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Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Pentagon Isn’t Sweating China’s New Weapons of Doom

You’d think the Pentagon would be chewing its nails down to the nub over China’s military buildup. After all, in the past few months, China unveiled its first stealth jet, reached the early operating phase of a “carrier-killer” missile, and took its first-ever aircraft carrier out for a stroll. Instead, the Defense Department’s Asia hands don’t seem any more freaked by the Chinese military than they were last year. In fact, the Pentagon’s annual report on its Chinese counterpart reads a lot like the previous edition.

Yes, Beijing is rapidly modernizing its forces, as it has for years, upping its military spending by 12.7 percent last year while the Pentagon prepares for deep cuts. Yes, China’s pursuing an “expanded regional maritime strategy and presence.” And yes, in the eyes of the Pentagon’s top Asia wonk, that modernization is “potentially destabilizing.”

Russian Space Station Cargo Ship Crashes : Discovery News

Russian Space Station Cargo Ship Crashes : Discovery News: "The unmanned Progress M-12M vehicle failed to reach orbit and may have crashed into Siberia or Russia's Altai region."

Wake Up America! 10 Very Obvious Reasons Why The Devastating U.S. Jobs Famine Is Going To Suck The Hope Right Out Of America

Wake Up America! 10 Very Obvious Reasons Why The Devastating U.S. Jobs Famine Is Going To Suck The Hope Right Out Of America: "Do you have friends, neighbors and relatives that can't find work? Well, unfortunately the current U.S. jobs famine is about to get a whole lot worse. Right now there are approximately 13.9 million unemployed Americans. That does not count those that "are not looking for work". That does not count those that are working part-time jobs but that are desperate for full-time work. The truth is that we need tens of millions more full-time jobs in order to give one to everyone that wants one. Sadly, the long-term trends that have caused this mess continue to get worse. Unless truly dramatic changes are made, the U.S. economy is going to continue to bleed jobs and that is going to suck the hope right out of this country. It is time to wake up America! It is not a big mystery why we don't have enough jobs. But sadly, very few of our leaders are talking about the real issues."

Pentagon Quake Nightmare: Fukushima on the Mississippi

In May, the federal government simulated an earthquake so massive, it killed 100,000 Midwesterners instantly, and forced more than 7 million people out of their homes. At the time, National Level Exercise 11 went largely unnoticed; the scenario seemed too far-fetched — states like Illinois and Missouri are in the middle of a tectonic plate, not at the edge of one. A major quake happens there once every several generations.

But Tuesday’s earthquake along the East Coast is a reminder that disasters can hit where they’re least expected. And if the nightmare scenario comes, government officials worry that state and federal authorities won’t be able to handle the “cascading failures” that follow. The results of May’s disaster exercise won’t be released to the public. But privately, these government officials say they’re glad that this earthquake was just a drill — and not the big one. Especially because there are so many nuclear power plants in the fault zone.

“A couple of things keep me up at night,” Paul Stockton, the Defense Department’s senior homeland security official, told the Aspen Security Forum last month. A quake, like the one simulated in National Level Exercise 11, is chief among the sleep-takers. “It’s so much bigger than anything we’ve faced — way beyond Hurricane Katrina.”

The ultimate hot air balloon: Capsule that can take brave (and wealthy) explorers into Earth's stratosphere to launch in two years

A helium balloon that will take enterprising travellers into Earth's stratosphere is due to take off in just two years.

The 'Bloon' will climb to a height of 22miles thanks to a huge balloon measuring 420ft in diameter.

The five-hour experience would cost an astronomical £90,000 per person but would offer 'space tourists' the chance to glimpse the curvature of the Earth.

Pod with a view: Space tourists will be able to see the curvature of the Earth during their five-hour trip

Conditions on the 'near-spaceship' should be fairly comfortable as the pressurised pod, which is 13ft in diameter, would offer plenty of space for the two pilots and up to four guests. The room temperature would allow visitors to be in 'shirt sleeves.'

On 'their trip of a lifetime' visitors would experience a three-hour cruise at an altitude where they could watch the Sun dawning over our planet.

Then the sail would be vented and descend until the sail separated from the pod. A parachute would then deploy to fly the pod back to Earth.

The pod, due to fly its first mission in 2013, is the brainchild of Spanish company Zero 2 Infinity.

They claim is can be flown 25miles in any direction to safely guide it to a predetermined landing site.

Entrepreneur and CEO Jose Mariano Lopez-Urdiales said he was inspired to do the project while having a conversation with his astronomer father.

Going up: The pod holding two pilots and up to four guests will ascend thanks to a helium balloon 420ft in diameter

Earth, home to mankind and 8.7m other species - but it will take 1,200 years to find them all

Scientists claim to have worked out how many species there are on Earth - 8.7million.

They reached the figure using an advanced mathematical model which they believe is the most accurate ever.

Previous estimates ranged from three million to 100million.

New find: This new species of monitor lizard was discovered in Papua New Guinea recently

The Canadian researchers hope their ‘telephone book’ for the planet will help find undiscovered species and quantify how many are being lost.

Zoologists and botanists have been cataloguing species for 250 years, but so far only 1.2million have been logged. Each year 6,000 are discovered, but even at that rate, it would take another 1,200 years to find them all.

The authors reached their total using a model based on known species groups. Each was divided into categories, then re-divided again and again into theoretical sub-categories.

'God Particle' May Be a Mirage, Scientists Hint

cern particles lhc

A proton-proton collision at the Large Hadron Collider particle accelerator at CERN laboratory in Geneva that produced more than 100 charged particles.

Scientists chasing a particle they believe may have played a vital role in creation of the universe indicated on Monday they were coming to accept it might not exist after all.

But they stressed that if the so-called Higgs boson turns out to have been a mirage, the way would be open for advances into territory dubbed "new physics" to try to answer one of the great mysteries of the cosmos.

The CERN research center, whose giant Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has been the focus of the search, said it had reported to a conference in Mumbai that possible signs of the Higgs noted last month were now seen as less significant.

A number of scientists from the center went on to make comments that raised the possibility that the mystery particle might not exist.

Black Holes and Pulsars Could Reveal Extra Dimensions of the Universe

Black holes and pulsars could reveal extra dimensions, solving that thorny problem of testing string theory, which attempts to unify all the known forces. String theory calls for extra spatial dimensions beyond the three we experience. Testing the theory has proved difficult, however.
But that hasn't stopped John Simonetti of Virginia Tech in Blacksburg and colleagues who say black holes orbited by neutron stars called pulsars could do just that – if cosmic surveys can locate such pairings. “The universe contains ‘experimental’ setups we cannot produce on Earth,” he says.
Black holes are predicted to cast off their mass over time by emitting particles, a phenomenon called Hawking radiation. Without extra dimensions, this process is predicted to be incredibly slow for run-of-the-mill black holes weighing a few times as much as the sun, making it impossible to measure.

Extra dimensions would give the particles more ways to escape, speeding up the process. This rapid weight loss would loosen a black hole's gravitational grip on any orbiting objects, causing them to spiral outwards by a few metres per year, the team calculates.

Scorpion-shaped UFO seen in the skies over Los Cristianos, Spain

Scorpion-shaped UFO seen in the skies over Los Cristianos, Spain: "In one of the most unusual recent UFO sightings, a scorpion-shaped object was spotted in the skies above Los Cristianos, Spain on Saturday, August 21, 2011. Jamie O'Rourke saw the unidentified flying object near his home around 8:00am and managed to snap several photos before the object disappeared."

Scorpion-shaped UFO seen in the skies over Los Cristianos, Spain [photos]

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

IBM UNVEILS CHIPS BASED ON THE BRAIN

One of the bigger challenges in designing a computer that works like a brain is that computers are not very bright. They can do math faster than humans, and they can run through thousands of data points in a fraction of a second. But ask a computer to read the bad handwriting on your prescription, or recognize an object based on seeing just a fraction of it, and it stumbles.

On top of that, the fastest and most sophisticated computers are power hogs. A typical human brain may not compute very fast, but it uses only about a watt or so of power. A late-model Cray supercomputer uses about 45,000 watts per cabinet; such computers can eaily consume megawatt levels of energy in some configurations.

Tom Horn – Pandemonium’s Engine

NASA's New Space Technologies

NASA has selected three proposals to transform space communications, deep space navigation and in-space propulsion capabilities. The projects will develop and fly a Mission-Capable Solar Sail, Deep Space Atomic Clock, and space-based Laser Communications Relay optical communications system. Launches are anticipated in 2015 and 2016.

"These technology missions will improve our communications, navigation and in-space propulsion capabilities, enable future missions that could not otherwise be performed, and build the technological capability of America's space industry," said NASA Chief Technologist Bobby Braun at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

ET Technology Could Appear as Natural Objects in the Universe

According to the British physicist Stephen Wolfram, intelligent life is inevitable. But there is a hitch. Although intelligent life is inevitable, we will never find it -at least not by looking out in the Milky Way. As evidence Wolfram points out In order to compress more and more information into our communication signals - be they mobile phone conversations or computer- we remove all redundancy or pattern. If anything in a signal repeats, then clearly it can be excised. But this process of removing any pattern from a signal make it look more and more random - in fact, pretty much like the random radio "noise" that rains down on Earth coming from stars and interstellar gas clouds.

According to Wolfram, if someone beamed our own 21st-century communication signals at us from space we would be hard pressed determining whether they were artificial or natural. So what chance do we have of distinguishing an ET communication from the general background radio static of the cosmos?

A Flying Saucer at 50

A Flying Saucer at 50 | Mysterious Universe: In March 1960, the U.S. Air Force and NASA became deeply embroiled in a controversial UFO event involving a man named Joseph Perry, of Grand Blanc, Michigan, who claimed to have photographed a UFO in the night sky approximately two weeks earlier. It was an affair that – officially, at least, finally came to a close 50-years ago this very week.

Warning as children shun books in favour of Facebook

Warning as children shun books in favour of Facebook - Telegraph: One in six children is failing to read books as they spend an increasing amount of time text messaging friends, sending emails and browsing social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, a study has found.

DARPA Prepares for Meme War

DARPA Prepares for Meme War: “Potent memes can change minds, alter behavior, catalyze collective mindshifts and transform cultures. Which is why meme warfare has become the geopolitical battle of our information age. Whoever has the memes has the power.”–Kalle Lasn

Galaxies are running out of gas: study

Galaxies are running out of gas: study: (PhysOrg.com) -- A new study has shown why the lights are going out in the Universe. The Universe forms fewer stars than it used to, and a CSIRO study has now shown why - the galaxies are running out of gas.

Scottish prehistoric mummies made from jigsaw of body parts

BBC News - Scottish prehistoric mummies made from jigsaw of body parts: DNA tests on British prehistoric mummies revealed they were made of body parts from several different people, arranged to look like one person.

New Report: Aliens Will Fix Global Warming ... Or Kill Us

An artist's illustration of a potential alien attack as depicted in the science television series "Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking."

If or when intelligent extraterrestrials discover us, it's anybody's guess what they'll do. They might befriend us. They might eat us. As Carl Sagan once noted, they might find amusement in some talent we have that they lack and use us as entertainment, just as we keep sea lions in captivity because of their remarkable ability to balance rubber balls on their noses.

All of these scenarios and more are fleshed out in a new article in the journal Acta Astronautica by researchers at Pennsylvania State University. One possibility they've raised has garnered more attention than any other: An extraterrestrial civilization might notice our planet by detecting changes in the spectral signature of Earth — the light radiated by our planet and atmosphere — caused by greenhouse gas emissions. And they might frown upon our behavior.

The group's thinking goes like this: From the rate of change of the chemical composition in our atmosphere, the aliens will deduce our rapid expansion and, because of that, possibly view us as a threat, thinking we'll soon pursue resources on other worlds. [Look! Up in the Sky! A Recent History of UFOs]

"If [they] doubt that our course can be changed, then they may seek to preemptively destroy our civilization in order to protect other civilizations from us," the researchers write. (Several media outlets have inaccurately reported that NASA is behind the new report. One of its authors, astrobiologist Shawn Domagal-Goldman, recently began working at NASA, but wrote the paper with former colleague Seth Baum and others at Penn State, whose institution was solely responsible for funding their research.)

Monday, August 22, 2011

Secret U.S. experiments to prompt 2nd Coming?

'It's the destruction of humanity and introduction of 'its' and 'things' that will make war against God'

Are men and women about to become superhumans who could hasten the 2nd Coming of Jesus?

Is mankind's quest for knowledge, power and longer life about to backfire and wipe human beings off the face of the Earth?

Secret experiments now underway in the U.S. and elsewhere are sparking fears of a potential extinction-level event hastening the 2nd Coming of Jesus.

For decades now, there have been science-fiction stories portraying a future filled with spectacular abilities for people, where the definition of what makes someone a human being is blurred by blending high technology and even animal traits into the humanbody.

In the 1970s, TV's "Six Million Dollar Man" featured Lee Majors as a critically injured astronaut rebuilt by the government to "make him better than he was – better, stronger, faster."

In 1982's classic film "Blade Runner," Harrison Ford portrayed a futuristic cop who falls in love with a genetically engineered female "Replicant" while he looked to kill renegade androids seeking immortality.

Since then, there's been no shortage of tales with similar themes, from "Dollhouse" and "The Terminator" to"Spider-Man," "Splice" and "The Matrix."

And with major advances in technology in recent years, science fiction of the past could become science fact of our immediate future, with human minds connected wirelessly to computers and bionic bodies outperforming top athletes by leaps and bounds. That prospect has some sounding alarm bells about the fulfillment of End-times Bible prophecy and the possible vanishing of mankind through global warfare, disease, starvation or even – as strange as it sounds – replacement by other entities.

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