spooly ,Australian SKA project - AuSKA
Rudd has been lobbying senior officials to back the nation’s candidacy. Meeting with U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in Washington, he put forward Australia’s case, and is likely to repeat this in New York, Brussels, Bucharest, London and Beijing.
http://www.thewest.com.au/default.aspx?MenuID=77&ContentID=65521
Mr Rudd said WA’s bid — centred on Boolardy Station, 300km northeast of Geraldton — was being taken so seriously that the Government had asked New Zealand to consider building linked radio dishes to improve data collection. “The way in which this technology works is the wider the geographical span the better the capture,” the PM said.
Dr Thomas, one of 19 high-profile expatriates to be invited for a working dinner with the PM at the Australian Ambassador’s residence, said the SKA project would be a massive boon for Australia and WA.
“If that were to come to Australia, the face of Australia 20 years from now would be permanently and irrevocably changed for the better,” he said. “Australia is a prime contender for it, for a number of reasons: it’s got the economic wherewithal to do it, it’s got the intellectual capital to do it, it’s got the infrastructure you need to run that large kind of project. More than anything, it’s got a high degree of political stability that you need for running a long-term project like that.”
reminds me of that joke when we had the lunar eclipse ... (red moon etc)then we were hit by a "rock" the size of Mars..
pat,Makes you think who's watching and from where.
The images show trackable objects in orbit around Earth, with at least 12,000 objects doing their rounds.
Meanwhile two of NASA's satellites have captured amazing images of the Sun "belching" out debris and ripping the tail of a comet, the BBC reports.
In a process known as Coronal Mass Ejections - or less informally as solar burps - billions of tons of hydrogen and helium can be hurled into space.
While the Earth is somewhat protected by its magnetic field these eruptions can still knock out satellite communications equipment, control gear on aircraft and even power grids.
But a comet was not so lucky, a scientific conference in Vienna was told yesterday, with the Sun's emissions apparently shearing the tail off
Well maybe it isI certainly agree that the sky is not falling...
In the Australian outback Mavis Malbunka tells her grandchildren an ancient Aboriginal tale that explains the creation of Tnorala (also called Gosses Bluff, in background). Eight women once danced across the night sky, the story goes, but one grew weary of carrying her infant. She set down the baby in its wooden carrier, which rolled off its perch and plummeted to Earth. Scientists say that an asteroid or comet impact formed this outcrop””a remnant of a larger crater, now eroded””some 140 million years ago. Science and legend share one central insight: Something sudden and violent happened here long ago””and it changed the face of the planet.
I'm not sure if I'd like to know. I think we got no chance of stopping and asteriod. Imagine the panicSo Pat it seems that Apophis is pulled closer to Earth on each pass.On a time scale these large collisions with Earth are rare though will happen again at some time.I suppose we have to place some faith in the telescopes exploring the skies for warnings of impending large collisions.Long time.No sweat.
I'm not sure if I'd like to know. I think we got no chance of stopping and asteriod. Imagine the panicTime for some Mad Max
A rare event has given astronomers a great view of a binary asteroid system. Tonight, asteroid 2008 BT18 passed 1.4 million miles from Earth, shining like a 13th magnitude star. Before July 7th, astronomers believed 2008 BT18 was "just another" near-Earth asteroid, but then the Arecibo radio telescope obtained a "delay-Doppler" image of the asteroid and found it in fact had a binary partner.
There are some pretty sci-fi ideas about taking on an asteroid. I guess it will be just like the movies Armageddon or Deep Impact.Dunno Pat, given enough time, say 1-2 years from impact would be plenty to nudge it off course.
The idea would not be to stop it with a bomb, but gently nudge it off it`s trajectory....some bizzarre ideas!
If anything was to keep me awake at night it would be a comet, they only start to show themselves inside the orbit of Jupiter .... we`d be stuffed, not enough time.
A couple of days ago, a binary asteroid system came close ... if you consider1.4 million miles to be close
http://www.universetoday.com/2008/07/14/binary-asteroid-glides-past-earth/
Polar Reversal
Change in polarity of Earth's magnetic field. Like all magnets, Earth's magnetic field has two opposing regions, or poles, positioned approximately near geographical North and South Poles. During a period of normal polarity the region of attraction corresponds with the North Pole. Today, a compass needle, like other magnetic materials, aligns itself parallel to the magnetizing force and points to the North Pole. During a period of reversed polarity, the region of attraction would change to the South Pole and the needle of a compass would point south.
Studies of the magnetism retained in rocks at the time of their formation (like small compasses frozen in time) have shown that the polarity of the magnetic field has reversed repeatedly throughout geological time.
The reason for polar reversals is not known. Although the average time between reversals over the last 10 million years has been 250,000 years, the rate of reversal has changed continuously over geological time. The most recent reversal was 780,000 years ago; scientists have no way of predicting when the next reversal will occur. The reversal process probably takes a few thousand years. Dating rocks using distinctive sequences of magnetic reversals is called magnetic stratigraphy.
And where you gonn'a be when this happens?
wiki said:The Harmonic Convergence was a loosely organized new age spiritual event that occurred on August 16 and August 17, 1987, when groups of people gathered in various sacred sites and "mystical" places all over the world to usher in a new era. The date was based primarily on the Maya calendar, but was also affected by interpretations of European and Asian astrology. It also marked a time in astronomy when a number of planets in our solar system came into alignment with one another.
The Harmonic Convergence was supposed to be a global awakening to love and unity through divine transformation. It was initiated in 1987 by Jose Arguelles. According to his interpretation of Maya cosmology (an interpretation held as completely unfounded by Mayanist scholarship), this date was the end of twenty-two cycles of 52 years each, or 1144 years in all. The twenty-two cycles were divided into thirteen "heaven" cycles, which began in AD 843 and ended in 1519, when the nine "hell" cycles began, ending 468 years later in AD 1987.
And where were you when this happened?
Incidentally, you read that when two twins are born, and one goes on a trip at speed of light , and returns , then ( the myth goes) when he lands, he is young and his brother old.
The Twin Paradox: The Time Gap Objection
Try this on for size.
Make the turnaround instantaneous. Relativity puts an upper on speed, but no upper limit on acceleration. An instantaneous Turnaround Event is the limiting case of shorter and shorter turnarounds, and so the theory should handle it.
During the Outbound Leg, Terence ages less than two months, according to Stella. (12 Stella-months / time dilation factor of 7.) During the Inbound Leg, Terence also ages less than two months, according to Stella, by the same computation. The Turnaround Event is instantaneous. Total Terence ageing: less than 4 months, it would seem. Yet Terence is supposed to be over 14 years older when Stella returns! Where did the missing time go?
The Doppler Shift Analysis makes short work of this. Stella sees (through her telescope) Terence age hardly at all during her Outbound Leg, and nearly the full 14 years during her Inbound Leg. No gap.
Of course, she calculates something different, taking into account Doppler shifts and the finite speed of light. These calculations must be based on reference frames. In fact, for Stella to get two months for the Outbound Leg and two months for the Inbound Leg (as in the paragraph above), she has to switch inertial reference frames midway through her journey.
Now different inertial reference frames have different notions of simultaneity. The Outbound reference frame says: "At the same time that Stella makes her turnaround, Terence's clock reads about two months." The Inbound reference frame says: "At the same time that Stella makes her turnaround, Terence's clock reads about 13 years and 10 months." The apparent "gap" is just an accounting error, caused by switching from one frame to another.
The Spacetime Analysis offers the same elucidation, graphically expressed.
The Twin Paradox: The Doppler Shift Analysis
.....
Let us focus on what Stella and Terence actually see with their own eyes. To make things interesting, we'll equip them with unbelievably powerful telescopes, so each twin can watch the other's clock throughout the trip. If each twin saw the other clock run slow throughout the trip, then we would have a contradiction. But this is not what they see.
Just in case it's too hard to read the clock hands through the telescope, we'll add a flash unit to each clock, set to flash once a second. You might guess at first that Terence sees Stella's clock flashing once every 7 seconds (with the time dilation factor we've chosen) and vice versa. Not so! On the Outbound Leg, Terence sees a flash rate of approximately one flash per 14 seconds; on the Inbound Leg, he sees her clock going at about 14 flashes per second. That is, he sees it running fast! Stella sees the same behavior in Terence's clock.
What gives? Well, the section title gave it away: just replace the words "flashes per second" with "cycles per second", and you'll recognize the familiar Doppler shift at work. The regular pulses are redshifted to lower frequencies during the Outbound Leg, and blueshifted to higher frequencies during the Inbound Leg.
Light is converted into electrical impulses and sent down the optic fiber, it goes all the way to the back of the brain (after making a few stopovers), where the visual cortex is located. In the visual cortex, a hierarchy of detector cells isolates useful regularities in the visual data, discarding superfluous information. One layer of cells detects things like lines and curves.
A higher-up layer would detect regularities like motion and 3D shapes. The highest layer is where gestalts - overall symbols - appear, responsible for the conscious experience of sight under normal circumstances. The visual cortex is among the best understood of all brain areas, with a voluminous neuroscience literature.
This is a particularly nice example of the classical “Ponzo Illusion”, where the context suggests different depths in the drawing – here by the subterranean catacomb. Assuming size constancy, our visual system estimates the size of any object as follows: retinal size multiplied by the assumed distance. Thus, the two monsters, though identical, look quite different in their differing contexts.
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(PS I didn't say it was easy lol - but at least - after reading it 10 times with a slab or two of beer - you end up with the right answer - that they end up at the same place doing the same speed and at the same age)
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