Tag Archives: Earth

December 20, 2012 · 1:07 AM

The Mayan 5 Day Weather Forecast

Mayan Weather Forecast http://mariopiperni.com/

Only Mr. Piperni could have a sense of humor about the Mayan Apocalypse  meme.

Mario Piperni

You can count on survival stores making a killing on sales of generators, ‘survival seeds’ and emergency crank radios. For some, there has never been an apocalyptic prediction they didn’t embrace after watching a ridiculous History Channel special on the latest doomsday scenario. If that’s you, and you want to know what to do after the the gamma ray burst or the displacement of the earth’s crust hits the planet on the 21st, you’d better hurry down to Where To  Survive 2012 and read up on how to pack that survival kit. More important, you’ll learn the best place on the planet to survive the Mayan apocalypse.

(Spoiler alert: It’s Turkey. Something about it being free of oceans and volcanoes…and has a high elevation with “friendly native populations” and lots of natural resources and wild animals. Sounds like heaven, doesn’t it?)

The world will not end on 12-21-12.

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August 5, 2012 · 11:15 PM

WATCH LIVE: NASA Curiosity rover landing on Mars

Mars Curiosity landing

I’ll be watching…

The Raw Story

NASA’s largest Mars rover, Curiosity, is scheduled to land on Mars in perhaps the most complex landing on an alien world since space exploration began, according to the Guardian.

NASA spent $2.5 billion on the project, and will explore whether the planet has ever had the potential to support life. “Whether life has existed on Mars is an open question that this mission, by itself, is not designed to answer,” NASA wrote in a press release. “However, if this mission finds that the field site in Gale Crater has had conditions favorable for habitability and for preserving evidence about life, those findings can shape future missions that would bring samples back to Earth for life-detection tests or for missions that carry advanced life-detection experiments to Mars. In this sense, the Mars Science Laboratory is the prospecting stage in a step-by-step program of exploration, reconnaissance, prospecting and mining evidence for a definitive answer about whether life has existed on Mars.”

Watch live, broadcast on UStream on Aug. 5.

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February 21, 2012 · 9:04 PM

See a solar eclipse from outer space

The moon takes a bite out of the sun's disk in this extreme ultraviolet view from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory.

This is simply spectacular!

MSNBC Photo Blog

The heavens have to align just right for a solar eclipse — and for NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, today was the day the heavens aligned. The only place where you could see today’s partial eclipse was in outer space. But don’t worry: Some of us earthlings will get a couple of chances later this year.

The Solar Dynamics Observatory watches the sun in multiple wavelengths of extreme ultraviolet light from a vantage point in geosynchronous orbit, about 22,000 miles (36,000 kilometers) above Earth’s surface.

Sometimes other celestial bodies muscle in on SDO’s view of the sun. Earth itself gets in the way twice a year, around the time of the spring and autumn equinoxes. Today, it was the moon’s turn to take a bite out of the sun’s bright disk.

Although this brief obstruction cut into the $850 million mission’s observing time, the SDO team tried to make use of the opportunity, project scientist Dean Pesnell said in a blog posting. During its transit, the moon blocked the probe’s view of an active region on the sun. That caused a dip in the energy recorded by the Extreme Ultraviolet Variability Experiment, or EVE, which “may allow scientists to calibrate the energy emitted by the active region,” Pesnell said.

SpaceWeather.com’s Tony Phillips mentions another opportunity provided by the eclipse: “The sharp edge of the lunar limb helps researchers measure the in-orbit characteristics of the telescope … how light diffracts around the telescope’s optics and filter support grids. Once these are calibrated, it is possible to correct SDO data for instrumental effects and sharpen the images even more than before.”

Observers in a wide swath of East Asia, the Pacific and western North America will be able to see a partial solar eclipse with their own eyes on May 20. Some lucky folks will see something even rarer: an annular eclipse, in which the moon covers up most of the sun but leaves a thin ring of the bright disk shining in the sky. The U.S. West Coast and Southwest will be prime territory for that “ring of fire” eclipse.

On Nov. 13, a total solar eclipse will be visible from a corner of Australia and a long strip of the Pacific Ocean. You’ll be hearing a lot more about these eclipses as we get closer to the events. In the meantime, feast your eyes on this time-lapse view of today’s space eclipse in different wavelengths:

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January 2, 2012 · 12:29 AM

Newt Says There’s Insufficient Evidence For Climate Change, Citing His Expertise As An Amateur Paleontologist

He’s a historian, a philanderer, ethically challenged, author of three dozen books and now a paleontologist?   Now, now, Newt.  Your plate seems dangerously full to be the POTUS.

Think Progress

 At a town hall in Atlantic, Iowa, Saturday afternoon, Gingrich gave an unusual reason for his present denial of man-made global warming.

“I’m an amateur paleontologist,” Gingrich said. “I spend a lot of time looking at the Earth’s temperature for a very long time. I’m a lot harder to convince than just looking at a computer model.”

Professional paleontologists, who have spent a lot more time than Gingrich looking at the Earth’s temperature, are convinced. “Few credible scientists now doubt that humans have influenced the documented rise in global temperatures since the Industrial Revolution,” the American Quaternary Society wrote in 2006.

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November 8, 2011 · 7:42 AM

Rick Perry to Occupy Movement: ‘What’s With the Money Hangup, Man?’

Rick Perry is an idiot…

Crooks & Liars

Incredible but true: In a television interview, Rick Perry told the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators not to think about money so much. “Just find your passion,” said Perry. “Stop thinking about money.”

The other day Yours Truly co-hosted The Young Turks with Brian Unger, and in this segment Brian and I show the video and argue whether Perry is a shrewd re-framer of the debate, the last real hippie on Earth … or just has a screw loose. Watch the video and take the poll – is the Governor a canny re-framer of political perceptions, a carefree spirit letting his inner love child out for a stroll, or speaking to us from a state of profoundly altered perceptions?

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May 24, 2011 · 2:03 AM

Harold Camping Predicts Rapture Will Now Be Oct. 21

As this blog continues sorting out the crazies, Harold Camping has to be one of the craziest SOB’s that I’ve ever covered!  Now, he claims he got the dates wrong…

The Daily Beast

Harold Camping will not stop warning of the impending Rapture, no matter how many times he is wrong.

The doomsday preacher and radio-show host came out of hiding Monday and said the end of the world will be October 21, not May 21 as he previously predicted. He had earlier said Oct. 21 would be the day the Earth would be consumed by a fireball.

On his show Monday, Camping said the Rapture did begin May 21, just in a “spiritual” and not “physical” way. “But it won’t be spiritual on Oct. 21,” Camping said. Camping’s incorrect prediction of the Rapture was not the first time he’s been wrong—he previously predicted the end of the world would be in 1994, but then attributed that to a mathematical error.

 
 
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March 18, 2011 · 1:56 AM

The Moon Is Going to Be Huge on Saturday

Gawker

On Saturday, for the first time since 1993, the Moon is going to be full at almost the exact same time it’s closest to earth. So if you’ve got livestock you need to sacrifice, now’s the time to do it!

The Moon will be less than one hour away from perigree (the fancy science word for “point on the Moon’s elliptical orbit at which it’s closest to earth”) on Saturday—the same day that a Full Moon is scheduled (on God’s calendar). This means it’ll be 14 percent larger than usual! Or, at least, it’ll appear 14 percent larger than normal, since the Moon does not, according to scientists, change size. This happens once every “18 years or so,” so the next time you get a perigree Full Moon, Justin Bieber will be in his mid-30s.

According to NASA, your best bet is to find the Moon when it’s close to the horizon, and look at it through a foreground object, like a tree, triggering an optical illusion called, imaginatively, the “Moon illusion” that will make it appear huge, and compel you to mate, or whatever.

[NASA]

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February 22, 2011 · 1:47 AM

Researchers: Earth will be ‘unrecognizable’ by 2050

Beyond the Thunder Dome…?

The Raw Story

A growing, more affluent population competing for ever scarcer resources could make for an “unrecognizable” world by 2050, researchers warned at a major US science conference Sunday.

The United Nations has predicted the global population will reach seven billion this year, and climb to nine billion by 2050, “with almost all of the growth occurring in poor countries, particularly Africa and South Asia,” said John Bongaarts of the non-profit Population Council.

To feed all those mouths, “we will need to produce as much food in the next 40 years as we have in the last 8,000,” said Jason Clay of the World Wildlife Fund at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

“By 2050 we will not have a planet left that is recognizable” if current trends continue, Clay said.

The swelling population will exacerbate problems, such as resource depletion, said John Casterline, director of the Initiative in Population Research at Ohio State University.

But incomes are also expected to rise over the next 40 years — tripling globally and quintupling in developing nations — and add more strain to global food supplies.

People tend to move up the food chain as their incomes rise, consuming more meat than they might have when they made less money, the experts said.

It takes around seven pounds (3.4 kilograms) of grain to produce a pound of meat, and around three to four pounds of grain to produce a pound of cheese or eggs, experts told AFP.

“More people, more money, more consumption, but the same planet,” Clay told AFP, urging scientists and governments to start making changes now to how food is produced.

Population experts, meanwhile, called for more funding for family planning programs to help control the growth in the number of humans, especially in developing nations.

“For 20 years, there’s been very little investment in family planning, but there’s a return of interest now, partly because of the environmental factors like global warming and food prices,” said Bongaarts.

“We want to minimize population growth, and the only viable way to do that is through more effective family planning,” said Casterline.

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January 14, 2011 · 12:39 PM

New Zodiac Sign Dates: “Ophiuchus” The 13th Sign?

Well, I refuse to accept that I am now under the sign of Taurus when I know that I exhibit all the (positive) traits of a Gemini! 

Huffington Post

Your zodiac sign may not actually be your zodiac sign anymore.

Astronomer Parke Kunkle says that due to changes in the Earth’s alignment the dates of many zodiac signs have changed, according to NBC. In addition, there may be a 13th Zodiac sign: Ophiuchus.

Kunkle says that as the Earth and Sun slowly move the signs gradually change, as expected.

The change didn’t happen over night either. The 12 signs were designated to different periods of the year almost 3,000 years ago, when astrology began, and since then the Earth’s position in relation to the sun has changed.

While the sign many people were born under may now be different, it shouldn’t affect horoscope readings, according to NBC.

See if your Zodiac sign has changed below. (And find out if your friends’ signs have changed here or under the dates below.)

The New Dates:

Story continues below

Capricorn: Jan. 20 – Feb. 16
Aquarius: Feb. 16 – March 11
Pisces: March 11- April 18
Aries: April 18 – May 13
Taurus: May 13 – June 21
Gemini: June 21 – July 20
Cancer: July 20 – Aug. 10
Leo: Aug. 10 – Sept. 16
Virgo: Sept. 16 – Oct. 30
Libra: Oct. 30 – Nov. 23
Scorpio: Nov. 23 – Nov. 29
Ophiuchus: Nov. 29 – Dec. 17
Sagittarius: Dec. 17 – Jan. 20

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