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POPSGobal warming on Mars There is no doubt that the earth is experiencing warming on a global scale. What is now left uncertain is the cause. It has almost become heresy to challenge or express doubts on our present understanding of climate change. Mars, as well as the moons of Saturn have all shown signs of warming. The early 1930's were also warmer than normal and temperatures continued to drop into the 70's. One would have expected continued warming as industrialization had continued to add co2 to the atmosphere. I'm not saying that man is not responsible for some of the effects we've been experiencing, but there our legitimate doubts...And why don't we hear more about decreasing the pollution of our air and water supplies?
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POPSSuper-Earths Orbit Neighboring Stars
An international team of researchers detected the new planetary systems by combining information collected during years of observations at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii and the Anglo-Australian Telescope in Australia. The astronomers combed the data looking for minute variations in the starlight caused by gravitational tugs of orbiting planets. "This was not the kind of 'ah-ha' moment where you look into the telescope and see the planet sitting there," Laughlin said. "The signal builds up over time." Refinements in planet-hunting techniques should make detection of Earth-sized planets possible in about a year, he added. "The practical limits for finding terrestrial planets around nearby stars is a lot more optimistic than what was thought to be the case a few years ago," Laughlin said. The newly discovered planets are too close to their parent stars for liquid water to exist on their surfaces, a condition that is believed to be necessary for life. Still, scientists say
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POPSTsunamis On the Sun If you click on the video, you can pull up a larger view. The video is just staggering. I try to imagine something like this happening on Earth, and I just can't do it.
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POPSDramatic Video of Recent Utah Asteroid Early Nov. 18th, eyewitnesses reported an explosion in the atmosphere above Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and Idaho in the western United States. Some said the fireball "turned night into day".
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POPS"The World Will Not End on Dec. 21, 2012" Morrison said he tries to reassure people that their fears are groundless, but has received so many inquiries that he has posted a list of 10 questions and answers on the website of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific (www.astrosociety.org). Titled "Doomsday 2012, the Planet Nibiru and Cosmophobia," the article breaks down the sources of the hysteria and assures people that the ancients didn't actually know more about the cosmos than we do. "The world will not come to an end on Dec. 21, 2012," E.C. Krupp, director of Los Angeles' Griffith Observatory, declared in a statement released Thursday by the observatory and Sky & Telescope magazine. Krupp debunks the 2012 doomsday idea in the cover story of the magazine's November issue. Morrison said he attributes the excitement to the conflation of several items into one mega-myth. One is the persistent Internet rumor that a planet called Nibiru or Planet X is going to crash into the Earth. . .
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POPSOopsy! A Prime Example! Hopefully, I'll remember this next time I'm tempted to send something out without double checking it. Look BEFORE you leap, Look before you leap, look before you......
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POPSColdest, Driest, Calmest Place on Earth Found All these elements combine to make the perfect recipe for an astronomical observation post: "The astronomical images taken at Ridge A should be at least three times sharper than at the best sites currently used by astronomers," Saunders said. "Because the sky there is so much darker and drier, it means that a modestly-sized telescope there would be as powerful as the largest telescopes anywhere else on earth."
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POPSNaked eye astronomy Wherever you are in the world, there will always be stars in the night sky above. And spotting these heavenly bodies - be it a solitary star amid the light pollution or great drifts dotted across the inky darkness - can give a certain thrill. It is one of the few things where we can go out into our own gardens and do it ourselves Marek Kukula, Royal Observatory And stars are not the only attraction - there are planets, comets and galaxies too. Most have been in the skies above for millions and millions of years, which is part of the draw for stargazers, amateur and aficionado alike.
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POPSScientists track down source of Earth's hum more: Previous studies suggested that waves from both shallow continental shelves and the deep ocean contribute to the Earth’s hum, but new data indicates otherwise. Based on measurements from a seismic observatory called the USArray EarthScope, most of the hum appears to originate from the Pacific coast of North America, with a smaller contribution from the west coast of Europe. Waves from the deep ocean don’t seem to make much hum at all. The data for this study, published Thursday in Geophysical Research Letters, was gathered from November 2006 to June 2007, so humming patterns might be different during the summer months.