Only problem, I have two eyes and I am not about to sacrifice one to lodge that camera.
EYEBORG– The Two Week Trial from eyeborg on Vimeo.
02.20.2009
February 20, 2009: The first gamma-ray burst to be seen in high-resolution from NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is one for the record books. The blast had the greatest total energy, the fastest motions and the highest-energy initial emissions ever seen.
“We were waiting for this one,” said Peter Michelson, the principal investigator on Fermi’s Large Area Telescope (LAT) at Stanford University. “Burst emissions at these energies are still poorly understood, and Fermi is giving us the tools to understand them.”
This explosion, designated GRB 080916C, occurred at 7:13 p.m. EDT on Sept. 15, 2008, in the constellation Carina. This movie compresses about 8 minutes of Fermi LAT observations of GRB 080916C into 6 seconds. Colored dots represent gamma rays of different energies:
LOS ANGELES, California (AP) — Here’s a mind-bending idea: The U.S. military is paying scientists to study ways to read people’s thoughts.
The hope is that the research could someday lead to a gadget capable of translating the thoughts of soldiers who suffered brain injuries in combat or even stroke patients in hospitals. But the research also raises concerns that such mind-reading technology could be used to interrogate the enemy.
Armed with a $4 million grant from the Army, scientists are studying brain signals to try to decipher what a person is thinking and to whom the person wants to direct the message.
The project is a collaboration among researchers at the University of California, Irvine; Carnegie Mellon University; and the University of Maryland.
The scientists use brain wave-reading technology known as electroencephalography, or EEG, which measures the brain’s electrical activity through electrodes placed on the scalp.
It works like this: Volunteers wear an electrode cap and are asked to think of a word chosen by the researchers, who then analyze the brain activity.
August 11, 2008: There are places on the Moon where the sun hasn’t shined for millions of years. Dark polar craters too deep for sunlight to penetrate are luna incognita, the realm of the unknown, and in their inky depths, researchers believe, may lie a treasure of great value.
NASA is about to light one up.
Sometime between May and August 2009, depending on launch dates, the booster stage for NASA’s LCROSS probe will deliberately crash into a permanently-shadowed lunar crater at 9,000 km/hr, producing an explosion equivalent to about 2,000 pounds of TNT (6.5 billion joules). The blast will jettison material out of the crater into broad daylight where astronomers can search the debris for signs of lunar water.
Water is the treasure. NASA plans to send people back to the Moon by 2020 and eventually set up a lunar outpost. Water would be an invaluable resource for astronauts living and working on the Moon. Not only could people drink it, but water could be used to grow plants for food, or it could be split into hydrogen for rocket fuel and oxygen to replenish the outpost’s air. It even could shield astronauts from dangerous space radiation.
Hence the kamikaze mission, called the Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS), to search for H2O on the Moon. “If LCROSS’s booster stage hits a patch of lunar regolith that contains at least 0.5 percent water ice, water should be detectable in the plume of ejecta,” explains Anthony Colaprete, principal investigator for LCROSS at NASA’s Ames Research Center.
June 30, 2008: The year is 1908, and it’s just after seven in the morning. A man is sitting on the front porch of a trading post at Vanavara in Siberia. Little does he know, in a few moments, he will be hurled from his chair and the heat will be so intense he will feel as though his shirt is on fire.
That’s how the Tunguska event felt 40 miles from ground zero.
Today, June 30, 2008, is the 100th anniversary of that ferocious impact near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in remote Siberia–and after 100 years, scientists are still talking about it.
“If you want to start a conversation with anyone in the asteroid business all you have to say is Tunguska,” says Don Yeomans, manager of the Near-Earth Object Office at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “It is the only entry of a large meteoroid we have in the modern era with first-hand accounts.”
While the impact occurred in ’08, the first scientific expedition to the area would have to wait for 19 years. In 1921, Leonid Kulik, the chief curator for the meteorite collection of the St. Petersburg museum led an expedition to Tunguska. But the harsh conditions of the Siberian outback thwarted his team’s attempt to reach the area of the blast. In 1927, a new expedition, again lead by Kulik, reached its goal.
“At first, the locals were reluctant to tell Kulik about the event,” said Yeomans. “They believed the blast was a visitation by the god Ogdy, who had cursed the area by smashing trees and killing animals.”
It seems unthinkable, but for the first time in human history, ice is on course to disappear entirely from the North Pole this year.
The disappearance of the Arctic sea ice, making it possible to reach the Pole sailing in a boat through open water, would be one of the most dramatic – and worrying – examples of the impact of global warming on the planet. Scientists say the ice at 90 degrees north may well have melted away by the summer.
“From the viewpoint of science, the North Pole is just another point on the globe, but symbolically it is hugely important. There is supposed to be ice at the North Pole, not open water,” said Mark Serreze of the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado.
If it happens, it raises the prospect of the Arctic nations being able to exploit the valuable oil and mineral deposits below these a bed which have until now been impossible to extract because of the thick sea ice above.
Seasoned polar scientists believe the chances of a totally ice-free North Pole this summer are greater than 50:50 because the normally thick ice formed over many years at the Pole has been blown away and replaced by huge swathes of thinner ice formed over a single year.
Full article : Independent.co.uk
If you have an interest in the crop circles that have been appearing around the world for the last 30 years, you’re not alone. The topic of crop circles has gained more and more popularity over the years, and the recent M. Night Shyamalan movie, Signs , is the focal point of this mystery, which, much like in real life, tells the story of the mysterious appearance of odd patterns made in crop fields.
Fueling debate that has endured the last few decades, many skeptics have discussed whether or not these designs are the creation of humans, supernatural forces, or aliens.
As England is one of the most popular locations for crop circle sightings around the world, it leads the way in popularizing and glamorizing this seemingly unsolved mystery. Ever since the 1970s, when a surge of strange but immaculate circular shapes began appearing in fields in southern England, people from around the globe have sought answers to this enigma.
As hypotheses and explanations were brought forth, two Englishmen came clean about their nocturnal practices in 1991. Doug Bower and Dave Chorley, two men in their 60’s at the time, claimed that they were responsible for the crop circles that everyone was talking about. Armed with planks of wood, garden rollers and string, the men would stomp and mark an area of a field, thus creating crop circles as we know them.
On the 30th of October 2007, the Romanian presented a damaged fighter jet to the astonished public: According to the Romanian military, it must have been an unidentified flying object. More info
By TAWNELL D. HOBBS / The Dallas Morning News
Whether a UFO visited two Central Texas towns will remain a mystery – at least for now.
“All the video that we’ve analyzed hasn’t provided substantial proof,” Ken Cherry, Texas state director of the Mutual UFO Network, said Sunday. “Without definite evidence, we’re left with the word of our witnesses.”
The Erath County towns of Stephenville and Dublin were thrust into the national spotlight in January after dozens of people – including a pilot and business owners – said they saw a large, silent object with bright lights flying low on Jan. 8. Two military jets were in hot pursuit, the witnesses said.
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