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Thursday, April 8, 2010

Magnitude-7.2 quake strikes Baja California

By CHRISTOPHER WEBER, Associated Press WriterSun Apr 4, 11:37 pm ET

LOS ANGELES – Damage reports from the U.S.-Mexico border region are growing after a magnitude-7.2 earthquake in Baja California that was felt from Tijuana and Los Angeles to Las Vegas and Phoenix.

The quake struck south of Mexicali, Mexico, at 3:40 p.m. Sunday, but damage also was being reported north of the border.

Calexico Fire Chief Peter Mercado tells KABC-TV in Los Angeles that there is substantial damage in the older section of the southeastern California city. Mercado says there is structural damage and broken windows, leaking gas lines and damage to the water system. But he says no injuries have been reported.

Across the border, a parking structure at the Mexicali city hall has collapsed. Mexicali is a bustling commerce center where trucks carrying goods cross into California.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A powerful earthquake in Baja California rocked the U.S.-Mexico border region Sunday, collapsing a parking structure south of the border and causing power outages in both countries as it sent out seismic waves felt from Los Angeles to Las Vegas and Arizona.

The 7.2-magnitude quake struck at 3:40 p.m. about 19 miles southeast of Mexicali, a bustling commerce center on the Mexican side of the border where trucks carrying goods cross into California. More than 900,000 people live in the greater Mexicali area.

It was the largest earthquake in the region in nearly 18 years and was followed by aftershocks or distant "triggered" earthquakes on both sides of the border, saidU.S. Geological Survey seismologist Lucy Jones.

A multistory parking structure collapsed at the Mexicali city hall but no one was injured, said Baja California state Civil Protection Director Alfredo Escobedo.

Other early reports indicated only minor damage, but communication in the region more than 100 miles southeast of Los Angeles is often slow.

"I grabbed my children and said, 'Let's go outside, hurry, hurry!'" said Elizabeth Alvarez, 54, who said the quake hit as she was getting ready to leave her house with her children in an eastern Tijuana neighborhood, across the border from San Diego.

Hundreds of people fled Tijuana's beach fearing a tsunami, said Capt. Juan Manuel Hernandez, chief of aquatic rescue at the Tijuana fire department. Tsunami experts quickly reported that no tsunami was expected along the West Coast, and Hernandez said the beach filled back up with people within an hour.

Tijuana Fire Chief Rafael Carillo said firefighters were rescuing people trapped in an elevator at the Ticuan Hotel in downtown Tijuana, but mostly were responding to reports of fallen cables and minor damage to buildings.

The Crowne Plaza hotel in Mexicali had minor damage — burst pipes and broken windows — but no on was hurt, said receptionist Juan Carlos Fernandez.

"There was a little bit of panic," Fernandez said. "Wait, it's trembling again."

Guests fled their rooms at the Hotel Playa Club in San Felipe, on the Gulf of California, but there was no damage, said receptionist Araceli Marquez.

Seismologists said there have been many earthquakes in the region including many in the magnitude-3.0 range before Sunday's big shock.

"The last time we had an earthquake this large in either Baja or California was in 1992 with the Landers Earthquake, which was 7.3," Jones said.

The USGS reported three strong aftershocks within the hour, including a magnitude-5.1 jolt in the Imperial County desert east of San Diego. Magnitude-4.5 and magnitude-4.3 aftershocks were also reported. Another occurred off Malibu.

The 7.2-magnitude quake was felt as far north as Santa Barbara, USGS seismologist Susan Potter said. It was one of the strongest to hit California in recent history. Only one has been stronger — a 7.3 quake that hit Landers, Calif., and left three dead in 1992 — and there were at least two other 7.2-magnitude quakes in the last 20 years.

Seismologists also said a number of small quakes were triggered in a geothermal area in Northern California.

More than 5,000 Southern California Edison customers were affected, mostly with about 30 seconds of flickering lights. Several hundred had longer outages.

In Arizona, 3,369 customers in the Yuma area had a "relatively momentary outage" from the quake, Arizona Public Service Company spokesman Don Wool said.

Only about 70 people were still without service in the rural Gadsden and Summerton areas. But Wool said he expected electricity to be restored there in about two hours.

Clint Norred, a spokesman for the Yuma, Ariz., Police Department, said the quake was very strong there but he'd heard no reports of injuries or major damage.

In the Phoenix area, Jacqueline Land said her king-sized bed in her second-floor apartment felt like a boat gently swaying on the ocean.

"I thought to myself, 'That can't be an earthquake. I'm in Arizona,'" the Northern California native said.

___

Associated Press Writers Mariana Jimenez in Tijuana, Mexico, Andrew Dalton and John Antczak in Los Angeles, John S. Marshall in San Francisco, and Matt Reed and Katie Oyan in Phoenix contributed to this report.

Newfound Asteroid Will Fly Close by Earth Thursday (From yahoo.com/news)

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Tariq Malik
SPACE.com Managing Editor
SPACE.com – Tue Apr 6, 7:30 pm ET

A newly discovered asteroid will zip close by Earth Thursday, but poses no threat of crashing into our planet even though it is passing within the orbit of the moon.

The asteroid, called 2010 GA6, is a relatively small space rock about 71 feet (22 meters) wide and was discovered by astronomers with the Catalina Sky Survey in Tucson, Az. The space rock will fly within the orbit of the moon when it passes Earth Thursday at 7:06 p.m. EDT (2306 GMT), but NASA astronomers said not to worry...the planet is safe.

"Fly bys of near-Earth objects within the moon's orbit occur every few weeks," said Don Yeomans of NASA'sNear-Earth Object Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., in a statement.

At the time of its closest pass, asteroid 2010 GA6 will be about 223,000 miles (359,000 km) from the Earth. That's about nine-tenths the distance between Earth and the moon [more asteroid photos].

The space rock is not the first asteroid to swing close by Earth this year.

In January, the small asteroid 2010 AL30 passed within 80,000 miles (130,000 km) when it zipped by. Otherspace rocks have flown past Earth at more comfortable distances greater than several hundred thousand miles.

NASA routinely tracks asteroids and comets that may fly near the Earth with a network of telescopes on the ground and in space. The agency's Near-Earth Object Observations program, more commonly known asSpaceguard, is responsible for finding potentially dangerous asteroids and studying their orbits to determine if they pose a risk of hitting the Earth.

NASA's latest space telescope, the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) launched in December, has been given the task of hunting new asteroids that were previously undetectable because they shine only in the infrared range of the light spectrum.

So far, the WISE telescope has been discovering dozens of previously unknown asteroids every day. Some of those space rocks have been tagged for closer analysis since they may be potentially hazardous to Earth, WISE mission scientists have said.

Original Story: Newfound Asteroid Will Fly Close by Earth Thursday

SPACE.com offers rich and compelling content about space science, travel and exploration as well as astronomy, technology, business news and more. The site boasts a variety of popular features including ourspace image of the day and other space pictures,space videos, Top 10s, Trivia, podcasts and Amazing Images submitted by our users. Join our community, sign up for our free newsletters and register for our RSS Feeds today!

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Monday, April 5, 2010

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Friday, April 2, 2010

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Thursday, April 1, 2010

Tricky tiny Mercury easier to see in sky for a bit

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AP – This image provided by NASA Tuesday Oct. 7, 2008 shows the planet Mercury, taken on Oct. 6, 2008, at …

Mon Mar 29, 12:52 pm ET

WASHINGTON – Mercury, the solar system's most elusive planet, will be easier to see for the next two weeks.

Astronomers say that Mercury and Venus will appear unusually close together between now and April 10. Because Venus is one of the brightest objects in the night sky it can be used as a pointer to find the hard-to-see Mercury.

Just look in the lower western sky about an hour after sunset. Find Venus and look down and to the right for Mercury.

They will appear closest together on April 3 and 4, but Venus is really on the other side of the sun.

Mercury is the solar system's smallest planet and it looks pink. Miami Space Transit Planetarium director Jack Horkheimer (HORK-hi-mur) calls Mercury the pinkie of the planets.

Saturday, March 27, 2010

Exo planet found in balmy orbit – is it Avatar’s Pandora?

Friday, March 26, 2010

Cassini reveals Saturn's raucous rings

Last Updated: Thursday, March 18, 2010 | 5:38 PM ET Comments41 Recommend64

CBC News

The Cassini spacecraft captured this image of Saturn's rings from the unlit side, a view not visible from Earth. The central B ring is dense enough that sunlight doesnt penetrate to the northern regions of the planet, making it appear darker than the other rings. (NASA/JPL/CICLOPS)New data from the Cassini probe has revealed Saturn is a turbulent planet with odd weather patterns and constantly shifting rings.

Images from the satellite show that Saturn's rings shift and tumble, changing their structure on very short time scales for astronomy: years, months or even days.

"This rambunctious system gives us a new feel for how an early solar system might have behaved," said Linda Spilker, a Cassini project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

"This kind of deep, rich data can only be collected by an orbiting spacecraft, and we look forward to the next seven years around Saturn bringing even more surprises," she said.

Two studies of the Cassini data were published this week in the journal Science, one on the rings and one on Saturn's atmosphere.

The objects that made up the planet's rings are composed mostly of water ice, and collisions in the rings are routine, leaving trails of debris, the probe found. The chunks of ice are contaminated with a reddish substance that could be rusty iron compounds or organic molecules.

Cassini's data revealed how gravity from Saturn's moon and the planet itself toss and pull the micro-satellites around, preventing them from coalescing and forming moons themselves.

When sunlight hit Saturn's rings edge-on during the planet's equinox, Cassini saw that rings that were normally tens of metres thick were flipped up as high as mountains.

"It has been amazing to see the rings come to life before our very eyes, changing even as we watch, being colourful and taking on a tangible, 3-D nature," said Jeff Cuzzi, lead author of the ring study.

This true-colour image of Saturn and its main rings, showing the inner or C ring and the central or B ring. (NASA/JPL/CICLOPS)The research on Saturn's atmosphere has helped astronomers understand some strange phenomena, such as the hexagon-shaped jet stream on Saturn's north pole.

The scientists also looked at the magnetic fields surrounding the planet and found an unexpected source for the charged particles there.

Cassini found that the biggest source of charged particles is Saturn's moon Enceladus, not the sun or Saturn's largest moon, Titan. Enceladus also sprays water vapour and other gases from its south pole.

"We learned from Cassini that the Saturnian magnetosphere is swimming in water," said Tamas Gombosi of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. "This is unique in the solar system and makes Saturn's plasma environment particularly fascinating."

The Cassini spacecraft is the largest and most complex interplanetary spacecraft ever built. It's the result of a co-operative project that includes NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The mission is managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The probe arrived in Saturn's neighbourhood in 2004, but it's not the first to look at the ringed planet. The Voyager missions flew by Saturn in the early 1980s.

Cassini is loaded with a dozen instruments, everything from cameras that take pictures in visible light to radar that can peer into the depths of planets' atmospheres. It can measure magnetic fields and analyze the quantity and composition of dust particles.

"Cassini has answered questions we were not even smart enough to ask when the mission was planned and raised a lot of new ones," Cuzzi said.

Saturn Will Explode Tomorrow ( A fake story)

Friday, 19 March 2010

image for Saturn Will Explode Tomorrow
About To Be Sliced Up Like A Tomato

Houston, TX-- The planet Saturn is on fire and it will explode on Saturday. NASA scientists released this grim news early today after a devastating accident involving the Cassini probe. If the planet explodes as expected, there is a good chance Saturn's rings will strike the Earth, slicing it in half.
The Cassini probe has been in Saturn's orbit since 2004. During a routine flyby of the planet yesterday, a terrible accident happened. Some moron at NASAsent the probe too close to Saturn's hydrogenatmosphere, and the whole planet caught on fire. The fire is expected to reach Saturn's solid hydrogen core tomorrow. Once that happens, it will explode. Saturn's detached rings will then fly through space "like a buzz-saw from Hell", according to NASA spokesman Dr. Karl Saygun.
Saturn's rings are extremely thin and razor sharp. They are expected to hit the Earth's equator on Easter Sunday.
"The rings will slice the Earth in half, just like a butcher knife slices a tomato." said Dr. Saygun. "There is no hope at all." he said grimly.
Dr. Saygun did note the poetic justice of it all.
"Well, I--I mean we-- blew up Saturn, and now we have to pay for it. At least it's an interesting way for the world to end." said the moron.

Thursday, March 25, 2010

The nation’s public school curriculum may be in for a Texas-sized overhaul, if the Lone Star state’s influential recommendations for changes to social studies, economics and history textbooks are fully ratified later this spring. Last Friday, in a 10-to-5 vote split right down party lines, the Texas State Board of Education approved some controversial right-leaning alterations to what most students in the state—and by extension, in much of the rest of the country—will be studying as received historical and social-scientific wisdom. After a public comment period, the board will vote on final recommendations in May.
Don McElroy, who leads the board’s powerful seven-member social conservative bloc, explained that the measure is a way of "adding balance" in the classroom, since "academia is skewed too far to the left." And the board's critics have labeled the move an attempt by political "extremists" to "promote their ideology."
The revised standards have far-reaching implications because Texas is a huge market leader in the school-textbook industry. The enormous print run for Texas textbooks leaves most districts in other states adopting the same course materials, so that the Texas School Board effectively spells out requirements for 80 percent of the nation’s textbook market. That means, for instance, that schools in left-leaning states like Oregon and Vermont could soon be teaching from textbooks that are short on references to Ted Kennedy but long on references to conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly.
Here are some of the other signal shifts that the Texas Board endorsed last Friday:

- A greater emphasis on “the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s.” This means not only increased favorable mentions of Schlafly, the founder of the antifeminist Eagle Forum, but also more discussion of the Moral Majority, the Heritage Foundation, the National Rifle Association and Newt Gingrich's Contract With America.
- A reduced scope for Latino history and culture. A proposal to expand such material in recognition of Texas’ rapidly growing Hispanic population was defeated in last week’s meetings—provoking one board member, Mary Helen Berlanga, to storm out in protest. "They can just pretend this is a white America and Hispanics don’t exist," she said of her conservative colleagues on the board. "They are rewriting history, not only of Texas but of the United States and the world."

- Changes in specific terminology. Terms that the board’s conservative majority felt were ideologically loaded are being retired. Hence, “imperialism” as a characterization of America’s modern rise to world power is giving way to “expansionism,” and “capitalism” is being dropped in economic material, in favor of the more positive expression “free market.” (The new recommendations stress the need for favorable depictions of America’s economic superiority across the board.)

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Newly discovered alien world looks like Jupiter

This is the first planet discovered outside our solar system that resembles planets within our system.

By Katherine Butler

Fri, Mar 19 2010 at 12:31 AM EST

Read more: NASA, SPACE

Jupiter and its moon, Lo. (Photo: NASA)

Scientists have long looked for a planet outside of our own solar system that would resemble our own cluster of worlds. Space.com reports that researchers have found a planet outside our solar system that is about the size of Jupiter and situated at an orbit similar to Mercury's.

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The newfound exoplanet was discovered by the French space agency CNES's CoRoT satellite. Dubbed CoRoT-9b by scientists, it may have a more temperate climate than some of the other exoplanets since discovered. This is because CoRoT-9b is farther away than some of the other gas giant planets circling alien stars. Scientists came to this conclusion by tracking the light signature of the planet passing in front of its host star from the perspective of Earth. CoRoT-9b moves relatively slow, so this gave researchers enough time to get a good look at it.

The physical makeup of CoRoT-9b is similar to a planet in our own solar system. Tristan Guillot of the Côte d'Azure Observatory in Nice, France, is a member of the team that discovered this new planet. As he told Space.com,"Like our own giant planets, Jupiter and Saturn, the planet is mostly made of hydrogen and helium … And it may contain up to 20 Earth masses of other elements, including water and rock at high temperatures and pressures."

Further, CoRoT-9b has a low eccentricity orbit, which means that its orbit remains fairly stable. Scientists believe this allows the exoplanet to have a more temperate climate. Didier Queloz of the Observatory of the University of Geneva in Switzerland is another member of the team that discovered the planet. As he told Space.com, "Our analysis has provided more information on CoRoT-9b than for other exoplanets of the same type."

Does this mean NASA should gear up a shuttle and take a trip to CoRoT-9b to check for life? Researchers say the surface temperature is somewhere between minus 4 and 360 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 20 and 160 degrees Celsius), so, the team might want to bring a jacket.

Big Bang project may delay space shuttle's final flight

Scientists are still testing a possible design flaw in the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, which could lead to clues about the beginning of the universe.

By Mark K. Matthews and Robert Block

March 13, 2010

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Reporting from Washington and Cape Canaveral, Fla. - Possible problems with a $2-billion physics experiment could delay the space shuttle's final flight and further complicate White House plans to retire the orbiter fleet this year.
At issue is a van-sized device called the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, which scientists hope will tell them more about the universe and its beginnings. The AMS is scheduled to fly aboard Endeavour in July to be installed aboard the International Space Station, but a potential design flaw has forced NASA to consider postponing the mission.
The trouble lies with the experiment's magnets, which are designed to work within a few degrees of absolute zero. The magnets will bend interstellar particles as they flow through the middle of the tube-shaped device; scientists will be able to identify the electronic charge of the particles by how they curve.
Supporters say it's the best tool to find a mysterious

substance called antimatter, which is believed to make up half of the universe.
The experiment will test the Big Bang theory, which says that the universe formed from equal parts of matter and antimatter.
Just about everything known in the universe -- from people to planets -- is composed of matter. But finding antimatter has been difficult because it is destroyed whenever it comes into contact with matter.

Scientists think antimatter particles are present in space and can be observed as they flow through the AMS magnetic field.
But engineers are worried that the AMS may not work as expected when attached to the outside of the space station. Heat from the sun and the station could warm the magnets, which could make them malfunction or shorten the experiment's three-year life span.
Scientists are testing the AMS to gauge the problem, and hope to have results by mid-April. In the meantime, NASA officials are preparing to swap the planned July 29 launch of Endeavour with a September mission that was supposed to be the shuttle's final flight.
"We are evaluating launch options for the STS-134 [Endeavour] flight as prudent planning in case the results of the testing does not come back as expected," NASA spokesman John Yembrick said.
"It is premature to speculate on whether the . . . launch date will slip. Endeavour is still targeted to launch on July 29," he added.

The project's lead scientist would not say how long it will take the AMS team to assess, and potentially fix, the heat problem. But Samuel Ting, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, remained confident that the AMS would be ready this year.
"No matter what, we are going to fly this year," said Ting, a physics professor with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
He even expressed hope that the upcoming tests could help engineers find a way to extend the AMS experiment past its three-year life to coincide with new plans to extend station operations to 2020.
Once the AMS is in space, he joked, "You can no longer send a graduate student to fix it."
The project, at Johnson Space Center in Houston, must arrive at Kennedy Space Center in Florida by June 1 to make a July launch.
The White House has budgeted an extra $600 million through Dec. 31 in case shuttle flights slip into the final three months of this year. Administration officials are uncertain what would happen if the AMS flight went into 2011.

Scientists find turbulence in Saturn's rings

March 19, 2010|By David Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor

(03-19) 11:03 PDT SAN FRANCISCO — The ringed planet Saturn, brilliant jewel of the night sky, has revealed new insights into the behavior of its rings for scientists studying signals from the Cassini spacecraft still flying through the Saturnian neighborhood after six years in orbit.

"We now have the clearest view of the rings' beautiful crystalline structure pasted onto the real night sky," said Jeffrey Cuzzi of NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, leader of the Cassini-Huygens mission. "Gazillions of icy particles are constantly colliding with each other up there as they orbit the planet ... moving as waves under the influence of moonlets we've discovered orbiting inside gaps between the rings."

The tumultuous nature of the particles in Saturn's seven main rings and the gaps between the planet's rings, where those tiny moonlets cause ring edges to wave like ripples on the shorelines of space, are being described today in the journal Science.

Saturn's rings, through even the best of telescopes, look like series of thin flat discs grooved like an old phonograph record. But that's far from the truth: From Cassini's images and data, researchers have determined that each ring is a turbulent collection of orbiting particles - 95 percent water ice glistening in sunlight and the rest some strange kind of rubble tinged in red-brown here and there.

"That color may be some kind of organic materials," said Cuzzi, "but to me it looks like just plain rust - iron oxide. How it got there we don't yet know."

The ice chunks range in size from a few inches to tens of yards. As they orbit the planet, gravity turns some into huge clumps and pulls others apart, and they batter each other chaotically.

Beyond Saturn's major rings, Cassini scientists report they have detected several other faint rings that seem to be composed of minute amounts rubble and "microscopic dust."

The physics involved in their evolution suggests they are similar to the "protoplanetary discs" of rubble that on a much larger scale mark the earliest stages in the formation of the planets in the solar system.

But just how long ago the rings of Saturn formed and where their material came from originally remains a mystery, the scientists say.

The rings and the icy matter they contain are far from stable in their orbits around the planet. Instead, they appear to be changing constantly.

MY WATCHES

I have two watches. One I got for my birthday and for Christmas.

My Timex 1440 Sports This Watch contains these abilities: Stopwatch, Time 1 & 2, Timer, and Alarm.

My Armitron Watch

This contains these abilities: Stopwatch, Time 1 & 2 , 5 Alarms, 8 Birthday Alarms and Timer.

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