Atmosphere Above Japan Heated Rapidly Before M9 Earthquake
technologyreview - Geologists have long puzzled over anecdotal reports of strange atmospheric phenomena in the days before big earthquakes. But good data to back up these stories has been hard to come by.
In recent years, however, various teams have set up atmospheric monitoring stations in earthquake zones and a number of satellites are capable of sending back data about the state of the upper atmosphere and the ionosphere during an earthquake.
Last year, we looked at some fascinating data from the DEMETER spacecraft showing a significant increase in ultra-low frequency radio signals before the magnitude 7 Haiti earthquake in January 2010
Today, Dimitar Ouzounov at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Centre in Maryland and a few buddies present the data from the Great Tohoku earthquake which devastated Japan on 11 March. Their results, although preliminary, are eye-opening.
They say that before the M9 earthquake, the total electron content of the ionosphere increased dramatically over the epicentre, reaching a maximum three days before the quake struck.
At the same time, satellite observations showed a big increase in infrared emissions from above the epicentre, which peaked in the hours before the quake. In other words, the atmosphere was heating up.
These kinds of observations are consistent with an idea called the Lithosphere-Atmosphere-Ionosphere Coupling mechanism. The thinking is that in the days before an earthquake, the great stresses in a fault as it is about to give cause the releases large amounts of radon.
The radioactivity from this gas ionises the air on a large scale and this has a number of knock on effects. Since water molecules are attracted to ions in the air, ionisation triggers the large scale condensation of water.
But the process of condensation also releases heat and it is this that causes infrared emissions. "Our first results show that on March 8th a rapid increase of emitted infrared radiation was observed from the satellite data," say Ouzounov and co.
These emissions go on to effect the ionosphere and its total electron content.
It certainly makes sense that the lithosphere, atmosphere and ionosphere are coupled in a way that can be measured when one of them is perturbed. The question is to what extent the new evidence backs up this idea.
The Japan earthquake is the largest to have struck the island in modern times and will certainly turn out to be among the best studied. If good evidence of this relationship doesn't emerge from this data, other opportunities will be few and far between.
NOTE: is this a natural syndrome or is this a HAARP scenario? Lon
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CDC Warns Public to Prepare for 'Zombie Apocalypse'
Are you prepared for the impending zombie invasion?
That's the question posed by the Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention in a Monday blog posting gruesomely titled, "Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse." And while it's no joke, CDC officials say it's all about emergency preparation.
"There are all kinds of emergencies out there that we can prepare for," the posting reads. "Take a zombie apocalypse for example. That's right, I said z-o-m-b-i-e a-p-o-c-a-l-y-p-s-e. You may laugh now, but when it happens you'll be happy you read this, and hey, maybe you'll even learn a thing or two about how to prepare for a real emergency."
The post, written by Assistant Surgeon General Ali Khan, instructs readers how to prepare for "flesh-eating zombies" much like how they appeared in Hollywood hits like "Night of the Living Dead" and video games like Resident Evil. Perhaps surprisingly, the same steps you'd take in preparation for an onslaught of ravenous monsters are similar to those suggested in advance of a hurricane or pandemic.
"First of all, you should have an emergency kit in your house," the posting continues. "This includes things like water, food, and other supplies to get you through the first couple of days before you can locate a zombie-free refugee camp (or in the event of a natural disaster, it will buy you some time until you are able to make your way to an evacuation shelter or utility lines are restored)."
Other items to be stashed in such a kit include medications, duct tape, a battery-powered radio, clothes, copies of important documents and first aid supplies.
"Once you've made your emergency kit, you should sit down with your family and come up with an emergency plan," the posting continues. "This includes where you would go and who you would call if zombies started appearing outside your doorstep. You can also implement this plan if there is a flood, earthquake or other emergency."
The idea behind the campaign stemmed from concerns of radiation fears following the earthquake and tsunami that rocked Japan in March. CDC spokesman Dave Daigle told FoxNews.com that someone had asked CDC officials if zombies would be a concern due to radiation fears in Japan and traffic spiked following that mention.
"It's kind of a tongue-in-cheek campaign," Daigle said Wednesday. "We were talking about hurricane preparedness and someone bemoaned that we kept putting out the same messages."
While metrics for the post are not yet available, Daigle said it has become the most popular CDC blog entry in just two days.
"People are so tuned into zombies," he said. "People are really dialed in on zombies. The idea is we're reaching an audience or a segment we'd never reach with typical messages." - foxnews
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Argentina’s Cerro Los Guanancos: A High-Strangeness Area
Inexplicata - One night, a group of people saw a large ball of fire fall to earth from the heavens. They thought it was an airplane, but no traces of such a vehicle were ever found.
It was the summer of 1970. The time was 8:00 pm and “Gordo” Jiménez and Zito Verón were walking along the hillside with their goats. Suddenly, a large fireball flew overhead and impacted the north face of Cerro Los Guanacos.
Within hours, the area had been seized by soldiers, policemen, nurses and backwoodsmen searching for the fallen “plane”, yet no traces of that strange sighting were ever found.
Ever since that strange incident, this region of the Department of Salavina is constantly visited by UFO researchers and by curiosity seekers who (still) hope to experience a close encounter with the unknown.
Gastón Zalazar is an aeronautical technician and writer who told EL LIBERAL newspaper that he had his first brush with “the unknown” in 1935.
”One evening we were returning home with my father and when we reached Cerro Los Guanacos, my father realized he’d lost his rebenque, and asked me to go back and find it. I found it, and on my way back, on the highest part, I found myself facing something that left me cold: the sea was only a few meters away from me. It looked so real that I could even make out the waves. I couldn’t scream or say a word. I took off at full gallop to the house of Mr. Juan Mansilla, where I was given some water to drink,” he said.
Stories about Cerro Los Guanacos have been handed down from one generation to another, involving the presence of strange phenomena, sounds and lights that appear in the firmament and keep local residents on their toes, and even researchers who come to the area to spend the night, faced with the likelihood of having a sighting to study.
The location is 17 kilometers from Sumampa, in the El Carabajal wilderness, deep in the Quebrachos Deparment. It is dominated by dense forest and few have had the privilege of reaching its summit, where it is said the firmament can be seen “in a different manner” and where the night offers colored lights and the possibility of seeing strange phenomena.
Thanks to Scott Corrales
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NSW motorist witnesses Yowie
dailyexaminer - What's more than two metres (six foot) tall, solidly built and covered in shaggy hair?
If your answer was “that guy down at the local,” you're probably right but it's also a common description of a mythical Australian creature known as a yowie, a specimen of which has been reportedly spotted near Centenary Dr, north of Grafton.
A Hunter Valley man named Dean, who did not wish to be identified further, thinks he may have caught a glimpse of one of the creatures, a kind of an Australian version of Bigfoot, as he was driving along the section of road in the early hours of Tuesday morning.
Dean, whose work sees him driving more than 5000km a week around NSW, was travelling south along the Pacific Hwy, north of Grafton just before 2.30am when he took the Centenary Dr bypass. Shortly after turning into the road he saw something that shook him to the core.
“I reached the top of the hill and I was coming around the sweeping corner to the right when I noticed something a lot larger than a kangaroo in the middle of the road – my headlights weren't on it yet but it was a bright night and I saw what looked like a large person stooped over, with a big overcoat on,” Dean said.
“At the time I thought ‘you silly old thing, what are you doing in the middle of the road at this time of the morning', but next thing I knew my headlights started to light it up and it took one giant step off the road, it went from standing up like a person to going down on all fours and then it disappeared into the scrub in about three bounds.”
Dean, who is used to night-driving and fatigue management, slowed down and was looking into the scrub for the creature and said he saw it silhouetted against the sky.
“It had an almost sort of a square, shaggy block head sitting straight on its shoulders – I'm a pretty big guy but it made me absolutely awe-struck how huge its body was – it had its arm up against a tree and it had about a foot of hair hanging from under its biceps.”
He estimated the creature to be at least two metres tall and covered in what looked like jet-black hair.
Dean said he had no idea what to think until he described the incident to colleagues later who said it was similar to yowie-sighting stories they'd heard in their travels.
Since then Dean said he had been researching ... to rationally explain what he saw but has yet to find a satisfactory answer.
“Anybody who knows me knows I'm the ultimate realist but this was an awe-inspiring moment, it's definitely made me a believer,” Dean said.
During his search for answers however, Dean came across the website of Australian yowie researcher, Paul Cropper who was very interested in his story.
Mr Cropper, who has also co-written a book on yowies, said Dean's story wasn't unusual.
“In our book we recorded around 350 reports going back to the late 1700s, early 1800s, but I imagine there's a lot more than that which don't ever reach the media – people have these experiences and then just keep it to themselves,” Mr Cropper said.
Theories abound as to what yowies could be, including an unknown species of ape or even an undiscovered close relative to homo sapiens, he said.
“One thing you can say with absolute certainty is that Aborigines and Europeans have been recording these things for a long time – the Aboriginal stories go back to the Dreamtime and the European stories go back to basically the first settlement ... there's just this consistent thread of stories up until Tuesday morning,” he said.
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