The Cosmic Heart

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'Doomsday' vault opens its doors
2008-03-01 17:48:00
The opening of the "fail-safe" vault attracted a number of dignitaries. Leading dignitaries have attended the official opening of a 'doomsday' seed vault built 130m (426ft) inside a mountain on a remote Arctic island. Norwegian Prime Minister Jen Stoltenberg and Nobel Prize winner Wangari Maathai placed the first seeds in the depository during the ceremony. The vault, designed to withstand all natural and human disaster, will house samples of all known food crops. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault took 12 months and cost £5m to construct.
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Venus and Her Extroadinary Weather System
2008-02-26 17:27:00
Slowly but surely scientists are unraveling an incredible picture of our Solar System with each planet vastly differing from the next, but all featuring it?s own unique and mysterious beauty. The tan highland area in the center of the image left is called Aphrodite Terra, while the faint green circle to the lower right is a deep canyon named Artemis Chasma.Named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty, Venus is also known as the ?morning star? and ?evening star? since it is visible at dawn and dusk to the naked eye, appearing as a bright, white disk from Earth. However, closer up, the planet?s cloudy atmosphere creates a process similar to ?urban smog over cities.?Venus is often called Earth's twin as the two planets are close in size, but that's where the similarity ends. The massive clouds that cover Venus create a greenhouse effect that keeps the planet at a sizzling 864°F. Now Venus Express has revealed our ?twin? planet to be extraordinarily fast changing 'global weather...
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God Particle - At The Heart Of All Matter
2008-02-24 17:36:00
If you were to dig a hole 300 feet straight down from the center of the charming French village of Crozet, you'd pop into a setting that calls to mind the subterranean lair of one of those James Bond villains. A garishly lit tunnel ten feet in diameter curves away into the distance, interrupted every few miles by lofty chambers crammed with heavy steel structures, cables, pipes, wires, magnets, tubes, shafts, catwalks, and enigmatic gizmos. This technological netherworld is one very big scientific instrument, specifically, a particle accelerator-an atomic peashooter more powerful than any ever built. It's called the Large Hadron Collider, and its purpose is simple but ambitious: to crack the code of the physical world; to figure out what the universe is made of; in other words, to get to the very bottom of things.Starting sometime in the coming months, two beams of particles will race in opposite directions around the tunnel, which forms an underground ring 17 miles in circumferen...
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Saturn Rules the Night February 24,08
2008-02-23 06:51:00
Saturn reaches a point in its orbit called opposition February 24. At such times, the planet lies opposite the Sun from our perspective on Earth. This marks the best time of year to view the ringed planet because it lies closest to Earth and thus appears its biggest and brightest. At this opposition, Saturn will lie 771 million miles (1.24 billion kilometers) from Earth. Opposition is also when Saturn rises at sunset and sets at sunrise, so the planet remains visible all night.Shortly after the Sun sets, look east to see Saturn rising with the stars of Leo the Lion. Look 5° (a bit less than the width of three fingers held at arm's length) west of Saturn for Leo's brightest star, Regulus. In the early evening, Regulus will lie to Saturn's upper right.http://www.astronomy.com/asy/defaul t.aspx?c=a&id=6656
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2012 A Time Odyssey
2008-02-23 05:37:00
Many experts, scientists, artists and philosophers have reached the conclusion that the human experience is reaching some kind of ultimate climax. Each person who studies this phenomenon calls this coming event by a different name, or uses different terms to describe it, but essentially they are all speaking of the same event. José Argüelles says that it is the Climax of Matter, Jean Houston calls it Jump Time , and Ray Kurzweil calls it the approaching singularity.For full story cut and past the link below into your browser or click on the title link above. http://www.newdawnmagazine.com/Article/20 12_A_Time_Odyssey%20.html

Cosmic Coincidence Spotted
2008-02-22 04:25:00
The secret of the Universe is not 42, according to a new theory, but the unimaginably larger number 10122. Scott Funkhouser of the Military College of South Carolina (called The Citadel) in Charleston has shown how this number ? which is bigger than the number of particles in the Universe ? keeps popping up when several of the physical constants and parameters of the Universe are combined. This ?coincidence?, he says, is surely significant, hinting at some common principle at work behind the scenes.
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Could Creation of Universe Be Similar to The Analogy of Farmer Planting See
2008-02-19 20:43:00
Could the image of the creator planting seeds be similar to the anology of the image of a farmer planting seeds. For example in this scenerio to start, lets say maybe there are only two seeds. The first seed would have been the universe itself, which we are told started out as a very small thing, much smaller than a mustard seed. Yet it has grown into a giant tree, that all the stars and planets can find shelter in. Then lets say the second seed would be the first microorganisms planted on our planet, billions of years ago. Then if the concept of a front-loaded evolution could turn out to be correct, then this could all be the direct design intervention that may have been necessary. And so from this tiny seed grew the huge tree of life that we see around us today.So perhaps the proper analogy of the creators action in the universe is that of a farmer, planting seeds in his field.
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Earth Like Planets Not Rare in Milky Way
2008-02-19 20:12:00
Using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, a team of scientists found that at least 20 percent, and possibly the majority (as many as 60 percent) of stars similar to the sun are candidates for forming rocky planets. The Legacy Science Program set out to determine whether planetary systems like ours are common or rare in the Milky Way. What they found is that many, perhaps even most, of the sun-like stars in our galaxy could well harbor Earth -like planets. The Spitzer team found that at least 1 in 5 neighboring solar-mass stars have the right conditions to have formed terrestrial worlds. This new research indicates that worlds with potential for life may be relatively common.The research appears in Astrophysical Journal Letters, and the findings were also presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The research team included University of Arizona astronomer Michael Meyer and colleagues John Carpenter of the California Institute of Technolog...
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A Search for the "Dark Ages" of The Moon
2008-02-18 17:40:00
Scientist are said to be going to explore one of the greatest unknown realms of astronomy, the so-called "Dark Ages" near the beginning of the universe when stars, star clusters and galaxies first came into existence. This period of roughly a billion years, beginning shortly after the so called Big Bang, closely followed the time when cosmic background radiation, which has been mapped using satellites, filled all of space. Learning about this unobserved era is considered essential to filling in our understanding of how the earliest structures in the universe came into being.Observations of the cosmic Dark Ages are impossible to make from Earth, say scientist because of two major sources of interference that obscure these faint low-frequency radio emissions. One is the Earth's ionosphere, a high-altitude layer of electrically charged gas. The other is all of Earth's radio and television transmissions, which produce background interference everywhere on the Earth's surface.The only...
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Many, perhaps most, nearby sun-like stars may form rocky planets
2008-02-18 02:51:00
Astronomers have discovered that terrestrial planets might form around many, if not most, of the nearby sun-like stars in the disk of our galaxy. These new results suggest that worlds with potential for life might be more common than thought.
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Sun Like Star Flips it's Magnetic Field
2008-02-16 01:27:00
An international group of astronomers that includes the University of Hawaii's Evgenya Shkolnik reported that they have discovered that the Sun-like star tau Bootis flipped its magnetic field from north to south sometime during the last year.It has been known for many years that the Sun's magnetic field changes its direction every 11 years, but this is this is the first time that such a change has been observed in another star. The team of astronomers, who made use of Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope atop Mauna Kea, are now closely monitoring tau Bootis to see how long it will be before the magnetic field reverses again.Magnetic field reversals on the Sun are closely linked to the varying number of sunspots seen on the Sun's surface. The last "solar minimum," the time when number of sunspots was the lowest and the magnetic flip occurred, was in 2007. The first sunspot of the new cycle appeared just last month.The magnetic cycle of the Sun impacts the Earth's climate and is believe...
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Gas From Saturn's Largest Moon
2008-02-15 22:28:00
Saturn's orange moon Titan has hundreds of times more liquid hydrocarbons than all the known oil and natural gas reserves on Earth, according to new data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft. The hydrocarbons rain from the sky, collecting in vast deposits that form lakes and dunes.
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Saturn's Rings as Ancient as Solar System
2008-02-14 16:02:00
Larry Esposito -University of Colorado, Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics states: "We have discovered that the rings were probably not created just yesterday in cosmic time, and in this scenario it is not just luck that we are seeing planetary rings now. They probably were always around but continually changing, and they will be around for many billions of years."The scientific world is a continuing maelstrom of ideas, being reformed, redefined and refuted. Nothing stays put for long, and this is even more the case in the scientific realm of astronomy. New observations by NASA?s Cassini spacecraft are helping to continue this bafflement of the scientific terra firma, dispelling beliefs that the rings orbiting Saturn are relatively new.Once thought to have formed during the age of the dinosaurs, nearly 100 million years ago as a result of a disintegrating moon, the Saturn rings may have been created roughly 4.5 billion years ago when the solar system was still under constr...
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Lunar Eclispe February 20th, 08 Next Eclispe Not Until 2010
2008-02-14 00:38:00
On Wednesday evening, February 20th, the full Moon over the Americas will turn a delightful shade of red and possibly turquoise, too. It's a total lunar eclipse?the last one until Dec. 2010.The Sun goes down. The Moon comes up. You go out and look at the sky. Observing the eclipse is that easy. Maximum eclipse, and maximum beauty, occurs at 10:26 pm EST (7:26 pm PST).
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Swedish Researchers Strongly Support New Theory of Earth's Core
2008-02-13 23:31:00
It has long been known that the inner core of the earth, a sphere consisting of a solid mass with a radius of about 1,200 km, is mainly made up of iron. However, seismic observations have shown that elastic waves pass more rapidly through this core in directions that are parallel to the earth?s axis of rotation than in directions parallel to the equator­-a phenomenon that has not been previously explained. At the high temperatures that prevail in the core of the earth, these waves should pass at the same speed regardless of their direction. The earth?s heat balance, like its magnetic field, is dependent on the amount of heat that is stored in the inner core of the earth. These conditions, in turn, are dependent on the crystal structure of the iron in the inner core. Previously these estimates were based on models deriving from the hexagonal structure of iron in the inner core. The Swedish scientists? discovery will now entail a critical revaluation of the cooling off of the earth an...
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Maya, Zero Point and Precessional Cycle
2008-02-12 17:26:00
With the Maya we have discovered another story associated with the Winter Solstice, the New Year and the fate of people on Earth. The astronomical alignment of the Precessional Cycle of the Winter Solstice and Galactic Center represents the "Zero Point " on the Cosmic Clock, thus marking the beginning of the New Age in our evolutionary journey in consciousness. It tells us that a New Sun is born, a New Year has dawned, a New Galactic Cycle has begun, and the transformation of our World is well underway. The big secret in this particular story is that we need not wait for the Winter Solstice in the year 2012 to recognize that we are entering into this time of profound transition. For according to the most recent astronomical calculations the Solstice Meridian actually coincided most precisely with the Galactic Equator between 1998 and 1999. Just as the Earth?s equator divides the planet into two hemispheres of North and South, the Galactic Equator is the astronomical term for the divi...

Connection Between Milky Way Galaxy and 2012 Mayan Calendar
2008-02-12 17:20:00
Most astronomers are now convinced that at the center of our Galaxy is a massive black hole the unimaginable seize of millions of our suns. This is where Science and Mythology truly meet. For what the center of our Galaxy may represent in terms of energy and the properties of time/space, no one has a clue.But to the ancient Maya the Milky Way Galaxy represented the Great Cosmic Mother from which all Life was birthed. They saw our Galactic Mother stretching out across the night sky and somehow recognize the place where we all had come from. And the great central bulge at Her center they perceived as the Cosmic Womb. Within the central bulge there is what looks like a dark corridor, known as the dark rift. To the Maya it was referred to by many names but the most pertinent here is their reference to this area as the "birthing place". Are we beginning to get the picture here?Considering then the significance of the 2012 date in the Mayan calendar , it has been discovered that this year ...
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Earths Elliptcal Orbit Responsible for Our Leap Year February 29th and More
2008-02-12 16:36:00
Earth?s orbit around the sun is not the perfect circle that many would like to believe; this is how we get our leap years every four years. But more than that, a new report points to the Earth?s elliptical orbit as being responsible for more than just the 29th of February .According to Michael E. Wysession, Ph.D., associate professor of earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, our planet?s elliptical orbit has much more to it though than just the odd extra day."All planets travel in an ellipse around the sun, but the shape of that ellipse oscillates," he explains. "When the Earth's orbit is more elliptical, the planet spends more time farther away from the sun, and the Earth gets less sunlight over the course of the year. These periods of more-elliptical orbits are separated by about 100,000 years. Ice ages occur about every 100,000 years, and they line up exactly with this change in the Earth's elliptical shape."The science behind this...
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Solar Activity Deminishes - Researchers Predict Another Ice Age
2008-02-12 03:49:00
Researchers are worried about the sun. Solar activity comes in regular cycles, but the latest one is refusing to start. Sunspots have all but vanished, and activity is suspiciously quiet. The last time this happened was 400 years ago -- and it signaled a solar event known as a "Maunder Minimum," along with the start of what we now call the "Little Ice Age."During the Little Ice Age, global temperatures dropped sharply. New York Harbor froze hard enough to allow people to walk from Manhattan to Staten Island, and in Britain, people reported sighting eskimos paddling canoes off the coast. Glaciers in Norway grew up to 100 meters a year, destroying farms and villages. But will it happen again?In 2005, Russian astronomer Khabibullo Abdusamatov predicted the sun would soon peak, triggering a rapid decline in world temperatures. Only last month, the view was echoed by Dr. Oleg Sorokhtin, a fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences. who advised the world to "stock up on fur coats...
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Extremophile Hunt Begins in Antarctica, Implications for Exobiologists
2008-02-10 23:19:00
An expedition has set off for Antarctica 's Lake Untersee in the quest to find bacteria living in one of the most extreme environments on Earth. The bacteria-hunting team are looking for a basic lifeform in a highly toxic location. Resembling the chemistry of Mars, moons of Jupiter and Saturn, even comets, the ice-covered lake may hold some clues to how life might survive, thrive even, beyond the "normality" of our planet.
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Countless Alternative Worlds May Actually Have Existed at the Big Bang
2008-02-10 18:59:00
How did the Universe begin is one of the most profound questions of all. But to Stephen Hawking, who has perhaps come closer than anyone to answering it, the question doesn't in fact even exist.Hawking, who holds Newton's Lucasian Chair at the University of Cambridge, UK, and his colleague Thomas Hertog of the European Laboratory for Particle Physics at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, are about to publish a paper claiming that the Universe had no unique beginning. Instead, they argue, it emerged out of a profusion of beginnings, the vast majority withered away without leaving any real imprint on the Universe we know today. Only a tiny fraction of them blended to make the current cosmos, Hawking and Hertog claim. According to their article in Nature: He and Hawking call their theory 'top-down' cosmology, because instead of looking for some fundamental set of initial physical laws under which our Universe unfolded, it starts 'at the top', with what we see today, and works backwards...
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A Gas Hook Points To Galaxies Future
2008-02-10 18:49:00
Like a fork piercing a fried egg, a giant finger of hydrogen gas is poking through our Milky Way Galaxy from outside, astronomers have found.The location of the intrusion may give a crucial clue to the fate of the little galaxies the gas flows from, the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds.?We?re thrilled because we can determine exactly where this gas is ploughing into the Milky Way ? it?s usually extremely hard to get distances to such gas features,? said the research team leader, Dr Naomi McClure-Griffiths of CSIRO?s Australia Telescope National Facility.The gas finger, called HVC306-2+230, is running into the starry disk of our Galaxy about 70 thousand light-years (21kpc) away from us. On the sky, the point of contact is near the Southern Cross.The finger is the pointy end of the so-called Leading Arm of gas that streams ahead of the Magellanic Clouds towards the Milky Way.Until last year, astronomers generally thought that the Magellanic Clouds had orbited our Galaxy many times, a...
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Update on Asteroid 2007 TU24 - Russia Warns of Catastrophic from Earth Bou
2008-02-09 22:07:00
The Russia n Scientist Dr. Khabibullo Abdusamatov, Director of the space research lab at the Pulkovo Observatory in St. Petersburg, and who has previously warned about a coming Ice Age, issued a report to the Kremlin warning of the potential affects to our Earth from an asteroid that come dangerously close to our World on January 29,08.According to this report, Asteroid 2007 TU24, which has been measured at being 600 meters (2,000 feet) large, was due to pass within 540,000 kilometers (334,000 miles) of Earth on January 29th, and which is being described by NASA Scientist Don Yeomans as being "... the closest approach by a known asteroid of this size or larger until 2027?.Though some reports emerging from the West were suggesting that NASA was ?greatly concerned? about Asteroid 2007 TU24 striking our Earth, Dr. Abdusamatov?s report states that the greatest danger from this space object is the catastrophic effect it is having on our electromagnetic field and destabilizing our already ...
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DNA May Have "Impossible" Telepathic Properties
2008-02-09 21:14:00
DNA has been found to have a bizarre ability to put itself together, even at a distance, when according to known science it shouldn't be able to. Explanation: None, at least not yet. Scientists are reporting evidence that contrary to our current beliefs about what is possible, intact double-stranded DNA has the ?amazing? ability to recognize similarities in other DNA strands from a distance. Somehow they are able to identify one another, and the tiny bits of genetic material tend to congregate with similar DNA. The recognition of similar sequences in DNA?s chemical subunits, occurs in a way unrecognized by science. There is no known reason why the DNA is able to combine the way it does, and from a current theoretical standpoint this feat should be chemically impossible.Even so, the research published in ACS? Journal of Physical Chemistry B, shows very clearly that homology recognition between sequences of several hundred nucleotides occurs without physical contact or presence of pr...
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Total Eclipse of the Moon February 20,08
2008-02-09 03:42:00
Mark Wednesday, Feb. 20, on your calendar as "Lunar Eclipse Night," for if the weather is fair you should have no difficulty observing a total eclipse of the moon.The eclipse will be visible wherever the moon is above the horizon during the time frame that the eclipse is taking place. As it turns out, North and South America will turned toward the moon and will be in excellent position for this sky show.Europe, Africa and a part of western Asia will also be able to see the eclipse, although for these regions the event will take place in hours just before sunrise on the morning of Feb. 21.All told, given clear skies, about three billion potential eclipse viewers will be able to partake in the spectacle of the full moon becoming completely immersed in the Earth's shadow.This will be the third total lunar eclipse within the past year. The previous two favored different parts of North America, but this one will be readily visible from start-to-finish across much of the continent, weath...
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The world's first time machine? Tunnel to the past could open door to futur
2008-02-09 03:37:00
Time travel could be a reality within just three months, Russian mathematicians have claimed. They believe an experiment nuclear scientists plan to carry out in underground tunnels in Geneva in May could create a rift in the fabric of the universe. Scientists say that time travel could be a reality in just three monthsThe European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) hopes its "atom-smashing" tests - which aim to recreate the conditions in the first billionth of a second after the "Big Bang'" created everything - will shed invaluable light on the origins of the universe. Irina Aref'eva and Igor Volovich, of Moscow's Steklov Mathematical Institute, say the energy produced by forcing tiny particles to collide at close to the speed of light could open the door to visitors from the future.
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How Does The Cycle of A New Golden Age Begin?
2008-02-07 15:28:00
Editor's noteIn order to initiate the new golden age, the life force of the creator must descend into our midst and be infused into the depths of our souls and the very fabric of earth. The life force of the Creator is not a Euphemism. It describes an actual physical spiritual force that periodically descends upon our planet in accordance with an ancient cosmic rhythm. It descends as a wave of luminious subtle matter.
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New Light on Dark Energy
2008-02-06 21:14:00
Astronomers have been measuring the distribution and motions of thousands of galaxies in the distant universe, which opens a fascinating perspective to better understand what drives the acceleration of the cosmic expansion and sheds new light on the mysterious dark energy that is thought to permeate the universe."Explaining why the expansion of the universe is currently accelerating is certainly the most fascinating question in modern cosmology," says Luigi Guzzo, lead author of a paper in which the new results are presented. "We have been able to show that large surveys that measure the positions and velocities of distant galaxies provide us with a new powerful way to solve this mystery."Astronomers made the stunning discovery 10 years ago that the universe is expanding at a faster pace today than it did in the past."This implies that one of two very different possibilities must hold true. "Either the universe is filled with a mysterious dark energy which produces a repulsive force...
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Solar Eclipse February 7th, 2008
2008-02-06 01:38:00
On Thursday, Feb. 7th, there will be a partial solar eclipse over New Zealand, Antarctica and parts of Australia. Anyone in the area with a solar telescope can watch the mountainous lunar limb glide across the Sun's fiery surface while crescent-shaped sunbeams dance at their feet--a marvelous experience. The highlight of the eclipse occurs along an Antarctic "path of annularity" where the Sun and Moon combine to produce a vivid ring of fire.
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Expelled - No Intelligence Allowed
2008-02-05 23:01:00
Why is intelligent design so controversial that a Hollywood film has been made about the effort to silence the design theorists? Expelled : No Intelligence Allowed, starring Ben Stein, is due for release in April. Comment: The trailer to this movie is pretty good. The movie should be interesting when it comes out. If you have time to watch the trailer do so.Here's the trailer. Click on the title link above or cut and past the link below into your browser.http://www.expelledthemovie.com/p layground.phpDarwinism is still very much alive, utterly dominating biology. Despite the fact that no one has ever been able to prove the creation of a single distinct species by Darwinist means, Darwinism dominates the academy and the media. Darwinism also has not one meaningful word to say on the origins of organic life, a striking lacuna in a theory supposedly explaining life.Alas, Darwinism has had a far bloodier life span than Imperialism. Darwinism, perhaps mixed with Imperialism, gave us Socia...