Galaxy may have gobs of Earth-size planets

Marc Kaufman – Nobody has seen them yet, but scientists now think there are tens of billions of planets the general size and bulk of Earth in the Milky Way galaxy alone – a startling conclusion based on four years of viewing a small section of the nighttime sky.

The estimate, made by astronomers Andrew Howard and Geoffrey Marcy of the University of California at Berkeley, flows from the logic that the number of small but detectable exoplanets – planets outside Earth’s solar system – is substantially larger than the number of big exoplanets in distant solar systems.

In a paper released Thursday by the journal Science, the two report that based on this galactic preference for smaller planets, they think that almost one-quarter of the stars similar to our sun have Earth-size planets orbiting them.

“This is the first estimate based on actual measurements of the fraction of stars that have Earth-size planets,” said Marcy, who did his observing with Howard at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii.

Their observations and extrapolations say nothing about whether these Earth-size planets will have the characteristics of Earth: its density, a distance from the sun that is just right for liquid water, the fact that it is a rocky structure rather than a gaseous ball.

But Marcy said that with so many Earth-size planets now expected to be orbiting distant suns – something on the order of 50,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 across the universe – the likelihood is high that many are in “habitable zones” where life can theoretically exist. …

via Galaxy may have gobs of Earth-size planets.

Home Grown Terror: Foiled or Faked?

Ponzi Scheme: Mortgages Were Pledged to Multiple Buyers at the Same Time

April Charney – a consumer lawyer with Jacksonville Area Legal Aid – and CNBC’s Dennis Kneale noted in February 2009 that courts have found that some mortgages have been sold again and again to different trusts, when they should have only been sold once.

Kneale explained that that is the reason that two different banks sometimes try to simultaneously foreclose on the same home.

“This is a three to seven trillion dollar Ponzi scheme.”

via Guest Post: Mortgages Were Pledged to Multiple Buyers at the Same Time « naked capitalism.

 

1910 police mugshot of Charles Ponzi.

“A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation that involves promising or paying abnormally high returns (‘profits’) to investors out of the money paid in by subsequent investors, rather than from net revenues generated by any real business.  It is named after Charles Ponzi…One reason that the scheme initially works so well is that early investors – those who actually got paid the large returns – quite commonly reinvest (keep) their money in the scheme (it does, after all, pay out much better than any alternative investment). Thus those running the scheme do not actually have to pay out very much (net) – they simply have to send statements to investors that show how much the investors have earned by keeping the money in what looks like a great place to get a high return. They also try to minimize withdrawals by offering new plans to investors, often where money is frozen for a longer period of time…The catch is that at some point one of three things will happen:

(1) the promoters will vanish, taking all the investment money (less payouts) with them;

(2) the scheme will collapse of its own weight, as investment slows and the promoters start having problems paying out the promised returns (and when they start having problems, the word spreads and more people start asking for their money, similar to a bank run);

(3) the scheme is exposed, because when legal authorities begin examining accounting records of the so-called enterprise they find that many of the ‘assets’ that should exist do not.”

via wikipedia

Methuselah Foundation’s New Organ Prize

Expediting the Solution to Organ Failure:

We challenge scientists to duplicate and successfully transplant a fully functioning new organ made from a patient’s own cells by 2020.

NewOrgan Prize will be awarded to the first scientist to make regenerative organs a reality. The US Department of Health & Human Services has stated, “Regenerative medicine will be the standard of care for replacing organ systems in the body.” This Prize will be the catalyst to speed up the process and make the vision a reality.

History shows us that prizes have proven to be the most powerful tool for inspiring radical scientific breakthroughs. The effort, interest and ingenuity that a prize generates are remarkable. Breakthroughs result along the way and, eventually, go above and beyond the original goal. New organ engineering will require the development of all tissues that build the organ including muscle, nerves, arteries and veins. The possibilities are extraordinary!

The challenges and limitations of the current system for organ replacement are well documented: the agony of waiting for a donor to die; lifelong limitations from immunosuppressant drugs; possible organ rejection. And the reality that many die without receiving a new organ or even qualifying to be considered.

A System for the Future: NewOrganomics

We envision a world where everyone who needs an organ gets an organ. And, in the Methuselah Foundation quest for everyone to live a long healthy life, we advocate a system that provides new organs and long-term health. We call that system NewOrganomics.

The promise of NewOrganomics is to provide a new organ to any patient in need, not from a donor or from the black market but rather built from their own cells. NewOrgan Prize was created to reach this ambitious goal. We need your support to make it happen. Be Organomical, donate today.

via Methuselah Foundation – Welcome to Methuselah Foundation.

China unveils powerful, 2.5-petaflop supercomputer

Agam Shah – China is unveiling a new supercomputer on Thursday that incorporates thousands of graphics chips and can reach a sustained performance of 2.5 petaflops, making it one of the fastest systems in the world. …

Located at the National Supercomputing Center in Tianjin, the Tianhe-1A supercomputer has 7,168 Nvidia Tesla M2050 GPUs (graphics processing units), each with 448 processor cores. It also has 14,336 six-core Intel Xeon CPUs.

The supercomputer was built by China’s National University of Defense Technology and is “the fastest system in China and in the world today,” Nvidia claimed in a press release.

Besides a sustained performance of 2.5 petaflops measured by the Linpack benchmark, it has a theoretical performance of 4.669 petaflops when all the GPUs are operational, according to an Nvidia spokesman. The benchmarks were provided by the National Supercomputing Center in China, he said.

China has been moving up the supercomputing ranks in recent years. The last Top500 list of the fastest supercomputers, issued in June, lists the Nebulae supercomputer in Shenzhen as the world’s second fastest. That system also combines Intel CPUs and Nvidia GPUs.

The fastest supercomputer in the world according to the June list is the Jaguar system at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which can deliver 1.76 petaflops of sustained performance.

The Tianhe-1A was announced two weeks before the release of the next Top500 list, so it is too early to say if it will be the fastest system on the list. …

via China unveils powerful, 2.5-petaflop supercomputer.

Carter’s weird science

Even with all of the press coverage of Jimmy Carter’s latest book, “White House Diary,” a strange and interesting nugget of history went ignored: Carter, as president, was enthralled by and impressed with the Central Intelligence Agency’s use of parapsychology in intelligence gathering (the field and practice of parapsychology explores various psychic abilities).

Consider this entry in Carter’s diary, from April 11, 1979:

“CIA briefing on unhappiness of King Hussein of Jordan [about agreements between Israel and Egypt], Idi Amin’s government about to fall, and that a plane had crashed in Zambia. An American parapsychologist had been able to pinpoint the site of the crash. We’ve had several reports of this parapsychology working; one discovered the map coordinates of a site and accurately described a camouflaged missile test site. Both we and the Soviets use these parapsychologists on occasion to help us with sensitive intelligence matters, and the results are unbelievable.”

(Carter alluded to another discussion about parapsychology in the White House situation room on May 8, 1980).

Writing in the present day, the former president reflected back on that entry in the book.

“The proven results of these exchanges between our intelligence services and parapsychologists raise some of the most intriguing and unanswerable questions of my presidency,” Carter notes in “Diary.” “They defy logic, but the facts are undeniable.”

via Carter’s weird science – PATRICK GAVIN | POLITICO CLICK.

Because no one would lie to a president about methods….

One EMP burst and the world goes dark

Dan Vergano – …. There is talk of catastrophe ahead, depending on whom you believe, because of the threat of an electromagnetic pulse triggered by either a supersized solar storm or terrorist A-bomb, both capable of disabling the electric grid that powers modern life.

Electromagnetic pulses (EMP) are oversized outbursts of atmospheric electricity. Whether powered by geomagnetic storms or by nuclear blasts, their resultant intense magnetic fields can induce ground currents strong enough to burn out power lines and electrical equipment across state lines.

The threat has even become political fodder, drawing warnings from former House speaker Newt Gingrich, a likely presidential contender.

“We are not today hardened against this,” he told a Heritage Foundation audience last year. “It is an enormous catastrophic threat.”

Meanwhile, in Congress, a “Grid Act” bill aimed at the threat awaits Senate action, having passed in the House of Representatives.

Fear is evident. With the sun’s 11-year solar cycle ramping up for its stormy maximum in 2012, and nuclear concerns swirling about Iran and North Korea, a drumbeat of reports and blue-ribbon panels center on electromagnetic pulse scenarios.

“We’re taking this seriously,” says Ed Legge of the Edison Electric Institute in Washington, which represents utilities. He points to a North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC) report in June, conducted with the Energy Department, that found pulse threats to the grid “may be much greater than anticipated.”

There are “some important reasons for concern,” says physicist Yousaf Butt of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass. “But there is also a lot of fluff.”

At risk are the more than 200,000 miles of high-voltage transmission lines that cross North America, supplying 1,800 utilities the power for TVs, lights, refrigerators and air conditioners in homes, and for the businesses, hospitals and police stations that take care of us all.

“The electric grid’s vulnerability to cyber and to other attacks is one of the single greatest threats to our national security,” Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., said in June as he introduced the bill to the House of Representatives.

via One EMP burst and the world goes dark – USATODAY.com.

When the big one hits, that’s when you have to watch out for the invaders. Have a safe place where you can see the invaders (aliens, bunian, another country, the secret govt, who cares?) coming for miles,  two weeks of water on hand, food that won’t spoil, lots of ice in the freezer, cash, decoys, a radio, personal protection, and a plan to contact your friends and relatives.  Drills are fun. Try living with zero gas and electricity for a three days.  It can be an eye-opener. When the lights go out, your EMP attack plan springs into action.

Dream recording device ‘possible’ researcher claims

Pallab Ghosh – A US researcher has said he plans to electronically record and interpret dreams.

Writing in the journal Nature, researchers said they have developed a system capable of recording higher-level brain activity.

“We would like to read people’s dreams,” says the lead scientist Dr Moran Cerf.

The aim is not to interlope, but to extend our understanding of how and why people dream.

For centuries, people have been fascinated by dreams and what they might mean; in ancient Egypt for example, they were thought to be messages from the gods.

More recently, dream analysis has been used by psychologists as a tool to understand the unconscious mind. But the only way to interpret dreams was to ask people about the subject of their dreams after they had woken up.

The eventual aim of Dr Cerf’s project is to develop a system that would enable psychologists to corroborate people’s recollections of their dream with an electronic visualisation of their brain activity.

“There’s no clear answer as to why humans dream,” according to Dr Cerf. “And one of the questions we would like to answer is when do we actually create this dream?”

Dr Cerf makes his bold claim based on an initial study that he says suggests that the activity of individual brain cells, or neurons, are associated with specific objects or concepts.

He found, for example, that when a volunteer was thinking of Marilyn Monroe, a particular neuron lit up.

By showing volunteers a series of images, Dr Cerf and his colleagues were able to identify neurons for a wide range of objects and concepts – which they used to build up a database for each patient. These included Bill and Hilary Clinton, the Eiffel Tower and celebrities. …

via BBC News – Dream recording device ‘possible’ researcher claims.

What happens if you completely knock out someone’s Marilyn Monroe neuron?

US navy completes successful test on boat powered by algae

Suzanne Goldenberg – It looked like a pretty ordinary day on the water at the US naval base in Norfolk, Virginia: a few short bursts of speed, a nice tail wind, some test manoeuvres against an enemy boat.

But the 49ft gunboat had algae-based fuel in the tank in a test hailed by the navy yesterday as a milestone in its creation of a new, energy-saving strike force.

The experimental boat, intended for use in rivers and marshes and eventually destined for oil installations in the Middle East, operated on a 50/50 mix of algae-based fuel and diesel. “It ran just fine,” said Rear Admiral Philip Cullom, who directs the navy’s sustainability division.

The tests, conducted on Friday, are part of a broader drive within the navy to run 50% of its fleet on a mix of renewable fuels and nuclear power by 2020. The navy currently meets about 16% of its energy and fuel needs from nuclear power, with the rest from conventional sources.

The navy plans to roll out its first green strike force, a group of about 10 ships, submarines and planes running on a mix of biofuels and nuclear power, in 2012, with deployment in the field scheduled for 2016.

The green trend runs across all military services. The air force has been testing jet engines on a mix of conventional fuels and camelina, a crop similar to flax, and the Marine Corps recently sent a company to Afghanistan’s Helmand province equipped with portable solar panels and solar chargers for their radio equipment.

Fuels made from algae oil burn more cleanly than fossil fuel, but preventing climate change is not a major factor in the Pentagon’s calculations. “Our programme to go green is about combat capability, first and foremost,” Cullom said. “We no longer want to be held hostage by one form of energy such as petroleum.”

Over the last year, the Pentagon has become increasingly vocal about the burden of running oil convoys in battle zones. Fossil fuel is the number one import to US troops in Afghanistan, and the slow and lumbering convoys of oil tankers are an obvious target for enemy combatants. …

via US navy completes successful test on boat powered by algae | Environment | The Guardian.

Hexed: Radio morning show hires witch to curse LeBron James

Rover, host of the syndicated Rover’s Morning Glory program hired a witch to place a curse on Miami Heat star LeBron James the morning of the Heat’s season opener, Tuesday, October 26. Rover says the curse is payback for the insensitive, pompous way James abandoned the Cleveland Cavaliers.

The witch, Samhain and assistant witch Lady Magick used bones, blood, and James’ Miami Heat jersey to place a hex on the star live on the air. Rover asked all Cleveland-area listeners of the show, which is based at 100.7 WMMS-FM, to simultaneously focus all their negative energy towards James during the ceremony.

“A broken leg, hand or other debilitating injury would be the best outcome,” says Rover. “At the very least a sordid sexual misconduct accusation against LeBron would be alright I suppose.”

LeBron James was widely criticized for the way in which he declared his departure from the Cavaliers, announcing it on a live television broadcast on ESPN titled The Decision.

“The city of Cleveland has been cursed for decades with losing sports franchises,” notes Rover. “Now we’re going on the offensive to curse others. It may not help our teams win, but it will sure make us feel better.”

The last time a major league Cleveland sports team won a championship was in 1964 when the Cleveland Browns won the NFL Championship. In 2004 ESPN named Cleveland the most tortured sports city in America.

via Hexed: Radio morning show hires witch to curse LeBron James – 19 Action News|Cleveland, OH|Breaking News, Weather, Exclusives.

 

Now that he knows, he can just get a counter-hex.  One simple protection spell by any competent witch would do the trick.  These things only work if you don’t publicize them.