What Actually Matters? Cosmic News We’re Not Seeing

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Giant Killer Meteor Barely Misses Us

Several times a year, Earth comes very close to being nailed by gigantic space rocks of death.  These are known as “PHA"s --- Potentially Hazardous Asteroids, and you can learn all about them on this handy NASA site. They’re pretty hip these days.  Fun Fact: humans have observed 12 of them come between Earth and the moon.  11 of those have been since 2004.

Before leaping to morbid conclusions, do remember the Law of Expanding Perspective.  (Yep, I just made that up.) Just because humans are seeing more of a given phenomena, doesn’t mean it’s actually happening more.  It could merely signify that we’re paying more attention.

However, if you’re in the mood for a depressing evening at home, check out NASA’s full list of PHA’s we can look forward to for the rest of the century.  A good date to think about at 5 in the morning is February 1, 2019.

Ocean Acting Rather Surly and Peevish

Industrial and auto pollution could turn Earth’s oceans so acidic by the end of this century that the entire marine world will be threatened, a new report warns.

The study, issued today by the Royal Society in the U.K., documents the rise of carbon dioxide, or C02, which occurs naturally and is also emitted in the burning of fossil fuels like coal and gasoline.

“If CO2 from human activities continues to rise, the oceans will become so acidic by 2100 it could threaten marine life in ways we can’t anticipate,” said Ken Caldeira, co-author of the report.

“This report should sound the alarm bells around the world,” said Chris Field, director of the Carnegie Department of Global Ecology. “It provides compelling evidence for the need for a thorough understanding of the implications of ocean acidification. It also strengthens the case for rapid progress on reducing CO2 emissions.”

Ha ha ha!  Yeah, totally. 

Sadly, this story is pretty much totally ignored.  If you’re interested, here’s three good links on one of the many exiciting ways we’re all going to die:

Start with this outstanding article from the Independent.

Here’s another un-reported symptom: Worst Coral Reef Die-off in 11,000 Years

And two good articles from Geotimes and from LiveScience.

Solar Cycling

It is rather remarkable that the next solar cycle is set to peak “between 2011 and 2012”—as if those hippies need more ammunition, right?—and it gets downright wild when you investigate what the scientific consensus about this next cycle is.  Not to give away the ending, but: strongest and most violent sun cycle ever. (Link for those interested)

Evidence is mounting: the next solar cycle is going to be a big one. Solar cycle 24, due to peak in 2010 or 2011 “looks like its going to be one of the most intense cycles since record-keeping began almost 400 years ago,” says solar physicist David Hathaway of the Marshall Space Flight Center.

Hathaway explains: “When a gust of solar wind hits Earth’s magnetic field, the impact causes the magnetic field to shake. If it shakes hard enough, we call it a geomagnetic storm.” In the extreme, these storms cause power outages and make compass needles swing in the wrong direction. Auroras are a beautiful side-effect.

Hathaway and Wilson looked at records of geomagnetic activity stretching back almost 150 years and noticed something useful:. “The amount of geomagnetic activity now tells us what the solar cycle is going to be like 6 to 8 years in the future,” says Hathaway. A picture is worth a lot of words:



According to their analysis, the next Solar Maximum should peak around 2010 with a sunspot number of 160 plus or minus 25. This would make it one of the strongest solar cycles of the past fifty years—which is to say, one of the strongest in recorded history.

Astronomers have been counting sunspots since the days of Galileo, watching solar activity rise and fall every 11 years. Curiously, four of the five biggest cycles on record have come in the past 50 years. “Cycle 24 should fit right into that pattern,” says Hathaway.

These results are just the latest signs pointing to a big Cycle 24. Most compelling of all, believes Hathaway, is the work of Mausumi Dikpati and colleagues at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado. “They have combined observations of the sun’s ‘Great Conveyor Belt’ with a sophisticated computer model of the sun’s inner dynamo to produce a physics-based prediction of the next solar cycle.” In short, it’s going to be intense.

Brainsturbator highly recommends Space Weather Dot Com as a valuable addition to your daily internet routine.  It’s a site that monitors astronomical phenomena, including (and especially) the behavior of our sun, which has been pulling some rather spectacular stunts lately.

Space Weather is a prime spot for keeping track of PHAs, meteor showers, and comets.  Speaking of which, we’ve been visited for the past few days by a comet named Swan.  From the site:

Comet Swan (C/2006 M4) swung by the sun in late 2006 on a hyperbolic orbit that will eventually fling it out of the Solar System. Closest approach to Earth: 1 AU on Oct. 26th. At that time the comet was shining about as brightly as a 4.5th magnitude star-- visible to the unaided eye. The comet is receding from Earth now and dimming, but it is still a pretty sight through backyard telescopes.

So What Do We Get?

The American Psychiatric Association published a rather interesting report this past year, summarized by a single quote: “For the last three decades, the one predominant finding in research on the mass media is that exposure to media portrayals of violence increases aggressive behavior in children.” Another tasty little chestnut: “By age 18, a U.S. youth will have seen 16,000 simulated murders and 200,000 acts of violence.”

Doing research for raw data on television was most entertaining, since the only people who seem to be concerned about the content of TV are Christians, specifically Christians who are concerned about the Homosexual Agenda, teenagers making sweet love, and the Antichrist, in that order.

It is worth noting, even if it’s just in passing, that history is very clear: those who are most concerned about “protecting the children” tend to get outed as pedophiles later on.  Those who are most disgusted by the unnatural sin of homosexuality turn out to be repressed homos themselves.  Those who proclaim the United States as the land of freedom and opportunity are generally working overtime to deny you both.  You probably already knew that.

Some gems I found along the way: for anyone interested in the mechanics of TV, here’s a very handy listing of all the actual frequencies for television channels.  It’s interesting to note that RF weapons, like the DARPA’s “Active Denial System”, are microwaves that technically begin at channel 83 of the FCC spectrum, thus confirming my long-time suspicion that the reason some of us can hear a TV get turned on anywhere in the house is because TV is a weapon.

Anyone remember 1984?  I’m still really, really bitter about 1984.  I have had a supremely difficult time getting over the disgust, and frankly, hatred that I felt when I was 10 and read this passage:

Behind Winston’s back the voice from the telescreen was still babbling away about pig-iron and the overfulfilment of the Ninth Three-Year Plan. The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it, moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.

See, what hit me at age 10 was that when Orwell wrote 1984, he had assumed that “telescreens” would have to be installed in people’s homes under penalty of law.  Orwell wasn’t nearly cynical enough, one reason I sorta snicker when people call the book “dystopian”.  Orwell hadn’t realized—or, hadn’t allowed himself to consider—that we would actually pay top dollar for telescreens and install them ourselves. Still leaves a bad taste in my mouth just typing it.