ah, yes that's the name of a song by Sound Garden, but it's also precisely how astrophysicist's describe the notion of a Black Hole.
Right on the edge of the 'event horizon' matter shrinks and hurtles possibly beyond the speed of light, towards the singularity, graphically seen in the image here.
Since you can't see black holes directly, how do we know they are there? ;The following documentary video tries to tell the story of black holes up to the first observation of one.
Apple earlier today announced a new leaping version to its OSX system software badged MountainLion or 10.8 and its main purpose is to make Apple computers work and function the exact same way as either an iphone, ipad or ipod touch. Essentially turning your computer into a great big iphone, plus more.
Mountain Lion's key feature is convergence and integration of immediate conveniences experienced, in their i-devices.
Averting and or planning a strategy to avoid the frequent loss of life, utilities and possessions that occurs after a devastating natural disaster is usually based on the amount of available time we get that informs us of a pending disaster.
Youtube user robbiek77 has noticed a rather alarming statistic of three recent earthquake events that have occurred in Chile, New Zealand and Japan. In the video here he shows that each earthquake happened exactly 188 days apart and goes onto predict with his math and ruler that California may expect a similar event in a few weeks time or 188 days since Japan, ie September 15.
He speculates in his video notes; "So, if this next BIG Earthquake is indeed going to be in California U.S.A. by way of measuring the timing and the global mapping - then why has the beloved and elite scientists not made you aware ? It took a brother from a message board I used to work it out - SURELY These scientists have worked it out? If so - why have they not told you on the nightly news?"
Although the 188 day period between these recent natural disasters seems uncannily accurate, nature rarely exhibits such finite accuracy, or, in this instance we hope it doesn't !
Update:
I'm happy to report that if you may have been holding your breath on September 15, "A 7.3-magnitude earthquake struck early Friday in the Fiji islands region of the Pacific Ocean, the U.S. Geological Survey reported." And although a destructive tsunami was not generated, the quake struck at a depth of 626 kms, (390 miles) below the earth's surface and caused no harm. The next day another 6.6 Mag. 60 miles offshore of Japan's east coast.
So, although there appeared to be an earthquake when robbiek77's hypothetical stated, it proved unremarkable for his predicated location. So unless you think this deserves further discussion, I welcome you as always, to submit any comments you may have, below.
The flooding never stops as Australia's Victoria (see video, below), gets a creeping massive inland sea that obliterates townships, villages, lively-hoods and municipal infrastructure throughout its north west.
Sydneysiders have just this afternoon received a very welcome cool strong burst of cool air lifting us out of the worst full 7 days on record of a 'round the clock' severe heatwave. Albeit north east Queensland has progressed to the mopping up phase, of tropical cyclone Yasi; hopefully giving rise to some worthwhile form of social and infrastructural remediation from the worst tropical cyclone in recorded history.
Simultaneously at present the remnant cyclonic stream from Yasi is rummaging across inner west Queensland towards the center of Australia, as the worst flood in recorded history is swamping multitudinous hectares of north western Victoria. Into this mix Australians struggle, perspire, sweat, or boat across wide open expanses of temporary flooded plains, hopefully to nearby evacuation centers.
Hey, but if things couldn't get any worse, with news just in; South Australia has just now been impacted by the petering out tropical cyclone Yasi.
"The landscape is sodden across a wide area of South Australia. Yongala received 128 millimeters of rain in 24 hours, beating a record set 121 years ago. Hallett in the mid-north also had a record fall of 98 millimeters, beating a mark set in 1890".
Go read the full story and view the video, from ABC News.
Totally dire flood predicament causes anguish and despair with floating detritus playing havoc across the Brisbane flood plain ripping at the very hearts of architecture, infrastructure, lives and families.
"Watching Australian TV you might be forgiven for thinking you're in the middle of an apocalyptic Hollywood movie going crazy with the CGI. From the gunmetal gray skies to the torrential rains and powerful floodwater tossing cars around as if they were Hot wheels toys you can't but feel a tremor run down your spine." Liz Pereira
There are 18 people confirmed dead and up to 20 something still missing after 6 days. 1000's of homes completely destroyed, 10's of thousands of people have had to leave their homes knowing that they will come back to utter environmental devastation ?
A couple of days ago Geoff Mackley and Bradley Ambrose who are in Brisbane covering this unfolding disaster, documented some unique perspectives of the raging torrid down the Brisbane river, cajoling dozens of boats as other items smash into bridges over the Brisbane River.
The river has since reduced its girth and the long and grinding road for clean up and rebuilding is underway. Go here to read more about how the flood unfolded and how the community is now dealing with it.
Peter Murphy has some captured some really excellent photographic panoramas of the devastating floods here.
Also, Australian online mapping company Nearmap, has released a flyover map of the flood devastation, in "super high resolution and you can zoom in and see a walnut on the ground without it pixelating." via
I wonder how many of us are aware that most people on the planet consume insects regularly. Red dye used in many of our foods and confectionery's like Coca Cola is derived from Charmine which is extracted from cochineal beetles and their eggs.
"An estimated 2,000 insect species are consumed around the world, and people do not just eat insects, they relish them as delicacies. In Africa, caterpillars and winged termites are fried and eaten as roadside snacks (after wings, legs, and bristles are removed, of course), and often considered tastier than meat. Grasshoppers and bee larvae seasoned with soy sauce are favorites in Japan, where pricey canned insects are also available. Papua New Guinea is known for its nutty-flavored sago grubs (Rhynchophorus ferrugineus papuanus or R. bilineatus), beetle larvae that inhabit dead sago palm trees and are honored at annual festivals.
Insects often contain more protein, fat, and carbohydrates than equal amounts of beef or fish, and a higher energy value than soybeans, maize, beef, fish, lentils, or other beans. According to a 2004 United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) report, caterpillars of many species are rich in potassium, calcium, magnesium, zinc, and iron, as well as B-vitamins. In some African regions, children fight malnutrition by eating flour made out of dried caterpillars. Pregnant and nursing women as well as anemic people also eat caterpillar species high in protein, calcium, and iron." Source
Al Jazeera's news reporter, Charles Stratford walks and talks us through the market stalls in Vientiane, Laos in this news documentary video here about moves afoot towards developing and promoting insect farming.
Presently large swathes of farming districts in the south east of Australia are under threat of being severely munched up by a large areas of locust plagues and the plague control organizations are spending large sums of money on aerial spraying of toxic poisons. Maybe we ought to be looking at ways to hoover them up for the dinner table, which seems possible since insect farming in Australia already exists !
IT engineers from Bangalore's IISc and four IITs have come up with a laptop at the cost of mere 35 dollars. The engineer says in the news video that by the time the device is released the product will be available for the mass market for under $20.
The display or tablet has a touch-screen, 2gig RAM, wifi connectivity and USB ports. Phew, when this nifty device arrives, I guess we can expect prices of most other tablets dropping ? Perhaps even the iPad ?
Oil Treatment International (OTI) has invented a sustainable solution for non-toxic bioremediation for cleaning up oil contaminated waterways. The video here is a documentary of one of their tests and explains exactly how their product could be deployed almost immediately in the Gulf oil spill.
OTI's product SOT11 acts in a totally non-toxic way and acts as a natural mediator to reintroduce oil into the natural process of degradation without applying any bacteria, nitrates or phosphates.
OTI's product has been specifically created to decontaminate without generating waste. Their product focuses entirely on the bioremediation of oil spills on water bodies, oil spills on soil and shorelines as well as the cleaning of objects contaminated with oil.
Among the environmental safety features of this new substance, the product is designed to decontaminate without generating waste and does not interfere with the natural flora and fauna of coastal and inland waterways. Their solution of oil bioremediation is successfully finalized within 2-4 months of a given treated area.
The actual material SOT11 is made of naturally occurring compound minerals, but as one might expect a trade secret and according to their website:
"SOT 11 is composed of powdered natural and non-toxic materials. SOT 11 is a solid adsorbent, strictly inorganic." Furthermore, "The SOT powder is dusted on the film of crude oil or its heavier fractions. The Oil-SOT 11-complex sinks finely dispersed to the bottom of the water body within two to four hours, leaving the water clear and free of oil. The fine crude petroleum droplets in the SOT 11 sediment at the sea bed serve as substrate for microorganisms."
Since the oil flowing the gulf is on it's way around the Florida keys perhaps that might be a good place to begin dropping the granulate, at the very least to prevent it going further up the east coast ?
Have you consumed any raw crayfish from rivers or streams lately ? You might be wondering why your experiencing fever, coughing, chest pain, shortness of breath and or extreme fatigue, then your most likely to have caught a very rare and severe parasitic infection, known as paragonimiasis.
Doctors have recently diagnosed a rare parasitic infection in six people who had consumed raw crayfish from streams and rivers in Missouri. Washington University infectious diseases specialist Gary Weil, MD, professor of medicine and of molecular microbiology, who has treated some of the patients, believes that many other people out there, may have contracted the disease.
Consuming almost any type shell or crab or crayfish from fresh water rivers and streams will likely contract an infection via a half inch (8cm) oval shaped parasitic worm that travels down ones intestines to the lungs. Worse still it could continue travelling to the brain causing severe headaches or vision problems, or under the skin, appearing as small, moving nodules.
Some patients experienced a buildup of fluid around the lungs and around the heart. One patient even had his gallbladder removed, to no avail. The infection is generally not fatal, and is easily treated if properly diagnosed. But the illness is so unusual that most doctors are not aware of it. Nevertheless once the disease has been diagnosed, treatment is easily managed with tabs of praziquantel and recovery takes hold within a few days.
Although Crayfish are common throughout North America, where hundreds of species live in rivers, streams, lakes and ponds there are other variant strains of the disease throughout East Asia, South america and Africa.
CBS news recently compiled a report, that reveals a startling finding about security risks contained in digital office photo-copiers.
As we can see in the video, office copying machines contain hard disks that store an image of every page ever copied by the copier. This means that all copies ever made on one of these machines remains intact
One wonders if identity thieves are busily buying up old laser printers from auctions in order to tap into the treasure trove of personal information about employees, clients, company trade secrets, bank account details or anything and everything that was ever copied ?
This means at the very least, if your business is planning on reselling your machine you may want to talk to your vendor about replacing the hard drive !
Last evening the 17th Biennale of Sydney launched one of the most ambitious programs in its 37-Year history which is presented free to the public from 12 May until 1 August 2010 at seven venues across the heart of the city.
Here, Peter Murphy has captured a panorama of the opening party that took place in the Turbine Hall on Cockatoo Island.
Peter's panorama features a few of famous Chinese artist Cao Gu0-Quiang's large installation of “exploding” cars hanging from the interior of the roof, first seen at the Gugenheim in this little video.
The Beauty of Distance: Songs of Survival in a Precarious Age, Biennale exhibition presents more than 440 works by 166 artists and collaborators from 36 countries, making it the largest exhibition ever staged by the Biennale of Sydney in its 37-year history. Read more.
The satellite has not responded to commands since solar flares fried its CPU in April, and it won't shut down. Thus it is likely to interfere with other satellites as it crosses their orbital slots on its way to an earth-sun Lagrange point, the natural final destination of a geostationary satellite without manoeuvring power.
The satellite looks to becoming Zombiefied, a satellite term for a failed satellite in orbit.
"Galaxy 15 is continuing on an orbital path occupied by C-band satellite AMC-11 operated by SES World Skies. Its still-operational payload could cause interference with the SES satellite for two weeks starting around May 23, according to estimates." via
Satnews, counters this claim; "There has been no immediate service interruption to customers, and based on current technical information, no service interruption is expected for the media customers on this satellite"
However the video here gives us a clearer account of possible interference outcomes of the rogue satellite.
I have, until now expected most satellites would include a backup control system, after all, aren't most of these sophisticated objects that sail out beyond human physical boudaries multimillion dollar investments ?
Stephen Wiltshire is an architectural autistic savant artist and is known for his ability to draw a landscape after seeing it just once. He studied Fine Art at City & Guilds Art College. His work is popular all over the world, and is held in a number of important collections. Stephen is currently in Sydney, Australia.
He simply absorbs any architectural and or street-scape he visually inspects. You'd also have to wonder if he stores in his memory every drawing he ever made or whether he wipes the hard drive every now and again ?
Peter Murphy has captured a panorama of Stephen at work, recreating his view of the city at Customs House, Circular Quay. Check out Stephen's blog here, or view a panorama of his awesome 10 meter long drawing of Tokyo here.
Perhaps you'd appreciate a live web-cam feedof Stephen performing his unreal photographic memory in action. Hey and there's heaps of video in place when his not in the field of vision - until May 1.
Sven Goebel from Germany has fulfilled his dream of building the biggest house made of beer coasters in the world and has sealed his Guinness World Record, by pulling it down.
He used over 300,000 coasters to create walls and furniture for the house. But to claim the record title, he had to prove no adhesives had been used to hold his structure together.
Goebel delivered the final proof that nothing but statics has been holding the coasters in place and with one little pull on a string, and a few taps of his foot, Goebel sent thousands of coasters and hundreds of working hours crashing down, to demonstrate that no glue or other substance joined the little cardboard mats.
The creative potential for advertisers is remarkably clear upon viewing this quick mock-up of what a digital magazine cover could look like on the iPad. Jesse Rosten's idea here is to take the familiar design and branding of Sunset Magazine and add motion.
Born to reshape the internet and looks certain to significantly alter the whole publishing industry, the iPad; doesn’t run Flash. If your website uses Flash, it won’t play well on the iPad. Turns out, a lot of people want their sites to look pretty on the iPad. So the internet is already starting to look different.
Over the foreseeable future I believe the iPad is likely to shake up the whole spectrum of news and entertainment media delivery systems, both on and off line.
ABC News reporter introduces us to Meghan Shea, a college student in North Carolina, who can easily speak "backwards. Meghan is majoring in biology, but I imagine she can't get a degree for her most unusual skill !
It's hard to imagine to be able to speak everything backwards. It seems impossible to read backwards. Try reading the following sentence out loud:
noinipo ym tsuj
Bruce Campbell, from the Smithsonian Institute presents here a video, that was
"created from a mosaic of radar images collected using a transmitter at the Arecibo Observatory (AO) in Puerto Rico and receivers at the Green Bank Telescope (GBT). Radar maps can look like optical images, but they represent the amount of energy reflected back toward the transmitter by any given part of the Moon's surface. These maps are created by measuring the echo strength as a function of the round-trip radar time delays and frequency changes (Doppler shifts) that correspond to different locations on the Moon. The radar wavelength of 70 cm penetrates 10 meters or more into the very dry lunar surface, revealing variations in the abundance of rocks larger than about 10 cm in diameter and differences in the chemistry of rocks that form the Moon's crust. The movie begins with a view of the north pole of the Moon - the center of the side we can see from Earth is at top. The rotation carries us around the visible edge of the Moon, past the south pole, the giant Orientale basin, and back to the north pole."
Liberia, a country ravaged by war has had no functioning utilities for over 14 year, no sewage system, no water, no electricity, no telephone. Thus Alfred Sirleaf, delivers the news of the day via a folding out blackboard he calls the Daily Talk. He says “I like to write the way people talk so they can understand it well." And in order to reach the common man, he places symbols of the main stories, like a UN helmet near a story about them for the people who can't read, of which there are many.
Alfred Sirleaf is reported to have founded his blackboard newspaper because of his belief that a well-informed citizenry is the key to the rebirth of Liberia.
Each morning, Alfred Sirleaf wakes up and heads down to his bulletin board to write up the day’s news, putting together a slate of stories his countrymen might otherwise never be aware of. Grateful readers line up in droves, on foot and in cars, to read these updates, in what has been described as "the country’s—and probably the world’s—only analog blog."
Airpod is a car that runs 200 miles on compressed air. The video here shows the engineer inventors, revealing the unique value of a pollutant free green transport system.
The Airpod seems to be, at first appearance, in this video, of the production model, a 3 wheeled buggy or half a car, but it actually runs on four wheels the two at the front are very close together.
Everything about this Carbon neutral automobile is unusual. Steering is done with a joystick, and the only doors open to the front and back. The two passenger seats are rear-facing and can be replaced with a cargo space. Drivers recharge their air supply in eight hours by plugging the car into electricity outlets, or by going to special 'air stations' where the process takes only 2 minutes.
Read more about the amazing engineering of the Airpod, here.
Nevertheless is a showcase of ideas, inventions and creative inventiveness of individuals, groups and companies, concerns for things green that can help change a polluted and climate disrupted world. Also of interest is the harm that human penetration and exploitation is doing to the world around us especially habitat destruction and species extinction.
