Tsunami warning issued for New Zealand after 8.3 Pacific quake

The tsunami generated in the Pacific is predicted to hit New Zealand’s East Cape at 9.44am and will be approximiately one metre high.

Samoan reports say the wave that hit in Apia was 0.7 of a metre while the second, larger wave in Pago Pago was measured at 1.7 metres.

Most low lying coastal areas of Apia have been affected with damage to many homes but there are no reports of deaths or injuries at this time.

Sea level readings indicated a tsunami was generated in the Pacific and Warwick Smith, senior seismologist at GNS, told Breakfast that if there is a tsunami, it will hit the East Cape first at 9.44am.

It would then hit Gisborne at 10.00am, Napier at 10.40am, Wellington at 10.50am and Auckland at 11.12am.The warning is in effect for American Samoa, Samoa, Niue Island, the Wallis and Futuna Islands, the Tokelau atolls, the Cook Islands, Tuvalu, Kiribati, the Kermadec Islands, the Baker and Howland Islands, Jarvis Island, French Polynesia and the Palmyra Islands, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre said.

New Zealand’s Ministry of Civil Defence Director, John Hamilton, says the Ministry has alerted the country’s regional Civil Defence Emergency Management CDEM Groups, Police, Fire Service, Ministry of Health, Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet and other government agencies, and media.

The Ministry has activated the National Crisis Management Centre and is co-ordinating central government response.

The Civil Defence Emergency Management sector is activating its emergency plans. Regional Civil Defence Emergency Management Groups are working urgently with local authorities, local emergency services and local media to warn and if necessary evacuate coastal areas at risk. – co.nz

Adolf Hitler suicide story questioned after tests reveal skull is a woman’s

Adolf Hitler’s suicide in his Berlin bunker has been called into question after American researchers claimed that a bullet-punctured skull fragment long believed to belong to the Nazi dictator is, in fact, that of an unknown woman.

The four-inch skull fragment has a hole where a bullet reportedly passed through Hitler’s left temple when he shot himself and is kept in Russia’s federal archives along with what are said to be his jawbones. Together, they are all that is left of Hitler’s body, the charred remains of which Soviet forces first recovered in 1945. For years, the Russians have held up the artefacts as proof that Soviet troops found Hitler’s body in the ruins of Berlin and that he died on April 30 when he shot himself just after taking cyanide.

But a History Channel documentary programme broadcast in the US called Hitler’s Escape claims the skull fragment belongs to a woman under 40 and not Hitler, who was 56 when he died. It quotes Nick Bellantoni, an archaeologist and bone specialist who took DNA samples from the skull in Moscow and had them tested at the University of Connecticut. He and his colleagues are sceptical that the skull fragment could belong to Eva Braun, Hitler’s long-time companion, since she is thought to have committed suicide by cyanide rather than with a gun.

The findings are likely to revive conspiracy theories suggesting that Hitler did not die in 1945 but survived and fled to South America or elsewhere. Proponents of that theory believe Soviet troops found only his body double.

via Adolf Hitler suicide story questioned after tests reveal skull is a woman’s – Telegraph.

World’s tallest man on vacation

Sultan Kosen, the tallest man in the world, has taken his second international holiday, leaving his native Turkey to visit Austria, where he reflected on the problems of being 8 feet, one inch high.

The 27-year-old farmer – whose towering status has been certified by Guinness World Records – signed hundreds of autographs and shook thousands of hands at a sun-kissed gathering of record holders in Prater park.

“I don’t consider myself a star, but rather as a champion because I am the tallest,” said Kosen, who surged in height from the age of 10 due to a tumour that caused too much growth hormone to be released from his pituitary gland.

“The advantages of being so tall are balanced by the inconveniences,” he said, such as “the difficulty in finding clothes that fit and the acrobatics involved in getting into a taxi.”

Kosen was in London earlier this month on his first trip ever outside Turkey, where his four siblings are all normal-sized.

Also appearing at the Vienna Recordia event on Sunday was Austrian strongman Franz Muellner, who set a world record for car-flipping as he overturned a red sedan eight times in five minutes.

via World’s tallest man goes on holiday – Telegraph.

Scientists lay bare magic secret

Scientists have revealed one of magic’s most closely guarded secrets – how a magician makes things disappear.

Researchers from Edinburgh University said illusions happen when blind spots prevent us from seeing change before our eyes.

When our eyes shift focus for just a few milliseconds, it is enough for us to lose our sight.

This is too short for us to notice, but long enough to miss changes in visual scenes.

The research team carried out experiments in which people looking at pictures often failed to detect deliberate alterations, such as objects becoming bigger or disappearing.

Prof John Henderson of the School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences said:  “We think our eyes show us the world in sharp detail all the time, but in fact this is not the case.

“Our studies show that our eyes do, in fact, miss a great deal.

“Our research gives us insight into how people see the world and ultimately how the brain processes information.”

- via bbc

Schrodinger’s Tardigrade may be first life form to prove multiple universe theory

One of the classical problems in quantum mechanics concerns a man and his feline companion. The man has placed his cat in an opaque tank and is slowing pumping it full of poison. Now until the man opens the tank and looks inside, he cannot be sure whether the cat is dead or alive. That is to say, the cat is both dead and alive at the same time. Impossible but such is the nature of the problem that faced this man. The man’s name is Erwin Schrodinger and the problem is that of his Uncertainty Principle. // For nearly a century, his problem has remained a quixotic quest for physicists. Particle physics has always held that matter can only exist at one state in one time. That is why particles are classified as moving with an up or down spin but nothing in between. In recent years that rule has been bent with the superposition of atoms and other nonliving things. Superposition is the term for an object that is not being observed that exists as both possibilities: up and down, dead and alive. This allows physicists to observe the matter in two different states at the same time. However, thus far it has only been done with non-living things. A life-form has never been superimposed. Now, one physicist says he may have an answer.

Oriol Romero-Isart is at the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Physics in Garching in Germany. Along with his team he is proposing a “Schrodinger’s virus” experiment that would follow the same general principles of Schrodinger’s Cat. Using an electromagnetic field created by a laser, the virus would be trapped in a vacuum. Then, using another laser, the virus will be slowed down until it lies motionless in its lowest possible energy state.

Now that the virus is fixed, a single photon is used to put the virus into a superposition of two states, moving and non-moving. Up until the point is measured it is in both states. Only after a measurement is it found to be in one state and one alone. The team has suggested that the tobacco mosaic virus be used. The virus is rod-shaped and measures 50 nanometers wide and approximately 1 micrometer long. There is debate however, whether the virus can truly be classified as “alive.” However the scientists are confident that the treatment could be extended to tiny micro-organisms such as tardigrades who can survive in vacuum for days, making them suitable for the “Schrodinger treatment.”

However, physicists are doubtful about the experiment’s results. Martin Plenio of Imperial College in London says that there is little reason that a virus would behave any differently than a similarly-sized inanimate object. However, there are possibilities in testing large objects such as viruses and molecules. This is because quantum mechanics says that macroscopic objects can enter superposition however, it has never happened. Through these studies, Plenio believes that we will finally be able to bridge the divide between the quantum world and our own macroscopic world. – physorg

Tardigrades are polyextremophiles and are able to survive in extreme environments that would kill almost any other animal. Some can survive temperatures of -273°C, close to absolute zero ^[4], temperatures as high as 151 °C (303 °F), 1,000 times more radiation than other animals such as humans^[5], nearly a decade without water, and even the vacuum of space.^[6] – wikipedia

Beatle’s essay found 50 years on

An essay written by Sir Paul McCartney as a 10-year-old has been found after lying undiscovered in Liverpool’s Central Library for more than 50 years.

Years before the Beatles received their MBEs, he beat hundreds of other school children to win a prize for his 1953 essay marking the Queen’s coronation.

In neat handwriting, he refers to “the lovely young Queen Elizabeth”.

In 2013, the library will display the essay – found in a scrapbook – to mark the 60th anniversary of the coronation.

Thought to be one of the earliest surviving written works by Sir Paul, the essay gave him an early taste of appearing in public.

Liverpool’s Lord Mayor presented him with the prize – despite the work having been marked down for grammatical errors.

McCartney’s neat writing has the same curly ends on capital letters which he used later on the “B” of “Beatles” on the group’s drum skin.

The schoolboy compares the happy scenes expected outside Buckingham Palace with the coronation of William the Conqueror nine centuries earlier, when a massacre of Saxons took place.

He declares that Britain’s “present day royalty rules with affection rather than force”.

via BBC NEWS | UK | Beatle’s essay found 50 years on.

Paul has fantastic handwriting.  Follow the BBC news link above for the video.

John Was Right: Beatles Top Jesus, so does Pizza

The Beatles really became bigger than Jesus when more people searched for the band than the son of God on Google over the last month.

Graph showing the relative popularity of the search terms Beatles and Jesus on Google over the past 30 days

More than forty years after John Lennon invoked the ire of Christians by claiming his band were bigger than Jesus, he has been proved right by an analysis of search terms on the Google search engine.

In the last four weeks more computer users have typed in the search word “Beatles” on the Google website than “Jesus”. The popularity of The Beatles has increased substantially during September thanks to the re-release of all of their albums digitally-remastered.

The last month also saw the release of the video game The Beatles Rock Band, which allows players to pretend to be Paul, John, George or Ringo by playing along to their songs on plastic instruments, while watching cartoon versions of the band on a screen.

In March 1966 Lennon caused uproar when he told the Evening Standard: “I do not know what will go first, rock’n'roll or Christianity … we’re more popular than Jesus now”.

Across America, angry Beatlemaniacs burned their Fab Four vinyl in protest and Lennon was forced to issue a rambling apology: “I wasn’t saying whatever they’re saying I was saying. I’m sorry I said it really. I never meant it to be a lousy anti-religious thing. I apologise if that will make you happy. I still don’t know quite what I’ve done. I’ve tried to tell you what I did do but if you want me to apologise, if that will make you happy, then OK, I’m sorry.”

Computer users can find out which topics people are searching for on Google by using the Google trends website, which allows you to analyse in detail the words people are typing in from different countries and different time periods.

Though the graph clearly shows that The Beatles caught the imagination of more people during September than Jesus did, video games experts point out that The Beatles Rock Band has not fared as well in the shops as expected with rival music game Guitar Hero 5 outselling the Fab Four’s version.

- via telegraph

Also topping Jesus at least for a while in 2009: Michael Jackson.  For you South Park fans, Santa does not beat Jesus, even at his strongest time of year.

But people, you may want to sit down for this… I think you need to know the truth now … Okay, I’m just going to say it….  pizza has been consistently more popular than Jesus Christ for the last five years in a row.

I am so sorry. I know this must be hard for you to accept. But, take heart! Xeno’s First Virtual Pizza Church will be opening soon on a web browser near you.

Glaciers of the world synchronized

Results of a new study add evidence that climate swings in the northern hemisphere over the past 12,000 years have been tightly linked to changes in the tropics.

The findings, published this week in the journal Science, suggest that a prolonged cold spell that caused glaciers in Europe and North America to creep forward several hundred years ago may have affected climate patterns as far south as Peru, causing tropical glaciers there to expand, too. …

Most of the world’s glaciers are now retreating, as manmade greenhouse gas levels rise.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that global temperatures may climb another 1.1 to 6.4 degrees Celsius by this century’s end.

“If the current dramatic warming projections are correct, we have to face the possibility that the glaciers may soon disappear,” said Joerg Schaefer, a geochemist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO) and co-author of the paper.

In a warmer world, regions that depend on glaciers for drinking water, farming and hydropower will need to come up with strategies to adapt….

Human civilization arose during fairly stable temperatures since the end of the last ice age, about 12,000 years ago. But research shows that even during this time glaciers fluctuated in large and sometimes surprising ways.

Most of the world’s glaciers are now retreating, as manmade greenhouse gas levels rise.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that global temperatures may climb another 1.1 to 6.4 degrees Celsius by this century’s end.

“If the current dramatic warming projections are correct, we have to face the possibility that the glaciers may soon disappear,” said Joerg Schaefer, a geochemist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO) and co-author of the paper.

In a warmer world, regions that depend on glaciers for drinking water, farming and hydropower will need to come up with strategies to adapt.

Recent developments in a technique called surface exposure dating have allowed scientists to place far more precise dates on glacial fluctuations during recent times than was previously possible.

When glaciers advance, they drag rocks and dirt with them. When they recede, ridges of debris called moraines are left behind, and the newly exposed deposits are bombarded by cosmic rays passing through Earth’s atmosphere.

The rays react with the rock and over time form tiny amounts of the rare chemical isotope beryllium-10. By measuring the buildup of this isotope in glacial rocks, scientists can calculate when the glaciers receded.

Using this technique, the authors showed that glaciers in southern Peru moved at times similar to those in the northern hemisphere.

- via Eureka Alert

Superheavy Element 114 Confirmed: A Stepping Stone to the Island of Stability

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have been able to confirm the production of the superheavy element 114, ten years after a group in Russia, at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, first claimed to have made it. The search for 114 has long been a key part of the quest for nuclear science’s hoped-for Island of Stability.

Heino Nitsche, head of the Heavy Element Nuclear and Radiochemistry Group in Berkeley Lab’s Nuclear Science Division (NSD) and a professor of chemistry at the University of California at Berkeley, and Ken Gregorich, a senior staff scientist in NSD, led the team that independently confirmed the production of the new element, which was first published by the Dubna Gas Filled Recoil Separator group.

Using an instrument called the Berkeley Gas-filled Separator (BGS) at Berkeley Lab’s 88-Inch Cyclotron, the researchers were able to confirm the creation of two individual nuclei of element 114, each a separate isotope having 114 protons but different numbers of neutrons, and each decaying…

The researchers identified the two isotopes as ²⁸⁶114 (114 protons and 172 neutrons) and ²⁸⁷114 (114 protons and 173 neutrons). The former, ²⁸⁶114, decayed in about a tenth of a second by emitting an alpha particle (2 protons and 2 neutrons, a helium nucleus) – thus becoming a “daughter” nucleus of element 112 – which subsequently spontaneously fissioned into smaller nuclei. The latter,²⁸⁷114, decayed in about half a second by emitting an alpha particle to form 112, which also then emitted an alpha particle to form daughter element 110, before spontaneously fissioning into smaller nuclei.

The Berkeley Group’s success in finding these two 114 nuclei and tracking their decay depended on sophisticated methods of detection, data collection, and concurrent data analysis. After passing through the BGS, the candidate nucleus enters a detector chamber. If a candidate element 114 atom is detected, and is subsequently seen to decay by alpha-particle emission, the cyclotron beam instantly shuts off so further decay events can be recorded without background interference. …

“One surprise was that the 114 nuclei had much smaller cross sections – were much less likely to form – than the Dubna group reported,” Nitsche says. “We expected to get about six in our eight-day experiment but only got two. Nevertheless, the decay modes, lifetimes, and energies were all consistent with the Dubna reports and amply confirm their achievement.”

Says Gregorich, “Based on the ideas of the 1960s, we thought when we got to element 114 we would have reached the Island of Stability. More recent theories suggest enhanced stability at other proton numbers, perhaps 120, perhaps 126. The work we’re doing now will help us decide which theories are correct and how we should modify our models.”

Nitsche adds, “During the last 20 years, many relatively stable isotopes have been discovered that lie between the known heavy element isotopes and the Island of Stability – essentially they can be considered as ‘stepping stones’ to this island. The question is, how far does the Island extend – from 114 to perhaps 120 or 126? And how high does it rise out the Sea of Instability.”…
via Superheavy Element 114 Confirmed: A Stepping Stone to the Island of Stability « Berkeley Lab News Center.

Surprising element 114 results eh?  I wonder if Bob Lazar was right about element 115.

The reactor is a closed system which uses the Element 115 as its fuel. The element is also the source of the gravity-A wave which is amplified for space/time distortion and travel.

Don’t understand “Island of Stability”? Quick review:

An isotope is a variant on a basic element, a substance made of atoms with a different number of neutrons than is typical. Except for hydrogen, every atomic nucleus in normal matter is made of both protons and neutrons; the only question is how many of each there are. Typically, the number of protons and neutrons is the same. In an isotope, this balance is frequently broken. For example, ²³⁸U, the most common state of uranium, has three more neutrons than ²³⁵U, the form used in nuclear weapons.

A lack of necessary neutrons makes a nucleus unstable. Protons in the nucleus are positively charged, meaning they repel each other. The presence of neutrons is necessary to separate these protons slightly, making the configuration stable. When the configuration is unstable, nuclear decay can result, turning the atoms into showers of radioactive particles.

The rate at which the isotope decays is given by its half-life, the interval after which half of the material breaks down. Half-life varies between a fraction of a second and many times longer than the age of the universe. Some isotopes, like Helium-3, are not radioactive. – wizegeek

Wikipedia says it nicely:

Isotopes are different types of atoms (nuclides) of the same chemical element, each having a different atomic mass (mass number).^[1] Isotopes of an element have nuclei with the same number of protons (the same atomic number) but different numbers of neutrons. Therefore, isotopes of the same element have different mass numbers (number of nucleons). For example, carbon-12, carbon-13 and carbon-14 are three isotopes of the element carbon with mass numbers 12, 13 and 14. Carbon has atomic number 6 so each of its isotopes has 6 protons. The neutron numbers in these isotopes are therefore 12-6 = 6, 13-6 = 7, and 14-6 = 8 respectively. – wiki

Carbon is element 6, because six protons are what make carbon carbon. Copy?  Element 114 has 114 protons in its nucleus. With 114 protons and 173 neutrons, element 114 decayed to element 112 in about half a second by emitting an alpha-particle (two protons and two neutrons).

Something like gold is made up of the same protons and neutrons as lead or any other element. What makes gold have the properties of gold is just the number of protons.  If an element’s number of protons changes, it becomes another element. Therefore, lead can become gold.

Transmutation of lead into gold isn’t just theoretically possible – it has been achieved! There are reports that Glenn Seaborg, 1951 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, succeeded in transmuting a minute quantity of lead (possibly en route from bismuth, in 1980) into gold. There is an earlier report (1972) in which Soviet physicists at a nuclear research facility near Lake Baikal in Siberia accidentally discovered a reaction for turning lead into gold when they found the lead shielding of an experimental reactor had changed to gold. Today particle accelerators routinely transmute elements. – about.com

Tip: If you want to spend the tremendous amount of money and energy it takes to make gold, remember this:

Since there is only one stable gold isotope, ¹⁹⁷Au, nuclear reactions must create this isotope in order to produce usable gold. – wiki

Gesundheit? Sneezing fetish lands man in jail

The Commerce Police Department has taken an elderly Hopkins County man into custody and are preparing to charge him with aggravated assault, after he allegedly attacked a female store clerk by blowing a powdery substance in her face, twice.

The reason why the man did it is truly unusual, according to Commerce Police Chief Kerry Crews.

“In my entire career I’ve never heard of anything like this,” Crews said. “I’ve checked with my detectives and they haven’t heard of anything like it either.”

Officers were called to Commerce Hardware and Feed on Monday regarding a customer that blew a white powdery substance in an employees face. The employee was checking the suspect out and when he handed his check to her, he blew the substance in her face. She turned away to process his check and when she turned back to him, he did it a second time, waited in the store for a few minutes then left.

Crews said Investigator Steve Scott was able to identify the suspect and subsequently interview him regarding this offense. The substance in the incident turned out to be white pepper.

“We found out he’s got a problem,” Crews said. “He becomes aroused by females sneezing.”

Crews said the nature of the incident could not be considered as a sexual assault. However, as the employee was taken to Hunt Regional Hospital in Commerce for an irritated throat and arm, the suspect was arrested for aggravated assault causing serious bodily Injury.

via The Herald Banner, Greenville, TX – Gesundheit? Sneezing fetish lands man in jail.

Okay son, just relax now. I want you to look at these photos and tell me how they make you feel. Do you feel you are witnessing a simple sneeze? Or do you, rather, feel you are getting an illicit peek at how the particular woman’s face would appear as she reaches the height of passion?