tagged w/ Gravity
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NASA wants space washing machine for ISS ........ NASA have moved at last to tackle the problem of dirty astronauts by commissioning a microwave with air-jets to clean underwear in space. There are no washing machines on the International Space Station so grime-encrusted nauts will wear underwear for 3-4 days and other items of clothing for months, before disposing of the dirty laundry by hurling it into the atmosphere to burn up in old Progress cargo capsules, attempting to wash it in a plastic bag or even - yuck - using it to grow plants in...... NASA have selected small disinfectant business UMPQUA to make a prototype of a low-water, low-power washing machine that could enable the laundry to be done 250 miles above the earth's surface - or much further afield, on deep space craft or in bases on the Moon or Mars. http://www.makeahistory.com/index.php/submit-an-article/43034-astronauts-dirty-laundry-problem-solvedNASA wants space washing machine for ISS ........ NASA have moved at last to tackle... more
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2 months ago
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The headline on the 1975 report was bold: “Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?” And this article that coined the term may have marked the last time a mention of “global warming” didn’t set off an instant outcry of angry denial.In the paper, Columbia University geoscientist Wally Broecker calculated how much carbon dioxide would accumulate in the atmosphere in the coming 35 years, and how temperatures consequently would rise. His numbers have proven almost dead-on correct. Meanwhile, other powerful evidence poured in over those decades, showing the “greenhouse effect” is real and is happening. And yet resistance to the idea among many in the U.S. appears to have hardened.
What’s going on?
“The desire to disbelieve deepens as the scale of the threat grows,” concludes economist-ethicist Clive Hamilton.
He and others who track what they call “denialism” find that its nature is changing in America, last redoubt of climate naysayers. It has taken on a more partisan, ideological tone. Polls find a widening Republican-Democrat gap on climate. Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry even accuses climate scientists of lying for money. Global warming looms as a debatable question in yet another U.S. election campaign.
The A.P. has published journalist Charles Hanley’s nearly 2000-word essay on U.S. climate denial, “The American ‘allergy’ to global warming: Why?”
The piece is an excellent edition to a growing group that includes, WashPost stunner: “The GOP’s climate-change denial may be its most harmful delusion” and National Journal: “The GOP is stampeding toward an absolutist rejection of climate science that appears unmatched among major political parties around the globe, even conservative ones.”
Here is more:
The basic physics of anthropogenic — manmade — global warming has been clear for more than a century, since researchers proved that carbon dioxide traps heat. Others later showed CO2 was building up in the atmosphere from the burning of coal, oil and other fossil fuels. Weather stations then filled in the rest: Temperatures were rising.“As a physicist, putting CO2 into the air is good enough for me. It’s the physics that convinces me,” said veteran Cambridge University researcher Liz Morris. But she said work must go on to refine climate data and computer climate models, “to convince the deeply reluctant organizers of this world.”
The reluctance to rein in carbon emissions revealed itself early on.
In the 1980s, as scientists studied Greenland’s buried ice for clues to past climate, upgraded their computer models peering into the future, and improved global temperature analyses, the fossil-fuel industries were mobilizing for a campaign to question the science.
By 1988, NASA climatologist James Hansen could appear before a U.S. Senate committee and warn that global warming had begun, a dramatic announcement later confirmed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a new, U.N.-sponsored network of hundreds of international scientists.
But when Hansen was called back to testify in 1989, the White House of President George H.W. Bush edited this government scientist’s remarks to water down his conclusions, and Hansen declined to appear.
That was the year U.S. oil and coal interests formed the Global Climate Coalition to combat efforts to shift economies away from their products. Britain’s Royal Society and other researchers later determined that oil giant Exxon disbursed millions of dollars annually to think tanks and a handful of supposed experts to sow doubt about the facts.
In 1997, two years after the IPCC declared the “balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate,” the world’s nations gathered in Kyoto, Japan, to try to do something about it. The naysayers were there as well.
“The statement that we’ll have continued warming with an increase in CO2 is opinion, not fact,” oil executive William F. O’Keefe of the Global Climate Coalition insisted to reporters in Kyoto.
The late Bert Bolin, then IPCC chief, despaired.
“I’m not really surprised at the political reaction,” the Swedish climatologist told The Associated Press. “I am surprised at the way some of the scientific findings have been rejected in an unscientific manner.”
In fact, a document emerged years later showing that the industry coalition’s own scientific team had quietly advised it that the basic science of global warming was indisputable.
See “Scientists advising fossil fuel funded anti-climate group concluded in 1995: The scientific basis for the Greenhouse Effect and the potential impact of human emissions of GHGs such as CO2 on climate is well established and cannot be denied”
Kyoto’s final agreement called for limited rollbacks in greenhouse emissions. The United States didn’t even join in that. And by 2000, the CO2 built up in the atmosphere to 369 parts per million — just 4 ppm less than Broecker predicted — compared with 280 ppm before the industrial revolution.
Global temperatures rose as well, by 0.6 degrees C (1.1 degrees F) in the 20th century. And the mercury just kept rising. The decade 2000-2009 was the warmest on record, and 2010 and 2005 were the warmest years on record.
Costal threat prediction
Satellite and other monitoring, meanwhile, found nights were warming faster than days, and winters more than summers, and the upper atmosphere was cooling while the lower atmosphere warmed — all clear signals greenhouse warming was at work, not some other factor.
The impact has been widespread.
An authoritative study this August reported that hundreds of species are retreating toward the poles, egrets showing up in southern England, American robins in Eskimo villages. Some, such as polar bears, have nowhere to go. Eventual large-scale extinctions are feared.
The heat is cutting into wheat yields, nurturing beetles that are destroying northern forests, attracting malarial mosquitoes to higher altitudes.
From the Rockies to the Himalayas, glaciers are shrinking, sending ever more water into the world’s seas. Because of accelerated melt in Greenland and elsewhere, the eight-nation Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program projects ocean levels will rise 90 to 160 centimeters (35 to 63 inches) by 2100, threatening coastlines everywhere.
“We are scared, really and truly,” diplomat Laurence Edwards, from the Pacific’s Marshall Islands, told the AP before the 1997 Kyoto meeting.
Today in these low-lying islands, rising seas have washed away shoreline graveyards, saltwater has invaded wells, and islanders seek aid to build a seawall to shield their capital.
The oceans are turning more acidic, too, from absorbing excess carbon dioxide. Acidifying seas will harm plankton, shellfish and other marine life up the food chain. Biologists fear the world’s coral reefs, home to much ocean life and already damaged from warmer waters, will largely disappear in this century.
Arctic ice cap
The greatest fears may focus on “feedbacks” in the Arctic, warming twice as fast as the rest of the world.
The Arctic Ocean’s summer ice cap has shrunk by half and is expected to essentially vanish by 2030 or 2040, the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center reported Sept. 15. Ashore, meanwhile, the Arctic tundra’s permafrost is thawing and releasing methane, a powerful greenhouse gas.
These changes will feed on themselves: Released methane leads to warmer skies, which will release more methane. Ice-free Arctic waters absorb more of the sun’s heat than do reflective ice and snow, and so melt will beget melt. The frozen Arctic is a controller of Northern Hemisphere climate; an unfrozen one could upend age-old weather patterns across continents.
more at the linkThe headline on the 1975 report was bold: “Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced... more
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“Our own Universe may be the interior of a black hole existing in another universe.” In a remarkable paper about the nature of space and the origin of time, Nikodem Poplawski, a physicist at Indiana University, suggests that a small change to the theory of gravity implies that our Universe inherited its arrow of time from the black hole in which it was born.
Poplawski says that the idea that black holes are the cosmic mothers of new universes is a natural consequence of a simple new assumption about the nature of spacetime. Poplawski points out that the standard derivation of general relativity takes no account of the intrinsic momentum of spin half particles. However there is another version of the theory, called the Einstein-Cartan-Kibble-Sciama theory of gravity, which does.
(read the rest at link)“Our own Universe may be the interior of a black hole existing in another... more
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“Euthanasia Coaster” is a hypothetic euthanasia machine in the form of a roller coaster, engineered to humanely – with elegance and euphoria – take the life of a human being. Riding the coaster’s track, the rider is subjected to a series of intensive motion elements that induce various unique experiences: from euphoria to thrill, and from tunnel vision to loss of consciousness, and, eventually, death. Thanks to the marriage of the advanced cross-disciplinary research in space medicine, mechanical engineering, material technologies and, of course, gravity, the fatal journey is made pleasing, elegant and meaningful. Euthanasia Coaster - with elegance and euphoria – take the life of a human being http://www.makeahistory.com/index.php/bizzareweird/42965-euthanasia-coaster“Euthanasia Coaster” is a hypothetic euthanasia machine in the form of a... more
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9 months ago
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Zero volume and near-infinite density are incompatible with three-dimensional space.
The Virgo Cluster harbors several galaxies that are listed in the early Messier catalog. Among them are M61, M90, and M100. M100 is particularly interesting to NASA scientists who, in conjunction with the Chandra X-ray Telescope team, called a special press conference on November 15, 2010 in order to announce the discovery of "the youngest black hole ever detected."
The object thought to be a black hole was identified by an excessively bright X-ray emission that has not varied in brightness for more than 12 years. According to consensus theories, the steady state of the radiation indicates that material is being superheated as it falls into the black hole's steep gravitational gradient.
SN 1079C, a supernova, is thought to have "given birth" to the black hole because when stars more than 5 times as massive as the Sun "explode," they are thought to leave behind compacted remains that can fall in on themselves until they attain near-infinite gravity in a zero volume. There are several opinions inherent in NASA's conclusion to which Electric Universe advocates would object.
First, what is a supernova? As previous Picture of the Day articles have argued, stars do not age and die in the way that conventional understanding proposes. Stars are not globes of hot gas under pressure, they are composed of plasma. Plasma is ionized and is an electrically charged substance. Since it is ionized, it does not behave like a pressurized gas, so shock waves and gravitational instabilities are insufficient when it comes to explaining the birth and death of stars.
As Electric Universe theory states, a supernova is an exploding star, but not in the conventional sense. Rather, it constitutes the explosion of a double layer in plasma. The power comes from external electric currents flowing through vast circuits in space, so the radiation from stars is due to discharges that vary in strength. It is those electric arcs that make up the stellar corona, chromosphere and photosphere of our Sun, for instance.
Supernovae are the result of a stellar "open circuit” in the galactic power supply. The result is the same as sometimes occurs in high-voltage switching yards, with extensive arcing.
In an exploding double layer, the energy of an entire circuit might flow into the explosion, increasing its expansion far from the surface of the star. Radiation from the double layer shines in ultraviolet or X-ray wavelengths, sometimes emitting bursts of gamma rays. It was those effects that should have been considered when SN 1979C was first identified.
Second, what is a black hole? Black holes are theorized to twist space and time so that velocity calculations yield impossible solutions. Matter inside a black hole occupies no volume at all, yet it retains gravitational acceleration so great that not even light can escape its attraction—the hole is "black" because it cannot be detected with optical telescopes.
Several previous Picture of the Day discussions about black holes determined that the language used by astrophysicists is itself problematic, relying on highly speculative explanations. Ambiguous lexical labels such as space/time, multiple universes, singularities, infinite density, and other ideas that are not quantifiable have introduced irony into what should be a realistic investigation.
It is assumed that matter falling into the intense gravity well of a black hole is accelerated and subsequently compressed. Material orbits the black hole at a faster and faster rate as it gradually spins closer to a point several times the mass of our Sun. The X-rays and ultraviolet light emissions are interpreted by astronomers as gas heating up from atomic collisions in the rotating disc.
Finally, hot gas, no matter how fast it moves, is not the principal cause of X-rays. Laboratory experiments most easily produce them by accelerating charged particles through an electric field. No gigantic masses compressed into tiny volumes are necessary; they are easily generated with the proper experiments.
There is no experimental evidence that matter can be compressed to “near-infinite density." Compression zones (z-pinches) in plasma filaments form plasmoids that can become stars and galaxies. Electricity is responsible for the birth of stars, and when the stellar circuit catastrophically releases its excess energy it appears as gamma ray bursts or X-rays or flares of ultraviolet light.
In the electric star hypothesis, no concentrated gravity from "singularities" is necessary. Classical understanding of electromagnetism reveals that it is more than able to create the phenomena we see, without recourse to the supernatural physics of black holes.
Meanwhile astrophysicists, untrained in the physics of double layers, treat supernovae remnants as a problem in fluid dynamics, using mechanical shockwaves and gravitational pressure to provide the observed energies. It is an approach that Hannes Alfvén warned, more than half a century ago, is doomed to fail.
Stephen SmithZero volume and near-infinite density are incompatible with three-dimensional space.... more
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Einstein was right again. There is a space-time vortex around Earth, and its shape precisely matches the predictions of Einstein's theory of gravity.
Researchers confirmed these points at a press conference today at NASA headquarters where they announced the long-awaited results of Gravity Probe B (GP-B).
"The space-time around Earth appears to be distorted just as general relativity predicts," says Stanford University physicist Francis Everitt, principal investigator of the Gravity Probe B mission.
"This is an epic result," adds Clifford Will of Washington University in St. Louis. An expert in Einstein's theories, Will chairs an independent panel of the National Research Council set up by NASA in 1998 to monitor and review the results of Gravity Probe B. "One day," he predicts, "this will be written up in textbooks as one of the classic experiments in the history of physics."
Time and space, according to Einstein's theories of relativity, are woven together, forming a four-dimensional fabric called "space-time." The mass of Earth dimples this fabric, much like a heavy person sitting in the middle of a trampoline. Gravity, says Einstein, is simply the motion of objects following the curvaceous lines of the dimple.
If Earth were stationary, that would be the end of the story. But Earth is not stationary. Our planet spins, and the spin should twist the dimple, slightly, pulling it around into a 4-dimensional swirl. This is what GP-B went to space in 2004 to check.
The idea behind the experiment is simple:
Put a spinning gyroscope into orbit around the Earth, with the spin axis pointed toward some distant star as a fixed reference point. Free from external forces, the gyroscope's axis should continue pointing at the star--forever. But if space is twisted, the direction of the gyroscope's axis should drift over time. By noting this change in direction relative to the star, the twists of space-time could be measured.
(more at link)Einstein was right again. There is a space-time vortex around Earth, and its shape... more
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"Ker Than
for National Geographic News
Published May 5, 2011
Two key predictions of Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity have been confirmed by NASA's Gravity Probe B mission, scientists announced this week.
"We've completed this landmark experiment testing Einstein's universe, and Einstein survives," principal investigator Francis Everitt, of Stanford University in California, said during a press briefing.
(Also see "Einstein's Gravity Confirmed on a Cosmic Scale.")
Launched in 2004, the Gravity Probe B mission used four ultraprecise gyroscopes—devices used to measure orientation—housed in a satellite to measure two aspects of Einstein's theory about gravity."
Full story and link to probe report:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/05/110505-einstein-theories-confirmed-gravity-probe-nasa-space-science/"Ker Than
for National Geographic News
Published May 5, 2011
Two key... more
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The most perfectly spherical object ever made by hand IS only the size of a ping pong ball, but its surfaces are so smooth that were it blown up to the size of Earth, the tallest mountain would be only eight feet high. It’s one of four spheres that are current floating in Gravity Probe B, which is possibly the coolest piece of space engineering evah. Gravity Probe B is an audacious attempt by NASA and Stanford to confirm Einsteinian physics by measuring, with utterly berserk precision, how much Earth’s enormous mass curves space-time around it. http://www.makeahistory.com/index.php/your-details/42937-the-roundest-objects-ever-built-by-handThe most perfectly spherical object ever made by hand IS only the size of a ping pong... more
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10 months ago
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It looks like a giant potato in space.
And yet, the information in this model is the sharpest view we have of how gravity varies across the Earth.
The globe has been released by the team working on Europe's Goce satellite.
It is a highly exaggerated rendering, but it neatly illustrates how the tug we feel from the mass of rock under our feet is not the same in every location.
Gravity is strongest in yellow areas; it is weakest in blue ones.
Scientists say the data gathered by the super-sleek space probe is bringing a step change in our understanding of the force that pulls us downwards and the way it is shaping some key processes on Earth.
Chief among these new insights is a clearer view of how the oceans are moving and how they redistribute the heat from the Sun around the world - information that is paramount to climate studies.
Those interested in earthquakes are also poring over the Goce results. The giant jolts that struck Japan last month and Chile last year occurred because huge masses of rock suddenly moved. Goce should reveal a three-dimensional view of what was going on inside the Earth.
"Even though these quakes resulted from big movements in the Earth, at the altitude of the satellite the signals are very small. But we should still seem them in the data," said Dr Johannes Bouman from the German Geodetic Research Institute (DGFI).
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12911806It looks like a giant potato in space.
And yet, the information in this model is... more
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Gliese 581g, situated a mere 20 light years away from Earth, sits in the “Goldilocks Zone” of its star: the very small zone where temperatures are neither too hot nor too cold to make the existence of life (as we know it) impossible. The planet has an atmosphere, gravity and temperatures that are cold, but not so cold as to make it uninhabitable.Gliese 581g, situated a mere 20 light years away from Earth, sits in the... more
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Extra dimensions are old news. The newest mind-bending descriptions of reality dreamed up by the world’s smartest physicists, and explained by superstar superstring theorist Brian Greene in his latest book The Hidden Reality, include untold numbers of extra universes. A million universes isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? Ten to the 500th power universes. Greene likes to drop you into the middle of the action first and then explain the backstory (and sometimes it does feel like a full-scale intellectual invasion is happening), but he has an elegant knack for anticipating questions and immediately dealing with any confusion or objections. http://www.makeahistory.com/index.php/your-details/32324-superstring-theorist-brian-greene-and-his-idea-of-an-infinite-number-of-universesExtra dimensions are old news. The newest mind-bending descriptions of reality dreamed... more
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12 months ago
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Mysterious "dark matter" could lurk near Earth, according to a new theory to explain a puzzle that has baffled space flight engineers. The suggestion that clumps of the enigmatic matter lie in our cosmic back yard, between the Earth and the Moon, has been put forward to explain a strange phenomenon called the "fly-by anomaly." Almost every spacecraft that has swung around the Earth to speed it on its journey has recorded a velocity change that, according to the well-understood laws of gravity, should not have happened. http://www.makeahistory.com/index.php/submit-an-article/26444-mysterious-dark-matter-may-be-near-earthMysterious "dark matter" could lurk near Earth, according to a new theory to... more
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On September 22, 2010, with the departure of the Expedition 23 crew, Colonel Douglas H. Wheelock assumed command of the International Space Station and the Expedition 25 crew. He is also known as @Astro_Wheels on twitter, where he has been tweeting pictures to his followers since he arrived at the space station. The images bring breathtaking views from our only off planet Vista point. The captions are all his own words. http://www.makeahistory.com/index.php/submit-an-article/13903-expedition-25-nasaOn September 22, 2010, with the departure of the Expedition 23 crew, Colonel Douglas... more
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Why are there so many earthquakes and volcanoes in 2010? Could this be caused by particle accelerator experiments?Why are there so many earthquakes and volcanoes in 2010? Could this be caused by... more
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Time for astrophysicists to say goodbye to OGLE-TR-113b a planet which is observed to be spiralling into a star (named OGLE-TR-113, must be jealous), though apparently it will be quite a destruction ""It would be pretty spectacular. You'd be watching a planet get shredded," says Rory Barnes of the University of Washington in Seattle."-NS
According to New Scientists the planet will be ripped apart by the stars gravity in 1.4m years, with its existence only discovered in 2002.
"As the Jupiter-sized world orbits its star, we see a temporary dimming in the star's light when the planet passes between it and us. This transit occurs during each of its 32-hour-long orbits."-NSTime for astrophysicists to say goodbye to OGLE-TR-113b a planet which is observed to... more
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Chinese photo artist Li Wei has no respect for gravity, as demonstrated by his photography. He make photos of people flying out of windows, sticking out from walls, jumping from bridges or simply hanging up in the air. All for the sake of art.
http://www.buzzhunt.co.uk/2010/09/15/chinese-artist-li-wei-hates-gravity/Chinese photo artist Li Wei has no respect for gravity, as demonstrated by his... more
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Hold the front page: the big bang was an inevitable consequence of the laws of physics. Or indeed, as the front page of the London Times put it: "Hawking: God did not create universe". Media furore over Stephen Hawking's new book, The Grand Design, has made it the biggest science news story of the day. But it's not like Hawking has suddenly given up a religious belief – let alone proved that God doesn't exist. http://www.makeahistory.com/index.php/submit-an-article/3961-stephen-hawkingHold the front page: the big bang was an inevitable consequence of the laws of... more
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