COSMIC EVENTS
June 28th, 2007 by Barry Eaton
This story from Richard Giles, who sums up the situation far better than the media hack who wrote the article…
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Here we go with the Sun demonstrating its effects on our planet. Is this an event precursor? for something bigger later this year (or even sooner this year). At the bottom of this ABC piece I’ve added some comments as the writer and probably the science journalist who put it out are incredibly uninformed – about the effects of solar outbursts on human beings. It says “most people will not notice any effects in their daily lives.”
Richard
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http://www.abc.net.au/news/
The sun has unleashed four potent solar flares in just under 24 hours, marking the most intense activity yet this year. NASA says one of the flares was classified as an X3.2 flare, with X-class flares being the most intense type.
“This is the strongest X-class flare of 2013 so far, surpassing in strength the two X-class flares that occurred earlier in the 24-hour period,” the US space agency said. A fourth X-class flare peaked later on Wednesday (US time).
The latest flares began on May 13 and have sent off bursts of radiation from the sun, known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs).
The strongest travelled particularly fast, at a speed of approximately 2,253 kilometres per second.
NASA says the CMEs will produce a merged cloud of solar material that “may give a glancing blow to the STEREO-B and Epoxi spacecraft,” which are space-based observatories orbiting Earth to monitor solar storms and comets.
“Their mission operators have been notified. If warranted, operators can put spacecraft into safe mode to protect the instruments from solar material,” it said.
Experts say that a rise in solar activity is common right now because the sun is in a phase of its 11-year activity cycle that is nearing the solar maximum, expected in 2013. According to space weather experts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, more strong solar flares may be expected in the coming days.
Although CMEs send off potent radiation, Earth is protected by its magnetic field.
Solar activity can temporarily disrupt GPS signals and communications satellites, but most people will not notice any effects in their daily lives. (NB: below)
The first X-class flare of this solar cycle occurred in February, 2011. The largest so far of the current cycle was documented as an X6.9 in August 2011.
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NB: This is the funniest most uninformed comment – ‘most people will not notice any effects in their daily lives’ - as the sun and its outbursts have been linked to emotional upheavals, crime rates, various types of chronic illnesses reaching a peak, psychiatric illnesses, cardiac problems (Nature magazine, 1979, 646-48), and more. And most of this investigation research work has been done 10 to 20 years ago. Journalists and scientists who work in this field today are way uninformed.
Saturn’s Hurricane-sized Super-Storm Vortex
A new revelation about Saturn thanks to NASA’s Cassini spacecraft.
This Hurricane-like Super Storm Vortex lies fixed within “Saturn’s Hex” whirling about Saturn’s north pole.
The eye alone of this relentless vortex stretches about 2000 kilometers (1250 miles) across,
with vaporous clouds whipping around the outer edge of the storm at about 150 meters per second (330 miles per hour)….
Full Article
A Nuclear Physicisist & Ex Military Weather Specialist Reveals
Why Tall White Alien Species is on Earth
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Paleontologists needed on Gale Crater, Mars.
It Seems that the Rover Curiosity literally “walks” among a huge “carpet of bones”. These astounding images were cropped by Sol 107, 108, 109 and 141. What lies on the bed of this ancient Martian lake are nothing more than “fossilized bones” (spines and vertebrae) of some sort of carcasses of big creatures that, times ago, swam in that lake.
mars.jpl.nasa.gov…
Detail cropped.
Compare
Other carcass
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Same Sol 107
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And Vertebrae……. everywhere….
And other incredible anomalies….
And fossilized Shells….
Compare
These images were taken on NOVEMBER 2012 .
Do you remember the NASA/JPL Big Annoncement in November 2012? “Grotzinger gave an interview on NPR public radio on November 20 where he said: “This data is gonna be one for the history books. It’s looking really good.”
Confirmation of these images from NASA is still to come, so in the meantime it raises interesting speculation…
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The Year of the Comets: Three Reasons Why 2013 Could be the Best Ever
by BOB KING on FEBRUARY 19, 2013
http://www.universetoday.com/
2013 could turn out to be a comet bonanza.
No fewer than three of these long-tailed beauties are expected to brighten to naked eye visibility. Already Comet C/2011 L4 PANSTARRS has cracked that barrier. Sky watchers in Australia have watched it grow from a telescopic smudge to a beautiful binocular sight low above the horizon at both dusk and dawn. A few have even spotted it without optical aid in the past week. Excited reports of a bright, fan-shaped dust tail two full moon diameters long whet our appetite for what’s to come.
Recent brightness estimates indicate that the comet could be experiencing a surge or “second wind” after plateauing in brightness the past few weeks. If the current trend continues, PanSTARRS might reach 1st or 2nd magnitude or a little brighter than the stars of the Big Dipper when it first becomes visible to northern hemisphere sky watchers around March 7.
Comet Panstarrs will make its first appearance for northern hemisphere sky watchers around March 7 low in the western sky after sundown. Notice that the comet gets no higher than 10 degrees – about one fist held at arm’s length – through much of the month.
Every day between now and March 10, when PanSTARRS’ orbit takes it closest to the sun, the comet is expected to slowly increase in brightness. Later this month it disappears in the solar glare, but when it re-emerges into evening twilight around Thursday, March 7, northern and southern hemisphere observers alike will get great views. Binoculars should easily show a bright head and swept-back tail pointing away from the sun. And don’t forget to mark your calendar for March 12. On that date the thin lunar crescent will join the comet for a rare photogenic pairing.
To locate and keep track of PanSTARRS, you’ll need the following materials and circumstances:
* An unobstructed view of the western horizon
* Clear, haze-free skies at dusk
* Pair of binoculars
* A map
I can’t help you with all of the above, but this map will help point you in the right direction. Once you find a location with a great western view, watch just above the horizon for a fuzzy, star-like object in your binoculars. While it’s possible the comet will be bright enough to see with the naked eye, binoculars will make finding it much easier. They’ll also reveal details of tail structure too subtle to be visible otherwise.
Comet PanSTARRS has some cometary company. C/2012 F6 Lemmon is currently plying its way through the constellation Tucana the Toucan, shining right around the naked eye limit at magnitude 5.5. To the unaided eye, Lemmon looks like a dim fuzzy spot. Binoculars show a thin gas tail and big, bright head or coma. Comas develop around the comet’s icy nucleus as sunlight vaporizes dusty ice to create a short-lived atmosphere that in the shape of a luminous teardrop. Long-exposures like the one above reveal richly-detailed streamers of carbon monoxide and other gases fluorescing in sunlight in the comet’s fashionably skinny tail.
Lemmon is slowly receding from Earth this month, but should remain just above the naked eye limit for some time as it continues to approach the sun. Northern hemisphere observers will need to be patient to see this one. After looping around the sun on March 24, the comet will pop back into the morning sky near the familiar Square of Pegasus asterism in early May. If we’re lucky, Lemmon may still be near the naked eye limit and visible in ordinary binoculars.
Before we move on to the comet with the greatest expectations, I want to mention Comet 2P/Encke. Encke was the only the second comet to have its orbit computed – way back in 1819 by German astronomer Johann Encke. This year it’s making its 62nd observed return to Earth’s vicinity. That’s a lot of visits, but when your orbital period is only 3.3 years – the shortest known of any comet – you can’t help but be a regular visitor. While not expected to brighten to naked eye level, the comet will be a fine sight in modest-sized telescopes glowing around 8th magnitude when it tracks between the Big Dipper and Leo the Lion this October.
COMET ISON
Our final comet, Comet C/2012 S1 ISON, was discovered last September by Russian amateurs Vitali Nevski and Artyom Novichonok while making observations for the International Scientific Optical Network (ISON). At the time, it was farther than Jupiter and impossibly faint, but once ISON’s orbit was determined, astronomers realized the comet would pass only 1.1 million miles from center of the sun (680,000 miles above its surface) on November 28, 2013.
Comet ISON belongs to a special category of comets called sungrazers. As the comet performs a hairpin turn around the sun on that date, its ices will vaporize furiously in the intense solar heat. Assuming it defies death by evaporation, ISON is expected to become a brilliant object perhaps 10 times brighter than Venus. Or brighter. Some predict it could put the full moon to shame. If so, that would occur for a brief time around at perihelion (closest approach to the sun) when the comet would only be visible in the daytime sky very close to the sun. When safely viewed, ISON might look like a brilliant, fuzzy star in a blue sky.
Most of us won’t risk burning our retinas staring so close to sun. Instead we’ll watch with anticipation as the comet sprouts a long tail while ascending from the western horizon just after sunset in late November and early December. Whatever it does, sky watchers in both southern and northern hemispheres will ringside seats when ISON’s at its best.
Right now the comet’s whiling away its time in the constellation Gemini the Twin and still very faint. Come September, it should be easily visible in small telescopes in the morning sky. The first naked eye sightings could happen in late October. Many of us hope the comet will be one for the record books, a worthy successor to C/2006 P1 McNaught, the last “great comet” to dazzle human eyes. It reached peak magnificence for southern hemisphere sky watchers in January 2007.
Three bright comets – and one modestly bright – might be enough for a year, but there could be surprises. Dozens of new comets are discovered each year by professional sky surveys and amateur astronomers. Most are faint and move along their appointed paths unnoticed by 99.9% of the world’s population, but every so often a new one comes along that blossoms into a spectacle. How many of those are out there tonight waiting to be discovered?
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Crop Circles Are No Hoax, Concludes Historian After Studying Google Earth’s New 1945 Overlay (PICTURES)
Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.
Crop circles dating back to 1945 are proof the phenomenon is no modern hoax, a Tasmanian historian claims.
The mystery of the increasingly intricate patterns was supposedly solved after several high-profile cases were revealed to be the work of artists and mischief-makers armed with barrels, planks of wood and plenty of spare time.
Credit for the hoaxes has been laid largely at the feet of pranksters Dave Chorley and Doug Bower, who in 1991 announced they had been pulling the wool over people’s eyes since 1978.
A crop circle in Halesowen. Greg Jefferys estimates this one to be about ten meters in diameter. He points out the shadow on its south east perimeter corresponds precisely with the shadows cast by the trees and hedges and that the quality of the image is high enough to show there are no tracks through the grain crop leading to or from the crop circle
(FYI, crop circles have also been blamed on unusual weather patterns, top secret military experiments and, er, stoned wallabies.)
But research by Greg Jefferys has revealed evidence of the strange circles in the English countryside at least 33 years before Chorley and Bower took credit for the phenomena – which until then had been attributed to UFOs and alien activity.
Jefferys, who has a degree in archaeology, was prompted to research the matter after reading a report on crop circles in an 1880 edition of the science journal Nature.
Jefferys is about to embark on a PhD in crop circles at the University of Tasmania
The 59-year-old’s research focuses on images from Google Earth‘s new 1945 overlay, which Jefferys studied for more than 300 hours.
The overlay is a series of photos taken towards the end of World War II by the RAAF and comprises around 35% of the 1945 overlay of England presently available online.
Jefferys points out the material available does not include acknowledged crop circle “hotspots” around Wiltshire.
In a research paper emailed to Huffington Post UK Jefferys writes:
“Using aerial photographs primarily from the Google Earth 1945 overlay, that the number of crop circles appearing each summer has been relatively constant for at least the last 70 years and that these crop circles cannot be explained by the ‘hoax theory’. This removal of the validity of the hoaxer’s claims means that crop circles remain an unexplained natural phenomenon deserving of serious investigation by academic institutions and other research organisations.”
Jefferys, who has previously used aerial photography to successfully locate shipwrecks, points out there have been reports of crop circles in the English countryside as far back as 300 years before the period the hoaxers began their work.
In his research Jefferys acknowledges the existence of flaws on the film caused by chemical or mechanical damage to the film on which the 1945 aerial snaps were taken and has taken these into account.
In summary, he says careful examination of the presently available images has yielded 64 shapes that were possible crop circles.
Using a process of elimination to recognise flaws in the negatives, Jefferys selected 13 which conformed strictly to his criteria. (Scroll down to view some of his evidence.)
He concludes: “The number of circular features that can be reasonably confirmed as crop circles that have been so far found in the survey of the currently available 1945 Google Earth overlay numbers about one dozen. As this survey did not include more than 35% of England and excluded the known crop circle ‘hot spots’ around Wiltshire the findings are consistent with an annual occurrence of around 100 crop circles across the English countryside in 1945. This, combined with a significant body of historic records describing crop circles, gives the lie to the claims made by various to be the originators and creators of all crop circles. This in turn begs the question ‘If not them, then who or what is responsible for the creation of crop circles?’”
He told HuffPo UK: “There is a mounting body of evidence that suggests that a rare form of electromagnetic energy called an ionised plasma vortex (generally known as ball lightning) is involved.
“Plasma balls do weird things like passing through solid objects (such as stone walls and glass windows) and floating through the air against the wind. Exactly where this energy comes from and what causes it is not yet understood by science.
“Based on my studies I suspect that the forces involved in the creation of crop circles represent a potentially extraordinary new field of science, a new frontier that could lead to profound discoveries and entirely new technologies.
“Further I believe that if the mainstream scientific community were not so timid and so conservative in their view of the Universe that they would not be sitting on their hands pretending this thing is not happening but would be seriously investigating this unexplained phenomenon.”
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