Lunar eclipse, winter solstice set for Tuesday

There are not many days like Tuesday, Dec. 21, 2010. Take it from people who know – astronomers. There was maybe one day like this Tuesday in the past 2,000 years.

On Tuesday morning, astronomers say, there will be – or depending on when this is read, was – a total eclipse of the moon. And on the very same day, the winter solstice arrives.

The last time the two celestial events occurred within the same calendar day was long before any of our lifetimes. The year, according to Geoff Chester, public affairs officer at the U.S. Naval Observatory, was 1638. Although the solstice does not always occur on the same date each year, the date in 1638 was the same as Tuesday’s – Dec. 21.

Chester said he looked it up, because as the time of the two events drew nearer, people began to make inquiries of him. He said his research took him back to the year A.D. 1.

That seemed to be reasonably far back. He consulted “a number of well-respected sources.” And his finding, essentially was this: “It’s a comparatively rare event.” Although it does not appear to have any cosmic significance.

Few alive today are likely to see a recurrence. The next time the winter solstice and a total lunar eclipse will occur on the same calendar day will be Dec. 21, 2094.

A total lunar eclipse occurs when the Earth blocks the sun’s rays from the face of the moon. The moon is then fully in the shadow cast in space by the Earth.

The absolute midpoint of the eclipse will be at 3:17 EST Tuesday morning, Chester said.

The moon then continues moving through the Earth’s shadow, emerging completely shortly after 5 a.m.

A slight effect known as the penumbral phase may be seen for as much as an hour longer. But it is generally considered too subtle for most people to notice.

The winter solstice, which occurs afterward, is the time when the sun reaches its lowest point in the northern sky.

That is the moment that many people consider to be the start of the winter season. …

via Lunar eclipse, winter solstice set for Tuesday.

How to walk through walls

Imagine being able to walk through a solid wall. That sort of trick might sound far-fetched, but it’s a little closer to reality now that researchers in China have created what they call an “invisible gateway”.

Huanyang Chen at Soochow University, Jiangsu, says that the effect is a bit like “platform nine and three-quarters” – that is, the fictional area of King’s Cross railway station in the Harry Potter books that is only accessible through a secret, illusionary wall. Although the researchers’ current demonstration is based on an electrical circuit for radio waves, Chen claims that it could also work for visible light.

The idea for the invisible gateway stems from so-called transformation optics, which gave us the first invisibility cloak back in 2006. Yet the invisible gateway is almost the opposite of a cloak: rather than bend light round an object to make the object invisible, the device makes an object – a wall – appear that isn’t really there. It is, according to Chen’s group, the first demonstration of illusion optics. …

via How to walk through walls – physicsworld.com.

Bones found on island might be Amelia Earhart’s

Associated Press – The three bone fragments turned up on a deserted South Pacific island that lay along the course Amelia Earhart was following when she vanished. Nearby were several tantalizing artifacts: some old makeup, some glass bottles and shells that had been cut open.

Now scientists at the University of Oklahoma hope to extract DNA from the tiny bone chips in tests that could prove Earhart died as a castaway after failing in her 1937 quest to become the first woman to fly around the world. …

Earhart’s disappearance on July 2, 1937, remains one of the 20th century’s most enduring mysteries. Did she run out of fuel and crash at sea? Did her Lockheed Electra develop engine trouble? Did she spot the island from the sky and attempt to land on a nearby reef? …

Gillespie’s book “Finding Amelia: The True Story of the Earhart Disappearance,” and “Amelia Earhart’s Shoes,” written by four volunteers from the aircraft group, suggest the pair landed on the reef and survived, perhaps for months, on scant food and rainwater.

Gillespie, a pilot, said the aviator would have needed only about 700 feet of unobstructed space to land because her plane would have been traveling only about 55 mph at touchdown.

“It looks like she could have landed successfully on the reef surrounding the island. It’s very flat and smooth,” Gillespie said. “At low tide, it looks like this place is surrounded by a parking lot.” …

via Bones found on island might be Amelia Earhart’s – FoxNews.com.

Study: Living Near Freeways Doubles Infant Autism Risk

The paper, published by researchers from Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, the USC Keck School of Medicine and UC Davis MIND Institute found that children born to parents living within 1,000 feet of a freeway are two times as likely to have autism.

Air pollution is known to have physical and developmental effects on fetuses. However, the authors said the new study is the first to link vehicular pollutants to autism, although direct measurements of pollutants were not made.

“Children born to mothers living within 309 meters of a freeway appeared to be twice as likely to have autism,” said Dr. Heather Volk, the primary author of the study.

via Study: Living Near Freeways Doubles Infant Autism Risk « CBS Los Angeles- News, Sports, Weather, Traffic and the Best of LA.

Soooo, if you are more than 0.19 miles from a freeway, how does the effect drop off? No problems at 1/2 mile from a freeway?

 

Hope for millions as brain study unlocks secrets of Alzheimer’s

Steve Connor – New ways of diagnosing and treating dozens of brain disorders could soon emerge from a pioneering study of the chemical and genetic makeup of the vital microscopic gaps between nerve cells that control all brain functions.

Scientists announced yesterday that they have identified more than a thousand proteins and their related genes which are involved in transmitting electrical messages from one nerve cell to another across the tiny gaps of the brain’s many billions of synapses – switches that control brain activity.

The researchers said the feat could be compared to the deciphering of the human genome, because knowing the chemical and genetic makeup of the synapses will lead to important new insights into the nature of the many brain disorders that have so far defied adequate scientific explanation.

The study identified 1,461 proteins and their genes that make up the so-called “post-synaptic density” of chemicals that control the transmission of each electrical message from one nerve cell to another. The scientists also found that these proteins could be linked directly with 130 brain diseases, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

The post-synaptic density is a complex collection of protein molecules that sticks out from the membrane of the second nerve cell of the synapse which receives the chemically transmitted message from the first nerve cell. Scientists believe that this assemblage of proteins is involved in many if not all major brain diseases. …

via Hope for millions as brain study unlocks secrets of Alzheimer’s – Science, News – The Independent.

Einstein was right, you can be in two places at once

Steve Connor – A device that exists in two different states at the same time, and coincidentally proves that Albert Einstein was right when he thought he was wrong, has been named as the scientific breakthrough of the year.

The machine, consisting of a sliver of wafer-thin metal, is the first man-made device to be governed by the mysterious quantum forces that operate at the level of atoms and sub-atomic particles.

Normal, everyday objects obey the laws of conventional Newtonian physics, named after Sir Isaac Newton, but these rules break down on the sub-atomic scale and a whole new branch of theoretical physics had to be invented to explain what happens on this sub-microscopic level.

Einstein was the first to embrace quantum physics but later rejected it on the grounds that it made everything unpredictable – “God does not play dice with the universe,” he famously stated.

However, a range of effects has been recorded over the past few years that can only be explained by quantum mechanics and in March scientists were able to build the first device that seemed to follow the quantum rules that Einstein was the first to realise applied to light waves.

The breakthrough, recognised by the journal Science as the most significant this year, opens the way to a range of practical developments such as quantum computers that are far faster than conventional processors and which could never be hacked into because they handle and transmit data using an unbreakable form of encryption.

… The breakthrough was achieved by physicists Andrew Cleland and John Martinis from the University of California at Santa Barbara. Their machine consisted of a tiny metal paddle made of semiconductor material just visible to the naked eye. By supercooling the device to just above absolute zero (minus 273C), then raising its energy by a “single quantum”, they made it vibrate by getting thicker and thinner at a frequency of some 6 billion times a second, producing a detectable electric current. They even managed to get it to vibrate in two energy states at once, both a lot and a little – a phenomenon allowed only by the rules of quantum mechanics.

“Physicists still haven’t achieved a two-places-at-once state with a tiny object like this one,” Mr Cho said. “But now that they have reached this simplest state of quantum motion, it seems a whole lot more obtainable.”

via Einstein was right, you can be in two places at once – Science, News – The Independent.

How do japanese multiply??

YouTube – How do japanese multiply??.

FCC set to enact strong rules affecting Internet access

Federal regulators are poised to enact controversial new rules affecting Internet access, marking the government’s strongest move yet to ensure that Facebook updates, Google searches and Skype calls reach consumers’ homes unimpeded.

Under the regulations, companies that carry the Internet into American homes would not be allowed to block Web sites that offer rival services, nor would they be permitted to play favorites by dividing delivery of Internet content into fast and slow lanes.

The rules are set to win passage in a vote Tuesday by the Federal Communications Commission, after a majority of the panel’s five members said they planned to vote in favor of the measure.

The proposal, pushed by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, seeks to add teeth to a principle known as net neutrality, which calls for all legal Internet traffic to be treated equally. It means that a cable company such as Comcast could not slow traffic of Netflix video, while a wireless carrier such as Verizon Wireless could not block competing Web voice services, such as Vonage.  …

via FCC set to enact strong rules affecting Internet access.

Sounds good, right? There is a catch. What sounds like a win for the people turns out to be a win for industry and government. Real net neutrality is good, but according to Al Franken, the FCC is considering a flawed “Net Neutrality” proposal, one that is supported by the largest media corporations in America.

If the FCC allows corporate monopolies to control the Internet, freedom of information will start quickly down hill. Ultimately, your freedom of choice will be lost and you will pay much more for much less.

This is an attack on democracy. The consolidation of media ownership will be the end of the Internet as we know it.  Be informed. Fight back.