to the collapse of political, economic, social and financial systems, as people respond to the call of the New World, the call of our time, and the call of their soul.

These courageous people are reaching out for a better quality of life, for equality, for their basic survival needs to be met, and for an overall sense of wellbeing, all of which are our fundamental birthright.

People are reclaiming their individual power; and if they can use this wisely, this will help to empower millions of fellow humans across the globe. We are bearing witness to a re-evolution, on a global scale.

The energy of change is sweeping the globe. People are “waking up” to the reality of their lives and to the current state of the world.

Under the spotlight of radical questioning and these sweeping changes is religion, or in a broader sense, spirituality. Are religion and spirituality one and the same?

At the center of all religion lies a spiritual heart. However, this spiritual heart, like the human heart, lies buried under thousands of years of conditioning and distortion, which has dominated and hidden the pure heart of religion.

The heart of religion and the human heart are not dissimilar in their historical fate. For the most part, both have remained buried under eons of fear-based constructs, which have manifested a distorted and unrecognizable caricature of religion, and of the human being.

It is said that all rivers lead to the same ocean and that, in a similar way, all religions lead to the same fundamental message and meaning: Love.

"Canyon Tree" 2012 © Sol Luckman“Canyon Tree” 2012 © Sol LuckmanContemporary Spirituality

What is Contemporary Spirituality? We could say that Contemporary Spirituality is an extraction of the purest essence of all religion.

It is what lies at the heart of all religion and at the heart of any spiritual practice or philosophy which has developed a complex doctrine, a fundamentalist and inaccurate set of scriptures and texts, and a dysfunctional set of rules and code of conduct.

Contemporary Spirituality is a current spirituality that speaks directly to us now in the times we live in. It is a Way which brings our spiritual focus into the Now.

Religion is an ancient system that was birthed in an unrecognizable (to our modern mind) and vastly different time in our ancient human history. Its rise to prominence took place when our conscious evolution was in its formative stages.

The heart of religion was adapted beyond all original meaning by those who held power, in order to control, manipulate and dominate the human being of 2,000 and more years ago.

Our conscious evolution has come a long way since then. We are no longer in the infancy stages of our conscious evolutionary development.

Therefore, it is entirely out of context to be following antiquated religious doctrine created by, and for, our less consciously evolved predecessors.

Contemporary Spirituality consists of a Way, which is uncorrupted, uncomplicated, and non-fundamental. It is an expression of spirituality and religion in its purest form. It represents the true heart of all religion, which was hidden by power hungry rulers long ago.

The heart of Contemporary Spirituality is open and available for all to see. It is a heart that is exquisite in its simplicity, transparency, beauty, and purity.

Contemporary Spirituality invites ALL, no matter what race, denomination or creed, to be inspired and seek to aspire and embody its proposals. It is a Way which is an infinitely pure and true expression of what lay at the heart of religion and certain spiritual paths.

Contemporary Spirituality invites us toward Self-mastery, in which we learn to master our bodies, senses, emotions, thoughts, and lives. It encourages us to cultivate self-discipline, self-love, self-awareness, self-knowing, and self-realization.

Contemporary Spirituality leads us along a clear path, devoid of rules, judgments, expectations, dogma, or fundamentalist belief systems. It guides us towards enlightenment.

Contemporary Spirituality requires no intellectual predisposition, as it is a language of the heart. It invites us to explore, practice and master the Seven Cornerstones of Contemporary Spirituality (see below).

The joy of Contemporary Spirituality is in its simplicity. It is a stripped back to the core spiritual Way forward for humanity.

It gently encourages and guides us to let go of dualistic and separatist religious indoctrination, and instead, embrace the concept of equality, unity, and unifying as one global family, with one “religion,” one spiritual practice, at the heart of humanity—that of Love.

This is something that we are now ready to embrace as contemporary, consciously evolving human beings.

The Light Shadow

Contemporary Spirituality embraces the human shadow, recognizing that when we explore ourselves with consciousness and awareness, and are therefore engaged in our own evolutionary process, the shadow is not dark, but indeed Light.

Contemporary Spirituality discounts the existence of a fundamentally dark nature within the human being, and instead acknowledges that there exists, within each of us, a primal wound, a separation from Source (God, Divinity, our Divine Nature).

However, this is not a wound we must bear as part of being human. We experience it only because we have been steeped in dualism, brought about by the misinterpretation or obscuration of what lay at the heart of religious and spiritual philosophies throughout human history.

The Light Shadow is referred to as such because by becoming aware of and healing the human shadow, its existence has brought us further enlightenment.

When compassion and empathy are offered as balms with which the human shadow can be healed and transformed, this results in its integration, and the conscious evolution of the human being.

For thousands of years we have lived under dictatorships, flawed regimes and a misinterpretation of the fundamental meaning of all religions, which is Love.

We have lived in duality, at a personal and collective level. We have been separated from the heart of religion and spirituality, and therefore our own hearts.

The primal wound of humanity, separation from Source, is one which can be healed. The way to healing all perceived sense of separation (for we have never truly been separate, only perceived ourselves to be so) is to become Love and only Love.

To live, breathe, sleep and live Love in every moment. To be a Master of the Heart. To reclaim and embody our natural state of being—which is Love.

This is what lies at the heart of Contemporary Spirituality: a new Way forward for a new human and a new world.

Seven Cornerstones of Contemporary Spirituality

The following is a list of the Seven Cornerstones of Contemporary Spirituality. Each is a teaching in itself, and all tend to be explored, practiced and embodied at the same time.

Each supports the transformation of the Light Shadow into a vast and beautiful Light which can surround and radiate from us.

The Seven Cornerstones are as follows: Unconditional Love, Empathy, Compassion, Forgiveness, Conscious Communication, Unconditional Positive Regard, and Compassionate Action.

When all seven of these foundational qualities of Contemporary Spirituality are mastered and lived realities, every day, we have attained Self-mastery.

This is when our true essence is fully awakened. This is when the heart has become fully transparent. When all humans embody this Way, as a lived reality, we will live in a transcendent world.

Copyright © 2012 by Nicolya Christi. All Rights Reserved.

[Nicolya Christi is Founder of WorldShift Movement, Co-founder of WorldShift International, and Co-initiator of WorldShift 2012. Nicolya’s focus is on human evolution, inner peace, and world peace. She is author of 2012: A Clarion Call—Your Soul’s Purpose in Conscious Evolution. Visit her website at www.nicolyachristi.com.]

from:    http://www.phoenixregenetics.org/resources/dna-monthly/current-issue

Thrifty Eco-Friendly Air Fresheners

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5 Low-Waste Air Fresheners for the Home

by 01/05/12

We all want our homes to smell fresh for winter company. But store-bought air fresheners can cost a fortune and often contain less-than-friendly chemicals. For a sweet scent that’s easy on the planet (and your wallet), check out these five all-natural air freshers that you can make yourself.

potpourri, flowers, dried flowers, air freshener, deodorizer, fragrance, smell, scent, dried spices, spicesCombine dried flowers with seasonal ingredients like fruit, pinecones and fresh spices for a warming scent. Photo: Flickr/goaliej54

1. Seasonal potpourri

Price: Less than $5

Homemade potpourri is a cheap and easy way to make your home smell inviting. For green brownie points and an extra-sweet scent, use ingredients you already have on hand and spice it up with some local and seasonal flare.

If you receive floral bouquets as host or hostess gifts this winter, save the dried flowers for potpourri. And don’t forget your own backyard! If you live in a warm climate, pluck some flowers from the garden, or pick up a few pinecones if you call a cooler state home.

Combine your foliage with fresh spices like cloves, cinnamon and nutmeg from the farmer’s market, and add some local fruits for a seasonal scent. Orange and grapefruit peels will make perfect additions for those in warm climates. If you live in a cool-weather state, set aside some cranberries while preparing your holiday dinner.

Make sure all the ingredients have dried completely, and combine them in the container of your choice to freshen any room of the house. As the scent wears off, toss in a few drops of your favorite essential oil to get the most out of your potpourri, and don’t forget to compost the leftovers!

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from:   http://earth911.com/news/2012/01/05/5-low-waste-air-fresheners-for-the-home/

Time Cloak

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Now You See It, Now You Didn’t: Researchers Cloak a Moment in Time

A laser beam passes through a “split-time lens” – a specially designed waveguide that bumps up the wavelength for a while then suddenly bumps it down. The signal then passes through a filter that slows down the higher-wavelength part of the signal, creating a gap in which the cloaked event takes place. A second filter works in the opposite way from the first, letting the lower wavelength catch up, and a final split-time lens brings the beam back to the original wavelength, leaving no trace of what happened during the gap. (Credit: Gaeta lab)

ScienceDaily (Jan. 6, 2012) — Think Harry Potter movie magic: Cornell researchers have demonstrated a “temporal cloak” — albeit on a very small scale — in the transport of information by a beam of light.

The trick is to create a gap in the beam of light, have the hidden event occur as the gap goes by and then stitch the beam back together. Alexander Gaeta, Cornell professor of applied and engineering physics, and colleagues report their work entitled “Demonstration of temporal cloaking,” in the journal Nature (Jan. 5, 2012.)

The researchers created what they call a time lens, which can manipulate and focus signals in time, analogous to the way a glass lens focuses light in space. They use a technique called four-wave mixing, in which two beams of light, a “signal” and a “pump,” are sent together through an optical fiber. The two beams interact and change the wavelength of the signal. To begin creating a time gap, the researchers first bump the wavelength of the signal up, then by flipping the wavelength of the pump beam, bump it down.

The beam then passes through another, very long, stretch of optical fiber. Light passing through a transparent material is slowed down just a bit, and how much it is slowed varies with the wavelength. So the lower wavelength pulls ahead of the higher, leaving a gap, like the hare pulling ahead of the tortoise. During the gap the experimenters introduced a brief flash of light at a still higher wavelength that would cause a glitch in the beam coming out the other end.

Then the split beam passes through more optical fiber with a different composition, engineered to slow lower wavelengths more than higher. The higher wavelength signal now catches up with the lower, closing the gap. The hare is plodding through mud, but the tortoise is good at that and catches up. Finally, another four-wave mixer brings both parts back to the original wavelength, and the beam emerges with no trace that there ever was a gap, and no evidence of the intruding signal.

None of this will let you steal the crown jewels without anyone noticing. The gap created in the experiment was 15 picoseconds long, and might be increased up to 10 nanoseconds, Gaeta said. But the technique could have applications in fiber-optic data transmission and data processing, he added. For example, it might allow inserting an emergency signal without interrupting the main data stream, or multitasking operations in a photonic computer, where light beams on a chip replace wires.

The experiment was inspired by a theoretical proposal for a space-time cloak or “history editor” published by Martin McCall, professor of physics at Imperial College in London, in the Journal of Optics in November 2010. “But his method required an optical response from a material that does not exist. Now we’ve done it in one spatial dimension. Extending it to two [that is, hiding a moment in an entire scene] is not out of the realm of possibility. All advances have to start from somewhere,” Gaeta says.

Funding for the research: The Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) and by the Cornell Center for Nanoscale Systems, which is supported by the National Science Foundation and the New York State Division of Science, Technology and Innovation (NYSTAR).

from:    http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120106111312.htm

USA Seismic Maps

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– USA / seismic maps : Probabilistic seismic-hazard maps were prepared for the conterminous United States portraying peak horizontal acceleration and horizontal spectral response acceleration for 0.2- and 1.0-second periods with probabilities of exceedance of 10 percent in 50 years and 2 percent in 50 years.

from:    http://earthquake-report.com/2011/07/13/template-earthquake-related-news-july-2011/

BAE Invisibility Cloak — Take a Look

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BAE invisibility cloak hides vehicles as scenery, cars and cows

05 September 11
British defence company BAE Systems has developedan “invisibility cloak” that can effectively hide vehicles from view in the infra-red spectrum.

The patented system — called Adaptiv — uses a matrix of hexagonal “pixels” that can change their temperature very rapidly. On-board cameras sweep the area to pick up the background scenery and display that infra-red signature on the vehicle.

This allows even moving tanks to be effectively invisible in the infra-red spectrum, or mimic other objects. “The tank skin essentially becomes a big infra red TV,” BAE Head of External Communications Mike Sweeney told Wired.co.uk. “You can display anything you want on it — including a cow — while the rest of the vehicle blends into the background.”

The current system works in the infra-red spectrum, which could hide vehicles from heat-seeking missiles, drones and heat-sensitive goggles. However, BAE Systems engineers have combined the pixels with other technologies to provide camouflage in other parts of the electro-magnetic spectrum.

“Earlier attempts at similar cloaking devices have hit problems because of cost, excessive power requirements or because they were insufficiently robust,” explained project manager Peder Sjölund. “Our panels can be made so strong that they provide useful armour protection and consume relatively low levels of electricity, especially when the vehicle is at rest in ‘stealth [reconnaissance]’ mode and generator output is low.”

The pixel panels can also be made at different sizes to achieve practical invisibility at greater ranges. The resolution needed to hide a CV90 tank at close range is high, but disguising a building or warship from a great distance can be achieved with a lower resolution, and larger panels.

In tests earlier this summer, BAE systems has been able to make one side of a Swedish CV90 tank “effectively invisible” in infra-red mode, and will be showing this off at the UK Defence and Security Equipment International exhibition later this month (Wired.co.uk will be attending). Over the next few years, the company hopes to see similar success in other parts of the electro-magnetic spectrum.

Get a closer look at the cloaking in action in our gallery below.

Article gallery

View gallery

  • from:    http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-09/05/bae-invisibility-cloak

Eyes to the Skies in 2012

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12 Must-See Skywatching Events in 2012

Joe Rao, SPACE.com Skywatching Columnist
Date: 03 January 2012 Time: 07:40 AM ET

 

b040602 venustransit 2VS
Venus Transit

As the year 2011 comes to a close, some might wonder what is looming sky-wise for 2012? What celestial events might we look forward to seeing?

I’ve selected what I consider to be the top 12 “skylights” for this coming year, and list them here in chronological order. Not all these events will be visible from any one locality … for the eclipses, for instance, you’ll probably have to do some traveling … but many can be observed from the comfort of your backyard.

Hopefully your local weather will cooperate on most, if not all, of these dates. Clear skies!

This meteor shower reaches its peak in the predawn hours of Jan. 4 for eastern North America. The Quadrantid meteor shower is a very short-lived meteor display, whose peak rates only last several hours. The phase of the moon is a bright waxing gibbous, normally prohibitive for viewing any meteor shower, but the moon will set by 3 a.m., leaving the sky dark for a few hours until the first light of dawn; that’s when you’ll have the best shot at seeing many of these bluish-hued meteors.

From the eastern half of North America, a single observer might count on seeing as many as 50-to-100 “Quads” in a single hour. From the western half of the continent the display will be on the wane by the time the moon sets, with hourly rates probably diminishing to around 25 to 50 meteors.

2012 aquadrantid meteor shower sky map

The first major meteor shower of 2012 takes place on the night of Tuesday, Jan. 3 and the morning of Wednesday, Jan. 4. It peaks at 2 a.m. EST (0700 GMT) on Jan. 4.
CREDIT: Starry Night Software

Feb. 20 to March 12: Best evening apparition of Mercury

In February and March, the “elusive” innermost planet Mercury moves far enough from the glare of the sun to be readily visible soon after sunset. Its appearance will be augmented by two other bright planets (Venus and Jupiter), which also will be visible in the western sky during this same time frame.

Mercury will arrive at its greatest elongation from the sun March 5. It will be quite bright (-1.3-to-0 magnitude) before this date and will fade rapidly to +1.6 magnitude thereafter. Astronomers measure the brightness of objects in terms of magnitude, with lower numbers corresponding to brighter objects.

March 3: Mars arrives at opposition

On March 3, the Earth will be passing Mars as the two planets wheel around the sun in their respective orbits. Because Mars reaches aphelion — its farthest point from the sun — on Feb. 15, this particular opposition will be an unfavorable one. In fact, two days after opposition, Mars will be closest to Earth at a distance of 62.6 million miles.

Compare this with the August 2003 opposition when Mars was only 34.6 million miles away.  Nonetheless, even at this unfavorable opposition the fiery-hued Mars will be an imposing naked-eye sight, shining at magnitude -1.2, just a bit dimmer than Sirius, the brightest star, and will be visible in the sky all night long.

venus moon dec26 truckee jeffrey berkes

Astrophotographer Jeffrey Berkes of West Chester, Pa., snapped this stunning view of planet Venus and the crescent moon during a bright conjunction on Dec. 26, 2011.
CREDIT: Jeffrey Berkes

March 13: Brilliant “double planet”

The two brightest planets, Venus and Jupiter, team up to make for an eye-catching sight in the western sky soon after sunset. They will be separated by 3 degrees on this evening, Venus passing to the northwest (upper right) of Jupiter and shining nearly eight times brighter than “Big Jupe.” Although they will gradually go their separate ways after this date, on March 25 and 26, a crescent moon will pass by, adding additional beauty to this celestial scene.

May 5: Biggest full moon of 2012

The moon turns full at 11:35 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time and just 25 minutes later it will arrive at its closest point to the Earth in 2012, at a distance of 221,801 miles. Expect a large range in ocean tides (exceptionally low to exceptionally high) for the next few days.

May 20: Annular eclipse of the sun

The path of annularity for this eclipse starts over eastern China and sweeps northeast across southern and central Japan. The path continues northeast then east, passing just south of Alaska’s Aleutian Island chain. The path then turns to the southeast, making landfall in the western United States along the California-Oregon coast. It will pass over central Nevada, southern Utah, northern Arizona, the extreme southwest corner of Colorado and most of New Mexico before coming to an end over northern Texas.

Since the disk of the moon will appear smaller than the disk of the sun, it will create a “penny on nickel” effect, with a fiery ring of sunlight shining around the moon’s dark silhouette. Locations that will witness this eerie sight include Eureka and Reading, Calif.; Carson City, Reno and Ely, Nev.; Bryce Canyon in Utah; Arizona’s Grand Canyon; Albuquerque and Santa Fe in New Mexico and just prior to sunset for Lubbock, Tex.

A partial eclipse of the sun will be visible over a large swath of the United States and Canada, including Alaska and Hawaii, but no eclipse will be visible near and along the Atlantic Seaboard.

 

June 4: Partial eclipse of the moon

This partial lunar eclipse favors the Pacific Ocean; Hawaii sees it high in the sky during the middle of its night. Across North America the eclipse takes place between midnight and dawn. The farther east one goes, the closer the time of moonset coincides with the moment that the moon enters the Earth’s dark umbral shadow.

In fact, over the Northeastern United States and eastern Canada, the only evidence of this eclipse will be a slight shading on the moon’s left edge (the faint penumbral shadow) before moonset. Over the Canadian Maritimes, the moon will set before the eclipse begins. At maximum, more than one-third of the moon’s lower portion (37.6-percent) will be immersed in the umbra.

 

June 5: Rare transit of Venus across the sun

The passage of Venus in front of the sun is among the rarest of astronomical events, rarer even than the return of Halley’s Comet every 76 years. Only six transits of Venus are known to have been observed by humans before: in 1639, 1761, 1769, 1874, 1882 and, most recently, in 2004.

The next one will occur in the year 2117. When Venus is in transit across the solar disk, the planet appears as a distinct, albeit tiny, round black spot with a diameter just 1/32nd of the sun. This size is large enough to readily perceive with the naked eye.  HOWEVER … prospective observers are warned to take special precautions (as with a solar eclipse) when attempting to view the silhouette of Venus against the blindingly brilliant solar disc.

The beginning of the transit will be visible from all of North America, Greenland, extreme northern and western portions of South America, Hawaii, northern and eastern portions of Asia including Japan, New Guinea, northern and eastern portions of Australia, and New Zealand. The end will be visible over Alaska, all of Asia and Indonesia, Australia, Eastern Europe, the eastern third of Africa, and the island nation of Madagascar.

huntsville perseids composi

Perseids composite, seen Aug. 12-13. Concentric circles are star trails.

Aug. 12: Perseid meteor shower

Considered to be among the best of the annual displays thanks to its high rates of up to 90 per hour for a single observer, as well as its reliability. Beloved by summer campers and often discovered by city dwellers who might be spending time in the country under dark starry skies. [10 Perseid Meteor Shower Facts]

Last summer a bright moon wrecked the shower by blotting out many of the fainter streaks, but in 2012 the moon will be three days past last quarter phase on this peak morning – a fat waning crescent presenting only a minor nuisance for prospective observers.

 

Nov. 13: Total eclipse of the sun

The first total solar eclipse since July 2010. Virtually the entire path of totality falls over water. At the very beginning, the track cuts through Australia’s Northern Territory just to the east of Darwin, then across the Gulf of Carpentaria, then through northern Queensland, passing over Cairns and Port Douglas before heading out to sea.

The rest of the eclipse path, including the point of the maximum duration of totality (4 minutes, 2 seconds) is, unfortunately, pretty much wasted by falling over the open waters of the Pacific Ocean.

Dec. 13-14: Geminid meteor shower

If there is one meteor display guaranteed to put on a very entertaining show it is the Geminid meteor shower. Now considered by most meteor experts to be at the top of the list, surpassing in brilliance and reliability even the August Perseids.

Bundle warmly against the winter chill; you can start observing as soon as darkness falls on the evening of Dec. 13 as Gemini starts coming up above the eastern horizon and continue through the rest of the night. Around 2 a.m. when Gemini is almost directly overhead, you might see as many as two meteor sightings per minute … 120 per hour! And the moon is new, meaning that it will not be a factor at all.

from:    http://www.livescience.com/17706-12-amazing-skywatching-events-2012.html

New CME

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fr/spacewether.com

INCOMING CME? A magnetic filament in the sun’s northern hemisphere erupted on Jan. 5th and hurled a CME in the general direction of Earth. At first it appeared that the cloud would sail north of Earth and completely miss our planet. Subsequent work by analysts at the Goddard Space Weather Lab suggests a different outcome: the CME might deliver a glancing blow to Earth’s magnetic field on Jan. 7th. Click to view an animated forecast track:

NOAA forecasters were already calling for a 40% chance of polar geomagnetic storms on Jan. 7-8 in response to a high-speed solar wind stream. The arrival of a CME would boost the chances even more.

Mt. Etna’s First 2012 Eruption

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Mount Etna Erupts (VIDEO)

First Posted: 1/5/12 12:01 PM ET Updated: 1/5/12 12:03 PM ET

Europe’s tallest active volcano Mount Etna erupted for the first time this year.

On Wednesday night, the volcano released a column of ash, and lava was seen running down its eastern flank. The volcano is located on the island of Sicily.

According to Reuters, the eruption caused no damages or air traffic disruptions.

Check out the link below for some ectacular footage from the eruption.

from:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/05/mount-etna-erupts_n_1186391.html