Electrically Charged Particles Hit Space Age High

Science Daily: Cosmic Rays Hit Space Age High.

ScienceDaily (Sep. 29, 2009) — Planning a trip to Mars? Take plenty of shielding. According to sensors on NASA's ACE (Advanced Composition Explorer) spacecraft, galactic cosmic rays have just hit a Space Age high.

"In 2009, cosmic ray intensities have increased 19% beyond anything we've seen in the past 50 years," says Richard Mewaldt of Caltech. "The increase is significant, and it could mean we need to re-think how much radiation shielding astronauts take with them on deep-space missions."

The cause of the surge is solar minimum, a deep lull in solar activity that began around 2007 and continues today. Researchers have long known that cosmic rays go up when solar activity goes down. Right now solar activity is as weak as it has been in modern times, setting the stage for what Mewaldt calls "a perfect storm of cosmic rays."

"We're experiencing the deepest solar minimum in nearly a century," says Dean Pesnell of the Goddard Space Flight Center, "so it is no surprise that cosmic rays are at record levels for the Space Age."

Galactic cosmic rays come from outside the solar system. They are subatomic particles--mainly protons but also some heavy nuclei--accelerated to almost light speed by distant supernova explosions. Cosmic rays cause "air showers" of secondary particles when they hit Earth's atmosphere; they pose a health hazard to astronauts; and a single cosmic ray can disable a satellite if it hits an unlucky integrated circuit.

Parents Lie To Children About Gravitation, Plate Tectonics, and Evolution

Jeanna Bryner: Parents Lie to Children Surprisingly Often.

Parents might say "honesty is the best policy," but when it comes to interacting with their own kids, mom and dad stretch the truth with the best of them, finds a new study.

From claiming the existence of magical creatures to odd consequences of kids' actions, parents often come up with creative tales to shape a child's behaviors and emotions.

"We are surprised by how often parenting by lying takes place," said study researcher Kang Lee of the University of Toronto, Canada. "Our findings showed that even the parents who most strongly promoted the importance of honesty with their children engaged in parenting by lying."

Saturnian Surprises

"When first observed by Voyager, the spoke movements [of Saturn's Rings] seemed to defy gravity and had the scientists very perplexed. Since the spokes rotate at the same rate as Saturn's magnetic field, it is apparent that the electromagnetic forces are also at work." -- Ron Baalke, astrophysicist, 1998

Stephen Smith: Spring Has Sprung.

On August 11, 2009, Saturn's rings turned edge-on to the Sun, something that happens once every 15 years as Saturn revolves. When the rings cross the equatorial plane, they cool down considerably—dropping more than 50 Kelvin in the last five years.

Many things about Saturn have changed in the 29 years since the two Voyager spacecraft passed by the giant gas planet. Saturn's magnetosphere grew larger by more than a million kilometers and then contracted, only to begin expanding again. The spokes in Saturn's B ring disappeared and then reappeared. The equatorial thunderstorm (known as the Dragon Storm) that raged continuously broke up, moved toward the poles, and then erupted again a short while ago in the lower latitudes.

The most likely explanation for the storms on Saturn is that they are equivalent to sunspots. As the Sun changes its behavior over the course of a 22 year cycle, the electrical output that connects it with its family of planets varies. If Saturn's Great White Spots, Dragon Storm, and ring spokes are driven by the same galactic Birkeland currents that drive the Sun, they should get stronger and closer to the equator as the sunspot cycle oscillates. It appears that that is just what has happened over the past three decades.

It is significant that the increases to the energetic phenomena on Saturn are occurring irrespective of whether the sunspot cycle is at maximum or minimum: the Sun is exhibiting large-scale electrical effects although it has just passed solar minimum. It was suggested in a previous Picture of the Day that it is the change in magnetic orientation that could be the key, rather than the strength of the solar magnetic field.

In 2008, scientists from the Max Planck Institute discovered partial rings around the gas planet in a nearly invisible collection of small arc segments. Using the Cassini-Equinox magnetospheric sensors, the team found two areas near Saturn where highly energetic electrons suddenly drop out, presumably because something is absorbing them.

The magnetospheric imager detected lower energy emissions from the ion torus that surrounds Saturn when the ring arc segments are oriented between Cassini and the electron flow. The region of absorption is almost 3000 kilometers wide, so Cassini mission analysts speculate that there could be unseen rings in several bands.

The invisible rings are most likely another manifestation of the electrical environment that exists near Saturn. What Cassini is detecting most likely supports the charged particle stream hypothesis originally proposed by Kristian Birkeland in 1913. He wrote: "It seems almost incredible that such a ring of cosmic dust should be able to exist for ever, so to speak, without other governing forces than gravitation..."

Seen from our planet, the view of Saturn's rings during equinox makes them invisible. However, Cassini is in orbit around Saturn 20 degrees above the ring plane. As NASA puts it, that "novel illumination geometry" causes objects above the rings to cast shadows across them. Cassini photographed the shadows from several of Saturn's moons, but also saw the shadows cast by something new: vertical structures embedded in the rings.

Planetary scientists already knew about material sticking out of the rings in a few places, but until Saturn reached its equinox it was not possible to measure how high these "ridges" are. Saturn's main rings are approximately 140,000 kilometers wide, but were only thought to be between 10 and 30 meters thick until the discovery of the vertical "walls" extending along the edges of some rings. Some of the other newly found formations are ripples over four kilometers high.

How did these strange clumps, undulations, and ridges form? According to theories presently under consideration, it is collisions and shock waves that were and are the culprits. The gravitational attraction of so-called "shepherd moons" is also said to be responsible.

As some moons, such as Daphnis, move up and down through the ring plane, they do disturb the motion of the ring particles. However, as was discussed in another Picture of the Day article, Saturn's rings and moons are electrically charged objects moving within its vast plasmasphere. The instabilities inherent in that system most likely contribute to the formation of unusual features.

As shepherd moons pass close to the rings, their effect is not like a turbulent wind, which would be expected when a gravitational field's torque effects act on a cloud of fine particles. Instead, sine waves, perpendicular "braids," and cylindrical arcs are seen. Some are multiply woven, like those in the remote F-ring.

More data needs to be recovered, but Cassini continues to provide an embarrassment of riches for Electric Universe advocates, and a box of puzzles that consensus opinions cannot assemble.

Science In Turmoil

Jeremy Dunning-Davies: Science in Turmoil - Are we Funding Fraud?

There can be little doubt in the minds of those who are involved in attempting to disseminate research results among the entire scientific community that major problems exist. It is well documented that adopting certain stances will result in an inability to publish in the majority of the so-called high impact academic journals.

There are also well documented cases of people experiencing grave difficulties in their place of work and even, on some occasions, being driven out. Amazingly, there are even cases of attempts being made – some successful – to deny research students their doctorates because their theses contain material which may cause embarrassment for some person with an inflated sense of his/her own importance. Again, more and more academics, certainly in British universities, are coming under increasing pressure to draw funds into their establishments. Note the emphasis is not on good research, or even just research, but rather on attracting more and more money.

Obviously, to achieve this, the person concerned must not give those in authority any reason to dismiss their grant applications out of hand. Hence, they must be careful to offend no-one or, in other words, they must conform. The result is that many carry out straight forward work which is easily published in reputable journals and attracts funding without problem. However, such work is often more development than true research and often does little to advance knowledge.

These mediocre individuals play the game to their own advantage though and are regularly being promoted to positions their academic ability and achievement doesn’t warrant. In due course, such people rise to positions of increasing power and authority and the status quo is strengthened further. Conventional wisdom triumphs and the innovative thinker is condemned to work and think alone under the burden of an ever-increasing teaching load.

Remember though that as one university official told an academic member of staff, “I don’t pay you to think”! With this attitude, what hope is there unless people read books such as Against the Tide and learn from them?

Dark Fairy Tales

Tom Wilson: Dark Matter Recreations Part One.

There seems to be a growing cadre of theoretical astronomers who are focused on mathematical recreations centered on dark matter without observations or data to interpret.

In June 2008, Universe Today published a report from astronomers Siegel and Xu, predicting about 10^20 kilograms of dark matter in our Solar System that was accreted over the last 4.5 billion years. Quoting Siegel in the original paper:

“Overall, we find that dark matter in our Solar System is far more important than previously thought. Due to gravitational three-body interactions between dark matter particles, the Sun, and the planets, a significant amount of dark matter winds up gravitationally bound to our Solar System, resulting in density enhancements between two and five orders of magnitude, depending on the distance from the Sun.”

The paper begins by asserting dark matter as a reality, without any doubt as to its existence. Siegel begins the paper by citing evidence in three key areas that support the existence of dark matter: First, cosmic microwave background (CMB) evidence; second, galactic power spectrum analyses; and third, galaxy cluster collision evidence.

In part two of this article we will examine this underlying evidence in some detail. However, summarizing the Electric Universe position about the initial dark matter assertion, the underlying “evidence” for dark matter is not so much actual data, but the cosmological interpretations overlaid on actual data. The real observational data is red shifts, galactic distances, and cosmic background temperature gradients. All else is inference.

The approach Siegel and Xu took in computing the amount of dark matter in the solar system was based in the assumption that there is a certain dark matter density in the interstellar space surrounding the Solar System. They used a value of 0.009 solar masses per cubic parsec (one cubic parsec equals 9.78 cubic light-years), which amounts to about 7 x 10^-20 kilograms per cubic meter, or about 10 to 100 times the density assumed for “regular” interstellar matter.

They then used relatively straightforward calculations to compute the volume of space the Solar System encountered in its 4.5 billion year history. With that, they were able to calculate the gravitational capture of the dark matter given the relative velocities of the planets, the sun and the dark matter itself. Without getting into too much detail, they were able to estimate a dark matter density profile with respect to distance from the sun and the different planets.

According to Xu and Siegel, the Solar System has captured about 10^20 kilograms of dark matter over its 4.5 billion year history. Questions that should always be in the forefront when reading any scientific report include: how valid are the underlying assumptions for the work, and how useful is it for understanding the Universe?

Putting 10^20 kilograms of matter into context reveals it to be vanishingly small with respect to the Solar System as a whole. This amount of mass falls somewhere between the third and fourth largest asteroids (Vesta and Hygiea, respectively). The determination does nothing to explain Solar System dynamics or the anomalous behavior of space probes. How this vanishingly small amount of matter translates into “a significant amount of dark matter” is difficult to understand.

The key, according to Siegel, is that the dark matter density near the Earth (3.3 x 10^16 kilograms per cubic astronomical unit) is now shown to be four orders of magnitude greater than the background halo density. This statement is confusing. Translating the dark matter density close to the Earth into kilograms per cubic meter results in 10^-17 kilograms per cubic meter. Remember the interstellar dark matter density was 7 x 10^-20 kilograms per cubic meter, which looks like 2 to 3 orders of magnitude.

Regardless, Siegel claims this “discovery” will help dark matter investigators because they'll "know where to look." However, by definition, dark matter is unobservable so it is unclear how this benefit will be realized.

A different viewpoint demonstrates that these investigators have based a paper on assumptions about dark matter drawn from earlier papers that are themselves based on different types of assumptions about dark matter and the cosmological model. There is assumption layered on assumption to the point where there is no longer any need for actual data or observations.

It seems to be enough at this point to construct a Universe and Solar System that astronomers no longer actually observe in favor of mathematical recreations involving dark matter densities and so on. In the end, this work has led to a conclusion that a vanishingly small (one might say meaningless) amount of dark matter has accumulated in 4.5 billion years. I’m sorry, I do not find this enlightening.

I encourage astronomers like these authors in question to go out on a clear night with a simple optical telescope and take a good look. They will see a Universe that is brightly lit throughout the electromagnetic spectrum, with electrically active plasmas stretching between our Sun and the planets, as well as between the stars and galaxies.

During the day using a solar filter, they will see the electromagnetic activity of our own Sun tossing immensely hot filaments of plasma into space. With bigger telescopes, like Hubble, they can see intricately arrayed Birkeland filaments winding through planetary nebulae. The heart of our galaxy is brightly lit in a sparkling electromagnetic rainbow driven by powerful electrical currents carried on intergalactic transmission lines.

The Universe is not an abstract mathematical construct of dark matter halos, black hole singularities or geometrically perfect neutron stars. It is filled with electric currents flowing through chaotically beautiful Birkeland filaments. These chaotic filaments are notoriously difficult to squeeze into linear differential equations, but they’re there just the same. Just go look.

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault

"Ahura Mazda warns Yima, the first king of men, of the approach of a dire winter, which is to destroy every living creature by covering the land with a thick sheet of ice, and advises Yima to build a Vara, or an enclosure, to preserve the seeds of every kind of animal and plant." -- Zend-Avesta, Fargard II, 1000 B.C.

Via Retardipedia: Svalbard Global Seed Vault. (Hat tip: Suzannah)

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault (Norwegian: Svalbard globale frøhvelv) is a secure seedbank located on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen near the town of Longyearbyen in the remote Arctic Svalbard archipelago. The facility was established to preserve a wide variety of plant seeds from locations worldwide in an underground cavern. The Seed Vault holds duplicate samples, or "spare" copies, of seeds held in genebanks worldwide.

Deja vu all over again. At least some people get it.

Dean Radin On The Stupidity Hypothesis

Brain Drain

I sometimes wonder what civilization would be like if the smartest people in the world (e.g. Vladimir Kramnik & Alexei Shirov) dedicated themselves to natural philosophy instead of theoretical entertainment.

Chess is a game about considering all possibilities and all options. Science on the other hand is about censoring all possibilities and all options.

I guess it's pretty obvious why all the geniuses would rather play chess than work in a lab.

Gregory P. Laughlin On Expanding Planets

Here is yet another example of how everything they say contradicts everything they believe. UC Santa Cruz Astronomy, Astrophysics, and Astrobiology Professor Gregory P. Laughlin is interviewed on The History Channel's The Universe Season 2. He says the following about the Expansion Tectonics of expanding planets:

"... we think that the reason why that's happening [planetary expansion tectonics] is because they have an internal source of heat which is raising the pressure inside the planet and causing it to expand. That's very similar to a steam boiler on a steam train. In a steam boiler you have water which is being heated by a heat source. That water is turning to steam. The pressure is increasing and that's causing the piston of the boiler to move out, to expand. If you didn't have the gases ability to expand, planets wouldn't inflate. Steam trains wouldn't work. We wouldn't be climbing up this mountain. " -- Gregory P. Laughlin, planetary scientist, November 2007

All Possible Worlds

"Perhaps the major lesson to be learned so far from looking for planets around other stars is that nature can make a lot more planets than we can dream of." -- Alan P. Boss, astrophysicist, November 2007

Scientists Complete First Expansion Tectonics Map of Ganymede

"Groove lane morphology and development consistent with that predicted for passive rifts suggest a major role of global expansion in grooved terrain formation." -- Scott L. Murchie, geologist, et al., November 1986

"The bright terrain formed as Ganymede underwent some extreme resurfacing event, probably as a result of the moon's increase in size." -- Louise M. Prockter, physicist, 2001

"In fact, it is now widely accepted that the Jovian moon, Ganymede, has experienced significant, internally-generated, post-formation expansion. As Prockter (2001) writes: 'The bright terrain formed as Ganymede underwent some extreme resurfacing event, probably as a result of the moon's increase in size'. Collins et al. (1999) agree that the formation of the grooved terrain on Ganymede was likely the result of post-formation 'global expansion'. " -- Dennis J. McCarthy, geoscientist, November 2005

"Since planets and moons did not pop into existence at their current size, everyone agrees they must have expanded at some point in their history." -- Dennis J. McCarthy, geoscientist, November 2005

"Ganymede's grooved terrain likely formed during an epoch of global expansion...." -- Michael T. Bland and Adam P. Showman, planetary scientists, 2007

"Ganymede's surface is dominated by relatively young, extensional tectonic deformation. While it is generally accepted that this deformation formed during global expansion of the satellite, the cause of the expansion remains unclear." -- Michael T. Bland, astrogeologist, et al., 2007

"Why does plate tectonics occur only on Earth? This is one of the major questions in earth and planetary sciences research, and raises a wide range of related questions: has plate tectonics ever occurred...?" Paula Martin, astrophysicist, et al., 2008

Science Daily: Scientists Complete First Geological Global Map Of Jupiter's Satellite Ganymede.

ScienceDaily (Sep. 18, 2009) — Scientists have assembled the first global geological map of the Solar System’s largest moon – and in doing so have gathered new evidence into the formation of the large, icy satellite.

Extraterrestrial Television

The centauroids are looking at Janet's boobs and the mermen are watching Spongebob Squarepants.

Strange Maps: What's On Earth Tonight?. (Hat tip: Sam Creek)

Tiny Raptorex Lived Long Before T-Rex

"Have the subsequently introduced species consumed the food of the great antecedent races? Can we believe that the Capybara has taken the food of the Toxodon, the Guanaco of the Macrauchenia, the existing small Edentata of their numerous gigantic prototypes? Certainly, no fact in the long history of the world is so startling as the wide and repeated exterminations of its inhabitants." -- Charles R. Darwin, naturalist, 1834

Another problem for Darwinists: Tiny Tyrannosaur: T. Rex Body Plan Debuted In Raptorex, But 100th The Size.

ScienceDaily (Sep. 17, 2009) — A 9-foot dinosaur from northeastern China had evolved [sic] all the hallmark anatomical features of Tyrannosaurus rex at least 125 million years ago.

University of Chicago paleontologist Paul Sereno and five co-authors describe the newly discovered dinosaur in the Sept. 17 Science Express, advanced online edition of the journal Science.

Raptorex shows that tyrannosaur design evolved [sic] at "punk size," said Sereno, a National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence, "basically our bodyweight. And that's pretty staggering, because there's no other example that I can think of where an animal has been so finely designed [as in intelligent design not unintelligent design] at about 100th the size that it would eventually become." [Obviously Dr. Sereno is unaware of giant humans]

Cosmetologists and Astrologers Vs. Immanuel Velikovsky

"I who am a specialist in the field am moved to ask myself, 'Did this physician [Immanuel Velikovsky] writing in 1954 know more about physics of radio emissions than this physicist [Carl Sagan] writing 20 years later?'" -- James Warwick, astronomer, 1974

"Dr. Velikovsky pointed out that the collisions were not independent; in fact, if two bodies orbiting the Sun under the influence of gravity collide once, that encounter enhances the chance of another, a well known fact in celestial mechanics. Professor Sagan's calculations, in effect, ignore the law of gravity. Here, Dr. Velikovsky was the better astronomer." -- Robert Jastrow, astrophysicist, December 1979

"This Sagan assumption is so disingenuous that I do not hesitate to label it as either a deliberate fraud on the public or else a manifestation of unbelievable incompetence or hastiness combined with desperation and wretchedly poor judgement." -- Robert W. Bass, astronomer, 1976

Joshua Snyder: The Science Cartel vs. Immanuel Velikovsky. (Via Louis Hissink's Crazy World)

In 1950, Immanuel Velikovsky culminated decades of research with a book titled Worlds in Collision that "proposes that many myths and traditions of ancient peoples and cultures are based on actual events." His approach was interdisciplinary, a rarity in the 20th century, taking into account astronomy, physics, chemistry, psychology, ancient history, and comparative mythology.

He noted, for example, that Venus, the second brightest object in the night sky, was not mentioned by the earliest astronomers. He proposed that the planet was a newcomer to our solar system, a comet, appearing in historical times with an irregular orbit that caused catastrophic events on our own planet.

Coming in close contact with the Earth, the latter's rotation altered, making it appear that The Sun had stood still, a phenomenon reported on in the Book of Joshua. What has come to be known as Joshua's Long Day is corroborated by the texts of the ancient Chinese, Japanese, Egyptians, Babylonians, and Mayans; the East Asians reporting a extremely long sunset, the Mexicans reporting an extremely long sunrise.

Immanuel Velikovsky was too eminent a scholar to be dismissed outright as a kook, and he counted some respected people among his friends. (See The Einstein-Velikovsky Correspondence). Nevertheless, his Catastrophism was rejected outright by a scientific establishment that couldn't stomach an interdisciplinary challenge to its dogmatic Uniformitarianism, even after Velikovsky's predictions about the temperature of Venus and radio activity from Jupiter were proven true.

The Falsification of Evolution

"...Evolution makes the strong prediction that if a single fossil turned up in the wrong geological stratum, the theory would be blown out of the water. When challenged by a zealous Popperian to say how evolution could ever be falsified, J.B.S. Haldane famously growled: 'Fossil rabbits in the Precambrian.'" -- Richard Dawkins, biologist, 2006

Fossil octopuses in the Cretaceous represent a "single fossil in the wrong geological stratum" therefore as Dawkins correctly claims the theory of evolution is "blown out of the water." And if you don't agree with Dawkins, then you must agree with Popper that, since evolution cannot possibly be falsified, it cannot be considered to be a scientific theory.

Aries I Test Successful

AP reports that 1 million pounds of solid propellant were ignited "in a split second."

Alliant Techsystems Press Release: ATK and NASA Successfully Test Ares First Stage Development Motor.

PROMONTORY, Utah, Sept. 10 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- NASA and Alliant Techsystems (NYSE: ATK) made history today as they conducted the first test of the Ares I first stage five-segment development solid rocket motor, marking the first steps into a new era of space exploration. It is the most powerful and reliable solid rocket booster in the world, and is planned for NASA's Ares I and Ares V rockets.

The initial data showed the motor performed as designed, producing 3.6 million pounds of thrust and burning for over two minutes. The first stage motor for Ares I measures 12 feet in diameter and 154 feet in length. During the test sensors and gauges collected 650 channels of data to accomplish 46 test objectives. The data from this test will help validate how Ares I will perform in flight.

More Evidence of Giants

"There were giants in the earth in those days...." -- Genesis 6:4

"The belief in giants was part of the everyday life of the ancient Greeks and Romans." -- Edward J. Wood, author, 1868

"We want to make clear that the existence of giant people [in ancient times] ... must be regarded as a scientifically certain fact." -- Louis Burkhalter, paleontologist, 1950

University of Oxford: Giant stone-age axes found in African lake basin. (Via Science Daily)

Their research was prompted by the discovery of the first of what are believed to be the world’s largest stone tools on the bed of the lake. Although the first find was made in the 1990s, the discovery of four giant axes has not been scientifically reported until now. Four giant stone hand axes, measuring over 30 cm long and of uncertain age, were recovered from the lake basin.

As The World Turns

"The Great Chinaman of Königsberg" [Kaliningrad] chimes in on pole shift and the reversal of retrograde rotation.

"The problem set forth by the [Royal Berlin] Academy [of Sciences] is expressed in the following terms: Whether the Earth in its Rotation around its Axis, by which it brings about the alternation of day and night, has undergone any alteration since the first period of its origin. What may be the cause of this, and what can make us certain of it? The question may be investigated historically. This may be done by examining monuments of antiquity dating from remotest times...." -- Immanuel Kant, natural philosopher, 1754

Atlantis Art of Nicholas Roerich

Star of the Hero, 1936


The Last of Atlantis, 1928


And We Do Not Fear, 1922

"I admire sincerely your art so much that I can say without exaggeration that never have landscapes made such a great impression on me." -– Albert Einstein, mathematician, 1931

UCLA Scientists Discover Birkeland Currents

Science Daily: Surprise In Earth's Upper Atmosphere: Mode Of Energy Transfer From The Solar Wind.

ScienceDaily (Sep. 11, 2009) — UCLA atmospheric scientists have discovered a previously unknown [to the mainstream] basic mode of energy transfer from the solar wind to the Earth's magnetosphere. The research, federally funded by the National Science Foundation, could improve the safety and reliability of spacecraft that operate in the upper atmosphere.

"It's like something else is heating the atmosphere besides the sun. This discovery is like finding it got hotter when the sun went down," said Larry Lyons, UCLA professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences and a co-author of the research, which is in press in two companion papers in the Journal of Geophysical Research.

The sun, in addition to emitting radiation, emits a stream of ionized particles called the solar wind that affects the Earth and other planets in the solar system. The solar wind, which carries the particles from the sun's magnetic field, known as the interplanetary magnetic field, takes about three or four days to reach the Earth. When the charged electrical particles approach the Earth, they carve out a highly magnetized region — the magnetosphere — which surrounds and protects the Earth.

Charged particles carry currents, which cause significant modifications in the Earth's magnetosphere. This region is where communications spacecraft operate and where the energy releases in space known as substorms wreak havoc on satellites, power grids and communications systems.

...

"Any space physicist, including me, would have said a year ago there could not be substorms when the interplanetary magnetic field was staying northward, but that's wrong," Lyons said.

No Fossils In Fuel

"The modern theory of the abiotic deep petroleum origins recognizes that petroleum is a primordial material of deep origin which has been erupted into the crust of the Earth. In short, petroleum is not a 'fossil fuel' and has no intrinsic connection with any biological detritus 'in the sediments'." -- Vladimir A. Kutcherov, geologist, August 2008

"There is no doubt that our research proves that crude oil and natural gas are generated without the involvement of fossils. All types of bedrock can serve as reservoirs of oil." -- Vladimir A. Kutcherov, geologist, September 2009

KTH Royal Institute of Technology: Easier to find oil. (Via Science Daily)

Researchers at KTH have been able to prove that the fossils of animals and plants are not necessary to generate raw oil and natural gas. This result is extremely radical as it means that it will be much easier to find these energy sources and that they may be located all over the world.

“With the help of our research we even know where oil could be found in Sweden!” says Vladimir Kutcherov, Professor at the KTH Department of Energy Technology in Stockholm.

Together with two research colleagues, Professor Kutcherov has simulated the process of pressure and heat that occurs naturally in the inner strata of the earth’s crust. This process generates hydrocarbons, the primary elements of oil and natural gas.

According to Vladimir Kutcherov, these results are a clear indication that oil supplies are not drying up, which has long been feared by researchers and experts in the field.

He adds that there is no chance that fossil oils, with the help of gravity or other forces, would have been able to seep down to a depth of 10.5 kilometres in, for example the US state of Texas, which is rich in oil deposits. This is, according to Vladimir Kutcherov, in addition to his own research results, further evidence that this energy sources can occur other than via fossils - something which will cause a lively discussion among researchers for a considerable period of time.

“There is no doubt that our research has shown that raw oil and natural gas occur without the inclusion of fossils. All types of rock formations can act as hosts for oil deposits,” asserts Vladimir and adds that this applies to areas of land that have previously remained unexplored as possible sources of this type of energy.

This discovery has several positive aspects. Rate of success as concerns finding oil increases dramatically – from 20 till 70 percent. As drilling for oil and natural gas is an extremely expensive process, costs levels will be radically changed for the petroleum companies and eventually also for the end user.

“This means savings of many billions of kronor,” says Vladimir.

In order to identify where it is worth drilling for natural gas and oil, Professor Kutcherov has, via his research, developed a new method. The world is divided into a fine-meshed grid. This grid is the equivalent of cracks, known as migration channels, through strata underlying the earth’s crust. Good places to drill are where these cracks meet.

According to Professor Kutcherov, these research results are extremely important not least as 61 percent of the world’s energy consumption is currently based on raw oil and natural gas.

The next stage in this research is more experiments, especially to refine the method that makes it easier to locate drilling points for oil and natural gas.

The research results produced by Vladimir Kutcherov, Anton Kolesnikov and Alexander Goncharov were recently published in the scientific journal Nature Geoscience, Volume 2, August.

For more information, please contact Vladimir Kutcherov at vladimir.kutcherov@indek.KTH.se or on +46 8790 85 07.

A Skull That Rewrites History

The Independent: A skull that rewrites the history of man. (Hat tip: Anaconda)

Experts believe fossilised bones unearthed at the medieval village of Dmanisi in the foothills of the Caucuses, and dated to about 1.8 million years ago, are the oldest indisputable remains of humans discovered outside of Africa.

But what has really excited the researchers is the discovery that these early humans (or "hominins") are far more primitive-looking than the Homo erectus humans that were, until now, believed to be the first people to migrate out of Africa about 1 million years ago.

The Dmanisi people had brains that were about 40 per cent smaller than those of Homo erectus and they were much shorter in stature than classical H. erectus skeletons, according to Professor David Lordkipanidze, general director of the Georgia National Museum. "Before our findings, the prevailing view was that humans came out of Africa almost 1 million years ago, that they already had sophisticated stone tools, and that their body anatomy was quite advanced in terms of brain capacity and limb proportions. But what we are finding is quite different," Professor Lordkipanidze said.

"The Dmanisi hominins are the earliest representatives of our own genus – Homo – outside Africa, and they represent the most primitive population of the species Homo erectus to date. They might be ancestral to all later Homo erectus populations, which would suggest a Eurasian origin of Homo erectus."

A Rolex Award was presented in 2004.

Propane For 150 Billion BBQs?

"We now have in our hands—really, in our libraries—the technology to feed, clothe, and supply energy to an ever-growing population for the next seven billion years." -- Julian L. Simon, economist, 1995

"The industry will never run out of oil, not in 10,000 years. Some day, it may run out of customers. Every mineral industry is a perpetual tug-of-war, between diminishing returns and increasing knowledge." -- Morris A. Adelman, economist, 1997

Science Daily: Saturn's Moon Titan Could Power 150 Billion Labor Day Barbecues

"Titan's atmosphere is extremely rich in an assortment of hydrocarbon chemicals, including propane, which we use to fill our barbecue tanks," said Cassini scientist Conor Nixon of the University of Maryland, College Park. "Titan's atmospheric inventory would fuel about 150 billion barbecue cookouts, enough for several thousand years of Labor Days."

Encounters at the End of the World

"Those few who have experienced the world under the frozen sky often speak of it as going down into the cathedral." -- Werner Herzog, film maker, 2007

"There are creatures that are down there that are like science fiction creatures. They range in the way that they would gobble you up from slime type blobs. But creepier than classical science fiction blobs. These would have long tendrils that ensnare you and as you tried to get away from them you would just become more and more ensnared by your own actions. And then after you would be frustrated and exhausted, then this creature would start to move in and take you apart. So that's one example of one of the types of creatures and then there are other worm type things with horrible mandibles and jaws and just bits to rend your flesh. It really is a violent, horribly violent, world. That is obscure to us because we are encased in neoprene and we're much larger than that world. So it doesn't really affect us. But if you were to shrink down and to miniaturize into that world, it would be a horrible place to be. Just horrible." -- Samuel A. Bowser, biologist, 2007

"The end of human life on this Earth is assured. Human life on Earth is part of an endless chain of catastrophes. The demise of the dinosaurs being just one of these events." -- Werner Herzog, film maker, 2007

Planetary Cause of Rapid Pole Shift

"...consider what impetuous force
Turns stars and planets in a diff'rent course.
I steer against their motions; nor am I
Born back by all the current of the sky.
But how cou'd you resist the orbs that roul
In adverse whirls, and stem the rapid pole?"-- Ovid, poet, Metamorphoses Book II: Phaeton, 8

"Have we of all mankind been deemed deserving that heaven, its poles uptorn, should overwhelm us? In our time has the last day come?" -- Lucius A. Seneca, philosopher statesman, Thyestes, 1st century

Greenland and Antarctica are currently in an ice age. But this has not always been the case. Formerly temperate green continents such as Greenland and Antarctica (see my post When Antarctica Was Green) weren't always located at the poles. So-called "ice ages" such as exist in Antarctica and Greenland today are only caused by axis shift. There was an astronomical catastrophe. Though some giants and megafauna survived, it should be called the P-H Extinction Event since it marked the end of the Pleistocene and the beginning of the Holocene.

Woelfli, W., and Baltensperger, W., A Link Between an Ice Age Era and a Rapid Polar Shift, Jul 2004

The striking asymmetry of the ice cover during the Last Global Maximum suggests that the North Pole was in Greenland and then rapidly shifted to its present position in the Arctic Sea. A scenario which causes such a rapid geographic polar shift is physically possible. It involves an additional planet, which disappeared by evaporation within the Holocene. This is only possible within such a short period, if the planet was in an extremely eccentric orbit and hot. Then, since this produced an interplanetary gas cloud, the polar shift had to be preceded by a cold period with large global temperature variations during several million years.

Either that or maybe there really isn't a global conspiracy spanning several millenia to convince us Venus is a new planet.

"As Zeus's daughter [Venus] she'll be immortal and live in heaven with her brothers, Pollux and Castor, the heavenly twins, an extra star for ships to steer their courses by." -- Euripides, playwright, Orestes, 408 B.C.

"Then, it was then that Zeus changed the radiant paths of the stars, and the light of the sun, and the bright face of dawn; and the sun drove across the western back of the sky with hot flame from heaven's fires, while the rain-clouds went northward and Ammon's lands [Egypt] grew parched and faint, not knowing moisture, robbed of heaven's fairest showers of rain." --Euripides, playwright, Electra, 408 B.C.

"Some of the Italians called Pythagoreans say that the comet is one of the planets [Venus]." -- Aristotle, philosopher, Meteorology, 350 B.C.

"...all the comets that have been seen in our day have vanished without setting, gradually fading away above the horizon; and they have not left behind them either one or more stars. ... Democritus however, insists upon the truth of his view and affirms that certain stars [Venus] have been seen when comets dissolve." -- Aristotle, philosopher, Meteorology, 350 B.C.

"Here you see the Morning Star [Venus]. Who sees the Morning Star shall see more, for he shall be wise." -- Black Elk, medicine man, August 1930

"... the morning star [Venus] lives to give men wisdom ...." -- Black Elk, medicine man, August 1930

"In an ancient Hindu tablet of planets, attributed to the year -3012 Venus among the visible planets is absent [Delambre, J.B.J., Histoire de l'astronomie ancienne I, Page 407, 1817: 'Venus alone is not found there.']." -- Immanuel Velikovsky, cosmologist, 1950

"These four-planet systems and the inability of the ancient Hindus and Babylonians to see Venus in the sky, even though it is more conspicuous than the other planets, are puzzling unless Venus was not among the planets." -- Immanuel Velikovsky, cosmologist, 1950

Inside the Aurorae

Michael Armstrong: Inside the Aurorae.

There has been a long history of resistance to the electrical Birkeland current explanation for polar aurorae. Now there should be no doubt.

For those who have never experienced them, auroras consist of fluctuating light manifestations seen against or below the sky in the extreme north--and southern latitudes. These scintillating lights can take the form of diffuse patches or dancing streamers, bouncing arcs, shifting rays and, quite often, ephemeral hanging draperies which seem to sway in an unfelt wind. One of the most magnificent, if somewhat eerie, of natural phenomena, these lights can, and do, appear in varying shades of red, yellow, green, blue and purple. The rapidity of their ever changing glittering behavior makes them a difficult subject to capture in still photography. Their life-like nature, however, could not but capture man's imagination.

Eventually it became quite evident that the aurora borealis, or northern lights, had a tendency to disrupt compass readings, a situation which had become something of a threat to navigation. In 1740, Anders Celsius, the inventor of the centigrade scale named after him, had already interpreted the aurora as an electromagnetic phenomenon when he, too, repeatedly noticed that a big compass needle on his desk changed its orientation every time an aurora appeared in the sky above Uppsala, Sweden. So did his brother-in-law, Olaf Peter Hiorter, who spent the entire year between 1741 and 1742 observing compass needles going awry at each appearance of the lights.

In 1861, Benjamin Marsh also "endeavored to show that an auroral streamer is a current of electricity which, originating in the upper portions of [the] atmosphere and following upward the magnetic curve which passes through its base" reaches "far beyond the supposed limits. of the atmosphere."

And again in 1883, Selim Lemstron, a professor from Finland, reported the relationships he had presumed to exist between auroras and electrical activity. He accomplished this by artificially producing a "low-level aurora" that stretched to 400 feet above ground through a vast electrical apparatus he installed on top of a hill near Kultala, Finland. At the time, this was considered "the only known experiment that successfully reproduced the properties of the aurora on a large scale."

Yet even so, electrical or otherwise, no one had yet managed to discover what it was that actually caused these scintillating lights.

This new contender was the Norwegian Kristian Olaf Birkeland (1867-1917), whom we have had occasion to mention earlier in passing. From his base in Christiania, later renamed Oslo, Birkeland devoted a great portion of his life to an intensive investigation of the baffling aurora borealis. During this period of his life he mounted expeditions to remote icy regions, carting instruments and survival equipment up steep crags, setting up camps in the most dismal of weathers, in order to be able to study the phenomenon at first hand.

Having been instructed in electromagnetism early in his career, it is not surprising that he, too, sought an electromagnetic solution to the creation of the auroras. In this he was additionally motivated by the work of William Crookes in England who had established that cathode rays in gas-discharge tubes can be deflected by a magnet. Birkeland therefore wondered whether electrons—which is what cathode rays really amount to—could be ejected by the Sun toward Earth. If such electrons could be captured by Earth's magnetic field, he reasoned, chances were they would be directed toward the poles. As these electrons flowed through the upper atmosphere might they not even glow just as could be seen in laboratory discharge-tubes?

That was the kernel of Birkeland's theory, which was laughed out of court by just about every one of his scientific colleagues. One saving grace, which in the long run saved just about nothing was the acceptance of his theory by the English physicist Sydney Chapman. But even this did not last long. Having been warned by others that an electric current flowing from [the] Sun was an impossibility, Chapman ended up declaring Birkeland wrong in his assumptions. Even later, when Hannes Alfven went out of his way in replicating Birkeland's terella experiments for him, Chapman refused to change his mind.

Having spent the final days of his life in a study of the zodiacal light, some say Birkeland died of mercury poisoning inhaled during his long hours in laboratory experimentation. Most agree that he died, at the age of fifty, "broken in spirit and in intellect, disheartened by the harsh reaction to his theory."

Forty-four years had to pass before Birkeland could be vindicated. It all started in 1961 when, on its way to the Moon, the Soviet Lunik 2 spacecraft encountered a stream of electric particles flowing [from] the Sun. But so reluctant were western scientists in accepting such evidence that they branded the Soviet data unreliable out of hand. The following year, however, the same stream of "electrified gas," traveling "at speeds ranging from 300 to 700 kilometers a second," was recorded by the instruments aboard NASA's Mariner II spacecraft while on its way to Venus. It was the first indication of what was later termed the "solar wind."

Further evidence was collected in 1966 by a U.S. Navy navigation satellite which consistently recorded magnetic disturbances on almost every pass it made over Earth's polar regions.

"Since 1967 scientists have been looking at the satellite data in relation to phenomena such as the Northern Lights, rediscovering Birkeland's extraordinarily prophetic theories and completely reassessing his work. Today, he is credited as the first scientist to propose an essentially correct explanation of the aurora borealis, supported by theoretical, observational, and experimental evidence."

The vertical currents that reach earth through the interaction of the so-called solar wind were, in 1967, designated as, "Birkeland currents" by Alex Dessler. As they have now become understood Birkeland currents constitute helical plasmas that can be produced in laboratory experiments, but that can also stretch over vast distances in the immensity of space. Such a galactic Birkeland current recently discovered has been dubbed the Double Helix Nebula, which has unfortunately been described as a twisted magnetic flux tube. As Donald Scott has however indicated, it can "clearly be seen as a pair of helical current filaments in a plasma."

Nevertheless, as Lucy Jago noted, "rejection of his theories probably slowed the advance of geomagnetic and auroral physics for nearly half a century."

The Smell of "Empty" Space

"...we must raise the whole problem about place/space -- not only as to what it is, but even whether there is such a thing." -- Aristotle, Physics, Book IV

"...if it [place] is itself an existent, where will it be? Zeno's difficulty demands an explanation: for if everything that exists has a place, place too will have a place, and so on ad infinitum." -- Aristotle, Physics, Book IV

"It is evident, then, that it is easy to refute the arguments by which they prove the existence of the void." -- Aristotle, Physics, Book IV

"...there is no void...." -- Aristotle, Physics, Book IV

"There is no vacuum." -- Gottfried W. Leibniz, polymath, 1689

"...space without matter is something imaginary...." -- Gottfried W. Leibniz, polymath, 1689

"When formerly I regarded space as an immovable real place, possessing extension alone, I had been able to define absolute motion as change of this real space. But gradually I began to doubt whether there is in nature such an entity as is called space; whence it followed that a doubt might arise about absolute motion." -- Gottfried W. Leibniz, polymath, 1695

"Space is filled with electrons and of flying electric ions of all kinds." -- Kristian Birkeland, physicist, 1904

Space.Com: Space Sights and Smells Surprise Rookie Astronauts.

WASHINGTON - For rookie astronauts flying aboard the International Space Station, the food is good, the rocket thrusters are loud and there's an odd tang in the air - apparently from outer space.

"It's a very, very different environment than I expected," Discovery shuttle pilot Kevin Ford, a first-time spaceflyer, said from orbit late Friday.

One of things Ford wasn't ready for is the weird smell.

"From the [spacewalks] there really is a distinct smell of space when they come back in," Ford said from the station in a Friday night news conference. "It's like...something I haven't ever smelled before, but I'll never forget it. You know how those things stick with you."

In the past, astronauts have described the smell of space as something akin to gunpowder or ozone.

How Did Hunter Gatherers Remove The Tops of Mountains?

Courtesy of The History Channel not the Mythology Channel.

Magnetic Monopoles Detected

Physicist Paul Dirac was correct about the Expanding Earth and now it seems he was also correct about magnetic monopoles.

Science Daily: Magnetic Monopoles Detected In A Real Magnet For The First Time.

ScienceDaily (Sep. 4, 2009) — Researchers from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie have, in cooperation with colleagues from Dresden, St. Andrews, La Plata and Oxford, for the first time observed magnetic monopoles and how they emerge in a real material.

Results of their research are being published in the journal Science.

Magnetic monopoles are hypothetical particles proposed by physicists that carry a single magnetic pole, either a magnetic north pole or south pole. In the material world this is quite exceptional because magnetic particles are usually observed as dipoles, north and south combined. However there are several theories that predict the existence of monopoles. Among others, in 1931 the physicist Paul Dirac was led by his calculations to the conclusion that magnetic monopoles can exist at the end of tubes – called Dirac strings – that carry magnetic field. Until now they have remained undetected.

Naga (Siriusly)

"... the imaginative power of the old storytellers was so incredible that the books of contemporary writers of science fiction seem banal by comparison. So it must be that the ancient storytellers had a store of things already seen, known, and experienced ready at hand to spark off their imagination!" -- Erich Von Däniken, author, 1968

"To me the most exciting speculation is the idea that extraterrestrials have indeed visited this planet in the past, which is what deductive logic would dictate." -- Tom Van Flandern, astronomer, 1995

"They came from outerspace -- and posed for portraits." -- Erich Von Däniken, author, December 3rd 2002

Two possibilities. Either (1) the Indians and the Greeks and the Jews and the Dogon were conspiring with one another in one mass hallucination spanning several millenia (using time machines obviously since the history and art is from different time periods), or (2) Nagas (aka Mermen aka Nommo aka Pelasgians) were (are?) real and came from the star Sirius. Since I don't believe in mass hallucinations, time travel, or global conspiracy theories, the latter is the most logical belief.

Stellar Cartography

The closest stars via The Speculist.

Bottom line: our best bet for a close Earth-like neighbor lies within the Alpha Centauri system.

Will Kepler Find Habitable Moons?

Science Daily: Will Kepler Find Habitable Moons?

ScienceDaily (Sep. 3, 2009) — Since the launch of the NASA Kepler Mission earlier this year, astronomers have been keenly awaiting the first detection of an Earth-like planet around another star. Now, in an echo of science fiction movies a team of scientists led by Dr David Kipping of University College London thinks that they may even find habitable ‘exomoons,’ too.

The new results will appear in a paper in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

...

Dr Kipping says, "For the first time, we have demonstrated that potentially habitable moons up to hundreds of light years away may be detected with current instrumentation"

‘As we ran the simulations, even we were surprised that moons as small as one-fifth of the Earth's mass could be spotted.

‘It seems probable that many thousands, possibly millions, of habitable exomoons exist in the Galaxy and now we can start to look for them."

What Does a Molecule Look Like?

Daily Mail: Single molecule, one million times smaller than a grain of sand, pictured for first time. (Hat tip: Arie Sheyn)

It may look like a piece of honeycomb, but this lattice-shaped image is the first ever close-up view of a single molecule.

Scientists from IBM used an atomic force microscope (AFM) to reveal the chemical bonds within a molecule.

'This is the first time that all the atoms in a molecule have been imaged,' lead researcher Leo Gross said.

The researchers focused on a single molecule of pentacene, which is commonly used in solar cells. The rectangular-shaped organic molecule is made up of 22 carbon atoms and 14 hydrogen atoms.

In the image above the hexagonal shapes of the five carbon rings are clear and even the positions of the hydrogen atoms around the carbon rings can be seen.

To give some perspective, the space between the carbon rings is only 0.14 nanometers across, which is roughly one million times smaller than the diameter of a grain of sand.

Chosun Dynasty

Unfortunately I really don't know enough (or anything for that matter) to discuss this topic intelligently but am most curious to see where the discussion goes. My knowledge of Korea and Korean history is defined by Park Chan-Wook films, etc. So by popular demand: Annals of the Choson Period.

The Annals of the Choson Dynasty comprise 1,893 books covering 472 years (1392~1863) of the history of the Choson Dynasty, from the reign of King Taejo, the founder, to the end of the reign of King Cheoljong. Thick extensive set of records is considered to deal with the longest period of a single dynasty in the world. For their cultural and historic rarity, the Annals of the Choson Dynasty deserve world cultural preservation as an invaluable documentary heritage.

Transocean Says Tiber Well Is Deepest Ever

Another billion barrels @ 35,000 feet TVD.

Transocean Press Release: Deepwater Horizon Drills World's Deepest Oil & Gas Well.

ZUG, SWITZERLAND—Transocean Ltd. (NYSE: RIG) today announced that its ultra-deepwater semisubmersible rig Deepwater Horizon recently drilled the deepest oil and gas well ever while working for BP and its co-owners on the Tiber well in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico. Working with BP, the Transocean crews on the Deepwater Horizon drilled the well to 35,050 vertical depth and 35,055 feet measured depth (MD), or more than six miles, while operating in 4,130 feet of water.

"This impressive well depth record reflects the intensive planning and focus on effective operations by BP and the drilling crews of the Deepwater Horizon," said Robert L. Long, Transocean Ltd.'s Chief Executive Officer. "Congratulations to everyone involved."

These achievements are the latest in Transocean's history of world and other records dating back to the 1950s. In 2005, the ultra-deepwater drillship Discoverer Spirit set the record for the longest Gulf of Mexico oil and gas well at 34,189 feet, MD. Most recently, the Transocean jackup GSF Rig 127 drilled the industry’s longest extended-reach well in 2008 while working for Maersk Oil Qatar AS at 40,320 feet MD with a 35,770-foot horizontal section. The well was drilled offshore Qatar in 36 days and was incident-free.

Transocean also holds the current world water-depth record of operating in 10,011 feet of water set while working for Chevron in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico.

The Deepwater Horizon, placed into service in 2001, is a dynamically positioned ultra-deepwater semisubmersible rig capable of working in water depths of up to 10,000 feet.

Scientists Baffled By Magnetic Portals

"...their theory is incorrect but they don't have an accepted theory to replace it and that I think is very psychologically bothersome to particularly scientists who have gone into science in order to be certain about the world, to be sure that they're right and so forth, and it's a very insecure position. Some scientists have joked that, well, a scientist would rather be wrong than uncertain. We sort of have to live with uncertainty which is, well, it's an interesting and challenging situation." -- Halton C. Arp, astronomer, 1998

Via Watts Up With That? and Louis Hissink's Crazy World.

Magnetic reconnection could be the Universe’s favorite way to make things explode. It operates anywhere magnetic fields pervade space–which is to say almost everywhere. On the sun magnetic reconnection causes solar flares as powerful as a billion atomic bombs. In Earth’s atmosphere, it fuels magnetic storms and auroras. In laboratories, it can cause big problems in fusion reactors. It’s ubiquitous.

The problem is, researchers can’t explain it.

Plate Tectonics Subducted

"It is established fact, however, that there is not any physically observed discontinuity between deep crust and upper mantle at around 100 km depth, and the continents are observed to have continuous mantle rock roots extending as deep as 600 km (Grand, 1987; Grand et al., 1997). So the question is naturally raised: How is it possible for the upper 100 km of a continent, e.g., North America, to move horizontally by several thousand kilometers at all, under any circumstances, when global seismic tomography data indicate deep continuous roots from the surface down to 600 km depth?" -- Stavros T. Tassos (seismologist) and David J. Ford (geologist), 2005

"Subduction leads to mythology." -- Me, noob, March 2009

Via Louis Hissink's Crazy World: Plate tectonics subducted. (Hat tip: Anaconda)

“This tomographic image alone,” says Choi, “is enough to bury the subduction models.”