Earth Day: What BP and TEPCO Don’t Want You to Know

JACQUELINE MARCUS FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

(Photo: Louisiana GOHSEP)The Tragic Consequences: BP Five Years Later…

On my way home from the market, I happened to tune in to an interview on a program that airs on our NPR station called Making Contact. The topic of discussion was titledBP Five Years Later: Deepwater Horizon and the Cost of Oil…

Journalists, scientists and residents were interviewed about how BP’s Deep Horizon, (“Deep” is a reference to offshore deepwater drilling) that exploded into raging flames on April 20th 2010, the largest and most devastating oil catastrophe in history, created a crisis of Biblical proportions. Beneath the Gulf’s seafloor is one of the most dangerous places to drill. BP has done more to establish that fact than any other oil company.

The blowout literally transformed an ocean that was teeming with life into a toxic, dead zone. BP is not the only oil company to blame. The oil industry, with the help of their paid-off political officials, has committed egregious crimes of pollution, and irreparable damage with their oil pipes and spills to rich habitats, pelican and turtle sanctuaries, marshes, wetlands and coastal ecosystems since the 1930s. But BP’s blowout was by far the last deadly nail to the Gulf’s coffin.

Layers of oil, like a huge bathtub ring, have settled on the seafloor, the size of Rhode Island, with no signs of recovery. This thick blanket of oil has prevented regeneration of life that begins at the most basic level of the Gulf’s ecology, such as plankton—minute plants and animals that are the foundation of the ocean’s food chain. The plankton cannot survive as waters become hypoxic i.e. depleted of oxygen due to microbes digesting oil and methane gas. Once the foundation of the food chain is contaminated, nothing can survive.

(Please click the link below to read this article on Buzzflash-

http://www.truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/earth-day-what-bp-and-tepco-don-t-want-you-to-know

Breakthrough in energy harvesting could power life on Mars

One of the co-authors of Northumbria’s research, Dr Rodrigo Ledesma-Aguilar, said: “Carbon dioxide plays a similar role on Mars as water does on Earth. It is a widely available resource which undergoes cyclic phase changes under the natural Martian temperature variations.

“Perhaps future power stations on Mars will exploit such a resource to harvest energy as dry-ice blocks evaporate, or to channel the chemical energy extracted from other carbon-based sources, such as methane gas.Breakthrough in energy harvesting could power life on Mars

Martian colonists could use an innovative new technique to harvest energy from carbon dioxide thanks to research pioneered at Northumbria University, Newcastle.

The technique, which has been proven for the first time by researchers at Northumbria, has been published in the prestigious journal Nature Communications.
The research proposes a new kind of engine for producing energy based on the Leidenfrost effect – a phenomenon which happens when a liquid comes into near contact with a surface much hotter than its boiling point. This effect is commonly seen in the way water appears to skitter across the surface of a hot pan, but it also applies to solid carbon dioxide, commonly known as dry ice. Blocks of dry ice are able to levitate above hot surfaces protected by a barrier of evaporated gas vapour. Northumbria’s research proposes using the vapour created by this effect to power an engine. This is the first time the Leidenfrost effect has been adapted as a way of harvesting energy.
The technique has exciting implications for working in extreme and alien environments, such as outer space, where it could be used to make long-term exploration and colonisation sustainable by using naturally occurring solid carbon dioxide as a resource rather than a waste product. If this could be realised, then future missions to Mars, such as those in the news recently, may not need to be ‘one-way’ after all.
Dry ice may not be abundant on Earth, but increasing evidence from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) suggests it may be a naturally occurring resource on Mars as suggested by the seasonal appearance of gullies on the surface of the red planet. If utilised in a Leidenfrost-based engine dry-ice deposits could provide the means to create future power stations on the surface of Mars.

“One thing is certain; our future on other planets depends on our ability to adapt our knowledge to the constraints imposed by strange worlds, and to devise creative ways to exploit natural resources that do not naturally occur here on Earth.”
The team at Northumbria believe one of humanity’s biggest challenges this century will be finding new ways to harvest energy, especially in extreme environments. It was this challenge which led them to develop their proposed Leidenfrost Engine.
Dr Gary Wells, co-author of the paper, explains the unique properties of an engine based on this phenomenon.
He said: “The working principle of a Leidenfrost-based engine is quite distinct from steam-based heat engines; the high-pressure vapour layer creates freely rotating rotors whose energy is converted into power without the need of a bearing, thus conferring the new engine with low-friction properties.”
As well as potentially making long-term space exploration and colonisation more sustainable, the unique, low-friction nature of this engine could have other exciting applications, according to Executive Dean for Engineering and Environment, Professor Glen McHale.
Professor McHale, who also worked on the new research with Dr Wells and Dr Ledesma-Aguilar, said: “This is the starting point of an exciting avenue of research in smart materials engineering. In the future, Leidenfrost-based devices could find applications in wide ranging fields, spanning from frictionless transport to outer space exploration.”

Explore further: Doctoral student explores formation of martian gullies
More information: Gary G. Wells, Rodrigo Ledesma-Aguilar, Glen McHale & Khellil Sefiane, “A sublimation heat engine,” Nature Communications 6,Article number:6390 DOI: 10.1038/ncomms7390
Journal reference: Nature Communications
Provided by Northumbria University

http://phys.org/news/2015-03-breakthrough-energy-harvesting-power-life.html#ajTabs

10 breakthrough

9 breakthrough

Greenland Reels: Climate Disrupting Feedbacks Have Begun

• Greenland Reels: Climate Disrupting Feedbacks Have Begun

Thursday, 05 March 2015 11:10By Bruce Melton, Truthout

The author waves from a point about a mile onto the ice sheet near what is called Point 660, about 25 miles from Kangerlussuaq, on the west coast of Greenland, 100 miles north of the Arctic Circle. Dust accumulates on the ice from as far away as Siberia. As the ice melts, most of the dust is left behind to absorb more sunlight and melt more ice in a climate change feedback that has already begun. (Photo: Bruce Melton)

Greenland is warmer than it has been in more than 100,000 years and climate disrupting feedback loops have begun. Since 2000, ice loss has increased over 600 percent, and liquid water now exists inside the ice sheet year-round, no longer refreezing during winter.

Melt and ice loss dynamics from Greenland are far more complicated than we understood just a few years ago. New discoveries have been made that add large uncertainties as to exactly how fast ice melt and iceberg discharge will increase in the future. Over the last decade, continued research into the rate of ice loss in Greenland has downplayed any rapid acceleration of current melt rates. New discoveries could be changing our understanding of this last decade’s work.

Greenland: Warmer Than in 100,000 Years

About 5,000 years ago, Greenland reached its warmest period in over 100,000 years. Since this time, Greenland had been cooling and the ice sheet was stable or growing. Beginning 30 to 40 years ago, however, a rapid reversal of cooling and ice sheet growth began.

The last 18 years have seen more melt than average across the ice sheet every year with an increasing trend that peaked in 2012 when the entire ice sheet surface temperature went above freezing for four days. (1)The melt line, or the elevation on the 11,000-foot-high ice sheet where the temperature does not rise above freezing in any given year, has steadily been increasing since the 1970s. (2) All of this melt is exposing areas beneath the ice sheet that have not been exposed in a very long time.

Across Baffin Bay to the west of Greenland is Baffin Island. This is the largest of the islands in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, and ranked the fifth largest in the world; it is almost as big as Texas (Greenland is the largest). Baffin Island has its own ice cap as well as satellite ice caps to the main body of ice. It is these satellite ice caps that attracted the attention of researchers.

Collecting samples, Baffin Island, Professor Gifford H. Miller, University of Colorado, Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR)

Led by the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado, Boulder, these researchers found dead plants and mosses still rooted in the ground immediately adjacent to the melting ice. The plants were dated with carbon-14 dating techniques to a time period 44,000 years ago that was in the depths of the last 100,000-year-long ice age. (3) At that time, the ice was growing and temperatures in the Arctic were 25 to 35 degrees Fahrenheit colder than the warmest time of our current interglacial era – the time between ice ages. The average temperature across the globe was 9 to 14 degrees colder than today. (4)

To find temperatures similar to today’s, we would have to go back nearly 120,000 years ago to the previous warmup between glacial periods, so it is virtually certain from these findings that the plants that these researchers found have not seen daylight in over 100,000 years. One of the amazing things this work reports is that some of the mosses at the 145 sites surveyed began to regrow once the ice melted away. (5)

Since the global thermal maximum temperature that occurred after the end of the last ice age about 5,000 years ago, Baffin Island cooled nearly 5 degrees Fahrenheit, but since the 1960s, this area has warmed nearly 7 degrees Fahrenheit, and the snow line has increased in altitude over 2,700 feet (half a mile). (6) This research definitively puts to rest the talking point that Greenland was warmer than today at any time in the past 100,000 years. The warming has also taken place entirely in the last 50 years, and during this entire 5,000-year-long period the natural cycles have been cooling, not warming.

The Dust Feedback

As the ice sheet melts around its edges, dust captured in eons of snow becomes exposed. Most of this dust does not get washed away by melt, (please click the link below to read this article on Truthout- http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/29462-greenland-reels-climate-disrupting-feedbacks-have-begun)

Mysterious Martian ‘plumes’ baffle scientists – CSMonitor.com

Mysterious Martian ‘plumes’ baffle scientists

Spotted by amateur astronomers, the huge plumes erupting from the surface of Mars have left scientists bewildered.

By Calla Cofield, SPACE.com / February 17, 2015

Scientists are puzzled by a mysterious plume that erupted off the surface of Mars in 2012. On the right, the location of the plume is identified in the yellow circle. On the left, close-up views of the changing plume morphology in images taken by W. Jaeschke and D. Parker on March 21, 2012. The background is a region on Mars known as Terra Cimmeria, where the plume formed. (Image source NOAA).

Grupo Ciencias Planetarias (GCP) – UPV/EHU

A mystery is brewing onMars: Amateur astronomers spotted enormous plumes erupting off the Red Planet’s surface, leaving scientists puzzled.

More than 155 miles (250 kilometers) high and hundreds of miles across, the baffling plumes were spotted by amateur astronomers in the spring of 2012. The plumes reflect sunlight, which means they could be made of water ice, carbon dioxide ice or dust. But clouds made of those materials would be hard to explain with current models of the Martian atmosphere, scientists say.

Images of Mars from the last 20 years reveal that shorter plumes, reaching heights of about 62 miles (100 km), occasionally flare up from the planet’s surface. An image by the Hubble Space Telescope from 1997 revealed another abnormally high plume, similar to the one seen in 2012, according to a statement from theEuropean Space Agency (ESA). [7 Biggest Mysteries On Mars]

Scientists at the Universidad del Pais Vasco in Spainstudied the images of the plumes and confirmed that they reach heights of more than 155 miles (250 km) above the surface, and cover an area of up to 310 by 620 miles (500 by 1,000 km).

“At about 250 km, the division between the atmosphere and outer space is very thin, so the reported plumes are extremely unexpected,” says Agustín Sánchez-Lavega of the Universidad del País Vasco, lead author of the new research.

The features developed in less than 10 hours and remained visible for about 10 days, but changed their structure from day to day, ESA officials wrote in a statement. None of the spacecraft orbiting Mars were in a position to see the plumes, due to their locations around the planet and light conditions at the time.

Analysis of the images from 2012 and of past images of plumes erupting from the surface of Mars haven’t helped the researchers determine what caused the plumes or what they are made of.

(Please click the link below to read full article on Christian Science Monitor-

http://m.csmonitor.com/Science/2015/0217/Mysterious-Martian-plumes-baffle-scientists?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Science_final&utm_campaign=04_Newsletter%3AScience_Sailthru&cmpid=ema%3Anws%3AScience%2520Weekly%2520%2802%2F19%2F2015%29 )

MORE Disclosure News USA-NASA Cuts Live ISS Video Feed As UFO Appears (Real Footage) | Collective-Evolution

This article contains multiple videos so I am posting the intro only. Please click the link below to see the full article with all videos. Blessings,
ohnwentsya

NASA Cuts Live ISS Video Feed As UFO Appears (Real Footage)
January 23, 2015 by Arjun NASA was recently accused of cutting their live feed from the International Space Station (ISS) just as an Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) was spotted hovering in sight.
The event took place on January 15th and is causing quite a stir. As you can see, it’s a small grey object slowly rising and then disappearing as NASA cut the feed. I am not saying this is an extraterrestrial space craft, but it’s unidentified.

That being said, I have provided some officially documented UFO footage from NASA in a video below this one, as well as more, vital information regarding the UFO phenomenon.

The video seems to be going viral, and sparking much controversy as many mainstream media outlets are claiming that the accusers are ‘conspiracy theorists.’ Anytime the subject of UFOs is placed within the realm of conspiracy theory, it does harm to a very serious issue that has had the attention of governments, military/intelligence agencies and many others for a very long time -not to mention several NASA astronauts.

http://www.collective-evolution.com/2015/01/23/nasa-cuts-live-iss-video-feed-as-ufo-appears-real-footage/

**Disclosure News USA** Air Force puts declassified UFO reports online. Is the truth out there? – CSMonitor.com

UFO buffs and everyone waiting/watching the “Disclosure” process; note the tone change in this article compared to many previous U.S. government statements and U.S. news reports on this topic. One sentence frankly admits the sightings were of technology beyond our level of knowledge.

I have long been skeptical of any possibility of official “Disclosure”, but I see in this and other articles in recent years a slow incremental movement away from the constant denial and cover-up of anything that disagrees with the official stance.

I don’t know what the full facts are. I’m definitely not a UFO hobbyist or researcher and I don’t have any personal theory or”axe to grind”. I have just heard from so many friends who are passionate about this issue (with so much evidence to present) that I can no longer justify blind faith in those who assure us that everything in the world is both knowable and known.

Blessings,
ohnwentsya

SCIENCE

Air Force puts declassified UFO reports online. Is the truth out there?

The Air Force has released a stockpile of documents pertaining to decades of military investigations on objects that were spotted over American skies throughout the years.

By Alexander LaCasse, Staff Writer JANUARY 20, 2015

• FBI/AP
  View Caption

Thanks to the Air Force, more than 130,000 documents describing military investigations of UFO activity over American airspace are now online.

“Project Blue Book” and “Project Grudge” were the official names of the investigations military officials headquartered at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio conducted between 1947 and 1969. The projects were discontinued after a joint review determined that no intelligence was being produced from the studies. The report specifically stated that no UFO “reported, investigated and evaluated,” ever posed, “any indication of threat to our national security,” CNN notes. The investigations suggest that the sightings “represent technological developments or principles beyond the range of present-day scientific knowledge,” the network also reported.

The disclosure comes after years of federal Freedom of Information Act requests filed by UFO researcher John Greenewald. The FBI will be making the files available on their website containing case files in PDF form from some of the FBI’s most notorious cases, from Bonnie and Clyde to Jimmy Hoffa. According to the same CNN report the case file, the initial field report following an alleged UFO crash at Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947 has garnered over two million page views so far.

Recommended: Are you a space whiz? Take our quiz!

Among some of the UFO cases the Project Blue Book Collection touches on are the “Exeter Incident,” “the Kenneth Arnold sighting,” from 1947 and “the Mantell crash,” from 1948.

Here are some of the most high-profile UFO mysteries:

Roswell,1947

During the first week of July in 1947, something is said to have crashed in the New Mexico desert, Northeast of the town of Roswell. Upon learning of the crash site Maj. Jesse Marcel, an intelligence officer for the 509th Bomb Group, who was stationed at Roswell Army Air Field, went to inspect the area. He allegedly found an aluminum foil-thin metal that was indestructible in the debris field, which he claimed composed the outer body of the object. Marcel also claimed that pieces of metal at the site had a strange purple writing on them.

At 11am on July 8, 1947 a public information officer for the base put out a press release stating that wreckage of crashed disk had been recovered. By the end of the day higher-ups in the Air Force made the base commanders release a second press release that asserted the material in the debris field came from a downed weather balloon.

The Exeter Incident, 1965

A man named Norman Muscarello was hitchhiking to his Exeter, N.H. home on a September night when out of no-where, a beam of light that was described as ninety feet in diameter began floating and wobbling towards him. Another panic-stricken woman who was driving from Exeter to Epping, called the police after a similar object had followed her for some 12 miles. The officer on duty did not think much of the woman’s call but after Muscarello was picked up by a couple and driven to the police station, the officer wanted to know more.

The officer had Muscarello take him to the spot where he saw the light. Muscarello had originally run to the nearest house to get help and went back to the same residence with the officer. After the owner’s horses and dogs began to stir, the beam of light rose above the trees. The police officer had been in the military and failed to recognize what kind of aircraft this was.

After the experience the police officer wrote to the Air Force at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, but investigators said they could not determine what caused the beam of light.

Kecksburg, Penn, 1965

In a small town 40 miles North of Pittsburgh, residents saw a fiery object crash into the town’s woods. Not too long after the object was reported, police and military personnel were on the scene and barricaded off the woods and turned away anyone who tried to get close. Hours later a military flat-bed truck with a large object covered by a tarp was seen leaving the woods, and the authorities never elaborated on what the object was.

A Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed against NASA to turn over its Kecksburg investigations ended in 2009, according to SPACE.com. As a result, the government did not force NASA to hand over any documents that would explain what became of the object removed from the Pennsylvania woods.

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Fossils on Mars? Geologist unearths intriguing hypothesis. – CSMonitor.com

Fossils on Mars? Geologist unearths intriguing hypothesis.

Martian sedimentary structures look surprisingly similar to terrestrial structures formed by microbes. Coincidence?

By Samantha Laine, Staff Writer / January 7, 2015

This photo released by NASA shows a self-portrait taken by the NASA rover Curiosity in Gale Crater on Mars.

NASA FileEvidence of water on Mars:Check. Organic chemistry in rock formations: Check. Methane in the atmosphere:Check. And now, fossils? Too soon to tell.

The journal Astrobiologyrecently published a paper that examines Martian rock structures photographed by NASA’sMars rover Curiosity that look strikingly like structures on Earth that are known to have been created by microbes. The paper’s author, Old Dominion University geomicrobiologist Nora Noffke, has studied microbially induced sedimentary structures, or MISS, on Earth for 20 years, even finding evidence of 3.48 billion year old MISS in the Western Australia’s Dresser Formation. The outcrop on Mars is about 3.7 billion years old.

Is this proof of life on ancient Mars? No. But Noffke’s research takes the search to a new step, especially in light of the recent detection of methane and other organic molecules on Mars. Chris McKay, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center and an associate editor of the journal Astrobiology, offers his thoughts on why this development is significant.

Are you a space whiz? Take our quiz!

“I’ve seen many papers that say ‘Look, here’s a pile of dirt on Earth,’” writes Dr. McKay. “‘And because they look the same, the same mechanism must have made each pile on the two planets.”

He continues: “That’s an easy argument to make, and it’s typically not very convincing. However, Noffke’s paper is the most carefully done analysis of the sort that I’ve seen, which is why it’s the first of its kind published in Astrobiology.”

Mars and Earth shared similar early histories, with Mars probably being a much warmer and wetter planetbillions of years ago than it is today. Gillespie Lake, the part of a dry lakebed on Mars where the structures were found, endured seasonal flooding, a hypothetically perfect situation for microbes to thrive.

On Earth, shallow bodies of water contain colonies of microbes that trap and rearrange sediments into identifiable structures. These structures can be found across the Earth in a variety of formations and types, such as pockets, domes, erosional remnants, roll-ups, chips, pits, and cracks.

“All I can say is, here’s my hypothesis and here’s all the evidence that I have,” Noffke said in Astrobiology Magazine, “although I do think that this evidence is a lot.”Noffke discusses next steps to provide proof for her hypothesis, but technology has not yet reached this stage. One important step includes bringing samples to Earth for in depth analyses, an unfeasible task. Or, better technology could be developed to enable deeper, more precise analyses of sedimentary samples on Mars.

“At this point, all I’d like to do is point out these similarities,” Noffke adds. “Further evidence must be provided to verify this hypothesis.”

http://m.csmonitor.com/Science/2015/0107/Fossils-on-Mars-Geologist-unearths-intriguing-hypothesis?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Daily&utm_campaign=20150108_Newsletter%3ADaily_Sailthru&cmpid=ema%3Anws%3ADaily%2520Newsletter%2520%2801-08-2015%29

New Year’s surprise: a comet you can see with the naked eye – CSMonitor.com

New Year’s surprise: a comet you can see with the naked eye

Skywatchers are getting an unexpected treat: Comet Lovejoy, which was discovered in August, has brightened, making it visible without a telescope. By Jan. 7, the comet, which is rising in the northern sky, will be appearing to the right of the bottom half of Orion’s bow.

By Pete Spotts, Staff writer / December 30, 2014

Comet Lovejoy, C/2014 Q2, is framed like a cosmic Christmas tree with starry decorations in this colorful telescopic portrait, snapped on December 16th. Its lovely coma is tinted green by diatomic C2 gas fluorescing in sunlight. Discovered in August of this year, this Comet Lovejoy (not to be confused with past Comet Lovejoys) is currently sweeping north through the constellation Columba, heading for Lepus south of Orion and bright enough to offer good binocular views. Not its first time through the inner Solar System, this Comet Lovejoy will pass closest to planet Earth on January 7 and then closest to the sun on January 30. A long period comet, this Comet Lovejoy should return again … in about 8,000 years.

Damian Peach/SEN/NASA

(Please click the link below to read the rest of this article on Christian Science Monitor’s site-

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