Only Natural
Japanese astronomers claim to have found free-floating "planets" which do not seem to orbit a star. Writing in Nature, they say they have found 10 Jupiter-sized objects which they could not connect to any solar system. They also believe such objects could be as common as stars are throughout the Milky Way.
Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) admitted for the first time on May 15 that most of the fuel in one of its nuclear reactors at the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant had melted only about 16 hours after the March 11 earthquake struck a wide swath of northeastern Japan and triggered a devastating tsunami.
Austin opened up the door to the dryer — it's about 1-by-1½ feet wide — and squeezed in, shutting the door behind him. As he did, some glass struck the outside of the door and shattered. For several minutes he heard the tornado pull his house apart, the sound of glass breaking, of items falling from shelves. Five minutes after things died down, an aunt, Jessica Wambold, came to the house to find him. Only then did he climb from the dryer.
One of the reactors at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant likely suffered a substantial meltdown of its core, operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Thursday, offering a fresh assessment of the reactor that suggests it came closer than the operator had previously revealed to a catastrophic meltdown. ... more than half melted...
The eruption of the Etna volcano in southern Italy early Thursday is connected to the earthquakes that rocked the Spanish region of Murcia, killing 12 people and injuring more than 170 others.... "We are currently witnessing an intense seismic activity in the entire Mediterranean area from Spain all the way to Malta which has a certain impact on regional volcanoes...." The eruption sent flying massive quantities of lava and volcanic ash, which spilled on the main town of Catania and other nearby villages but luckily caused no serious damage....
Researchers examining the San Andreas Fault in central California have found evidence that distant earthquakes can trigger episodes of accelerated (but still very slow) slip motion, deep on the fault.
Tragedy at the copper mine of Rudna, Poland 3 miners were killed in the KGHM copper mine at Rudna, a village in the vicinity of Glogow. Rudna has 1,300 inhabitants. 10 of them were slightly injured and 2 miners had to be hospitalized. Other miners were safely evacuated. The copper mine is about 15 km from the epicenter of the earthquake (mining shafts might have been drilled towards the epicenter location). Scientist will have to study the origin of this earthquake. As this is a mining area, there is a very big possibility that the origin will be mining related.
Climate change will disrupt wi-fi connections, cause regular power failures and lead railway lines to buckle unless Britain spends billions of pounds, Caroline Spelman, the Environment Secretary has warned. [Yes, climate changes. Deal!]
The feeble 75-year-old was discovered stranded alone in his small farmhouse on Friday, surrounded by fallen trees, dead pigs and garbage strewn by the deadly March 11 tsunami in Japan. He doesn't know where his wife is, and his neighbors have all fled his city of Minami Soma because it's within the 12-mile zone of a radiation-leaking plant. Authorities had ordered evacuations but Shiga, who has trouble walking, and was unable to leave... 'The tsunami came right up to my doorstep," he recounted. "I don't know what happened to my wife. She was here, but now she's gone."... "I'm old," he said from his home. 'I don't know if I could leave here. Who would take care of me?"
"Some will go toward Hawaiian beaches, and other parts will slip between islands and return to the garbage patch, to return the next time," Maximenko said in an interview. "It is safe to say after five years Hawaii will be the main coastline impacted by this debris." ... Its longer-term destination will be the garbage patch, an area of light winds perhaps twice the size of Texas....
A vast field of debris, swept out to sea following the Japan earthquake and tsunami, is floating towards the U.S. West Coast... cars, tractor-trailers, capsized ships and even whole houses... predictions of... human feet, still in their shoes, to wash up on the West Coast within three years.... Members of the U.S. Navy's 7th fleet, who spotted the extraordinary floating rubbish, say they have never seen anything like it and are warning the debris now poses a threat to shipping traffic.... Scientists say the first bits of debris from Japan are due to reach the West Coast in a year's time after being carried by currents toward Washington, Oregon and California.They will then turn toward Hawaii and back again toward Asia, circulating in what is known as the North Pacific gyre
Physicists will announce Wednesday that data from a major US atom smasher lab may have revealed a new elementary particle, or potentially a new force of nature.... The discovery is believed to relate to mass and how objects obtain it.... the particles behave differently than the Higgs-boson, which would be decaying into heavy quarks, or particles. The new discovery "is decaying in normal quarks...." "Nobody knows what this is.... If it is real, it would be the most significant discovery in physics in half a century."
TOKYO - The operator of Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant said it had reduced the flow of highly radioactive water out of a reactor, a possible sign of progress in an almost month-long battle to contain the world's biggest nuclear disaster in quarter of a century.
Scientists are growing human hearts in laboratories... believe the artificial organs could start beating within weeks... created by removing muscle cells from donor organs... taken from dead bodies.... then injected stem cells which multiplied and grew around the structure, eventually turning into healthy heart cells....
Workers at the disaster-stricken Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan say they expect to die from radiation sickness as a result of their efforts to bring the reactors under control, the mother of one of the men told Fox News.
The first spacecraft ever to circle Mercury has beamed home the first-ever photo taken of the small rocky planet from orbit.
Scientists today claimed one of the milestones in the drive for sustainable energy -- development of the first practical artificial leaf. Speaking here at the 241st National Meeting of the American Chemical Society, they described an advanced solar cell the size of a poker card that mimics the process, called photosynthesis, that green plants use to convert sunlight and water into energy.
Lasting nearly four minutes, it was the most powerful recorded earthquake in U.S. and North American history, and the second most powerful ever measured by seismograph.
The catastrophic earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan's east coast March 11 have left 10,151 people dead, and at least 17,053 were still unaccounted for till Saturday.
Authorities in Japan raised the prospect Friday of a likely breach in the all-important containment vessel of the No. 3 reactor at the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, a potentially ominous development in the race to prevent a large-scale release of radiation.
Japanese researchers cultivated small pieces of tissue from the testes of baby mice on a gel bathed in nutrients. After several weeks they collected viable sperm from the tissue.
As a result of the disaster at Fukushima, I am no longer nuclear-neutral. I now support the technology. A crappy old plant with inadequate safety features was hit by a monster earthquake and a vast tsunami. The electricity supply failed, knocking out the cooling system. The reactors began to explode and melt down. The disaster exposed a familiar legacy of poor design and corner-cutting. Yet, as far as we know, no one has yet received a lethal dose of radiation. Some greens have wildly exaggerated the dangers of radioactive pollution. For a clearer view, look at the graphic published by xkcd.com
Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Wednesday it has observed a neutron beam, a kind of radioactive ray, 13 times on the premises of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant after it was crippled by the massive March 11 quake-tsunami disaster. TEPCO, the operator of the nuclear plant, said the neutron beam measured about 1.5 kilometers southwest of the plant's No. 1 and 2 reactors over three days from March 13 and is equivalent to 0.01 to 0.02 microsieverts per hour and that this is not a dangerous level.
The government said Wednesday that it estimates the damage to houses, roads, utilities and businesses could range from at least $198 billion to the $309 billion figure. Either total would easily top the cost of the previous worst disaster, the vast destruction Hurricane Katrina wreaked on New Orleans and the Gulf Coast region of the United States in 2005. The insurance industry estimates Katrina caused $125 billion worth of damage. The Japan damage total could go higher because the government's estimate did not include possible wider effects on the country's economy, such as reduced factory production caused by planned power outages, or the effect of nuclear radiation leaks on the nation's food and water supply. One financial analyst, Bank of Japan board member Ryuzo Miyao, said the stress on the world's third largest economy "could linger for some time" and that the short-term effects "are not insignificant."
That reputable scientist, Ann Coulter, recently wrote a genuinely irresponsible and dishonest column on radiation hormesis. She claims we shouldn't worry about the damaged Japanese reactors because they'll make the locals healthier! With the terrible earthquake and resulting tsunami that...
According to the unnamed senior official, US support was based on dismantling the troubled reactors run by Tokyo Electric Power
NASA's Messenger probe is set to make history tomorrow night (March 17) when it becomes the first spacecraft ever to enter into orbit around the planet Mercury. …will map Mercury's surface in detail, as well as investigate the planet's composition, magnetic environment and tenuous atmosphere, among other features.
the last time Cascadia let go? Just 311 years ago. We know the time and date precisely, thanks to records kept by diligent Japanese officials on the far side of the Pacific. On January 26th 1700, between nine and ten o'clock at night, the Cascadia fault ruptured along its length, unleashing a megaquake of magnitude 9.0 or more. While the shaking was not felt across the Pacific, the Japanese were alarmed enough by the "orphan tsunami" that inundated their coastal villages to record the details. Knowing the distance and the speed such long waves travel at (around 750 kilometres per hour), the Japanese records allow the time the megaquake struck to be known to within an hour. Numerical models suggest that a seismic event that size would have made the seafloor bounce six metres or more, causing tsunami waves to rise as high as 30 metres along the nearby coasts of Oregon and Washington. This past week Sendai looked devastated enough. Imagine how much worse Portland and Seattle would fare if hit by a tidal surge three times bigger.
The first life form created entirely with man-made DNA opens the door to manufacturing new drugs and fuels, while raising the possibility that mail-order germs may one-day be available for bioterrorists.
"We're very close now to the point of no return," Dr. Michio Kaku, a theoretical physicist, said. "It's gotten worse. We're talking about workers coming into the reactor perhaps as a suicide mission and we may have to abandon ship." A group of 180 workers rotate shifts working at the plant in teams of 50 men. The men have been nicknamed the "Fukushima Fifty."
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