Nikola Tesla - The Forgotten Wizard

Water suspended in air?

NASA Baffled by Unexplained Force Acting on Space Probes

Mysteriously, five spacecraft that flew past the Earth have each displayed unexpected anomalies in their motions. These newfound enigmas join the so-called “Pioneer anomaly” as hints that unexplained forces may appear to act on spacecraft.A decade ago, after rigorous analyses, anomalies were seen with the identical Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft as they hurtled out of the solar system. Both seemed to experience a tiny but unexplained constant acceleration toward the sun.

A host of explanations have been bandied about for the Pioneer anomaly. At times these are rooted in conventional science — perhaps leaks from the spacecraft have affected their trajectories. At times these are rooted in more speculative physics — maybe the law of gravity itself needs to be modified.

Now Jet Propulsion Laboratory astronomer John Anderson and his colleagues — who originally helped uncover the Pioneer anomaly — have discovered that five spacecraft each raced either a tiny bit faster or slower than expected when they flew past the Earth en route to other parts of the solar system.

‘Humble and perplexed’

The researchers looked at six deep-space probes — Galileo I and II to Jupiter, the NEAR mission to the asteroid Eros, the Rosetta probe to a comet, Cassini to Saturn, and the MESSENGER craft to Mercury. Each spacecraft flew past the our planet to either gain or lose orbital energy in their quests to reach their eventual targets. In five of the six flybys, the scientists have confirmed anomalies.

“I am feeling both humble and perplexed by this,” said Anderson, who is now working as a retiree. “There is something very strange going on with spacecraft motions. We have no convincing explanation for either the Pioneer anomaly or the flyby anomaly.”

In the one probe the researchers did not confirm a noticeable anomaly with, MESSENGER, the spacecraft approached the Earth at about latitude 31 degrees north and receded from the Earth at about latitude 32 degrees south. “This near-perfect symmetry about the equator seemed to result in a very small velocity change, in contrast to the five other flybys,” Anderson explained — so small no anomaly could be confirmed.

The five other flybys involved flights whose incoming and outgoing trajectories were asymmetrical with each other in terms of their orientation with Earth’s equator. For instance, the NEAR mission approached Earth at about latitude 20 south and receded from the planet at about latitude 72 south. The spacecraft then seemed to fly 13 millimeters per second faster than expected. While this is just one-millionth of that probe’s total velocity, the precision of the velocity measurements was 0.1 millimeters per second, carried out as they were using radio waves bounced off the craft. This suggests the anomaly seen is real — and one needing an explanation.

The fact this effect seems most evident with flybys most asymmetrical with respect to Earth’s equator “suggests that the anomaly is related to Earth’s rotation,” Anderson said. As to whether these new anomalies are linked with the Pioneer anomaly, “I would be very surprised if we have discovered two independent spacecraft anomalies,” Anderson told SPACE.com. “I suspect they are connected, but I really do not know.”

Unbound idea

These anomalies might be effects we see with an object possessing a spacecraft’s mass, between 660 and 2,200 lbs. (300 and 1,000 kg), Anderson speculated.

“Another thing in common between the Pioneer and these flybys is what you would call an unbound orbit around a central body,” Anderson said. “For instance, the Pioneers are flying out of the solar system — they’re not bound to their central body, the sun. For the other flybys, the Earth is the central body. These kinds of orbits just don’t occur very often in nature — it could be when you get into an unbound orbit around a central body, something goes on that’s not in our standard models.”

The researchers are now collaborating with German colleagues to search for possible anomalies in the Rosetta probe’s second flyby of the Earth on November 13.

“We should continue to monitor spacecraft during Earth flybys. We should look carefully at newly recovered Pioneer data for more evidence of the Pioneer anomaly,” Anderson added. “We should think about launching a dedicated mission on an escape trajectory from the solar system, just to look for anomalies in its motion.”

Montana State University physicist Ronald Hellings, who did not participate in this study, said, “There’s definitely something going on. Whether that’s because of new physics or some problem with the model we have is yet to be worked out, as far as I know. A lot of people are trying to look into this.”

Anderson and his colleagues will detail their latest findings in an upcoming issue of the journal Physical Review Letters.

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Space.com

ONCE: Falling Slowly.

This song reminds me that in a parallel Universe, years ago, I took a bus ride for fun. I met and asked a girl out on a date. We went rowing on a lake that weekend. We were in our 20’s. She was a talented musician. We have been together ever since, in college, in love, building our careers, writing songs, making music, having kids, buying a home, saving the world.

Back in this Universe I’ve been fairly happy … but something is missing … because I missed that bus. I think she looks like Gillian Anderson, but that’s just a guess. She is living her life vaguely annoyed with a man she never met, a man who never took her rowing. Now she rows alone, mumbling to herself, “I should be on a bus, not in a boat.”

Xeno’s Daydream of the Humunculiria

Today February 28, 2008, the truth was revealed to me by GOD in a vision. God told me his true nature, and I will tell it to you: God is a sentient colony of microbes in the center of our brains which control everything we do. We are giant robots for them. Our brains exist to amplify their thoughts, our bodies to do their will. They live for millions of years causing our belief that we have immortal souls. They are space travelers causing our belief that we come from the stars. They are almost everywhere, so we believe that God is everywhere and that God is very large. But as microbes, they are invisible to us, as God is invisible. They move to new hosts causing our belief in reincarnation. They control the voices in our heads, causing our certainty that a God listens and responds. They are our souls, our gods, our true selves. They are the Humunculiria.

Meteorite Mysteries

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Five months after a meteorite made an international splash in Peru, experts are suggesting explanations for some of the space rock’s effects - for example, the sickening odor villagers smelled at the crash site, and the bubbles that were seen emanating from the water-filled crater left behind. But a study due to be presented next month also raises fundamental questions about the event. In fact, an international research team declares that the impact “should not have happened” at all.

The Peruvian meteorite impact comes in for a fresh round of scientific scrutiny in a study submitted by researchers from Brown University and institutes in Peru and Uruguay. Just after the impact was reported, some scientists doubted whether a meteorite was actually responsible for the crater - but subsequent analysis proved that a stony space rock was involved (as opposed to a denser iron meteorite).

… Meteorite hunter Michael Farmer, who visited the site last year soon after the impact, has said the sickening odor that villagers said emanated from the crater was most likely caused by sulfurous compounds such as triolite interacting with the ground water - and there’s nothing in the latest study that contradicts that suggestion.

The Peruvian meteorite may be in for another shot at fame: Just last week, Living in Peru reported that Japanese investors are interested in building a space museum near the impact site, and that National Geographic is planning a documentary about the meteorite.

Now to the other space-rock study: Meteorite hunters from the Lunar and Planetary Institute and NASA’s Johnson Space Center reported finding a pair of specimens in 2006 in Antarctica’s Graves Nunataks area.

“These meteorites are not obviously like any other meteorites, so their origin is unclear,” the Lunar and Planetary Institute said in its media advisory. “The mineralogy and chemical composition of these meteorites are so unusual that scientists have been struggling to find the right term to describe them. Numerous parent bodies have been proposed. Could they have come from the moon? From Venus? Scientists are currently debating these issues.”

The researchers behind the study say they’re not finished with their analysis of the rocks, and more findings may emerge at next month’s conference. So stay tuned as the meteorite tales and other mysteries are fully brought to light. - msnbc

Bruce Willis Look Alike Swims 10 Hours to Shore

A fisherman swam for more than 10 hours to find help for the two companions he left behind after their boat sank off the east coast of Australia.

The exhausted swimmer was found on a beach, and coastguards were then able to find one of the men. He had spent 30 hours at sea, clinging to debris. The search continues for the boat’s skipper. Source: BBC

Thirty hours at sea, he clung to debris. A song, I think, it sure should be.

Death Star Hotel in Azerbaijan Is No Moon

 

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This 521-foot-high hotel is coming to Baku, Azerbaijan, either to host a bunch of Imperial forces or obliterate the local population with a giant death ray. They call it “Full Moon” but they are not fooling us: this is a fully armed, fully operational battle station. And it shall be destroyed before it’s too late, with a bunch of small fighters that can escape its turbolasers and drop proton torpedoes down an exhaust port. Or maybe not, if you look at it from its side.

gizmodo

Famed geneticist creating life form that turns CO2 to fuel

A scientist who mapped his genome and the genetic diversity of the oceans said Thursday he is creating a life form that feeds on climate-ruining carbon dioxide to produce fuel.Geneticist Craig Venter disclosed his potentially world-changing “fourth-generation fuel” project at an elite Technology, Entertainment and Design conference in Monterey, California.

“We have modest goals of replacing the whole petrochemical industry and becoming a major source of energy,” Venter told an audience that included global warming fighter Al Gore and Google co-founder Larry Page.

“We think we will have fourth-generation fuels in about 18 months, with CO2 as the fuel stock.”

Simple organisms can be genetically re-engineered to produce vaccines or octane-based fuels as waste, according to Venter. Biofuel alternatives to oil are third-generation. The next step is life forms that feed on CO2 and give off fuel such as methane gas as waste, according to Venter.

“We have 20 million genes which I call the design components of the future,” Venter said. “We are limited here only by our imagination.” His team is using synthetic chromosomes to modify organisms that already exist, not making new life, he said. Organisms already exist that produce octane, but not in amounts needed to be a fuel supply.

“If they could produce things on the scale we need, this would be a methane planet,” Venter said. “The scale is what is critical; which is why we need to genetically design them.” The genetics of octane-producing organisms can be tinkered with to increase the amount of CO2 they eat and octane they excrete, according to Venter.

The limiting part of the equation isn’t designing an organism, it’s the difficulty of extracting high concentrations of CO2 from the air to feed the organisms, the scientist said in answer to a question from Page.

Scientists put “suicide genes” into their living creations so that if they escape the lab, they can be triggered to kill themselves. - afp