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Saturday, November 01, 2003
New Crop Circle Film
Pemberton - British Columbia - Canada - Crop circles have long captured public attention of both skeptics and believers alike. A new documentary, Star Dreams, coming to MY Place, sheds perspective on the two conflicting sides through an exploration of crop circles from all over the world — including sightings in B.C.
“The focus of Star Dreams is to lift these circles off the field and into the public consciousness,” said Robert Nichol, documentary producer and director.
The film will provide 77 minutes of disarming information about crop circles, including eyewitness accounts and interviews with scientists along with footage of breathtaking, awe-inspiring landscapes from all over the world.
The updated documentary with footage of 2003 crop circles is a pilot project for an upcoming, six-film series that will explore the extraterrestrial (ET) phenomena.
“There is a healthy interest in it,” Nichol said.
It took Nichol five years to convince a broadcaster to support the project. Nichol attributed the d ifficulty to the controversial nature of the topic. The film is gaining momentum, however, as screenings extend overseas to Italy and Spain.
Crop circles occur in a variety of mediums other than the cereal-grain fields commonly associated with the phenomena. Tree tops, sand, and snow and rice fields also have been the venues for intricate designs and symbols that arise out of sacred geometry.
The two screenings at MY Place will be followed by an open discussion with Nichols, giving audience members time to discuss the film and ask any questions that arise from it.
Star Dreams will be screened Nov. 1 at 7 and 9 p.m. at MY Place. Tickets are $8 for adults and $6 for students and seniors. For more information, call (604) 935-8410.
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Friday, October 31, 2003
Astronaut Ed Lu Sees Mystery Lights From Space
Astronaut Ed Lu returned on Monday from a six-month tour as science officer on the international space station with loads of memories and at least one nagging puzzle: what caused the mysterious flashes of light he saw while studying the Earth's aurora from orbit? Lu, who was a research astrophysicist before becoming an astronaut in 1994, estimates that he spent 100 hours watching the northern and southern lights during half a year in space. The auroral light show, which takes place well below the station's 380km altitude, shimmers and pulses depending on natural variations in incoming solar particles trapped by the Earth's magnetic field. (read more)
On three occasions - July 11, September 24 and October 12 - Lu saw something markedly different: flashes as bright as the brightest stars, which lasted only a second then blinked off again. In one instance, he called crew-mate Yuri Malenchenko over to the window to see the bursts.
Lu says they appeared very different from the random but harmless retinal flashes that many astronauts experience when heavy cosmic rays hit their eyeballs.
Given his limited time and ability to research the problem in space, Lu has tried to rule out other obvious explanations. The flashes weren't like sun glint from dust particles outside the station, which rotate and last longer than a second. Nor were they meteors, which look like linear streaks. Viewing conditions were wrong for a satellite or other artificial object.
They only appeared in the direction of the aurora. And Lu checked weather maps, which showed no lightning storms below at the time of his observations.
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Black Hole Broadcasting
An international team of astronomers led by researchers at the Max-Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) in Garching (Germany) has discovered powerful infrared flares from the supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way.
The signals, rapidly flickering on a scale of minutes, must come from hot gas falling into the black hole, just before it disappears below the "event horizon" of the monster. The new observations strongly suggest that the Galactic Center black hole rotates rapidly.
Never before have scientists been able to study phenomena in the immediate neighborhood of a black hole in such a detail. The new result is based on observations obtained with the NACO Adaptive Optics instrument on the 8.2-meter VLT KUEYEN telescope and is published in this week's edition of the research journal Nature.
Flashes of light from disappearing matter
Rainer Schödel and Reinhard Genzel, leader of the team and MPE Director, were observing the Milky Way Center, when they saw the "new" object on the screen in front of them. The astronomers were puzzled and then became excited - something unusual must be going on, there at the center of our galaxy!
And then, a few minutes later, the "star" disappeared from view. Now the scientists had little doubt - they had just witnessed, for the first time, a powerful near-infrared flare from exactly the direction of the supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way.
"We had been looking for infrared emission from that black hole for more than a decade" recalls another team member, Andreas Eckart of Cologne University. "We were certain that the black hole must be accreting matter from time to time. As this matter falls towards the surface of the black hole, it gets hotter and hotter and starts emitting infrared radiation".
But no such infrared radiation had been seen until that night at the VLT. This was the wonderful moment of breakthrough. Never before had anybody witnessed the last "scream" from matter in the deadly grip of a black hole, about to pass the point of no return towards an unknown fate.
Event Horizon Broadcast
The massive star Eta Carinae. This star went through a giant explosive outburst about 150 years ago, suddenly making it one of the brightest stars in the southern sky. Credit: N. Smith (U. Colorado), J. Morse (Arizona State U.), and NASA
A careful analysis of the new observational data has revealed that the infrared emission originates from within a few thousandths of an arcsecond [one thousandth of an arcsecond corresponds to about 2 meters at the distance of the Moon] from the position of the black hole (corresponding to a distance of a few light-hours) and that it varies on time scales of minutes.
This proves that the infrared signals must come from just outside the so-called "event horizon" of the black hole, that is the "surface of no return" from which even light cannot escape. The rapid variability seen in all data obtained by the VLT clearly indicates that the region around this horizon must have chaotic properties - very much like those seen in thunderstorms or solar flares.
"The most striking result is an apparent 17-minute periodicity in the light curves of two of the detected flares. If this periodicity is caused by the motion of gas orbiting the black hole, the inevitable conclusion is that the black hole must be rotating rapidly".
Reinhard Genzel is very pleased: "This is a major breakthrough. We know from theory that a black hole can only have mass, spin and electrical charge. Last year we were able to unambiguously prove the existence and determine the mass of the Galactic Center black hole. If our assumption is correct that the periodicity is the fundamental orbital time of the accreting gas, we now have also measured its spin for the first time. And that turns out to be about half of the maximum spin that General Relativity allows".
He adds: "Now the era of observational black hole physics has truly begun!"
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Thursday, October 30, 2003
Milky Way's black hole is in a spin
A "supermassive" black hole lurking at the centre of our galaxy is rotating at great speed, according to research published in British science weekly Nature today.
The dark leviathan, known as Sagitarrius A* (abbreviated to Sgr A*) lies about 26,000 light years from Earth, at the heart of the Milky Way.
German astrophysicist Reinhard Genzel, of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, spotted a powerful flare of infrared radiation that leapt from the maw of the black hole and lasted 30 minutes, in May this year.
On a second observational run the following month, his team noted another flare, which lasted 85 minutes with peaks at 14 and 17 minutes. That was followed by an identical flare the following day at a slightly different location.
Genzel's theory is that this regular occurrence points to radiation surges from blobs of gas captured near the black hole's lip, which is memorably known as the "event horizon."
"If the (17-minute) periodicity arises from relativistic modulation of orbiting gas, the emission must come from just outside the event horizon, and the black hole must be rotating at about half of the maximum possible rate," the authors said.
Sgr A* is estimated to be 3.6 million times the mass of our Sun, which makes it small by "supermassive" standards. Other "supermassives" spotted at the core of other galaxies are up to 1,000 bigger.
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Extraterrestrial storm pummels Earth
The most powerful geomagnetic storm possible walloped Earth early Wednesday, knocking out some airline communications but apparently causing no large power outages or other major problems.
The storm, the most disruptive to hit Earth since 1989, was unleashed by the fourth-most powerful solar flare ever seen, NASA said.
The gigantic cloud of highly charged particles hurled from the sun posed a threat to electric utilities, high frequency radio communications, satellite navigation systems and television broadcasts. Continued turbulence on the sun remains a concern for the next week, space forecasters say.
The biggest immediate effect was the blackout of high-frequency voice-radio communications for planes flying far northern routes.
The particle storm, measuring 13 times larger than Earth, was rated a G5, the highest intensity on scientists' scale of space weather. Space observers have measured G5 storms five times in the past 15 years, but few of them have hit Earth so directly.
It whipped through the solar system at about 5 million mph, taking just 19 hours to travel the 93 million miles from the sun to envelop the planet. Federal scientists said it collided with Earth's magnetic field at 1:13 a.m. EST on Wednesday, about 12 hours earlier than predicted.
Such storms pose no direct threat to people on the ground because Earth's thick atmosphere deflects and absorbs incoming charged particles. But the storm may produce colorful auroras in the northern night sky visible as far south as El Paso, Texas, beginning late Wednesday night.
The last time a G5 storm hit Earth was in 1989, which damaged the power grid and caused electrical blackouts in the Canadian province of Quebec.
Among the precautions taken by various utilities: making less electricity at generating stations, removing vulnerable transmission lines from service and adding voltage control equipment.
The increased solar activity also is affecting the international space station. The Expedition 8 crew, Commander Mike Foale and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Kaleri, briefly retreated to the aft end of the station's service module, which is shielded from higher levels of radiation.
The pair will spend about 20 minutes there, twice on each orbit of the Earth for about three orbits, until the station phases out of the high radiation areas.
In Tokyo, Japan's space agency said the Kodama communications satellite malfunctioned because of the flare, so it was temporarily shut down. There was no major communication disruption, the agency said.
Space scientists in the United States and Europe, as well as commercial satellite operators, shut down some delicate instruments and turned them away from the storm's blast. Solar panels are particularly vulnerable.
Researchers said Earth was protected from the storm's full impact because the magnetic field of the storm cloud was pointed north in the same direction as Earth's magnetic field.
But if the cloud's magnetic field shifted southward - something that still could happen, scientists say - its opposing force would, in effect, open a "hole" in the planet's magnetic shield. That could result in later disruptions to electrical systems, they said.
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UFO encounter over Indian Mountain
Canada - Sighting of unidentified flying object over Indian Mountain part of Life Network documentary
It was a clear, cold early February morning when Amy Wilbur saw a flying orange orb in the sky.
Now, the only way she can describe it is by what it was not.
"It wasn't a fiery ball, it was solid. It almost looked like the moon, but the moon was on the other side of the sky," said Wilbur. "It couldn't be a meteor because I've seen lots of those."
Only one explanation remains as to what hovered over the tree line just off Indian Mountain Road on that winter night: an alien space craft.
"I tried to reason with everything else it could be," said the 18-year-old artist.
Wilbur is not alone. Last year there were 483 reported sightings of Unidentified Flying Objects in Canada, four of those sightings came from New Brunswick, according to the web-based Canadian UFO survey which tallies sightings dating back to 1989.
The website is maintained by Manitoba resident Chris Rutkowski, one of the country’s leading UFO authorities. Rutkowski along with Fredericton’s Stanton Friedman, the world’s leading expert on the Roswell case, are featured in a Life Network documentary called UFO Hunters scheduled to air Nov. 8 at 9:30 p.m. The half-hour segment features an interview with Wilbur and her mother who also saw the hovering orb.
"UFO sightings are far more common than people realize," said Friedman, in a phone interview from a Detroit hotel room on Tuesday before he was scheduled to give a lecture on the topic at the University of Detroit-Mercy. "There have been many close encounters in New Brunswick, including abductions by aliens of earthlings."
This is not the first time an encounter of the Third Kind in New Brunswick has garnered national attention.
Last January, a number of Inkerman residents reported seeing a diamond shaped alien space craft in the sky. The community sits about 20 kilometres southwest of Shippagan.
Wilbur has since painted what she saw that morning at around 2 a.m. In the painting, amid the swirling deep dark blues of early morning, an orange ball, like a giant balloon, peeks through ghost-like trees.
"My mom agrees my painting matches our sighting," said Wilbur.
She had just gone to bed on the morning of Feb.9 when her mother and a friend woke her to look at something through the window. Wilbur said she couldn’t really see it through her bedroom window and went to the living room to get a better view.
"It was a round orange ball in the sky hovering across the road and field to the west in front of our house," she said. "It was bright and light orange, the edges even brighter, a red-orange."
Wilbur, who at one point used binoculars, said the surface of the object was very smooth, lacking any "pock-marks of lights, metal sheen or anything at all but smooth orange."
The orange ball moved very slowly, downward and diagonally, said Wilbur. It slid silently behind the trees, pausing for a moment, before disappearing.
"It went straight down, quickly," she said. "About five or six times faster than when the sun sets."
Thinking back, Wilbur said it was "pretty", but during the encounter she said it gave her very negative feelings.
"None of the traffic that had been going by drove down the road the entire duration of the sighting," she said. "It started up again only minutes after it disappeared. It’s probably a coincidence, but it added to the feeling that there was something wrong here."
Wilbur, who had half-believed in aliens before, said the experience made her a true believer.
Many might scoff at the idea that aliens have visited New Brunswick, but Friedman said those people have to open up their minds to the facts.
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Tuesday, October 28, 2003
Astronomers Unwrap Hidden Cosmic Monster
Just in time for Halloween, astronomers have hunted down a stellar vampire with a spooky new type of lair lurking in the galactic neighborhood. Hidden from view until now, the secretive black hole and its hapless prey, a massive companion star, appear to be collectively entombed in an eerie cocoon of gas and dust. Piercing through this obscuring shroud, first with gamma-ray and then x-ray vision, orbiting telescopes have revealed a strange new class of astronomical object with this discovery.
Researchers believe that the newfound black hole is feeding on gas sucked off the nearby massive star. While such bloodsucking relationships are nothing new to astronomers (about 300 have been catalogued), IGR J16318-4848 proved to be more illusive than the others. As the stellar gas becomes accreted by the voracious monster, an eerie, dense cocoon forms around the binary system. This enveloping bubble of cold gas blocked most of the emitted energy, keeping the system's true identity under wraps — until now.
"Only photons with the highest energies could escape from that cocoon," explains team leader Roland Walter of the Integral Science Data Center in Switzerland. "IGR J16318-4848 has therefore not been detected by surveys performed at lower energies, nor by previous gamma-ray missions that were much less sensitive than Integral."
Click here to See Picture
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Sunday, October 26, 2003
Powers of Ten
View the Milky Way at 10 million light years from the Earth. Then move through space towards the Earth in successive orders of magnitude until you reach a tall oak tree just outside the buildings of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, Florida. After that, begin to move from the actual size of a leaf into a microscopic world that reveals leaf cell walls, the cell nucleus, chromatin, DNA and finally, into the subatomic universe of electrons and protons.
Florida State University in Tallahassee has posted a fascinating Java applet. It begins as a view from the Milky Way Galaxy toward Earth at a distance of 10 million light years. It then zooms in, each time decreasing the distance by a power of 10 until it reaches a leaf on a large oak tree on the FSU campus. I keeps on zooming, however, until it finally reaches the lever of quarks.
Click here to see
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