Night Launch

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Over the Skies of Norway

 

The people of Norway witnessed this strange sight in the sky around 8 in the morning on Dec. 9 2009. Could this be related to the CERN particle collider in Geneva? Is the a sign of the end times? A sort of trumpet call for aliens poised to attack? No. Sorry. 

Apparently this is what happens when a Russia  rocket launch goes bad.  An unnamed Russian military official reported that a spiral light was due to a failed Bulava missile launch from a submarine in the White Sea. ( A warning to navigation was sent out prior to the event. http://www.frisnit.com/cgi-bin/navtex/view.cgi?id=1159919&lan=en&type=24H&message_filter=&search=ROCKET&station_filter=&date=2009-12-09&source=a4f7a470329caf85e2488355c7e88328&offset=0)

This kind of free light show would have had a lot of people jumping out of windows in a more populated area. 

For more information click here.

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In Praise of the Moon

This week marks the fortieth anniversary of Man's walk on the Moon. On this occasion, we at Nomadic View would like to take this moment to sing a song of praise for Luna.

Scientists tell us that moons like ours are fairly uncommon in the universe, occurring, at most, in only five to ten percent of the planetary systems. The Earth is unique amongst the terrestrial planets in having a large satellite, the Moon, which, relative to the Earth, has the largest mass of any satellite - parent system. George Rieke, Ph.D., an astrophysicist at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Ariz., says our moon is unique -- formed by a massive collision in space. "There was another planet about the size of Mars that was on a disastrous orbit across the Earth's orbit and so the Earth and this other planet ran into each other," he says. At the time of this collision, the Earth was still in the initial cooling stages, but following this crash, two distinct shapes formed from the molten debris.

When life began on Earth, the Moon was much closer-possibly only 20 to 30 thousands of kilometers away, and it would have looked extremely large in the sky, at least 20 to 10 times bigger. As a result of the Moon's close proximity, its tidal effects were much stronger. According to Richard Lathe, a molecular biologist at Pieta Research in Edinburgh, these tides could have helped drive the evolution of early DNA-like bio-molecules by regularly fluctuating the salinity levels. http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn4786-no-moon-no-life-on-earth-suggests-theory.html

The tides caused by the Moon, according to some biologists, may also have played a role in later evolution as well. The land affected by the ebb and flow may have been the only reasonable area for the emergence of the first terrestrial life forms Areas that were sometimes wet but not underwater may have allowed the transition from oceanic life. The regular rise and fall of sea level creates an unique environment in the Solar System, where life is exposed to both immersion in water and exposure to air in the space of a few hours.

The Moon, born at a crash scene, must surely have been essential for the development of intelligent life on this planet and possibly such intelligence is a very unique event in the Universe. (Does it fill you with fear or awe and reverence to consider that in the entire Universe, intelligent life on Earth, thanks to the Moon, might be unique?)

Finally men looked up at the Moon unavoidably and this has constantly spurred us on intellectually. There the Moon appeared, constantly taunting us for the answer to her riddle, through the ages challenging scientists to explain its face, sometime in shadow and sometime in glorious fullness.

For these reasons, but mostly because of your inspiring beauty on a summer night, we salute you,  enchanting Selene. 

Poem on God and The Moon

by Sukasah Syahdan

Before we ask if God exists
we should ask if man really
landed on the moon.

Technorati Tags: Moon,Evolution,Life,Creation

Mickey Mouse in the Laboratory

According to my sources at Discover magazine, scientists  have endowed  laboratory mice a human gene which is related to human language development.  The transgenic rodent did not begin a reciting Shakespeare or anything, but  appeared to show changes in vocal patterns and brain shape.

Some researchers speculate that these differences may help explain why humans are the only animal able to communicate with complex languages, and not simple grunts, barks or songs.

So what happened to the lab mice that were given the human version of the gene? In the study, published in the journal Cell, researchers report that the mice still emitted ultrasonic whistles to attract their mothers attention like normal mice, but the whistles of the transgenic mice had a lower pitch. They demonstrated other behavioral changes, including less willingness to explore their surroundings. But most interestingly, the altered mice had altered brain structures. In a region of the brain called the basal ganglia, known in people to be involved in language, the humanized mice grew nerve cells that had a more complex structure [The New York Times].

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2009/05/29/mice-with-a-human-language-gene-have-altered-squeaks-and-brain-structure/

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Areogels- The Material of Tomorrow

It looks like solid smoke. Or a hologram. When you look at it, the eye has trouble actually focusing on its true shape. It looks. in fact, like a ghost stuff. It's called Aerogel.

Aerogel is a form of nanofoam, an engineered material designed for high strength-to-weight ratio. Based on research from the 1930s by Stanford University's Steven Kistler, this material may soon be the concrete of the future (and a whole lot more). In a 1932 paper published in Nature, Kistler showed that gel is an open structure of a matrix of porous walls with a liquid filling. He reasoned that it could be possible to remove the fluid completely without destroying the structure. The result was areogel.

Aerogel, one of the world’s lightest solids, can withstand a direct blast of 1kg of dynamite and protect against heat from a blowtorch at more than 1,300C. They consist of more than 96 percent air. The remaining four percent is a wispy matrix of silica (silicon dioxide), a principal raw material for glass. Aerogels, consequently, are one of the lightest weight solids ever conceived. (water is actually 300 times denser.) The silica aerogel is an amorphous form of common sand, nonflammable, nontoxic, and environmentally safe.

Mercouri Kanatzidis, a chemistry professor at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, said: “It is an amazing material. It has the lowest density of any product known to man, yet at the same time it can do so much. I can see aerogel being used for everything from filtering polluted water to insulating against extreme temperatures and even for jewelry.” Just to give you a rough comparison, one inch of aerogel insulates just as well as ten inches of fiberglass or a window with 10 double panes of glass. The aerogels' extraordinary thermal insulation ability makes them capable of withstanding temperatures in excess of a thousand of degrees Fahrenheit.

Kanatzidis has created a new version of aerogel designed to mop up lead and mercury from water. Other versions are designed to absorb oil spills. In fact, if you handle aerogel for more than a few minutes, you should wear gloves. That’s because aerogel will draw the water out of your skin and leave it scaly and patchy.

It also has green credentials. Aerogel is described by scientists as the “ultimate sponge”, with millions of tiny pores on its surface. In fact, workers are advised to wear clothes when handling aerogel for more than a few minutes as it can draw the water out of skin. This quality also makes it ideal for absorbing pollutants in water.

One of the major problems with areogels has been its brittleness. However, in 2004, University of California scientists working at Los Alamos National Laboratory have recently demonstrated a novel method for chemically modifying and enhancing silica-based aerogels without sacrificing the aerogels unique properties. By mixing metal compounds during the production stage, lab scientist, Kimberly DeFriend showed that areogel's strength can be increased four fold. This allows the aerogels to retain their most valuable porosity and density characteristics while enhancing weaker characteristics like mechanical strength.

http://members.tripod.com/~geobeck/frontier/aerogels.html

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Entry from the Simon’s Book of World Sexual Records….

Reproduction (clam worm) first discovered

Clam worms usually crawl through the ooze on the ocean bed and don’t do much else. But when they start feeling sexy, they change into swimming worms so different in appearance that for a long time,  they were thought to be an entirely different species. In 1860, a Gottingen naturalist recognized that there heteronereids were sexual forms of the ooze-dwelling nereids. The males even dance about- often at new moon and high tide- during which they emit sperm and hormones released from the clouds of sperm stimulate the females to lay eggs.

A typical Friday evening in any major city is about the same.

Two Cool Virtual Reality New Stories

First Virtual Reality Technology To Let You See, Hear, Smell, Taste And Touch

ScienceDaily (Mar. 4, 2009) — The first virtual reality headset that can stimulate all five senses has been developed. What was it really like to live in Ancient Egypt? What did the streets there actually look, sound and smell like? For decades, Virtual Reality has held out the hope that, one day, we might be able visit all kinds of places and periods as 'virtual' tourists. (Click on link below to read more..)http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090304091227.htm

Human-Interface Engineers Create Virtual-Reality Experience by Letting Users Walk in Rotating Sphere

April 1, 2006 — A new invention allows users to explore virtual worlds while moving around safely in their real physical environment. Wearing a virtual-reality helmet, users walk inside a rotating, hollow sphere, while a computer responds by changing the visuals displayed in the helmet. The sphere could find applications in education, firefighter training, and entertainment. (Click on link below to read more..)http://www.sciencedaily.com/videos/2006/0409-the_new_virtual_reality.htm

LiveJournal Tags: Future,Virtual Reality,inventions,entertainment

So who needs cars anyway?

On a Night of a Million Stars

The Milky Road
Credit & Copyright: Larry Landolfi