A massive cosmic explosion in deep space sent out a pulse of high-energy radiation that hit the Earth between the years 774AD and 775AD when the emperor Charlemagne ruled much of Western Europe, scientists have found.
The radiation pulse was probably the most intense cosmic event to have affected the Earth in the past 3,000 years and it left an indelible imprint in ancient cedar trees dating to that time, they said. One suggestion was an intense solar flare from the Sun, but this was soon discounted as implausible. Now Professor Ralph Neuhauser of the University of Jena in Germany has suggested that the cosmic radiation came from a massive collision either between two black holes or two massive stars located between 3,000 and 12,000 light years away, within our own Milky Way galax. [IND]
The accident at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi plant in 2011 alerted the American nuclear industry and its regulators to the possibility that operators at plants with more than one reactor might have to deal with more than one meltdown at a time in a flood, earthquake or other catastrophe. Officials are now working to assure that they could master that situation.
But documents uncovered by a group that is critical of nuclear safety show that a high-level safety analyst at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission posed the possibility to his superiors in July 2007, about four years before the earthquake and tsunami that led to three simultaneous meltdowns at Fukushima Daiichi. The documents also show that in August 2008, the commission staff formally acknowledged the issue. [NYT]
Unrelenting snowfalls have caused unprecedented chaos in Russia. Over the past week, the country has seen scores of traffic accidents, flight delays and, in some cases, the complete isolation of some remote settlements and towns.
On Friday, Moscow was on a verge of traffic collapse as more than 10 inches of snow fell on the city, which is more than half of January’s average.
Thousands of passengers were stranded overnight in the capital’s major airports, as several dozen flights were delayed.
Share this list of shocking questions with everyone you know that needs to wake up. Sometimes asking good questions is the best way to get someone that you care about to understand something. When I attended law school, I became very familiar with something called “the Socratic method”. It is a method that has been traditionally used in law schools all over the United States. Law professors will bombard their students with questions, and the goal is to stimulate critical thinking and allow students to discover the answers for themselves. Many times those of us that can see what is happening to this country get frustrated when we try to get others to see what is so apparent to us. But instead of preaching to them, perhaps asking questions would be more helpful. When you ask someone a question, they are almost forced to think about what you just said and come up with a response. And without a doubt, the fact that America is in decline is undeniable. Those that would choose to blindly have faith in the system are foolish, because it is glaringly obvious that the system is failing. Our economy is heading for collapse and the world around us is becoming more unstable with each passing day. So it shouldn’t be a surprise that the number of preppers in the United States is absolutely exploding. Some estimates put the number of preppers in the U.S. as high as 3 million, and the movement continues to explode. [LINK]
The giant earthquake that devastated Japan in 2011 reshaped the seafloor, forming unexpectedly large underwater dunes and possibly dramatically influencing Japan's marine ecosystem, researchers have found.
The new findings, detailed online Jan. 1 in the journal Marine Geology, hint that clues about past tsunamis could be found on the sea bottom. The magnitude-9.0 Tohoku-Oki temblor that struck in March 2011 was the most powerful earthquake to hit Japan in recorded history, strong enough to slightly alter the pull of gravity under Japan. It then set off a tsunami that lay waste to the coast of the northeastern part of the country, triggering a crisis at the nuclear power plant at Fukushima, a combination that may be the first "complex megadisaster" the world has ever seen. [LS]
Sixty percent of high school and college students say they plan on owning guns at a later stage in life, an academic study from American University revealed on Monday. According to the study, about 40 percent of the American students surveyed said they definitely planned to own firearms once they had established their own households. Another 20 percent said they were “contemplating” owning guns.
Those findings were part of a broader study conducted by American University professor Jennifer L. Lawless and Loyola Marymount professor Richard L. Fox which focused on the political opinions of young Americans. The study was conducted prior the recent Newtown massacre, but after the Aurora theatre shooting. [LINK]
The surface of the sun erupted in a solar flare early Friday, unleashing a blast of super-heated plasma into space.
A huge sunspot known as AR1654 produced the M1-class flare at 4:11 a.m. EST, officials with NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory said in a description of the event. The SDO spacecraft is one of several sun-watching space telescopes keeping tabs on solar flares and other sun weather events. According to Spaceweather.com, sunspot AR1654 is growing more active and is now "crackling with M-class solar flares" like the one that erupted today.
As Washington focuses on what Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. will propose next week to curb gun violence, gun and ammunition sales are spiking in the rest of the country as people rush to expand their arsenals in advance of any restrictions that might be imposed.
People were crowded five deep at the tiny counter of a gun shop near Atlanta, where a pastor from Knoxville, Tenn., was among the customers who showed up in person after the store’s Web site halted sales because of low inventory. Emptying gun cases and bare shelves gave a picked-over feel to gun stores in many states. High-capacity magazines, which some state and federal officials want to ban or restrict, were selling briskly across the country: one Iowa dealer said that 30-round magazines were fetching five times what they sold for just weeks ago.
In the center of Hiroshima, in a part of the city totally destroyed by the explosion and ensuing fires, a long-lost photograph taken shortly after the blast has been discovered among a collection of articles about the bombing.
The picture is a rare glimpse of the bomb's immediate aftermath, showing the distinct two-tiered cloud as it was seen from Kaitaichi, part of present-day Kaita, six miles east of Hiroshima's center. Reprints of the image did appear in a 1988 Japanese-language publication, but the whereabouts of the original were unknown. There are only a couple of other photos in existence (two, possibly three) that capture the cloud from the vantage point of the ground; and, according to the Japanese paper Asahi Shimbun, there is only one other photograph that provides as clear a picture of the separated tiers of the cloud, and that is a photo taken from the Enola Gay as it zipped away. [LINK]
NASA scientists at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., effectively have ruled out the possibility the asteroid Apophis will impact Earth during a close flyby in 2036. The scientists used updated information obtained by NASA-supported telescopes in 2011 and 2012, as well as new data from the time leading up to Apophis' distant Earth flyby Jan. 9, 2013.
Discovered in 2004, the asteroid, which is the size of three-and-a-half football fields, gathered the immediate attention of space scientists and the media when initial calculations of its orbit indicated a 2.7 percent possibility of an Earth impact during a close flyby in 2029. Data discovered during a search of old astronomical images provided the additional information required to rule out the 2029 impact scenario, but a remote possibility of one in 2036 remained -- until Wednesday.
The flu is currently at epidemic levels across the five boroughs, New York City Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Farley announced Thursday. Officials said a full 5 percent of emergency room visits are flu-related.
“It’s a bad year. We’ve got lots of flu, it’s mainly type AH3N2, which tends to be a little more severe. So we’re seeing plenty of cases of flu and plenty of people sick with flu,” Farley told reporters including WCBS 880′s Rich Lamb.
The asteroid Apophis has crossed Earth's path. Now, astronomers will return to their calculators to find out what danger it poses in the future.
The 1,000-foot-wide asteroid has made the first in a series of close approaches to the Earth predicted since it was first discovered in 2009. Scientists ruled out any possibility of a devastating collision this time -- but there remains a small chance the asteroid will smash into Earth in 2036.
Some of the largest and deadliest earthquakes in recent years hit where earthquake hazard estimates didn't predict massive quakes. A detailed computer model of large earthquakes in Japan and Taiwan helps explain why.
Contrary to decades of geologic wisdom, creeping fault segments, thought to slide smoothly past one another, can suddenly switch to a different mode during an earthquake, the model finds. Instead of acting as a barrier to rupture, the creeping segment loses its resistance, most likely through frictional heating.
A European space telescope has captured new images of the huge asteroid Apophis, revealing that the potentially hazardous object is actually bigger than previously thought.
Asteroid Apophis has long been billed as a "doomsday asteroid" because of a 2004 study that initially predicted a 2.7 percent chance of the space rock hitting Earth in April 2029. Later studies proved, however, that the asteroid poses no threat to Earth during that flyby. The current forecast calls for Apophis to pass within 22,364 miles (36,000 kilometers) of the planet in 2029. Astronomers continue to track the object since it will make another pass near Earth in 2036.
Supposedly, the world should have ended about a month ago, on December 21, 2012 . If you’re like many other people who were at least kind of expecting the apocalypse to actually come through, don’t beat yourself up about it—the fact is, humans have a long, long history of believing wholeheartedly that the end is near, only to have the world stick around for another few thousand years. In looking at just how many apocalypse predictions there have been throughout history (and there have been a lot), it’s interesting to consider some of the psychology that goes on behind these predictions, and what makes so many people believe them time and time again. The fact is, people have been spouting end-times predictions for several centuries, and some of those predictions can be pretty quirky. What’s quirkier, however, is that for some reason, there seems to always be a following of people who don’t just believe these zany predictions, they seem to be disappointed when they don’t come true. Whether this is chalked up to religious fanaticism, pack mentality, or just a general sense of paranoia, remains to be seen. But for whatever the reason, people from all through history seem obsessed with the end of the world, and the following infographic takes a look at some of the wackiest predictions ever made.
Few post-disaster myths have a stronger hold on our imaginations than the specter of a follow-on epidemic. Some imagine a killer virus will spread through the sudden glut of dead bodies. Others merely go by the notion that when it rains--or shakes, or erupts, or burns--it pours. But we can all take a deep, healthy breath: It’s not true. There don’t tend to be spontaneous epidemics in the wake of natural disasters. As a World Health Organization team explained in a 2007 study published in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases: “The risk for outbreaks after natural disasters is low.” [POPSCI]
Beginning near or just past the middle of the month, signs are pointing toward waves of frigid air moving southward across North America from the North Pole.
Much of the nation has been experiencing higher-than-average temperatures and lower heating bills so far during the cold weather season, with the exception of some bouts the past couple of weeks. However, there are signs of a potential change on the way beginning during the second half of January. [ACCUWEATHER]
Many documents produced by the U.S. government are confidential and not released to the public for legitimate reasons of national security. Others, however, are kept secret for more questionable reasons. The fact that presidents and other government officials have the power to deem materials classified provides them with an opportunity to use national security as an excuse to suppress documents and reports that would reveal embarrassing or illegal activities.
I’ve been collecting the stories of unreleased documents for several years. Now I have chosen 11 examples that were created—and buried—by both Democratic and Republican administrations and which cover assassinations, spying, torture, 50-year-old historical events, presidential directives with classified titles and…trade negotiations. [LINK]
Our Milky Way is home to at least 17 billion planets that are similar in size to Earth, a new estimate suggests. That's more than two Earth-size planets for every person on the globe.
Just how many are located in the sweet spot where water could exist is "simply too early to call," said Francois Fressin of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who presented his work at an astronomy meeting Monday.It's the first reliable tally of the number of worlds outside the solar system that are the size of Earth, but the hunt for our twin is far from over.
