Astronomy Domine

"William Ruddiman, a professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, is behind a controversial theory suggesting that humans had a hand in warming the planet nearly 8,000 years ago, and in doing so, might have prevented another ice age."

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This is controversial, 8.000 years compared to 4 billions years? Is statistically insignificant any  claim about this period. Perhaps the global warming is a recurrent phenomenon, and humans have nothing to do. Think about this: does dinosaurs impacts on the environment was greater or lower than human impact?

2005 will go down as one of the worst newspaper years in history, and 2006 doesn't look promising. Online media is continuously generating more readership and ad dollars, but currently only accounts for 5% of total newspaper revenues.

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The Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX), is a powerful Radio Telescope, with the capacity to research how the Universe was formed.
This is the first prototipe radio telescope to be installed on the Llano de Chajnantor, 0 Km east San Pedro de Atacama, North of Chile, and is the kickoff of the ALMA Project. (See map below).

Placed at an altitude of 5,105 meters (16,748 feets aprox.), the site was selected for his tiny atmosphere, and clear skies.

The APEX inauguration was on september 27th.

Microbes are being assimilated!

By Merging microbe and machine for the first time, scientists at a University of Nebraska, have created gold-plated bacteria that can sense humidity. The first "cellborg" is a proof of concept of what might become an array of devices that could sense dangerous gases or other hazardous substances.

New images of the VLT (Very Large Telescope) show details how matter spirals toward the black hole in the center of a galaxy:  The Photo shows the whole of galaxy NGC1097. As this striking image reveals, NGC 1097 presents a centre that consists of a broken ring of bright knots surrounding the galaxy's nucleus.

 

Click here for a high resolution photograph.

 

"This is the first time that a detailed view of the channelling process of matter, from the main part of the galaxy down to the very end in the nucleus is released," says Almudena Prieto (Max-Planck Institute, Heidelberg, Germany), lead author of the paper describing these results. Located about 45 million light-years away in the southern constellation Fornax (the Furnace), NGC 1097 is a relatively bright, spiral galaxy seen face-on.

Astronomy Domine
(Barrett) 4:12

Lime and limpid green, a second scene
A fight between the blue you once knew.
Floating down, the sound resounds
Around the icy waters underground.
Jupiter and Saturn, Oberon, Miranda
And Titania, Neptune, Titan.
Stars can frighten.

Blinding signs flap,
Flicker, flicker, flicker blam. Pow, pow.
Stairway scare Dan Dare who's there?
Lime and limpid green
The sounds surrounds the icy waters underground
Lime and limpid green
The sounds surrounds the icy waters underground.