Electro-magnetic coupling of the Sun-Earth system

NASA SDO - X5.4-class Solar Flare, March 7, 2012
Right at midnight UT time the active region 1429 unleashed a powerful X5.4-class solar flare. X-class flares are the strongest of the flares. They are major ...

http://fedgeno.com/documents/on-the-relation-between-solar-activity-and-seismicity.pdf
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Seven centuries of records of ancient earthquakes in the Mediterranean region show that the century-scale variations in the number of strong earthquakes closely follow the secular cycle of solar activity. Two well expressed maxima in the global yearly number of earthquakes are seen in the 11-year sunspot cycle - onc coinciding with sunspotmaximum, and the other on the descending phase of solar activity. A day to day study of the number of earthquakes worldwide reveals that the arrival to the Earh of high speed solar streams is related to significantly greater probability of earthquake occurrence.
The possible mechanism includes deposition of solar wind energy into the polar ionosphere where it drives ionospheric convection and auroral electrojets, generating in ‘turn atmospheric gravity waves that interact with neutral winds and deposit their momentum in the neutral atmosphere, increasing the transfer of air masses and disturbing of the pressure balance on tectonic plates.
The main sources of high speed solar streams are the solar coronal mass ejections which have a maximum in the sunspot maximum, and the coronal holes with a maximum on the descending phase of solar activity. Both
coronal holes and CMEs are monitored hy satellite-home
and ground-based instruments, which makes possible to
predict periods of enhanced seismic risk.

http://iopscience.iop.org/0004-637X/727/1/44/fulltext/apj_727_1_44.text.html

Solar CME speed and geomagnetics. Interesting. (I don't understand it either.) Now I wonder if there could be something to the folk reports of "earthquake clouds".

http://www.khalilov.biz/pdf/About%20possible%20influence%20of%20solar%20activity%20upon%20seismic%20and%20volcanic%20activities%203.pdf
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It has been determined that in the period of solar activity increase (11-year cycles) there increase seismic and volcanic activities in the compression zone of Earth and at the same time there decreases the activity in the tension zones of Earth.
On the basis of the discovered stable 11-year and 22-year cyclicalities in the seismic and volcanic activities and their high correlation with solar activity there has been made the long-term forecast until 2018. The next maximum of seismic and volcanic activity with very high amplitude for the compression zones of Earth is forecasted for the period 2012-2015.

Just the abstract:
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Solar activities play significant roles in electromagnetic coupling of the Sun - Earth system. By comparing the 11-year sunspot cycles and global earthquake events during 1963 to 2010 period, it is possible to reveal the correlation of solar and seismic activities. In the present paper, the monthly values of sunspot cycles number 20 to 23 and earthquake events at different magnitude scales were analyzed to examine the relationship of these values and to understand the coupling mechanisms in solar and geomagnetic activities. The sunspot numbers are obtained from Marshall Space Flight Center, NASA database, and earthquake events are extracted from Advanced National Seismic System (ANSS) database. We found a significant correlation between high speed solar wind (HSSW) and great earthquake events (M ≥ 6.0 Richter scale).

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=6015869

The answer, my friend, is blowing in the high-speed solar wind. And stop thinking dirty thoughts about those coupling mechanisms.

Non-intervention in interplanetary affairs

 As the military budget surpasses one trillion dollars, over $3000 per capita, planetary exploration is scaled back (to $4.00 per capita). Soon, we'll have to just be content watching the Chinese missions.

Obama’s budget would cut Mars program, solar system exploration
The Obama administration’s budget would hit the NASA division that sends rovers to Mars and probes to Jupiter.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/presidents-next-budget-to-cut-mars-solar-system-exploration/2012/02/08/gIQAvrm3zQ_story.html

▻ Scientists briefed on the proposed budget said that the president’s plan drops funding for planetary science at NASA from $1.5 billion this year to $1.2 billion next year, with further cuts continuing through 2017.

Chatbot Dr C

http://marsdata1.jpl.nasa.gov/DrC/
Chat-bot for Mars Rovers: Dr. C. is based on a real Mars scientist, Dr. Phil Christensen.
Dr. C.
He's awfully stupid, even for a chatbot

This is your space shuttle's brain

It’s true: The brain of NASA’s primary vehicle has the computational power of an IBM 5150, that ’80s icon that goes for $20 at yard sales. According to NASA and IBM, the shuttle’s General Purpose Computer (GPC)—which controls, among other things, the entire launch sequence—is an upgrade of the 500-kilobyte computer the shuttle flew with until 1991.

http://www.popsci.com/military-aviation-amp-space/article/2009-02/does-space-shuttle’s-computer-real

Eels: Tomorrow Morning

I ran across this new interview with E about a week ago.



Tomorrow Morning is something to look forward to. By the way, Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives has become available again on YouTube after having been taken down sometime after I last referred to it. ("This video has been removed due to a copyright claim by the BBC.")You may want to DLHelper yourself to those mp4s before they get taken down again, because the price of buying the dvd ($40.49!) is a ridiculous price to pay for not recording it when it was broadcast on TV.

Just for the hell of it, here's an NPR interview from June 2009.



...and an official Eels video from April 2009.

Hide and Seek

Stephen Hawking (not to be confused with Stephen King) says it may be best to Hide from Extra Terrestrial Intelligence.(You can still search for it, but be vewy vewy quiet.)

Macbot News

Macbots, a Mac Tonnies tribute site, is developing nicely. There was an interview on Technoccult with facilitators blazingbetta and capnmarrrrk. Mac's last book, The Cryptoterrestrials: A Meditation on Indigenous Humanoids and the Aliens Among Us, published posthumously, is available from Anomolist books, amazon.co.jp and amazon.com. I haven't got it yet.

E (Mark Oliver Everett of the Eels)

I guess I missed this April 15, 2008 set at KCRW. There are four parts.



This was a good 2005 performance of Dead of Winter from Electro-Shock Blues.


I forgot to buy E's book, Things The Grandchildren Should Know. Maybe I will now; I've been on an Amazon buying spree (relatively speaking). I'm disappointed to notice today that the BBC had YouTube pull down Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives. I never made a local copy before it disappeared. :-(

Character Palette Panel Applet and Ringing Home

Danke schön, Señor Gagné. That answers a lot of questions for me. The Character Palette panel applet (say fast 5 times) is now living in my top panel.

On a completely unrelated note, as Monsieur Gagné has noted on his blog, you don't need to harbor any negative thoughts about the moon breaking up or our planet being eventually ringed with space junk. It turns out it's awfully pretty that way. Puts the moon to shame. The visual persuasion is below.

Place in the Sun

I love the sun. (I try to stay out of it, though.) Go to the SolarSoft site to see if there is a tiny solar physicist inside you struggling to get out. Get advance warnings on your cell phone in the event of the sun exploding. No, they don't offer that service. (What good are they, then?) Guess what the "LMSAL" stands for.

Everyone has their own place in the sun--should you choose to have your remains shot into the sun upon your demise. However, they'd probably be vaporized and blown back into deep space before they got to the sun.

Today's award for best (hottest?) background on a solar physicist web site goes to Mauna Loa. This totally beats standing outside and staring into the sun--plus it is available 24 hours a day and night.

Solar monitor.org is also easy on the retina. Never attempt to examine the sun directly with your eye(s) and a powerful optical magnifier.

You can also check the space weather news if you plan to be "outside" (the earth's atmoshere).

CH4 on Planet Four

Major news: A NASA press release today and article in Science gives details of the emissions of methane from the surface of Mars. This would seem to raise the probability of finding life to 50% or better. I checked Intrade to see if they were offering a contract on it; they weren't (altho Steve Jobs leaving as CEO this year was at 70%). Some people posting on news sites seem to be resistant to any ideas of life beyond the Earth, but it's really not unexpected, as meteor impacts have thrown tons of matter from Mars to Earth and vice versa over the millions and billions of years. They'll get their heads around it before too long. 

To Serve Man

Best Twilight Zone… Ever? -tho I have half a dozen favorites near this level.

Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives

The Eels "Whatever Happened to Soy Bomb" kept running through my brain yesterday. I don't even like that song. I decided I needed to displace that song with a dose of some other Eels music. I went to YouTube to see if I could find something fresh. I came across some interesting live content which can be waded into at the Eels official YouTube channel.

But better yet, I stumbled upon a BBC documentary about Hugh Everett, the multiverse theorist, featuring his son, E (Mark Oliver Everett). It doesn't get much better. Here is the first part of the six part YouTube version of the BBC documentary --NOT available on DVD in this universe--while it lasts.

In 1957, this young and brilliant physicist published a paper which used some heavy duty mathematics to predict the existence of parallel universes.

Although the concept of parallel universes seeped into popular culture, it was considered too way-out for mainstream physicists; and for many years, it remained in the scientific wilderness.

Now, 50 years on, Hugh Everett's son has travelled across America for a BBC Four documentary to find out more about his father's theory, and why it has now been accepted by many physicists as the work of a scientific genius.

Alternate sources in case this one gets deleted:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_vpEyE6rug
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWIyam5cAko

I haven't even had time to watch all of it yet myself, though. Planning to go to Kagurazaka Matsuri tonight despite possible thunderstorms and watch this later during the weekend.

Update: OK, where are the "Related" links? OK, here is the whole program.











Eels band site

About the documentary

E's book: Things The Grandchildren Should Know

BBC-- a spot of publicity

MySpace

Resist, Erisians, resist.

Pluto Now Called a Plutoid

Robert Roy Britt, Senior Science Writer, SPACE.com
Wed Jun 11, 11:49 AM ET, Updated 11:36 a.m. ET

The International Astronomical Union has decided on the term "plutoid" as a name for dwarf planets like Pluto.

Sidestepping concerns of many astronomers worldwide, the IAU's decision, at a meeting of its Executive Committee in Oslo, comes almost two years after it stripped Pluto of its planethood and introduced the term "dwarf planets" for Pluto and other small round objects that often travel highly elliptical paths around the sun in the far reaches of the solar system.

The name plutoid was proposed by the members of the IAU Committee on Small Body Nomenclature (CSBN), accepted by the Board of Division III and by the IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature (WGPSN), and approved by the IAU Executive Committee at its recent meeting in Oslo, according to a statement released today.

Here's the official new definition:

"Plutoids are celestial bodies in orbit around the sun at a distance greater than that of Neptune that have sufficient mass for their self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that they assume a hydrostatic equilibrium (near-spherical) shape, and that have not cleared the neighborhood around their orbit."

In short: small round things beyond Neptune that orbit the sun and have lots of rocky neighbors.

The two known and named plutoids are Pluto and Eris, the IAU stated. The organization expects more plutoids will be found.

Controversy continues

Already the IAU recognizes it is adding to an ongoing controversy.

The IAU has been responsible for naming planetary bodies and their satellites since the early 1900s. Its decision in 2006 to demote Pluto was highly controversial, with some astronomers saying simply that they would not heed it and questioning the IAU's validity as a governing body.

"The IAU is a democratic organization, thus open to comments and criticism of any kind," IAU General Secretary Karel A. van der Hucht told SPACE.com by email today. "Given the history of the issue, we will probably never reach a complete consensus."

It remains to be seen whether astronomers will use the new term.

"My guess is that no one is going to much use this term, though perhaps I'm wrong," said Caltech astronomer Mike Brown, who has led the discovery of several objects in the outer solar system, including Eris. "But I don't think that this will be because it is controversial, just not particularly necessary."

Brown was unaware of the new definition until the IAU announced it today.

"Back when the term 'pluton' was nixed they said they would come up with another one," Brown said. "So I guess they finally did."

More debate coming

The dwarf planet Ceres is not a plutoid as it is located in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, according to the IAU. Current scientific knowledge lends credence to the belief that Ceres is the only object of its kind, the IAU stated. Therefore, a separate category of Ceres-like dwarf planets will not be proposed at this time, the reasoning goes.

A meeting, planned earlier this year for Aug. 14-16 at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, aims to bring astronomers of varying viewpoints together to discuss the controversy. "No votes will be taken at this conference to put specific objects in or out of the family of planets," APL's Dr. Hal Weaver, a conference organizer, said in a statement in May. "But we will have advocates of the IAU definition and proponents of alternative definitions presenting their cases."

The term plutoid joins a host of other odd words -- plutinos, centaurs, cubewanos and EKOs -- that astronomers use to define objects in the outer solar system.

Source: Yahoo news from space.com

What's the solar system coming to? If a geeky-looking fellow in my vicinity were to begin talking in a whiny voice about the Plutinos and Plutoids, I would immediately tag him as an astronomer-impersonator and orally eject sputum into his ocular orbits. Billions and Billions of times. Even if he looked exactly like Stephen Hawking. I might push his wheelchair down the stairs, even if that meant we never found the wormhole to an alternate dimension that would save our species from extinction. Yes, this evokes strong emotions. Better that our world fall into the sun than we should move into the cosmos having permanently adopted the use of "plutoid." Think about it. What if "America" had been called, say "Spainoid" instead? South America, "Portugon"? How would you feel? Words matter.

What is this, really, some kind of attempt to pacify the angry supporters of Pluto-planethood? Pluto is not Hillary Clinton. The people who came up with this idea (or those who support Pluto as a planet?) could be called Plutons or Plutoids, but the long-established term Dwarf Planet is a more dignified and appropriate term. 1. It's not a made-up word that sounds like it was made by a third-grader, and 2. It contains the word "planet" and is therefore more acceptable to the planet-arians, people who do not want to see these bodies downgraded to non-planets. A dwarf planet is still a planet. Sort of. Also, imagine the confusion of translating the new made up (and fugly) word into Chinese and hundreds of other languages. Just use words that already exist, like "dwarf" and "planet." Gnome Planet would work, too, but do not consider Fairy Planet, please. Outer Dwarf Planets and Inner Dwarf Planets are possible, to accommodate the problem of Ceres.

I urge others who aspire to one day visit the (outer) dwarf planet Eris to resist! Resist this outrage. Call your local planetarium or university astronomy department to demand that their staff denounce(!) and reject(!) this mercurial decision by the IAU's CSBN and WGPSN. Better yet, go to John Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory August 14-16 to lobby the superdelegates. It'll be like Woodstock without the music, the hippies, and the muddy fields, and with astronomers, I promise. Throw pluton into the dustbin of discarded nomenclature. Throw plutoid into the void. This decision will not stand!

January 8, 2008 Stephenville Texas and other UFO sightings

I didn't see this story in the media at first (and I don't think it was a big story in Japan) but a friend sent me this video link.





I was shocked by the extremely condescending coverage by CNN. The background graphic is extreme and over-the-top. The story is introduced as an offbeat, humorous story. The male announcer mentions "visitors from very, very far away", seemingly leaping to the conclusion that anything flying and unidentified must be extraterrestrial in origin and a manned (or occupied) craft. Yet none of the witnesses in the news report made any such claims. The police officer, pilot, and other witnesses simply described what they saw without making any assumptions or conclusions other than that it didn't seem to be from around there. It seemed completely unwarranted for the casters to go out of their way to ridicule the very sincere eyewitnesses, who were not seeking publicity and who may be a little reluctant to report the facts given attacks from the media and public. If there had been a single witness who had been drinking and given the UFO story as an excuse to his wife for why he came home late, perhaps the story would be humorous, but this event was witnessed by dozens of people at different locations. There were around 40 eyewitnesses. It also seems that planetary invasion, if that is what it is, would not be a laughing matter unless the casters were shape-shifting reptilians themselves, or have been instructed by their owners (or a security agency) to present the story in a condescending and disrespectful way. If you visit the YouTube page, you will see that most viewers who commented mindlessly followed the CNN brainwash and heaped scorn and ridicule on the townspeople.

It sounds like a cover-up to me, (and I am not a UFO person; I don't own and haven't read a single book on the subject). Alternatively, it could just be that the society and the media are not prepared for Mystery, for something Unexplained. Many people have a low tolerance of Uncertainty. People should accept that there are unexplained phenomena and there always will be. A tiny sliver of the universe is explainable and understandable to us, 97% (to pick a random number) is not and never will be. To give an example, for most of human history, thunder and lightning were inexplicable phenomena. There was no theory that could correctly explain and account for hem. You had to be satisfies with "Apollo is bowling" or some such explanation. By the 1700s, we could begin to know what lightning was and even capture and make use of that force in the 1800s.

Speaking of flying objects, up until the 20th century, most people had no concept of aerodynamics, lacking the math and physics to even explain how birds could fly, and refused to accept the evidence presented by the existence of birds, that man could fly (Michelangelo was an exception).

Likewise, even today scientists are finding sprites and other bizarre phenomena, not in space but in the Earth's atmosphere, new species of mammals (tiny deer) are still being found, most species of life on Earth have not been cataloged, we are finding out some insects do not fly the way we thought they did, birds sing using a different technique than we had thought, we've found little people, and so we probably will find our brother Sasquatch one day, too, I suppose. (I think they fear fire-monkey for good reason.)

Like lightning, UFOs are a real phenomenon which has a real explanation (not necessarily UFO=ET) which will one day become clear.

Perhaps there is just an association of UFOs with crazy people. If the last 3 people who talked to you about UFOs were crazy (possibly as a side effect of their abductions?), you might start to react suspiciously without listening to the next person who says "UFO". It is true that some crazy people mention UFOs. Yet that doesn't mean every person who mentions UFOs is crazy; it just means that UFOs are an archetypal and profoundly impressive meme psychologically. Crazy people also mention God and Jesus, yet we do not treat every person who talks about God and Jesus as a lunatic. (It might be a better world if we did, though.)

The story did reach Japan on Larry King Live. I saw just enough to see that they were asking, "Do you believe in UFOs?," a question which literally means "Do you believe that there are objects which fly that are unidentified?," a question to which the only correct answer can be "Yes" as long as someone somewhere has not identified every object that flies.

I wonder where the media found the ability to be so skeptical when they seemed to have no critical thinking faculties operating when the news is about unconstitutional military commissions, secret invisible doomsday weapons in Iraq, Persian Islamic A-bombs (which are somehow safer than Perv and AQ Khan's Pakistani Islamic A-bombs), and other modern american fairy tales.

The story in USAToday is reported more professionally but includes the opening line "Cue the Twilight Zone theme ... Dozens of people say they saw a UFO hovering over their rural community near Stephenville, Texas," placing the story falsely within the realm of fiction or televised entertainment, not news.

The incident is similar to the November 7, 2006 O'Hare International Airport incident, in which a metallic, circular, spinning craft was witnessed hovering over a gate (C-16). As the Wikipedia article on the O'Hare event points out:

Widespread coverage of a UFO sighting by today's mainstream media is somewhat unusual for large media companies who, when they do cover UFO events, often tend to use a facetious or mocking style when reporting about the sightings. Many UFO researchers and UFO conspiracy theorists consider this to be an often deliberate way of deflecting any serious attention from the UFO phenomenon and specific incidents.

No kidding! I hadn't really noticed or paid much attention to that before, but I'd tend to agree now. For the general public, it may just be that the possibility of there being other intelligent beings in the universe is so exciting (and would be the biggest news in human history) that some psychological defenses leap into action. For the media people, it appears that they are instructed to minimize, marginalize, or ridicule these reports. That could be for military reasons, due to an internationally agreed policy of official secrecy, or it may just be that they are hit with many complaints from the public when they report the facts straight (although I would think the opposite might be true).

The O'Hare story was reported in the Chicago Tribune as a video post (via Laughing Squid).

These inexplicable events seem to be increasing lately, or occurring in increasingly public places. The March 5, 2004 Mexican Air Force encounter is another major incident, which produced video -- unavailable from the 2006 and 2008 incidents.

Goldilocks Hits the Jackpot

This is a book I want to read. It's a popular cosmology book written by Paul Davies. It's been out since last spring, before I heard of it. It's called Cosmic Jackpot in the US and The Goldilocks Enigma in the UK, --marketing to national stereotypes, perhaps?

Although the US version is subtitled The Mind of God, I don't think he really believes in "God", although it may be one way of referring to mind which arises from the universe and through a temporally symmetrical quantum causality creates a maximally mindfulness-friendly universe from the set of all possible multiverses.

I found some audio originally at Science Friday. There was also a piece on NPRnews and the SETI Institute's AWA (Are We Alone?) podcast.

The US Amazon had some reviews I thought were well-worth reading. I'll probably order it from amazon.co.jp but I like the UK Penguin cover, too. A reviewer quotes with disappointment from the end of the book:

So, how come existence? At the end of the day, all the approaches I have discussed are likely to prove unsatisfactory. In fact, in reviewing them they all seem to me to be either ridiculous or hopelessly inadequate: a unique universe that just happens to permit life by a fluke; a stupendous number of alternative parallel universes that exist for no reason; a preexisting God who is somehow self-explanatory; or a self-creating, self-explaining, self-understanding universe-with observers, entailing backward causation and teleology. Perhaps we have reached a fundamental impasse dictated by the limitations of the human intellect. The whole paraphernalia of gods and laws, of space, time, and matter, of purpose and design, rationality and absurdity, meaning and mystery, may yet be swept away and replaced by revelations as yet undreamt of.

That quote -- especially the "limitations of the human intellect"-- just makes me want to read it more. I would have said it differently: "You have to doubt that the universe is really so simple that it can be successfully modeled in fire-monkey's brain -- but keep working on it!"

Bloggers Prospero's Books and Reality Conditions have written intelligently about this book.

Go directly to the source: Paul Davies' own site. Or read some of his writing found online such as Reality in the Melting Pot or this msnbc interview.

Finally, there is his wikipedia page and an introduction to the multiverse.

Update: I ordered the "Goldilocks" British version of the book late at night on the 22nd and it was delivered early the next day! It seems the Amazon(.co.jp) delivery site is pretty close to us – in Urayasu. It joins my stack of other unread books.