Second Super-Fast Flip of Earth's Poles Foundnewscientist - Some 16 million years ago, north became south in a matter of years. Such fast flips are impossible, according to models of the Earth's core, but this is now the second time that evidence has been found.
The magnetic poles swap every 300,000 years, a process that normally takes up to 5000 years. In 1995 an ancient lava flow with an unusual magnetic pattern was discovered in Oregon. It suggested that the field at the time was moving by 6 degrees a day - at least 10,000 times faster than usual. "Not many people believed it," says Scott Bogue of Occidental College in Los Angeles.
Now Bogue and his colleague Jonathan Glen of the United States Geological Survey in Menlo Park, California, say they have found a second example in Nevada. The lava rock suggests that in one year, Earth's magnetic field shifted by 53 degrees (Geophysical Research Letters, DOI: 10.1029/2010GL044286). At that rate, a full flip would take less than four years, but there could be another interpretation. "It may have been a burst of rapid acceleration that punctuated the steady movement of the field," says Bogue.
Peter Olson of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, remains sceptical and points out that the effects could have been local rather than global.
Earth is overdue for a reversal, and rapid shifts would cause widespread chaos - for navigation and migratory birds for instance.
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Full Inquest Into Death of David Kelly Comes Closer
guardian - The attorney general's office is examining files relating to the death of David Kelly, a move which could herald a full inquest into the weapons inspector's death.
Officials acting on behalf of Dominic Grieve, the government's senior law officer, had requested the Ministry of Justice to supply reports of Kelly's post mortem examination, and now have them.
The move came after a group of prominent legal and medical experts called for a full inquest into the 2003 death of the scientist. A spokeswoman for the attorney general said the files had arrived in the office this week after being requested "quite a while ago".
Officials will examine the documents this week before making recommendations to the attorney general, who has the power to order a full inquest.
An inquest at the time was suspended by the then lord chancellor, Lord Falconer, ahead of the Hutton inquiry, which investigated the circumstances of Kelly's death. The inquiry concluded he had killed himself by cutting an artery in his wrist. However, it applied a less stringent test than would have been used in an inquest, where a coroner has to be sure "beyond reasonable doubt" that a person intended to kill themselves.
Last month, nine experts including Michael Powers, a QC and former coroner, and Julian Blon, a professor of intensive care medicine, said in a letter to the Times that they believed that the official cause of death, haemorrhage from the severed artery, was "extremely unlikely".
"Insufficient blood would have been lost to threaten life," they said. "Absent a quantitative assessment of the blood lost and of the blood remaining in the great vessels, the conclusion that death occurred as a consequence of haemorrhage is unsafe."
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NASA Going to the Sun
space - NASA is developing an ambitious new mission to plunge a car-sized probe directly into the sun's atmosphere, boldly going where no spacecraft has gone before.
The spacecraft, called Solar Probe Plus, is slated to launch no later than 2018, NASA announced Thursday.
The space agency has picked the five science experiments to ride aboard the new sun-exploring spacecraft. The instruments include a solar wind particle detector, a 3-D camera, and a device to measure the sun's magnetic field, among other tools.
"This project allows humanity's ingenuity to go where no spacecraft has ever gone before," said NASA's Solar Probe Plus program scientist Lika Guhathakurta in a statement. "For the very first time, we'll be able to touch, taste and smell our sun." [Amazing New Sun Photos]
As Solar Probe Plus approaches the sun, it will face temperatures exceeding 2,550 degrees Fahrenheit (1,399 degrees Celsius) and powerful radiation blasts.
The spacecraft is expected to take unprecedented, up-close view of our home star, enabling scientists to better understand, characterize and forecast the radiation environment for future space explorers, NASA officials said.
Researchers submitted 13 proposals for the Solar Probe Plus Mission in 2009. The five NASA picked should cost a total of $180 million for preliminary analysis, design, development and tests.
"The experiments selected for Solar Probe Plus are specifically designed to solve two key questions of solar physics: Why is the sun's outer atmosphere so much hotter than the sun's visible surface, and what propels the solar wind that affects Earth and our solar system? " said Dick Fisher, director of NASA's heliophysics division, in a statement. "We've been struggling with these questions for decades, and this mission should finally provide those answers."
The five experiments are:
Solar Wind Electrons Alphas and Protons Investigation: This experiment will count the most abundant particles in the solar wind -- electrons, protons and helium ions – and measure their properties.
Wide-field Imager: This telescope will make 3-D images of the sun's corona, or atmosphere. The experiment will actually see the solar wind and provide 3-D images of clouds and shocks as they approach and pass the spacecraft.
Fields Experiment: This study will make direct measurements of electric and magnetic fields, radio emissions and shock waves that course through the sun's atmospheric plasma. The experiment also serves as a giant dust detector, registering voltage signatures when specks of space dust hit the probe's antenna.
Integrated Science Investigation of the Sun: This experiment will take an inventory of elements in the sun's atmosphere. It will use a mass spectrometer to weigh and sort ions near the spacecraft.
Heliospheric Origins with Solar Probe Plus: This component will provide an independent assessment of scientific performance and act as a community advocate for the mission.
The Solar Probe Plus mission is part of NASA's Living with a Star Program. The program is designed to understand aspects of the sun and Earth's space environment that affect life and society.
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UFO Filmed Over Norway / 2nd Sighting of 'Green Strobe From Above' in Pennsylvania
What is being called "astonishing" footage of a UFO was disclosed recently. The footage was taken in the northern region of Norway on August 13.
Of interest is that the video was taken in the same area of last year's "spiral" event. A witness to the UFO made the following statement:
"This was in the same area where the Spiral UFO of December 2009 was observed, however any connection with this or the HAARP/EISCAT facility is unknown."
Click for video
MUFON CMS - Duryea, PA, August 30, 2010:
Hi, my name is Erica and I'm not sure exactly how to go about this, but here goes. Last week my girlfriend told me a story about how a few days before she was driving down Ransom RD. Duryea Pa. and she saw some green flash of light coming from the tree line.
So she had me look it up because she believed it was some UFO or something because she said she could see the source of the light one second and then it was just gone. After I looked it up I came across a bunch of things about the "green flash" that comes from the sun at sun up/down. Until last night I thought that's what it had to be.
Well last night we were driving through Ransom again(not in the same section) and in the complete darkness like right in front of us there was a green little bit of light, like a lazor pointer, and then we drove under it and it was like I don't even know how to explain it, it was almost like it expanded over the car or something and then it was gone.
Like a quick strobe light, of green all through the car. It was like it came from straight above us.
I figured i should let someone know about it, it's the 2nd time it's happened. thanks for your time and sorry if this is just me being dumb.
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Iranian Authorities = Barbarians
BBC - An Iranian woman sentenced to death by stoning for adultery now faces being whipped for indecency, her son says.
Iranian authorities sentenced Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani to 99 lashes after the Times newspaper published a picture purportedly of her without a headscarf.
The Times later published a correction, saying the photograph was of a different Iranian woman.
After an international outcry, Iranian officials temporarily halted Ms Ashtiani's stoning sentence in July.
There are fears the death sentence could still be carried out by hanging.
Ms Ashtiani's son has given several interviews saying he was told of the new sentence of 99 lashes by people who have recently been released from the prison in Tabriz where his mother is being held.
On 28 August, the Times published a picture it said was of Ms Ashtiani that it had obtained from one of her lawyers.
The lawyer, Mohammad Mostafei, who has fled Iran, said he received the picture from her son, Sajad Ghaderzadeh - a claim Mr Ghaderzadeh denies.
Mr Ghaderzadeh said the new sentence was "an excuse to increase [the authorities'] harassment of our mother".
In an open letter, he said his mother had been sentenced to receive 99 lashes "on false charges of spreading corruption and indecency by disseminating this picture of a woman presumed to be her without hijab".
He said he did not believe the sentence had been carried out but that her family and lawyer had not been allowed to visit her for two weeks and she had not been allowed to use a telephone.
Mr Ghaderzadeh said the family was appealing against the sentence.
In May 2006, a criminal court in East Azerbaijan province found Ms Ashtiani guilty of having had an "illicit relationship" with two men following the death of her husband. She was given 99 lashes.
But that September, during the trial of a man accused of murdering her husband, another court reopened an adultery case based on events that allegedly took place before her husband died.
Despite retracting a confession she said she had been forced to make under duress, Ms Ashtiani was convicted of "adultery while being married" and sentenced to death by stoning.
In August, Iranian TV aired what it said was a confession from Ms Ashtiani of her involvement in her husband's 2005 murder.
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Arthur C. Clarke Predicts the Future
Arthur C. Clarke predicting the future in 1964...he truly was a man of vision. Hopefully, there are more like him still with us.
Fortean / Oddball News - 9/5/2010
