Impending solar storms in 2012 have been touted to be one of the probable reasons for world ending in 2012. I presume that some debt burdened guy wanted to despair out his wishes by floating these doomsday predictions.
Reality check: Solar storms 2012
The worst solar storms of the decade since 2003 have been unleashed on earth in January 22nd and 27th respectively in 2012. One website which claims earth may not see through these storms also claims millions of hits every hour! But reality check states that even the artificial satellites which came directly in the solar scorch or CME (the scientific word) were not affected by the solar storms. On the other hand, beautiful aurorae in the form of greenish lights are visible all over Northern hemisphere. The website may have to close down after 2012! Anyway, I have an interesting video!
A nearby planetary nebula shines like a huge golden eye in a new photo snapped by a telescope in Chile.
The image shows theHelix Nebula, which lies about 700 light-years from Earth in the constellation Aquarius (The Water Bearer). The picture was taken in infrared light by the European Southern Observatory's Vista telescope, one of the instruments at ESO's Paranal Observatory.
Helix is a planetary nebula, a strange object that forms when a star like our sun exhausts its hydrogen fuel. The star's outer layers expand and cool, creating a huge envelope of dust and gas. Radiation flowing from the dying star ionizes this envelope, causing it to glow.
Despite their name, planetary nebulas have nothing to do with planets. Rather, the term refers to their superficial resemblance to giant planets, when observed through early telescopes. [Photos: Nebulas in Deep Space]
The dying star at the heart of the Helix Nebula is evolving to become a white dwarf, a shrunken, super-dense object that can pack a sun's worth of material into a sphere the size of Earth. The star is visible as a tiny blue dot at the center of the picture, researchers said.
The Helix Nebula is a complex object composed of dust, ionized material and molecular gas, arrayed in an intricate, flower-like pattern.
The main ring of the Helix is about 2 light-years across, roughly equivalent to half the distance between our sun and its closest star. However, wispy material from the nebula spreads out at least 4 light-years into space from the central star, researchers said. These thin clouds of molecular gas are difficult to see in visible light, but Vista's infrared detectors can pick them out, and they show up in the new image as a dark red haze.
Vista's keen eye also reveals fine structure in the planetary nebula's rings, showing how cooler molecular gas is organized. The material clumps into filaments that radiate out from the center.
While they may look tiny, these strands of molecular hydrogen -- known as cometary knots -- are each about the size of our solar system. The molecules that compose them can survive the powerful radiation emanating from the dying star precisely because they clump into these knots, which in turn are shielded by dust and molecular gas.
It is currently unclear how the cometary knots may have formed, researchers said.
The new Vista image also shows a wide array of stars and galaxies in the background, farther away than the Helix Nebula.
An artist’s conception of the Milky Way, at greatly exaggerated scale, illustrates the findings of a new survey that finds evidence for an average of more than one planet per star in the galaxy.
When you turn an eye to the evening sky, there’s a good chance that many of the stars above have at least one planet.
Using six years of data from planet-finding surveys, an international team of researchers concludes that, on average, every star in the Milky Way is accompanied by 1.6 planets. That’s at least 100 billion planets, the scientists report January 12 in Nature. Just like our sportstars?
The figure might seem enormous, but it doesn’t shock planet hunters. “I’m not surprised by this result,” says astrophysicist Wesley Traub of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., who was not involved in the study. “This sounds reasonable. This sounds good.”
To make their estimate, the scientists used data that had been gathered from 2002 to 2007 by surveys looking for the temporary brightening in a distant star’s light caused by the gravity of a body passing in front of it. If that passing body is a star with planets, the system causes a predictable boost in the distant star’s light, revealing the presence of the closer planet.
Unlike other types of planet searches, this technique, called gravitational microlensing, works well for stars both near to Earth and far away. “If we want go out of our little box and see into the infinite universe, or in the galactic bulge, or far outside the galaxy — are there planets even there? — then microlensing is the way,” says Kailash Sahu, an astronomer and study coauthor from the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. And microlensing can more easily detect small planets in orbits far from their stars — though the new study considered only planets circling from half the distance of Earth to the sun out to the equivalent of Saturn’s orbit.
Both the eclipse method used by NASA’s Kepler team and radial velocity searches that measure stellar wobbles are more sensitive to planets tucked in close to their hosts. And those methods more easily find larger planets. Microlensing is the best way to estimate planet frequencies for a range of masses, from planets 10 times the mass of Jupiter to those more like Earth, says astronomer and study coauthor Arnaud Cassan of the Astrophysical Institute of Paris.
Some scientists note that the team based its estimate on a small number of planet detections, but say the small sample size was accurately accounted for. “Non-detections are just as important as detections to constrain the planet frequency,” Cassan says.
Along with identifying the galactic abundance of planets, Cassan and his colleagues also predicted the distribution of planets by mass. The team found that smaller planets are much more common than larger ones, a conclusion that matches the data pouring in from other planet searches.
“Low-mass planets are common as dirt,” says Scott Gaudi, an astronomer at Ohio State University in Columbus who is not a part of the study team. “That doesn’t mean that there aren’t stars that have no planets. There probably are. But on average, planets are pretty common.”
The gap between science fiction and science fact is narrowing daily. Here’s a look at fiveemerging technologies and market and society trends that scientists at IBM’s research lab think have the potential to change the way people work, live and interact during the next five years.
Power from the people
Anything that moves or produces heat has the potential to create energy that can be captured, Big Blue’s scientists said in their sixth annual “IBM 5 in 5″ look at what’s in store for mankind in the near term. Walking, jogging, bicycling. The heat from your computer or the water flowing through plumbing.
Scientists believe that advances in renewable energy technology will allow individuals to collect thiskinetic energy, which now goes to waste, and use it to help power homes, offices and cities.
On a personal level, while you’re riding your bicycle to work, devices on the spokes of your wheels could be recharging batteries you could later use to power some of the lights in your home. On a larger scale, IBM researchers in Ireland are looking at ways to understand and minimize the environmental impact of converting ocean wave energy into electricity.
Each person has a unique biological identity. Your biometric data—facial definitions, retina scans and voice files—will be composited through software to build an individual’s unique online password, IBM researchers said.
Referred to as multi-factor biometrics, smarter systems will be able to use this information in real-time to safeguard your identity. You will no longer need to create, track or remember multiple passwords.
In the future, IBM scientists said, you will be able to walk up to an ATM and securely withdraw money by simply speaking your name or looking into a tiny sensor that can recognize the unique patterns in the retina of your eye.
Mind reading gets real
Mind reading may make the leap from science fiction to real life sooner than expected, the researchers in Armonk, N.Y., said. IBM scientists are among those researching how to link your brain to devices such as a computer or smartphone and be able to control inanimate objects by just thinking about it. If you think about calling someone, for example, the smartphone would then dial that number.
Scientists in the field of bioinformatics have designed headsets with advanced sensors to read electrical brain activity that can recognize facial expressions, and the thoughts of a person. IBM researchers believe that within five years we will begin early applications of this technology in the gaming and entertainment industry.
Digital divide closes
In five years, IBM said, the gap between information haves and have-nots will narrow considerably due to advances in mobile technology; by then 80 percent of the current global population will have a mobile device.
This will empower people without a lot of spending power, they believe. In India, IBM used speech technology and mobile devices to enable rural villagers who were illiterate to pass along information through recorded messages on their phones. With access to information that was not there before, villagers could check weather reports to help them decide when to fertilize crops, to know when doctors were coming to town, and to find the best prices fortheir crops or merchandise.
Junk becomes gems
In five years, unsolicited advertisements may feel so personalized and relevant that you’ll think spam is dead. At the same time, spam filters will be so precise that you’ll never be bothered by unwanted sales pitches again.
IBM said it is developing technology that uses real-time analytics to make sense and integrate data from across all the facets of your life such as your social networks and online preferences to present and recommend information that is useful only to you. Fromnews to sports to politics, you’ll trust the technology will know what you want, so you can decide what to do with it.
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By Ned Smith | LiveScience.com – Mon, Dec 19, 2011
