fr/spaceweather.com
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M6-CLASS SOLAR FLARE: Sunspot 1261 unleashed another strong solar flare this morning–an M6-class flash at 1348 UT. Like yesterday’s eruption from the same active region, this explosion propelled a CME in the general direction of Earth. ETA: August 5th. Stay tuned for additional analysis. UPDATE: A listening station above the Arctic Circle in Norway reports ionospheric waves and VHF radio noise associated with today’s M6-flare: their data. |
Study reveals why the Moon’s sides are different, hit by companion
| Published on August 3, 2011 1:40 pm PT – By Dave Tole – Writer – Article Editor and Approved – Ron Jackson |
(TheWeatherSpace.com) — The moon may have been hit by a second moon orbiting the Earth which explains why the two sides are different.
The ‘dark side’ of the moon is never shown at Earth and it rotates with the rotation of Earth so precise that we may never see it.
But spacecrafts have seen the other side of the moon, which has been discovered to be different than the Earth-facing side.
Scientists have discovered through an animation that a collision between Earth’s moon and a companion moon that was 750 miles wide and about 4 percent the lunar mass, may have been response for the different terrains.
The impact would have pushed an underground source of magma toward the near side, explaining why rare-earth metals and radioactive potassium, uranium, and thorium are concentrated best near the crust there.
fr/ww.theweatherspace.com/news/TWS-08_03_2011_moonside.html
Underneath those horned helmets, Vikings may have sported big brains. Like other residents of the dark north, however, the Scandinavian pillagers would’ve needed the grandiose noggins to see, not to sack cities. Scientists have long known that polar days tend to be shorter and dimmer, on average, than their equatorial counterparts. Northern and southern peoples seem to compensate much like owls do, scientists report online today in theProceedings of the Royal Society B. The researchers examined 55 skulls dating back to the 1800s and taken from various parts of the world. They discovered that humans living along the tropics tend to have smaller eye sockets than people dwelling at higher and lower latitudes. Since bigger eyes absorb more light, large polar orbs could make up for the twilight conditions there. In fact, high- and low-latitude natives seem to see just as well in low light as tropical people do in bright light, according to the study. Cerebral size seems to grow by a few milliliters with increasing and decreasing latitude, probably because the brain’s visual centers expand as peepers widen.
fr/http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/07/scienceshot-brains-grow-at-earth.html
Golfers can spend years honing their swings, but now it seems there are just a few key traits that separate amateurs from the pros. Researchers used eight digital cameras to record 3D videos of 10 professional and five amateur male golfers in action. Then, they measured several parameters, including the “S factor” (tilt of the shoulders) and the elusive “X factor” (rotation of hips relative to the shoulders), which is considered vital for power generation. Compared with the amateurs, the pros had S and X factors that were greater—often by as much as 10 degrees—and more consistent. Although previous studies have examined the biomechanics of golf, this latest study, published online today in the Journal of Applied Biomechanics, is thought to be the first to analyze rotational biomechanics throughout the swing. According to the researchers, the results could help golfers strike balls harder, with less risk of injury.
to read more, go to: http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/07/scienceshot-golf-is-all-about-the.html
To shoot, or not to shoot, that is the question. Whether ’tis nobler to try to score right away or wait for a better chance.
Professional basketball players face that quandary multiple times in every game. And in an article posted at arXiv.org on 29 July, Brian Skinner, a graduate student in theoretical physics at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, provides some mathematical guidance for the best time to take aim.
Skinner, an avid basketball fan, was inspired to analyze the game when he heard a talk at an American Physical Society meeting in 2007 on the flow of traffic. Every driver tries to minimize his or her commuting time rather than reduce the average travel time of all drivers, resulting in a paradoxical situation: Closing a road may actually reduce congestion by forcing drivers to take a route many had avoided, speeding up the average commute.
That paradox reminded Skinner of the Patrick Ewing theory in basketball, named after the high-scoring player for the New York Knicks. Analysts had noticed that in games from which Ewing or other big scorers on a team were absent, that team was more likely to win. In addition, the diagrams and flow of players in basketball also resembled the traffic models Skinner had seen.
to read more, go to: http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/08/the-mathematics-of-basketball.html?ref=hp
Archetypal Astrology and Transpersonal Psychology: The Research of Richard Tarnas and Stanislav Grof Renn Butler In the mid-1960’s, a young Czechoslovakian psychiatrist working at the Psychiatric Research Institute in Prague made some epoch-making discoveries concerning the fundamental structures of the human psyche. Working with a wide range of individuals involved in supervised LSD psychotherapy, Stanislav Grof and his clients encountered experiences that gradually and then irrevocably challenged the orthodox Freudian model in which he and his colleagues were working. The content of the sessions suggested a far deeper understanding of the human psyche and the cosmos itself than had been previously imagined. After supervising 3,000 LSD sessions and studying the records of another 2,000, Grof eventually systematized a farreaching model that accounted for the observations of his client’s sessions, integrated the diversity of competing psychological theories, and reached into areas of human spirituality described by the great spiritual traditions of the world. Stanislav Grof’s Expanded Cartography of the Human Psyche In 1976, Grof and his partner Christina developed a comparable non-drug technique for entering non-ordinary states of consciousness, which they called Holotropic Breathwork™ (from holos=“wholeness”; and trepein=“moving toward”). Throughout his long career of more than fifty-five years of research using powerful drug and non-drug catalysts, Grof discovered that individuals who enter holotropic states of consciousness have access to three broad layers of experience.
to read the whole article, go to: http://www.stanislavgrof.com/pdf/Richard%20Tarnas%20and%20Stan%20Grof.pdf
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| During the experiment, participants rated the interviewees who mimicked the behavior of the unfriendly interviewer as less competent than those who didn’t mirror him. CREDIT: Piotr Winkielman | University of California, San Diego |
While imitating another may be a sincere form of flattery, such mirroring can get you into trouble socially if you’re copying the wrong person, new research shows.
When participants in the study mirrored (or copied the mannerisms of) an unlikeable person, they were also judged as less competent and likeable by others, the researchers found.
Mirroring happens all the time and has been shown to involve mirror neurons, which are the cells in the brain that activate when we watch someone else perform a particular action that we also perform ourselves.
to read more, go to: http://www.livescience.com/15332-mirroring-behavior-downside.html
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OC Fisher, a reservoir in West Texas , turned blood-red in recent weeks — what’s left of it anyway. Due to unrelenting drought in Texas, the lake has almost entirely dried up, leaving thousands of dead fish behind. As of the last week in July, when this photo was taken, bacteria had turned the stagnant dregs of the lake red.CREDIT: Texas Parks and Wildlife Inland Fisheries–San Angelo
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A Texas lake that turned blood-red this summer may not be a sign of the End Times, but probably is the end of a popular fishing and recreation spot.
A drought has left the OC Fisher Reservoir in San Angelo State Park in West Texas almost entirely dry. The water that is left is stagnant, full of dead fish — and a deep, opaque red.
The color has some apocalypse believers suggesting that OC Fisher is an early sign of the end of the world, but Texas Parks and Wildlife Inland Fisheries officials say the bloody look is the result of Chromatiaceae bacteria, which thrive in oxygen-deprived water.
for more, go to: http://www.livescience.com/15346-texas-lake-blood-red.html
SAN DIEGO — One way to get noticed as a scientist is to tackle a really difficult problem. Physicist Sean Carroll has become a bit of a rock star in geek circles by attempting to answer an age-old question no scientist has been able to fully explain: What is time?
Sean Carroll is a theoretical physicist at Caltech where he focuses on theories of cosmology, field theory and gravitation by studying the evolution of the universe. Carroll’s latest book, From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time, is an attempt to bring his theory of time and the universe to physicists and nonphysicists alike.Here at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, where he gave a presentation on the arrow of time, scientists stopped him in the hallway to tell him what big fans they were of his work.
Carroll sat down with Wired.com on Feb. 19 at AAAS to explain his theories and why Marty McFly’s adventure could never exist in the real world, where time only goes forward and never back.
Wired.com: Can you explain your theory of time in layman’s terms?
Sean Carroll: I’m trying to understand how time works. And that’s a huge question that has lots of different aspects to it. A lot of them go back to Einstein and spacetime and how we measure time using clocks. But the particular aspect of time that I’m interested in is the arrow of time: the fact that the past is different from the future. We remember the past but we don’t remember the future. There are irreversible processes. There are things that happen, like you turn an egg into an omelet, but you can’t turn an omelet into an egg
to read more, go to: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/02/what-is-time/
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| Still of Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig in Cowboys & Aliens. CREDIT: Photo by Zade Rosenthal/Universal Studios and DreamWorks II – © Universal Studios and DreamWorks II Distribution Co. LLC |
Hollywood seems to have caught alien fever.
In the past few months, a slew of big-budget alien movies has hit theaters, from kiddie flicks (“Mars Needs Moms”) to comedies (“Paul”) to high-octane action films (“Battle: Los Angeles,” “Green Lantern” and the just-released “Cowboys & Aliens,” among others). And many more such movies are on the way, both this year and next.
This glut of alien sci-fi films comes at a time when scientific discoveries are making the existence of life beyond Earth seem more and more plausible. And that might not be a coincidence, some experts say.
to read more, go to: http://www.space.com/12498-alien-movies-extraterrestrial-life-real-science.html
