Creation "Science" 2: Frozen Mammoths

RHYMEMAIDEN1 pwns Kent Hovind.

Neil deGrasse Tyson- Is it worth it? (Today's with Matt Lauer)

A clip that should be on Youtube :P
Matt asks Neil if it is worth spending $3bn on the Cassini probe. Neil responds by pointing out that the money spent on lip balm exceeds the money spent on the mission.

WISE Surveys The Skies

Calacademy: WISE Surveys the Skies. NASA's WISE mission has just completed its first survey of the entire sky.

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WISE is a NASA-funded Explorer mission that will provide a vast storehouse of knowledge about the solar system, the Milky Way, and the Universe. Among the objects WISE will study are asteroids, the coolest and dimmest stars, and the most luminous galaxies.

WISE is an unmanned satellite carrying an infrared-sensitive telescope that will image the entire sky. Since objects around room temperature emit infrared radiation, the WISE telescope and detectors are kept very cold (below -430° F /15 Kelvins, which is only 15° Centigrade above absolute zero) by a cryostat -- like an ice chest but filled with solid hydrogen instead of ice.

Solar panels will provide WISE with the electricity it needs to operate, and will always point toward the Sun. Orbiting several hundred miles above the dividing line between night and day on Earth, the telescope will look out at right angles to the Sun and will always point away from Earth. As WISE orbits from the North pole to the equator to the South pole and then back up to the North pole, the telescope will sweep out a circle in the sky. As the Earth moves around the Sun, this circle will move around the sky, and after six months WISE will have observed the whole sky.

As WISE sweeps along the circle a small mirror scans in the opposite direction, capturing an image of the sky onto an infrared sensitive digital camera which will take a picture every 11 seconds. Each picture will cover an area of the sky 3 times larger than the full Moon. After 6 months WISE will have taken nearly 1,500,000 pictures covering the entire sky.

Each picture will have one megapixel at each of four different wavelengths that range from 5 to 35 times longer than the longest waves the human eye can see. Data taken by WISE will be downloaded by radio transmission 4 times per day to computers on the ground which will combine the many images taken by WISE into an atlas covering the entire celestial sphere and a list of all the detected objects.

http://wise.ssl.berkeley.edu/mission....

Venus: Death of a Planet

From the fires of a sun's birth... twin planets emerged. Venus... and Earth. Two roads diverged in our young solar system. Nature draped one world in the greens and blues of life.

While enveloping the other in acid clouds... high heat... and volcanic flows. Why did Venus take such a disastrous turn?

For as long as we have gazed upon the stars, they have offered few signs... that somewhere out there... are worlds as rich and diverse as our own.

Recently, though, astronomers have found ways to see into the bright lights of nearby stars.

They've been discovering planets at a rapid clip... using observatories like NASA's Kepler space telescope... A French observatory known as Corot ... .And an array of ground-based instruments. The count is approaching 500... and rising.

These alien worlds run the gamut... from great gas giants many times the size of our Jupiter... to rocky, charred remnants that burned when their parent star exploded.

Some have wild elliptical orbits... swinging far out into space... then diving into scorching stellar winds. Still others orbit so close to their parent stars that their surfaces are likely bathed in molten rock.

Amid these hostile realms, a few bear tantalizing hints of water or ice... ingredients needed to nurture life as we know it.

The race to find other Earths has raised anew the ancient question... whether, out in the folds of our galaxy, planets like our own are abundant... and life commonplace?

Or whether Earth is a rare Garden of Eden in a barren universe?

With so little direct evidence of these other worlds to go on, we have only the stories of planets within our own solar system to gauge the chances of finding another Earth.




Consider, for example, a world that has long had the look and feel of a life-bearing planet.

Except for the moon, there's no brighter light in our night skies than the planet Venus... known as both the morning and the evening star.

The ancient Romans named it for their goddess of beauty and love. In time, the master painters transformed this classical symbol into an erotic figure.

It was a scientist, Galileo Galilei, who demystified planet Venus... charting its phases as it moved around the sun, drawing it into the ranks of the other planets.

With a similar size and weight, Venus became known as Earth's sister planet. But how Earth-like is it?

The Russian scientist Mikkhail Lomonosov caught a tantalizing hint in 1761. As Venus passed in front of the Sun, he witnessed a hair thin luminescence on its edge.

Venus, he found, has an atmosphere. Later observations revealed a thick layer of clouds. Astronomers imagined they were made of water vapor, like those on Earth. Did they obscure stormy, wet conditions below?

And did anyone, or anything, live there? The answer came aboard an unlikely messenger.... an asteroid that crashed into Earth.

That is... according to the classic sci-fi adventure, The First Spaceship on Venus. A mysterious computer disk is found among the rubble.

With anticipation rising on Earth, an international crew sets off to find out who sent it... and why. Approaching Venus, the astronauts translate the contents of the disk. The news is not good.

In a desperate attempt to prevent an interplanetary war... and save their home planet... the crew embarks on a dangerous mission.

They descend to the planet's dark surface to confront the adversaries.

11. Climate Change - An imminent ice age debunked

In 2005 the media told us we were on the brink of another ice age. What happened?

SOURCES:
(in chronological order)

Movie clip at the beginning from "The Day After Tomorrow"

Broeker's hypothesis that melting ice will interrupt thermohaline circulation:
"Thermohaline Circulation, the Achilles Heel of Our Climate System; Will Man-Made CO2 Upset the Current Balance?" -- Wallace S. Broeker, Science (Nov 28 1997)

Linkage of glaciation to shut down of AMOC:
"A model for Northern Hemisphere continental ice sheet variation"
-- R. G. Johnson and B. T. McClure, Quaternary Research (Sep 1976)

See also "Was the Younger Dryas Triggered by a Flood?"
Wallace S. Broecker, Science (May 26, 2006)

"Slowing of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation at 25° N"
-- Harry L. Bryden et al, Nature (Dec 1, 2005)

NEWSPAPER HEADLINES SHOWN:

"Britain faces Big Freeze as Gulf Stream Loses Strength"
-- The Times (Dec 1, 2005)

"New Gulf Stream fears bring UK Ice Age warning"
-- The Evening Standard (Sep 6, 2001)

"Scientists probing a dying current bring worst climate fears to the surface."
-- The Australian, (Dec 5, 2005)

"Fears of Big Freeze as Scientists Detect Slower Gulf Stream"
-- The Independent (Dec 1, 2005)

RealClimate quote "while continued monitoring of this key climatic area is clearly warranted, the imminent chilling of the (sic) Europe is a ways off yet" at
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/...

Richard Wood saying Britain and Scandinavia should cool if Gulf Stream slowdown was real:
"Failing ocean current raises fears of mini ice age"
-- New Scientist, (Nov 30, 2005)
http://www.newscientist.com/article/d...

Gavin Schmidt saying surface temps should have dipped:
"Scientists Say Slower Atlantic Currents Could Mean a Colder Europe"
-- New York Times (Dec 1, 2005)

Robert Dickson saying much more data was needed to determine whether a slowdown was underway:
Ibid.

Harry Bryden saying not sure if change was temporary or signals a long-term trend:
"Failing ocean current raises fears of mini ice age"
-- New Scientist, (Nov 30, 2005)
http://www.newscientist.com/article/d...

Bryden says a variable signal, but too early to detect any trends:
"No new ice age for western Europe."
-- New Scientist, (Nov 7, 2006)
http://www.newscientist.com/article/m...

Wunch saying it's a complicated story reduced to a fairytale:
Ibid.

"Sea change: why global warming could leave Britain feeling the cold"
-- The Guardian (Oct 27, 2006)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment...

"Can in situ floats and satellite altimeters detect long-term changes in Atlantic Ocean overturning?"
-- Josh K. Willis, GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS (Mar 25, 2010)

"New climate change myth: Gulf Stream is NOT slowing down"
-- Daily Mail (Mar 30, 2010)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetec...

"IS BRITAIN ON THE BRINK OF A NEW ICE AGE?"
-- Daily Mail (Dec 2, 2005)
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/IS+BRIT...

"Global warming 'will bring cooler climate for UK'"
-- Daily Telegraph (Dec 1, 2005)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknew...

"Gulf Stream is not slowing down, scientists claim."
-- Daily Telegraph (Mar 30, 2010)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/sc...

1970s ice age myth busted at "Climate Change -- Anatomy of a Myth" on Potholer54 YouTube channel

Why Common Design Common Designer = FAIL

Intelligent Design advocates claim that when we see similarities between organisms, common designs, they must be evidence of a common designer. Here I show why this catchy little phrase fails miserably.

Intelligent Design is built on two pillars: Irreducible Complexity, and Design. I have previously shown that evolution predicts the IC systems will evolve. Here I disprove the concept of design.

Is life designed? Actually, yes. But the designer is not an intelligent supernatural being, life is sculpted by the environment through natural selection. Mother Nature and Father Time are the designers of life.

To download this video copyright free please go to:
http://www.mediafire.com/?yjznkx5yzel

Please Note: there are some prokaryotes with what resemble simple organelles, while some eukaryotes do have genomes almost completely devoid of introns, but those are the overwhelming minority.

And remember to always, Think about it.

Exoplanet Exploration: PlanetQuest Historic Timeline

Exoplanet Exploration: NASA PlanetQuest Historic Timeline

The NASA interactive multimedia timeline traces the search for extrasolar planets, from ancient philosophical speculation to modern discoveries.

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Exoplanet Exploration: Planet Quest Key Milestones

• 450 B.C.: Greeks ponder the existence of other worlds
• 1750: Wright describes the Milky Way as a massive disk of stars
• 1992: Woszczan and Frail discover rocky planets
• 1995: Mayor and Queloz find a planet at 51 Pegasi
• 1999: First transiting exoplanet observed
• 2005: Spitzer observed direct light from an exoplanet
• 2008: First visible-light exoplanet images released

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Are we alone? Searching for Earthlike Worlds

For centuries, human beings have pondered this question. Medieval scholars speculated that other worlds must exist and that some would harbor other forms of life. In our time, advances in science and technology have brought us to the threshold of finding an answer to this timeless question.

The recent discovery of numerous planets around stars other than the sun confirms that our solar system is not unique. Indeed, these "exoplanets" appear to be common in our galactic neighborhood.

The exoplanets we have discovered so far are giants, like Jupiter and Saturn. They are unlikely to support life as we know it. But some of these planetary systems might also contain smaller, terrestrial planets like Mars and Earth.

Over the next 15 years, NASA is embarking on a bold series of missions to find and characterize new worlds. These will be the most sensitive instruments ever built, capable of reaching beyond the bounds of our own solar system.

The Keck Interferometer combines the light of the world's largest optical telescopes, extending our vision to new distances. Using a technique known as interferometry, the Keck will study dust clouds around stars where Earthlike planets may be forming.

NASA's Kepler Mission, scheduled to launch in 2009, will survey our region of the Milky Way galaxy to detect and characterize hundreds of Earth-size and smaller planets. It will tell us whether planets like Earth are common or rare in our galaxy.

SIM PlanetQuest, to follow Kepler, will measure the distances and positions of stars with unprecedented accuracy. SIM's precision will allow us to locate planets in the habitable zones around nearby stars.

Finally, the Terrestrial Planet Finder will build upon the legacy of all that have gone before it. With an imaging power 100 times greater than the Hubble Space Telescope, the Terrestrial Planet Finder observatories will provide the first photographs of nearby planetary systems.

We will analyze the atmospheres of these distant worlds, looking for carbon dioxide, water and ozone. The substantial presence of all three gasses would suggest that life is present. Such a discovery would at last provide convincing evidence that we are not alone. We will have found another Earth.

Follow the history of planet hunting from science fiction to science fact with NASA's PlanetQuest Historic Timeline at http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/timel...

The interactive PlanetQuest web feature, developed by JPL, conveys the story of exoplanet exploration through a rich tapestry of words and images spanning thousands of years, beginning with the musings of ancient philosophers and continuing through the current era of space-based observations by NASA's Spitzer and Kepler missions. The timeline highlights milestones in culture, technology and science, and includes a planet counter that tracks the pace of exoplanet discoveries over time.

• More information about exoplanets and NASA's planet-finding program: http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov
• 3D New Worlds Atlas - A visual guide to exoplanets: http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/atlas...

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Related videos:

NASA/Spitzer Hidden Universe (Episode 4): Night And Day On An Alien World
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvOq2b...

NASA/Spitzer Hidden Universe (Episode 16): The X-Planets
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WXbVi...

Hubblecast 12: An Extrasolar Planet's Atmosphere
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDmvr4...

Hubblecast 14: Organic Molecules On Extrasolar Planets
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lxs9Pm...

ESOcast 11: Exoplanets Galore - 32 New Extrasolar Planets Found
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcJuhE...

ESOcast 18: Exoplanet Caught On The Move
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDTXno...

The Webb Space Telescope (JWST): Finding Earth-like Planets
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8eYB_...

Hubble's Universe Unfiltered (Episode 7): Eye Spy A Planet - Extrasolar Planets
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ou6kk...
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