Britain has committed £88m towards the construction of the world's largest telescope. The huge observatory, to be built in the Chilean Andes, will allow astronomers to capture images of the universe's earliest moments.The giant eye on the sky, known as the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT), will cost more than €1bn (£900m) to build. Its main mirror, which will gather light from distant stars and galaxies, will be 39 metres in diameter, made of 798 segments. The observatory will gather 15 times more light than the largest telescopes today.
"Every area of astronomy, from planets around other stars to the first galaxies in the universe, will be revolutionised by this telescope," said Professor Simon Morris of Durham University.
Mayor Leigh Dollar is working with city officials to pass an ordinance that would give police the power to “disarm individuals” during a disaster, a chilling example of how the second amendment is being assaulted via the back door.
The new rule would allow authorities to confiscate guns of “unruly” people during an extreme weather event such as the April 2011 tornadoes or any other emergency.
“The ordinance states officers could disarm individuals, if necessary, reports ABC 31. “Dollar says the proposal is just way to give officers more authority to protect themselves.”
Extreme weather events have been on the rise in the last few decades, and man-made climate change may be causing them by interfering with global air-flow patterns, according to new research.
The Northern Hemisphere has taken a beating from extreme weather in recent years — the 2003 European heat wave, the 2010 Pakistan flood and the 2011 heat wave in the United States, for example. These events, in a general sense, are the result of the global movement of air. Giant waves of air in the atmosphere normally even out the climate, by bringing warm air north from the tropics and cold air south from the Arctic. But a new study suggests these colossal waves have gotten stuck in place during extreme weather events.
Supporters for the city of Orlando allowing front-yard vegetable gardens protested outside of City Hall on Monday in hopes of keeping the city from imposing too many regulations in its new ordinance.
Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer said at the council meeting on Monday that the concerns of the College Park couple, whose front-yard vegetable garden made headlines across the nation last year, will be taken into consideration as the city drafts a new proposed ordinance.The Helvenstons tell Local 6 they're glad the city is willing to allow front yard gardens, but they're concerned officials might impose too many restrictions, possibly limiting the garden to a quarter of the front yard, requiring a fence and outlawing taller crops. [LINK]
They've terrorized a shopping mall in "Dawn of the Dead," been folded into classic literature, and even crashed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website. Seriously. What is the deal with zombies?
The shuffling (or quick-as-lightning, depending on your preferred version) hordes are horror-movie staples, but they've lately skyrocketed in fame with humorous takes such as in the book "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" (Quirk Books, 2009) and the movie "Shaun of the Dead" (2004), which follows a sad-sack salesman during the zombie apocalypse. In 2011, the CDC capitalized on zombie fever with a blog post dedicated to preparing for a zombie uprising, driving so much Internet traffic that their servers crashed.
NASA, universities and private groups in the US are working on asteroid warning systems that can detect objects from space like the one that struck Russia last week with a blinding flash and mighty boom. But the US space agency reiterated that events like the one in the Urals, which shattered windows and injured nearly 1,000 people, are rare.
"We would expect an event of this magnitude to occur once every 100 years on average," said Paul Chodas of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
The meteor that crashed to earth in Russia was about 55 feet in diameter, weighed around 10,000 tons and was made from a stony material, scientists said, making it the largest such object to hit the Earth in more than a century.
Large pieces of the meteor have yet to be found. However, a team from the Urals Federal University, which is based in Yekaterinburg, collected 53 fragments, the largest of which was 7 millimeters, according to Viktor Grokhovsky, a scientist at the university.
Data from a global network of sensors indicated that the disintegration of the Russia fireball unleashed nearly 500 kilotons of energy, more than 30 times the energy of the Hiroshima atomic bomb.
The shock wave from Friday's (Feb. 15) meteor explosion above Russia sent subsonic waves through the atmosphere halfway around the world. Up to 11 sensors in Greenland, Africa, Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula and other far-flung regions detected the Russian meteor blast's infrasound, or low-frequency sound waves. The sensors are part of the global network of 60 infrasound stations maintained by the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO).
Infrasound's long wavelengths (about 20 to 0.01 Hertz) can travel far distances in the atmosphere, at frequencies humans can't hear. Elephants, whales and even pigeons use infrasound for communication and navigation, scientists have discovered. [LS]
If the economy is improving, then why are many of the largest retail chains in America closing hundreds of stores? When I was growing up, Sears, J.C. Penney, Best Buy and RadioShack were all considered to be unstoppable retail powerhouses. But now it is being projected that all of them will close hundreds of stores before the end of 2013. Even Wal-Mart is running into problems. A recent internal Wal-Mart memo that was leaked to Bloombergdescribed February sales as a “total disaster”. So why is this happening? Why are major retail chains all over America collapsing? Is the “retail apocalypse” upon us? Well, the truth is that this is just another sign that the U.S. economy is falling apart right in front of our eyes. Incomes are declining, taxes are going up, government dependence is at an all-time high, and according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics the percentage of the U.S. labor force that is employed has been steadily falling since 2006. The top 10% of all income earners in the U.S. are still doing very well, but most U.S. consumers are either flat broke or are drowning in debt. The large disposable incomes that the big retail chains have depended upon in the past simply are not there anymore. So retail chains all over the United States are now closing up unprofitable stores. This is especially true in low income areas. [ECB]
An asteroid hurtled toward Earth's backyard, destined Friday to make the closest known flyby for a rock of its 150-foot size. In a startling coincidence, a meteor exploded above Russia's Ural Mountains just hours before the asteroid was due to zoom past the planet.
Scientists insisted the meteor had nothing to do with the incoming asteroid since they appeared to traveling in opposite directions. The asteroid is much more immense object that was expected to miss Earth by 17,150 miles, avoiding catastrophe.But that's still closer than many communication and weather satellites. Scientists insisted these, too, would be spared.
A series of explosions in the skies of Russia’s Urals region, reportedly caused by a meteor shower, has sparked panic in three major cities. Witnesses said that houses shuddered, windows were blown out and cellphones stopped working.
According to unconfirmed reports, the meteorite was intercepted by an air defense unit at the Urzhumka settlement near Chelyabinsk. A missile salvo reportedly blew the meteorite into pieces at an altitude of 20 kilometers.A bright flash was seen in the Chelyabinsk, Tyumen and Sverdlovsk regions, Russia’s Republic of Bashkiria and in northern Kazakhstan. [RT]
President Barack Obama is, arguably, the best gun salesman ever. Over 65 million guns have been purchased since the President took office in 2009. FBI background check statistics indicate that, over the last twelve months, Americans purchased a new gun every 1.5 seconds, a figure which suggests there is much more to the recent panic buying than people just stocking up to go hunting or sports shooting.
The following guns and ammo industry report indicates that every major gun and ammunition manufacturer in the country is running at 100% capacity, with many so far behind that they’ve stopped taking new orders altogether. [SHTF]
This is a list of the top 10 recommended disaster preparedness and survival books, as compiled by Armageddon Online. They aren't in any particular ranked order, but every one of them has been recommended by members, mentioned in numerous site reviews, and a few have actually been read by me! They cover information that everyone SHOULD know, but many people choose to ignore or dismiss. If & when a disaster does happen, these book will do their best to get you, your friends, and your family ready!
Alan Friedman of Buffalo, New York is an amateur astrophotography enthusiast who captures amazing photographs of the Sun through a telescope in his backyard. His highly detailed photographs show the sun in ways you never see with your naked eye. Using special filters that allow the photos to be captured without destroying his camera or his eyes, Friedman creates images of our life-giving star that look more like something you might see under a microscope.
On Friday, an asteroid dubbed 2012 DA14 will whiz by Earth closer than any rock of its size since record-keeping began. But if NASA weren't aiming high-powered telescopes at 2012 DA14, most Earthlings would never know we'd been buzzed.
That's because the asteroid won't come any nearer than 17,150 miles (27,650 kilometers) away as it passes Earth. Still, 2012 DA14's lack of imminent threat to the planet is no reason to ignore the flyby. From historical precedent to future implications, here's why you should care.
Joe Leader's heart sank as he descended into the South Ferry subway station at the southern tip of Manhattan in New York. It was 8 p.m. on 29 October, and Hurricane Sandy had just made landfall some 150 kilometers south in New Jersey. As chief maintenance officer for the New York City subway system, Leader was out on patrol.
He had hoped that the South Ferry station would be a refuge from the storm. Instead, he was greeted by wailing smoke alarms and the roar of gushing water. Three-quarters of the way down the final set of stairs, he pointed his flashlight into the darkness: seawater had already submerged the train platform and was rising a step every minute or two.
The asteroid 2012 DA14, which will come within about 17,000 miles of Earth on February 15, is about half the size of a football stadium, and in a collision would generate an explosive energy equivalent to 2,500 kilotons of TNT. In comparison, the atomic bomb over Hiroshima that instantly killed more than 70,000 people released “merely” the equivalent of 17 kilotons of TNT.
Seventeen-thousand miles seems like plenty of room, but in cosmic terms, it's an awfully close shave. “Remember, the Earth is a moving target, traveling around the sun at 65,000 miles per hour,” former astronaut Ed Lu said in a public appearance at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research earlier this month. “So [the asteroid] is missing us by only about 14 minutes.”
Just when you thought it was safe to go out of the bunker, there's a fresh wave of doomsday buzz over a purported 12th-century prophecy suggesting that the next pope will be the last pope before the end of the world. St. Malachy's "Prophecy of the Popes " has no credence in the Roman Catholic Church, but its effect could well be longer-lasting than the hype that surrounded the 2012 Maya apocalypse — especially if the papal conclave goes with one of the favored candidates for Benedict XVI's successor.
The text that's been attributed to Malachy came to light in 1595, in a book by Benedictine monk Arnold de Wyon. Supposedly, Malachy experienced a vision of future popes during a trip to Rome in 1139, and wrote down a series of 112 cryptic phrases that described each pope in turn. The text was said to have lain unnoticed in Rome's archives until Wyon published it.
Doomsday fans have found ways to link each phrase to a corresponding pope through the centuries. That includes John Paul II, who is associated with phrase No. 110, "From the labor of the sun," because he was born on the day of a solar eclipse and was entombed on the day of a solar eclipse as well. Benedict XVI, No. 111, is supposedly "glory of the olive" because some members of a branch of the monastic order founded by St. Benedict are known as Olivetans.
Superstorm Sandy was the deadliest hurricane in the northeastern U.S. in 40 years and the second-costliest in the nation's history, according to a report released Tuesday. The storm's effects reached far and wide, according to the National Hurricane Center report. While Sandy visited devastation on the East Coast, principally New Jersey and New York, it created wind gusts as far west as Wisconsin and as far north as Canada and caused water levels to rise from Florida to Maine, the center found.
The hurricane center attributed 72 U.S. deaths directly to Sandy, from Maryland to New Hampshire. That is more than any hurricane to affect the northeastern U.S. since Hurricane Agnes killed 122 people in 1972, according to the center's records covering 1851 to 2010. The report counted at least 87 other deaths that were indirectly tied to Sandy, from causes such as hypothermia due to power outages, carbon monoxide poisoning and accidents during cleanup efforts.
