SPACE BALLS

[Warph]

Published on Feb 20, 2013

Eruptive events on the Sun can be wildly different. Some come just with a solar flare, some with an additional ejection of solar material called a coronal mass ejection (CME), and some with complex moving structures in association with changes in magnetic field lines that loop up into the Sun's atmosphere, the corona.

On July 19, 2012, an eruption occurred on the sun that produced all three. A moderately powerful solar flare exploded on the Sun's lower right hand limb, sending out light and radiation. Next came a CME, which shot off to the right out into space. And then, the Sun treated viewers to one of its dazzling magnetic displays -- a phenomenon known as coronal rain.

Over the course of the next day, hot plasma in the corona cooled and condensed along strong magnetic fields in the region. Magnetic fields, themselves, are invisible, but the charged plasma is forced to move along the lines, showing up brightly in the extreme ultraviolet wavelength of 304 Angstroms, which highlights material at a temperature of about 50,000 Kelvin. This plasma acts as a tracer, helping scientists watch the dance of magnetic fields on the Sun, outlining the fields as it slowly falls back to the solar surface.

The footage in this video was collected by the Solar Dynamics Observatory's AIA instrument. SDO collected one frame every 12 seconds, and the movie plays at 30 frames per second, so each second in this video corresponds to 6 minutes of real time. The video covers 12:30 a.m. EDT to 10:00 p.m. EDT on July 19, 2012.

Credit: NASA SDO
Music: "Thunderbolt" by Lars Leonhard, courtesy of artist.[/b]

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~THE GOD PARTICLE~

5GENEVA (AP) - Scientists working at the world's biggest atom smasher near Geneva have announced they are confident that the new subatomic particle discovered last summer is a version of the long-sought Higgs boson. The particle bears key attributes of the so-called "God particle" that was theorized nearly a half-century ago as fundamental to the creation of the universe. It took thousands of scientists from around the world to hunt the particle in the atom-smasher operated by CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research.

This undated image made available by CERN shows a typical candidate event including two high-energy photons whose energy (depicted by red towers) is measured in the CMS electromagnetic calorimeter. The yellow lines are the measured tracks of other particles produced in the collision. The pale blue volume shows the CMS crystal calorimeter barrel. The European Organization for Nuclear Research, called CERN, says Thursday March 14, 2013 a look at all the data from 2012 shows that what they found last year was a version of what is popularly referred to as the "God particle."

WHAT EXACTLY IS THE GOD PARTICLE?
Everything is made of atoms, inside of which are electrons, protons and neutrons. And those, in turn, are made of quarks and other subatomic particles. Scientists have wondered how these tiny building blocks of the universe acquire mass. Without mass, the particles wouldn't hold together - and there would be no matter.

One theory proposed by British physicist Peter Higgs and teams in Belgium and the United States nearly a half-century ago is that a new particle must be creating a "sticky" energy field that acts as a drag on other particles. The atom-smashing experiments have now confirmed that this particle exists in a form that is similar to - but perhaps not exactly like - what was proposed.

WHY DOES THIS MATTER?
The Higgs is part of many theoretical equations underpinning scientists' understanding of how the world came into being. If the particle didn't exist, then those theories would have needed to be fundamentally overhauled. The fact that it does exist, in some form, means scientists have been on the right track with their theories. So far the measurements seem to line up with was expected under the so-called Standard Model of particle physics. This is disappointing for scientists who were hoping to see new discoveries including a theory known as "super-symmetry" where particles don't just come in pairs - think matter and anti-matter - but quadruplets, all with slightly different characteristics.

HOW MUCH DID IT COST?
CERN's atom smasher, the Large Hadron Collider, which forms a 17-mile (27-kilometer) tunnel beneath the Swiss-French border, cost some $10 billion to build and run. This includes the salaries of thousands of scientists and support staff around the world who collaborated on the two experiments that independently pursued the Higgs.

WHAT IF ANY PRACTICAL RESULTS MIGHT COME FROM THE SEARCH?
None directly. But the massive scientific effort that led up to the discovery paid off in other ways, including the creation of the World Wide Web. CERN scientists developed it to make it easier to exchange information among each other. The vast computing power needed to crunch all of the data produced by the atom smasher also boosted the development of distributed - or cloud - computing, that is now entering mainstream services. Advances in solar energy capture, medical imaging and proton therapy - used in the fight against cancer - also resulted from the work of particle physicists at CERN and elsewhere.

WHAT COMES NEXT
It remains an open question, CERN says, whether this is exactly the Higgs boson of the Standard Model of particle physics, or possibly the lightest of several bosons predicted in some theories that go beyond the Standard Model. Finding the answer to this question will take time, as scientists keep probing the new particle until they fully understand how it works. And in doing so, they hope to understand the 96 percent of the universe that remains hidden from view. This may result in the discovery of new particles and even unknown forces of nature.

[Warph]

Two Planets Collide in Deep Space

NASAs Spitzer Space Telescope has found evidence of a high-speed collision between two burgeoning planets around a young star.

                       

Astronomers say that two rocky bodies, one as least as big as our moon and the other at least as big as Mercury, slammed into each other within the last few thousand years or so — not long ago by cosmic standards. The impact destroyed the smaller body, vaporizing huge amounts of rock and flinging massive plumes of hot lava into space.

Spitzers infrared detectors were able to pick up the signatures of the vaporized rock, along with pieces of refrozen lava, called tektites.

This collision had to be huge and incredibly high-speed for rock to have been vaporized and melted, said Carey M. Lisse of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Md., lead author of a new paper describing the findings in the Aug. 20 issue of the Astrophysical Journal. This is a really rare and short-lived event, critical in the formation of Earth-like planets and moons. Were lucky to have witnessed one not long after it happened.[/b]

[Warph]

We discuss the secret space program, what it is, who is behind it and why? Is there a human civilization living off-world with highly advanced technology and knowledge about the existence of aliens? Why are we being kept in the dark? We feature Peter Levenda, Richard Dolan, Richard Hoagland, Rauni-Leena Luukanen-Kilde, Timothy Good, Hugh Newman, Jonathan Adams, Ed Grimsley, Robin Falkov, Jeroen Van Straaten and attendees of the Secret Space Program conference in Amsterdam who also share their own experiences with UFO sightings. Then, we hit the streets of Amsterdam where the locals speak their mind about aliens, abductions and making contact with ET.