Wednesday, February 18, 2015

'Cloud' over Mars Leaves Scientists Baffled


'Cloud' over Mars Leaves Scientists Baffled

by Naharnet Newsdesk Yesterday
W460
Amateur astronomers have spotted two strange, cloud-like plumes high over Mars, deepening the mystery of what constitutes the Red Planet's atmosphere, a study said Monday.
The phenomenon was observed on March 12, 2012 over the "terminator", the boundary between day and night on Mars.
One of the plumes developed in around 10 hours and lasted for about 11 days, shifting shape from "double blob protrusions" to pillars which merged into a "finger", the study authors wrote.
A second was spotted nearby on April 6, 2012, and lasted about 10 days.
Their trails were vast, extending between 500 and 1,000 kilometres (300 to 600 miles) in north-to-south and east-to-west directions.
The "clouds" -- if that is indeed what they were -- were seen at high altitude, at about 200-250 kilometres, roughly above Terra Cimmeria, which is part of Mars' rugged southern highlands, according to the paper.
Mars is being scrutinised for signs of water and volcanic activity, both of which could theoretically nurture some form of life.
Clouds of dust or ice crystals have been spotted occasionally over Mars in the past.
But they have never been as extensive as the latest two, and they always formed at an altitude below 100 kilometres.
The plumes could be made of particles of water or carbon dioxide, said the paper published in the journal Nature Geoscience by a team led by Agustin Sanchez-Lavega of the University of the Basque Country in Bilbao, Spain.
Alternatively, it could be an aurora, similar to the shimmering light show that develops in Earth's atmosphere when solar particles collide with Earth's magnetic field. 
Past surveillance by scientific orbiters have suggested Terra Cimmeria to have a "strip" with a strong but localised magnetic field.
If correct, the Martian "aurora" would be a remarkable 1,000 times brighter than its terrestrial equivalent.
But "both explanations defy our current understanding of Mars' upper atmosphere," the scientists admit.
SourceAgence France Presse
Science
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Move over Galileo! Saudi cleric says Earth doesn’t revolve around sun-Oh I am upset to hear that-carl

Move over Galileo! Saudi cleric says Earth doesn’t revolve around sun

Published time: February 17, 2015 13:14
Screenshot from YouTube user صقور محمد بن نايف
Screenshot from YouTube user صقور محمد بن نايف
Tags
Religion, Saudi Arabia, Science
A Saudi cleric has appeared in a video rejecting that Earth revolves around the sun, claiming instead that it is “stationary.” His statements have incited a fiery response on social media.
When questioned by a student about whether the Earth was stationary or moving, Sheikh Bandar al-Khaibari responded with “stationary and does not move,” Saudi-owned broadcaster Al-Arabia reported.

He then attempted to support his theory with a strange blend of logic and clerical statements.
“First of all, where are we now? We’re going to Sharjah Airport to travel to China by plane, [is that] clear? Focus with me, this is the Earth,” he said while holding up a sealed water cup.
READ MORE: 4 beheaded in Saudi Arabia less than a week into King Salman's rule
He proceeded to say that if the plane stopped dead in its tracks in mid-air, “China would be coming towards it in case the Earth rotates in one direction. If the Earth rotates in the opposite direction, the plane would never reach China, because China is also rotating,” he said.
The shaky reasoning incited a torrent of responses on Twitter under a hashtag which roughly translates as #cleric_rejects_rotation_of_Earth.

“Check out this hashtag if you feel like watching your IQ plummet,” Twitter user ‘ink’ wrote.

“This is why you don't give khutbah [a public sermon] after smoking up,”Saijaz wrote.
“No surprise women not allowed 2 drive w cretins like this,” one user commented, referencing the ultra-conservative absolute monarchy’s ban on female drivers.
READ MORE: Two Saudi women jailed for driving freed from prison
“Did somebody tell that guy that there are people literally live in space?” another wrote.


Others thought the blunder was a good opportunity to educate the public on issues of science.

The statements, rather ironically, were delivered on the birthday of Galileo Galilei, the 16th century "father of modern observational astronomy" who was persecuted by the Catholic Church for supporting heliocentricism – the astronomical model in which the Earth and planets revolve around the sun at the center of the solar system.

After being found "vehemently suspect of heresy," Galileo was forced to spend the last nine years of his life under house arrest.
In 1992, the Vatican formally and publicly cleared Galileo of any wrongdoing.

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Mars mystery: Enormous plumes detected erupting on Red Planet

Mars mystery: Enormous plumes detected erupting on Red Planet

Published time: February 17, 2015 05:11
Edited time: February 18, 2015 07:08
Reuters / NASA / Handout via Reuters
Reuters / NASA / Handout via Reuters
Tags
Biology, Ecology, Global economy, Human rights, Science, Space, USA
Mysterious plumes over 150 miles high have been recorded erupting on Mars by amateur astronomers – and the strange discovery has scientists stumped.
The bright flares have now died away, but they were spotted on two occasions – lasting for 10 days each time – by amateur astronomers in 2012. The dusty plumes were seen rising to altitudes of 155 miles (250km) and spread out over a region measuring 300-600 miles wide.

Scientists have captured plumes erupting from Mars before by the Hubble Telescope and on databases of amateur images, but none of them reached such heights – the maximum previously recorded was 62 miles.
“At about 250 km, the division between the atmosphere and outer space is very thin, so the reported plums are extremely unexpected,” said Agustin Sanchez-Lavega of the Universidad del Pais Vasco in Spain, the lead author of the paper, reporting the finding in the journal Nature.
READ MORE: Curiosity team denies claims of ‘microbe traces’ on Mars
Amateur astronomer Wayne Jaeschke, who spends about 100 nights a year watching the heavens, was looking at footage of Mars he had captured in his private observatory when he noticed the plumes. He shared the images with friends and then it was circulated among amateur and professional astronomers.
Scientists are using the Hubble data along with amateur images to find out what the plumes are made of and what might be causing them to occur. The announcement about a week after NASA’s Maven Spacecraft arrived to study Mars’ upper atmosphere.
Read more​Life on Mars more likely? Curiosity discovers methane, other organic chemicals

“One idea we’ve discussed is that the features are caused by a reflective cloud of water-ice, carbon dioxide-ice or dust particles, but this would require exceptional deviation from standard atmospheric circulation models to explain cloud formations at such high altitudes,” Agustin said.
Still, Agustin said the theory of a dazzling Martian aurora, like the Northern Lights on Earth, couldn’t explain the enormous size of the clouds.
Another scientist is cautious about the claims.
“I don’t think it’s real…basic physics says this can’t occur,” Todd Clancy, planetary scientist at the Space Science Institute, told USA Today, adding that Mars’ upper atmosphere doesn’t supply the necessary ingredients for clouds.

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Close Call: Star Whizzed Past Solar System at Distance of a Light Year

Close Call: Star Whizzed Past Solar System at Distance of a Light Year
by Naharnet Newsdesk 15 hours ago
W460
By the standards of outer space, it was the closest call yet recorded: a star that zoomed past our solar system 70,000 years ago at a distance of eight trillion kilometers, or five trillion miles.
An international team of astronomers said Tuesday the dim star probably passed through the solar system's distant cloud of comets, known as the Oort Cloud.
No other star is known to have ever approached our solar system this close --- five times closer than the current closest star, Proxima Centauri, said the team of researchers from the U.S., Europe and South America. 
Their study was published in the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Analysis of the trajectory of this recently discovered star -- known as a red dwarf and christened with the name Scholz's star after its discoverer -- suggests it passed roughly 0.8 light years from our solar system.
Astronomically speaking, that is close.
The star is now 20 light years away, said Eric Mamajek, from the University of Rochester in New York and lead author of the study. 
Using spectrographs and large telescopes in South Africa and Chile, researchers were able to go back in time and reconstruct its trajectory by calculating its speed.
They were also able to determine that it is now heading away from our solar system. 
Until now, the top candidate for the closest flyby of a star to the solar system was the so-called "rogue star" HIP 85605. It was forecast to come close to our solar system in 240,000 to 470,000 years from now.
But Mamajek and his colleagues also demonstrated that the original distance to HIP 85605 was probably underestimated by a factor of ten.

SourceAgence France Presse
Science
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The CDC: Mind Control on a Vast Scale

The CDC: Mind Control on a Vast Scale

Jon Rappoport
No More Fake News
February 17th, 2015
Reader Views: 1,212

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mind control
“Mind control has one basic purpose: the construction of false Reality. The embedding of false Reality to such an extent that it seems absurd to question it or even notice it. Purple and pink raccoons? Of course there are purple and pink raccoons. Why do you even bring it up? Without purple and pink raccoons, the world as we know it would collapse.” (The Underground, Jon Rappoport)
In recent articles, I’ve been pointing out that the current “measles outbreak” is a CDC fabrication.
On and off, since 1987, I’ve been following the CDC and its astonishing trail of lies. Lying is its business.
Here is yet another example—-
Once upon a time, the CDC claimed that roughly 36,000 people in the US died every year from the flu. Media sources parroted this figure over and over.
Lately, the CDC has chosen to change that estimate. It’s now between 3,000 and 49,000 flu deaths per year. That’s quite a loose range. Why does the CDC now waffle so egregiously?
Perhaps because they’ve been exposed…
In December of 2005, the British Medical Journal (online) published a shocking report by Peter Doshi, which spelled out a delusion and created tremors throughout the halls of the CDC.
Here is a quote from Doshi’s report:
“[According to CDC statistics], ‘influenza and pneumonia’ took 62,034 lives in 2001—61,777 of which were attributable to pneumonia and 257 to flu, and in only 18 cases was the flu virus positively identified.”
You see, the CDC had created one category that combined flu and pneumonia deaths. Why did they do this? Because they self-servingly assumed that the pneumonia deaths were complications stemming from the flu.
This is an absurd assumption. Pneumonia has a number of causes. But even worse, in all the flu deaths, only 18 were traced directly to a flu virus.
Therefore, the CDC could not say, with assurance, that more than 18 people died of the flu in 2001.
(Note: In several articles, I erred and reported “18 flu cases in 2001” instead of “18 flu deaths in 2001”.)
Doshi continues his assessment of published CDC flu-death statistics:
“Between 1979 and 2001, [CDC] data show an average of 1348 [flu] deaths per year (range 257 to 3006).”
However, as Doshi showed from the year 2001, the CDC actually finds the flu virus in a tiny proportion of people who are estimated to have died from the flu. So the CDC range of flu deaths—257 to 3006—is much, much lower when lab confirmation is required. And confirmation needs to be required, unless hocus-pocus guesswork is sufficient.
To the overwhelming percentage of Americans, the idea that only 18 people were positively identified as flu deaths in a year is staggering.
It’s so staggering, they reject it. It must be wrong. It has to be wrong. If it isn’t wrong…
A pillar of reality collapses.
And we’re not just talking about a Brian Williams pillar of reality or a went-to-war-for-the-wrong-reason pillar of reality. We’re not just talking about the CIA lying or the NSA lying or the President lying.
No. We’re talking about a medical pillar collapsing.
And the medical cartel is the modern Church of Reality. It has its priests in white coats and its CDC bishops and its ceaseless propaganda about an “overwhelming concern for the well-being of humanity.”
Therefore, when many people read this, when they see that only 18 flu deaths in America were confirmed in the year 2001, it doesn’t register at all in their minds.
It’s invisible.
This isn’t “cognitive dissonance.” It’s much, much deeper. It’s “I never read that.” “I don’t remember reading that.” “18 confirmed flu deaths in one year? I never heard of that.”
Mind control par excellence.
It’s on the order of half a major city disappearing overnight and the citizens saying, “Of course, nothing disappeared. How could anything disappear?”
Going even deeper, there are two factors at work here. One, a person’s stubborn refusal to reject reality as he receives it; and two, his refusal to invent a better reality to replace the one that has just crumbled and vanished.
Those two factors underlie the success of mind control. Delivered by The Daily Sheeple
Contributed by Jon Rappoport of No More Fake News.
The author of an explosive collection, THE MATRIX REVEALED, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world.


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Greece Rejects Bailout Deal

Greece Rejects Bailout Deal – Deadline to Avoid Financial Chaos in Europe Is March 1st

Michael Snyder
The Economic Collapse
February 17th, 2015
Reader Views: 1,055

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no
Europe is on the verge of a horrifying financial meltdown, and there are only a few short weeks left to avert total disaster.  On Monday, talks that were supposed to bring about yet another temporary “resolution” to the Greek debt crisis completely fell apart.  The new Greek government has entirely rejected the idea of a six month extension of the current bailout.  The Greeks want a new deal which would enable them to implement the promises that have been made to the voters.  But that is not going to fly with the Germans, among others.  They expect the Greeks to fulfill the obligations that were agreed to previously.  The two sides are not even in the same ballpark at this point, and things are starting to get very personal.  It is no secret that the new Greek government does not like the Germans, and the Germans are not particularly fond of the Greeks at this point.  But unless they can find a way to work out a deal, things could get quite messy very rapidly.  The Greek government has about three weeks of cash left, and any changes to the current bailout arrangement would have to be approved by parliaments all over Europe by March 1st.  And the stakes are incredibly high.  If there is no deal, we could see a Greek debt default, Greece could be forced to leave the eurozone and go back to the drachma, the euro could collapse to all time lows, all the banks all over Europe that are exposed to Greek government debt could be faced with absolutely massive losses, and the 26 trillion dollars in derivatives that are directly tied to the value of the euro could start to unravel.  In essence, if things go badly this could be enough to push us into a global financial crisis.
On Monday, eurozone officials tried to get the Greeks to extend the current bailout package for six months with the current austerity provisions in place.  Greek government officials responded by saying that “those who bring this back are wasting their time” and that those negotiating on behalf of the eurozone are being “unreasonable”…
A Greek government official said that a draft text presented to eurozone finance ministers meeting in Brussels on Monday spoke of Greece extending its current bailout package and as such was “unreasonable” and would not be accepted.
Without specifying who put forward the text to the meeting chaired by Dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the official said: “Some people’s insistence on the Greek government implementing the bailout is unreasonable and cannot be accepted.”
Most observers have speculated that the new Greek government would give in to the demands of the rest of the eurozone when push came to shove.
But these new Greek politicians are a different breed.  They are not establishment lackeys.  Rather, they are very principled radicals, and they are not about to be pushed around.  I certainly do not agree with their politics, but I admire the fact that they are willing to stand up for what they believe.  That is a very rare thing these days.
On Monday, Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis shared the following in the New York Times…
I am often asked: What if the only way you can secure funding is to cross your red lines and accept measures that you consider to be part of the problem, rather than of its solution? Faithful to the principle that I have no right to bluff, my answer is: The lines that we have presented as red will not be crossed.
Does that sound like a man that is going to back down to you?
Meanwhile, the other side continues to dig in as well.
Just consider the words of the German finance minister…
Wolfgang Schaeuble, the German finance minister, accused the Greek government of “behaving irresponsibly” by threatening to tear up agreements made with the eurozone in return for access to the loans which are all that stand between Greece and financial collapse.
“It seems like we have no results so far. I’m quite skeptical. The Greek government has not moved, apparently,” he said.
“As long as the Greek government doesn’t want a program, I don’t have to think about options.”
Global financial markets are still acting as if they fully expect a deal to get done eventually.
I am not so sure.
And without a doubt, time is running short.  As I mentioned above, something has got to be finalized by March 1st.  The following comes from the Wall Street Journal…
Any changes to the content or expiration date of Greece’s existing €240 billion ($273 billion) bailout have to be decided by Friday, to give national parliaments in Germany, Finland and the Netherlands enough time to approve them before the end of the month. Without such a deal, Greece will be on its own on March 1, cut loose from the rescue loans from the eurozone and the International Monetary Fund that have sustained it for almost five years.
So what happens if there is no deal and Greece is forced to leave the eurozone?
Below, I have shared an excerpt from an article that details what Capital Economics believes would happen in the event of a “Grexit”…
  • The drachma would be back. The euro would be effectively abandoned, and Greece would return to the drachma, its previous currency (it might take a new name). The drachma would likely tumble in value against the euro as soon as it was issued, and how much the government could print quickly would be a big issue.
  • It would have to be fast, with capital controls. There would be people trying to pull their money out of Greece’s banks en masse. The Greek government would have to make that illegal pretty quickly. The European Central Bank drew up Grexit plans in 2012, and might be dusting them off now.
  • European life support for Greek banks would be withdrawn. Greek banks can currently access emergency liquidity assistance from the ECB, which would be removed if Greece left the euro.
  • Likely unrest and disorder. Barclays expects that this sudden economic collapse would “aggravate social unrest”, and notes that historically similar moves have caused a 45-85% devaluation of the currency. Capital Economics suggests that the drop could be more mild, closer to 20%, and Oxford Economics says 30%.
  • Greece would resume economic policymaking. Greece’s central bank would probably start doing its own QE programme, and the government would likely return to running deficits, no longer restrained by bailout rules (though investors would probably want large returns, given the risk of another default).
  • Inflation would spike immediately, but both Capital Economics and Oxford Economics say that should be temporary. It might look a bit like Russia this year — with the new currency in freefall until it finds its level against the euro, prices inside Greece would rise at dramatic speed. The inflation might be temporary, however, because with unemployment above 20%, Greece has plenty of spare labour slack to produce more.
That certainly does not sound good.
And once Greece leaves, everyone would be wondering who is next, because there are quite a few other deeply financially troubled nations in the eurozone.
David Stockman believes that Spain is a prime candidate…
In spite of the “recovery” in Spain, close to 24% are still unemployed. That statistic explains Pessimism in the Streets.
The crisis is here to stay according to significant majority of Spaniards. The general perception is that the current situation in which the country is negative and far from getting better, can only stay stagnant or even worse.
A Metroscopia poll published in El País makes it clear that the Spanish are unhappy with the current state of the country. Five out of six (83%) see the economic situation as “bad”, while more than half of the remaining perceive “regular”.
Right now, Europe is already teetering on the brink of an economic depression.
If this Greek debt crisis is not resolved, it could set in motion a chain of events which could start collapsing financial institutions all over Europe.
Yes, we have been here before and a deal has always emerged in the end.
But this time is different.  This time very idealistic radicals are running things in Greece, and the “old guard” in Europe has no intention of giving in to them.
So let’s watch and see how this game of “chicken” plays out.
I have a feeling that it is not going to end well. Delivered by The Daily Sheeple
Contributed by Michael Snyder of The Economic Collapse.
Michael Snyder is a writer, speaker and activist who writes and edits his own blogs The American Dream , The Truth and Economic Collapse Blog.


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