Space Exploration and Humanity’s Struggle for Open System Economics

Matthew Ehret
Strategic Culture

The 50^th anniversary of mankind’s first landing on the moon on July 20, 1969 has created an opportunity to rethink some of the fateful decisions that set western society onto a trajectory of zero-technological growth and mindless consumerism in the early 1970s. Rather than speed up the momentum of ambitious goals for a permanent lunar settlement, nuclear rockets, terraforming and Mars colonization which leading NASA administrators had promoted after the successful landing of 1968, the very opposite occurred.

First the dollar was floated onto the international speculative markets on August 15, 1971 followed by the destruction of the Apollo program in 1975 and cancellation of most of the cutting edge projects that were meant to break humanity out of the closed system of geopolitics and finiteness of the earth’s limits for the first time in history.

Today, America has not only lost the capability to place a man on the moon, but cannot even send an astronaut into orbit without hitching a ride on a Russian Soyuz shuttle. While certain forces within America led by current NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine and the sitting President earnestly do wish to revive those capabilities, America’s 50 year visionless dance with monetarism have annihilated the memory of how such funding and long term planning occurred in the post war decades. Ironically, nations like China, Russia and India have discovered these modes of thought and economic practice to such an extent that China has quickly become a leader in Space technology, being the first nation to land a rover on the far side of the moon while all three Eurasian nations have unveiled ambitious programs for lunar-Mars development.

The fact that America put itself onto a course of action that has hollowed out its technological capabilities, and brought about the creation of the largest speculative bubble in history, can be largely accounted for by recognizing the existence of two worldviews at war. Only one of which will win.

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NASA Releases Video Announcing We're Going Back To The Moon By 2024 (And Staying There)

Geekologie

This is a video released by NASA and narrated by William Shatner announcing the organization's plans to return to the moon by 2024 and maintain a presence there as we push human exploration further into the solar system and beyond (the plan includes 'Gateway', a space station orbiting the moon and serving as a recharge and repair station for reusable lunar landers). The scientists and engineers in the video view the moon as a sort of jumping-off point for future missions into space, already outside the difficulty of escaping earth's atmosphere. So -- do you think you would be able to survive on the moon? That was a trick question, and the answer is only if I decide to let you, because I will be the leader of a ruthless barbarian moon tribe.

Keep going for the video and get amped about space.

NASA shares incredible VIDEO showing the raw vastness of space

RT
 

NASA has clocked up numerous amazing technological feats of engineering and ingenuity for decades, but a recent video from the space agency shows just how much work they have cut out for them. 

In just the last few years, NASA has provided some incredible perspectives on our own planet, including stunning images of some of the Earth’s most majesticnatural phenomena.


Not content with studying our own backyard, the agency has beamed back photos and videos from Mars thanks to its now-deceased rover, not to mention orbiting far-flung asteroids to try and understand the origins of the universe itself.

In an attempt to explain the vastness of their field of study, NASA helpfully put together a short explainer video showcasing the mindblowing scale of the Milky Way galaxy.

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Something BIG Just Hit The Ocean.. And NASA Is Looking For It

secure team 10

One Third Of Millennials Believe The Earth Is Flat

Comment: There is officially no hope for the coming generations....

-------------------------
 
The Daily Sheeple

It seems like the “flat earthers” are just a fringe movement of people who want to distrust NASA just for the sake of doing so. But about one-third of all millennials actually believe the earth is not a globe, but a flat disc.

According to Unilad, for some reason, more and more people (and more specifically millennials) seem to be buying into the theory that the earth is a disc rather than a globe, and the group who subscribes to it seems to be growing. There is even a Flat Earth Society whose membership continues to grow.

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Pentagon Acknowledges Secret UFO Investigation Program

New York Times

In the $600 billion annual Defense Department budgets, the $22 million spent on the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program was almost impossible to find.

Which was how the Pentagon wanted it.

For years, the program investigated reports of unidentified flying objects, according to Defense Department officials, interviews with program participants and records obtained by The New York Times. It was run by a military intelligence official, Luis Elizondo, on the fifth floor of the Pentagon’s C Ring, deep within the building’s maze.

The Defense Department has never before acknowledged the existence of the program, which it says it shut down in 2012. But its backers say that, while the Pentagon ended funding for the effort at that time, the program remains in existence. For the past five years, they say, officials with the program have continued to investigate episodes brought to them by service members, while also carrying out their other Defense Department duties.

The shadowy program — parts of it remain classified — began in 2007, and initially it was largely funded at the request of Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat who was the Senate majority leader at the time and who has long had an interest in space phenomena. Most of the money went to an aerospace research company run by a billionaire entrepreneur and longtime friend of Mr. Reid’s, Robert Bigelow, who is currently working with NASA to produce expandable craft for humans to use in space. 

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Flat Earthers SYSTEMatically Being Used To Disrupt And Undermine Truth Movements Everywhere

Millennium Report

Revisionist Historians for World Peace

There is an insidious conspiracy at work throughout the entire Internet which seeks to destroy Truth Movements everywhere.  It is known as the Flat Earth Society (FES) and its explicit purpose is to take down every single truth-oriented website, blog and/or organization which permits an open comment section at the bottom of their posts and articles.

Here’s how they work:
 
Agents of the FES often begin by posting rather benign yet factual comments about NASA, which everyone now knows is a rogue agency which can rarely be trusted to tell the truth about particular scientific endeavors and galactic missions. That’s a no-brainer that everyone agrees with—NASA holds onto most of the truth and parcels out only the absolute minimum to the taxpayers who fund their mandate .

The Flat Earthers then take advantage of this universal hatred of NASA for their spewing so much deception over so many years, and they use it to subtly garner support for their nonsensical Flat Earth Theory .  When the time is right, the Flat Earthers will then start introducing utterly absurd notions about the Solar System and patently false concepts about the Earth’s relationship to the Sun.

They justify their preposterous sophistry and wacky ideas by routinely outing NASA as a serially prevaricating government agency, which they are — and then using their well-known deception as a justification to overturn the entire paradigm of modern astrophysics.  Talk about throwing the baby out with the bath water.  There is no astronomical scientific truth they have left unassailed.  You name it — gravity, a spherical Earth and other planetary orbs, rotational movement of the planets. planetary revolutions around the Sun — they throw it all out and label it as “NASA lies”.

Once they do that in a very public Internet forum or chat room, website or blog comment section, they begin to stir up a LOT of trouble.  They pre-position sock-puppets in the same forums, blogs, etc, who will, with apparent spontaneity, support their silly and stupid comments about the Flat Earth Theory (FET).  The longer the comment thread, the more opportunity to draw in the unsuspecting into their outlandish web of deceit and deception.

They do this by presenting some entirely new and quite valid hypotheses which do introduce such concepts that are related to the Electric Universe; or that propose that the Solar System is also moving though space in a manner which defies the conventional wisdom. There are many instances where the current scientific paradigm does completely fall down, by the way, and the FEs use these obvious flaws to take down the whole system of thought.

By so aggressively assaulting the conventional wisdom which is accepted by the vast majority of people on the planet, they then tar the reputation of the truth movement groups whose websites they have deliberately polluted with their obvious foolishness concerning their FLAT EARTH fantasies.

The following comment was left on a major alternative website which clearly delineates some of the major farcical tenets of the Flat Earth Theory.  It’s not really a theory; rather it’s nothing but line of pure BS as the day is long … with a stray  corrected fact thrown in to string the gullible along.

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Updated NASA Data: Global Warming Not Causing Any Polar Ice Retreat

Comment: Just a little reminder from earlier this year....

-----------------------

James Taylor
forbes.com

Updated data from NASA satellite instruments reveal the Earth’s polar ice caps have not receded at all since the satellite instruments began measuring the ice caps in 1979. Since the end of 2012, moreover, total polar ice extent has largely remained above the post-1979 average. The updated data contradict one of the most frequently asserted global warming claims – that global warming is causing the polar ice caps to recede.

The timing of the 1979 NASA satellite instrument launch could not have been better for global warming alarmists. The late 1970s marked the end of a 30-year cooling trend. As a result, the polar ice caps were quite likely more extensive than they had been since at least the 1920s. Nevertheless, this abnormally extensive 1979 polar ice extent would appear to be the “normal” baseline when comparing post-1979 polar ice extent.

Updated NASA satellite data show the polar ice caps remained at approximately their 1979 extent until the middle of the last decade. Beginning in 2005, however, polar ice modestly receded for several years. By 2012, polar sea ice had receded by approximately 10 percent from 1979 measurements. 

(Total polar ice area – factoring in both sea and land ice – had receded by much less than 10 percent, but alarmists focused on the sea ice loss as “proof” of a global warming crisis.)

NASA satellite measurements show the polar ice caps have not retreated at all.

A 10-percent decline in polar sea ice is not very remarkable, especially considering the 1979 baseline was abnormally high anyway. Regardless, global warming activists and a compliant news media frequently and vociferously claimed the modest polar ice cap retreat was a sign of impending catastrophe. Al Gore even predicted the Arctic ice cap could completely disappear by 2014.

In late 2012, however, polar ice dramatically rebounded and quickly surpassed the post-1979 average. Ever since, the polar ice caps have been at a greater average extent than the post-1979 mean.

Now, in May 2015, the updated NASA data show polar sea ice is approximately 5 percent above the post-1979 average.

During the modest decline in 2005 through 2012, the media presented a daily barrage of melting ice cap stories. Since the ice caps rebounded – and then some – how have the media reported the issue?

The frequency of polar ice cap stories may have abated, but the tone and content has not changed at all. Here are some of the titles of news items I pulled yesterday from the front two pages of a Google News search for “polar ice caps”:

“Climate change is melting more than just the polar ice caps”
“2020: Antarctic ice shelf could collapse”
“An Arctic ice cap’s shockingly rapid slide into the sea”
“New satellite maps show polar ice caps melting at ‘unprecedented rate’”

The only Google News items even hinting that the polar ice caps may not have melted so much (indeed not at all) came from overtly conservative websites. The “mainstream” media is alternating between maintaining radio silence on the extended run of above-average polar ice and falsely asserting the polar ice caps are receding at an alarming rate.

To be sure, receding polar ice caps are an expected result of the modest global warming we can expect in the years ahead. In and of themselves, receding polar ice caps have little if any negative impact on human health and welfare, and likely a positive benefit by opening up previously ice-entombed land to human, animal, and plant life. Nevertheless, polar ice cap extent will likely be a measuring stick for how much the planet is or is not warming.

Earth 2.0: What we know about Kepler 452b, the most Earth-like planet ever discovered

The Independent 

Nasa scientists have announced the discovery of Kepler 452b, also known as 'Earth 2.0', an earth-like planet in our galaxy. 

Over the course of years of data-gathering by the Kepler space telescope and even more analysis and work here on Earth, scientists confirmed the existence of the distant exoplanet, which is the most earth-like planet ever discovered.

Although the planet is far too far away to photograph, advanced Nasa technology means we know a surprising amount about this 'New Earth'.

[...] 

It's the most similar planet to Earth that has ever been discovered

Beginning the conference, John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for Nasa's Science Mission Directorate in Washington, said: "Today we're announcing the discovery of an exoplanet that as far as we can tell is a pretty close cousin of Earth. It's the closest so far. It's Earth 2.0." 

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Why has NASA announced that a meteor is NOT going to hit the Earth in September?

Michael Snyder
End of the American Dream

 Internet buzz about a giant meteor that is going to strike our planet in September has become so intense that NASA has been forced to issue a statement publicly denying that it is going to happen. NASA insists that the agency knows of "no asteroid or comet currently on a collision course with Earth", and that "no large object is likely to strike the Earth any time in the next several hundred years". To be honest, NASA should perhaps hold off on making such bold statements concerning what will happen in the future considering the fact that the Chelyabinsk meteor that exploded over Russia in 2013 took them totally by surprise. In any event, what we do know is that our region of space is absolutely packed with meteors and asteroids. At this point, approximately 10,000 major near earth objects have been discovered by scientists, and about 10 percent of them are one kilometer or larger in size. If any of those big ones were to hit us, we would be looking at another Tunguska event or worse. Very large meteors have struck our planet before, and they will hit us again. It is only a matter of time.

But of most immediate concern to lots of people out there are the various theories that are floating around about September. The following is an excerpt from an article that appeared in a British news source just this week... 

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Nasa approves 'impossible' space engine design that apparently violates the laws of physics

The Independent

Engineers from the space agency managed to produce tiny amounts of thrust using a microwave engine design that could turn space travel on its head 

In a quiet announcement that has sent shockwaves through the scientific world, Nasa has cautiously given its seal of approval to a new type of “impossible” engine that could revolutionize space travel. 

In a paper published by the agency’s experimental Eagleworks Laboratories, Nasa engineers confirmed that they had produced tiny amounts of thrust from an engine without propellant  – an apparent violation of the conservation of momentum; the law of physics that states that every action must have an equal and opposite reaction.

Traditional spacecraft carry vast amounts of fuel with them into orbit in order to move about, using the thrust created by this fuel to move in zero gravity like a swimmer in a pool pushing off against a wall. This method works fine but it's costly - both in terms of obtaining the fuel and then launching all that extra weight into space.

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NASA sounds red alert over solar flare that nearly wiped out human civilization two summers ago

Natural News

(NaturalNews) The news you are about to read should be front page news everywhere. There is arguably nothing more important to humanity's survival than the alarming facts presented in this report from NASA, yet most of the world pretends this event never happened in 2012, and they falsely assume it won't happen again.

They are wrong. According to shocking new research published by NASA, each decade there is roughly a 12% chance of a near-wipeout of humanity's high-tech civilization. In fact, one such event nearly wiped out technology across the planet during the summer of 2012.

"A powerful coronal mass ejection (CME) tore through Earth orbit on July 23, 2012," reports NASA.gov. (1) "If the eruption had occurred only one week earlier, Earth would have been in the line of fire."

NASA goes on to report:

Analysts believe that a direct hit by an extreme CME such as the one that missed Earth in July 2012 could cause widespread power blackouts, disabling everything that plugs into a wall socket. Most people wouldn't even be able to flush their toilet because urban water supplies largely rely on electric pumps.

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See also: Billionaire Hedge Fund Manager to Clients: EMP Greatest Risk to Society

NASA acknowledging Electric Universe?: New NASA model gives glimpse into the invisible world of electric asteroids

phys.org

Space may appear empty - a soundless vacuum, but it's not an absolute void. It flows with electric activity that is not visible to our eyes. NASA is developing plans to send humans to an asteroid, and wants to know more about the electrical environment explorers will encounter there.

A solar wind blown from the surface of the sun at about a million miles per hour flows around all solar system objects, forming swirling eddies and vortices in its wake. Magnetic fields carried by the solar wind warp, twist, and snap as they slam into the magnetic fields around other objects in our solar system, blasting particles to millions of miles per hour and sending electric currents surging in magnetic storms that, around Earth, can damage sensitive technology like satellites and power grids.

On airless objects like moons and asteroids, sunlight ejects negatively charged electrons from matter, giving sunlit areas a strong positive electric charge. The solar wind is an electrically conducting gas called plasma where matter has been torn apart into electrons, which are relatively light, and positively charged ions, which are thousands of times more massive. While areas in sunlight can charge positive, areas in shadow get a strong negative charge when electrons in the solar wind rush in ahead of heavier ions to fill voids created as the solar wind flows by.

The surface of Earth is shielded from the direct effects of this activity by our planet's magnetic field, but airless objects without strong repelling magnetic fields, like small asteroids, have no protection from electrical activity in space.

NASA-sponsored researchers funded by the Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute (SSERVI) (formerly the NASA Lunar Science Institute (NLSI)) have developed a new computer model that can predict and visualize the interaction between the solar wind, solar radiation, and the surface of asteroids in unprecedented detail.

"Our model is the first to provide detailed, two-dimensional views of the complex interaction between solar activity and small objects like asteroids, using an adaptive computational technique that makes these simulations highly efficient," said Michael Zimmerman, project lead at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.

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Nasa-funded study warns of ‘collapse of civilisation’ in coming decades

 Comment: Decades?? I think they're in for a shock. I think we are looking at some partial catastrophic developments within the next five years...But hey, let's look on the bright side...

----------------- 

The Independent

Modern civilisation is heading for collapse within a matter of decades because of growing economic instability and pressure on the planet’s resources, according to a scientific study funded by Nasa.

Using theoretical models to predict what will happen to the industrialised world over the course of the next century or so, mathematicians found that even with conservative estimates things started to go very badly, very quickly.

Referring to the past collapses of often very sophisticated civilisations – the Roman, Han and Gupta Empires for example – the study noted that the elite of society have often pushed for a “business as usual” approach to warnings of disaster until it is too late.

In the report based on his “Human And Nature Dynamical” (Handy) model, the applied mathematician Safa Motesharri wrote: “the process of rise-and-collapse is actually a recurrent cycle found throughout history”.

His research, carried out with the help of a team of natural and social scientists and with funding from Nasa’s Goddard Space Flight Center, has been accepted for publication in the Ecological Economics journal, the Guardian reported.

Motesharri explored the factors which could lead to the collapse of civilisation, from population growth to climate change, and found that when these converge they can cause society to break down because of the “stretching of resources” and “the economic stratification of society into ‘Elites’ and ‘Masses’”.

Using his Handy model to assess a scenario closely resembling the current state of the world, Motesharri found that civilisation “appears to be on a sustainable path for quite a long time, but even using an optimal depletion rate and starting with a very small number of Elites, the Elites eventually consume too much, resulting in a famine among the Masses that eventually causes the collapse of society”.

The report stressed, however, that the worst-case scenario of collapse is not inevitable, and called on action now from the so-called real world “Elites” to restore economic balance.

“Collapse can be avoided and population can reach equilibrium if the per capita rate of depletion of nature is reduced to a sustainable level, and if resources are distributed in a reasonably equitable fashion,” the scientists said.

This is not the first time scientists have tried to warn us of potentially impending global disaster. Last year it emerged that Stephen Hawking and a team of Britain's finest minds are drawing up a “doomsday list” of the catastrophic low-risk (but high-impact) events that could devastate the world.

NASA | SDO Observes Strong X-class Solar Flare

Sun Goes Wild - NOAA Issues Alert: Earth Directed X-Class Flare On Its Way; Chance Of More

Marc Slavo
SHTFplan.com 

[Yesterday morning] The Daily Sheeple reported that the biggest sun spot in recent history had been identified, and that it had moved into position facing earth. The spot is so large that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says it could swallow three earths.

(Photo by Rocky Raybell : Sun spot AR1944 is so big it can be seen with amateur telescopes)

The spot was mostly quiet for the last few days and wasn’t directly facing earth, though a smaller Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) glanced the planet in the early hours of January 7th.

Then at 12:32 Central Time it went wild:

Massive sunspot AR1944 has erupted. The X1 flare has sent a coronal mass ejection into space, and it’s heading towards Earth. 

[…]

NOAA has upped the risk from further X-class flares to 50% for the next 24 hours. Risk of M-class up to 80%

The NASA-ESA Heliophysics Fleet is monitoring the sunspot and CME. Depending on its speed it could take anywhere from a day to three days to hit earth. NBC News reports that the flare is already responsible for radio traffic disruptions.

(Pictured: NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory 

shows a blast of activity originating from the center of the sun’s disk on Tuesday)

Though an X-1 Class flare is not going to cause widespread power outages across earth, the possibility of increased activity on the sun has been noted by NASA and other researchers, as the sunspot destabilizes further.

The rapid formation of sunspot AR1944 and the earth-facing ejections highlight how quickly life on earth could change if the right conditions are met.

In the summer of 2012 a massive solar flare was ejected by the sun and narrowly missed earth.

Had it occurred just a week prior, the highly charged particles would have struck earth and, according to CU-Boulder Professor Daniel Baker, would have led to nothing short of a technological disaster across the globe. 

The CME itself was massive… and its speed was unprecedented, clocking in at 7 million miles per hour. 

While typical coronal mass ejections from the sun take two or three days to reach Earth, the 2012 event traveled from the sun’s surface to Earth in just 18 hours. 

“The speed of this event was as fast or faster than anything that has been seen in the modern space age,” said Baker. 

[…] 

Had it hit Earth, the July 2012 event likely would have created a technological disaster by short-circuiting satellites, power grids, ground communication equipment and even threatening the health of astronauts and aircraft crews. 

Source: Scientists Warn of Worst Case Scenario

But that flare wasn’t a once-in-a-million-years event.

A decade ago in 2003 NASA identified the most powerful flare in recorded observational history:

In 2003 a solar flare emitted by the sun was the most powerful in recorded observational history, measuring in at levels so high that had it hit earth it would have likely disabled everything from the internet and mobile phones, to water utility plants and the whole of the U.S. electricity infrastructure.

That event was originally thought to have been an X-28 class flare, more powerful than necessary to take out modern electronics across earth. It was later revised to a “whopping” x-45.

These events occur quite regularly in the grand scheme. Recent observations suggest at least several occurrences in a lifetime. For the last hundred years since electronics made their way into our society we’ve been lucky, having experienced just minor disturbances.

But as the last decade shows, it can happen at any time and the after-effects would be catastrophic.

This is what prompted Senior Member of the House Homeland Security Committee Congresswoman Yvette Clarke to warn that the likelihood of a severe geo-magnetic event capable of crippling our electric grid is 100%.

Despite the various earthbound threats that exist, a solar flare is arguably the most probable threat we face as a civilization.

As Congressman Roscoe Bartlett has noted in the documentary Urban Danger, if an event of this magnitude hit earth we’d revert back to the stone age overnight:

We could have events in the future where the power grid will go down and it’s not, in any reasonable time, coming back up. For instance, if when the power grid went down some of our large transformers were destroyed, damaged beyond use, we don’t make any of those in this country. They’re made overseas and you order one and 18 months to two years later they will deliver it. Our power grid is very vulnerable. It’s very much on edge. Our military knows that.

So how does one survive such an event, where pretty much everything we have come to expect in our just-in-time modern society comes to a screeching halt within seconds of the disaster striking?

It won’t be easy, but it is certainly survivable, and if you’ve developed a broad preparedness plan you would fair much better then the 90% of people who studies say wouldn’t make it in such a scenario.

Imagine for just a moment what would be going through your mind and the minds of those with whom you share this report if sunspot AR1944 had emitted an X-25+ Class solar flare that was heading for earth right now and that it would be here within 48 hours.

Would you be prepared for what happens when the national power grid collapses? Would you be ready for the catastrophe that would follow within a matter of hours?

Preparedness for such an event starts with a simple grid-down supply. Once those basics are covered and you have enough to keep your family afloat for two weeks, you could broaden your preparedness horizons with long-term food storage, emergency medical supplies, gold and silver as bartering currencies, and self defense strategies to protect against the inevitable hordes that would follow.

The threat is real. Countless officials and experts have warned of the possibility in our lifetimes.

What if tomorrow was the day?

Earth-like planets may be quite common, relatively close, study says

Los Angeles Times
Amina Khan

November 4, 2013

Is the Earth a “cosmic freak” or a planetary average Joe around our galactic neighborhood? UC Berkeley astronomer Geoff Marcy says we’re in good company.

With some clever sleight of hand, scientists using Kepler data have calculated that a whopping one in five Sun-like stars has an Earth-sized planet in the habitable zone – and, if they have the right chemical ingredients on board, could be capable of supporting life.

The kicker? The nearest one may lie just 12 light-years away.

The results, published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also add 603 exoplanet candidates to Kepler’s tally, including 10 Earth-sized ones in the habitable zone.
“If we ever get star travel, we’d probably see a lot of traffic jams,” said William Borucki, Kepler’s lead scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif.


Since its launch in 2009, the Kepler space telescope has uncovered a strange menagerie of alien worlds, some utterly unlike the inhabitants of our own solar system. Scientists have picked out what Borucki called a “bewildering variety” of planets, from mini-Neptunes to super-Earths. Some may be composed entirely of water; others have densities greater than iron or lower than Styrofoam. Some are smaller than Mercury and others are many times bigger than Jupiter.

For this study, the scientists had one driving question, said UC Berkeley astronomer and lead author Erik Petigura: Among all these different types of planets, how common were the ones that were sized like Earth?

The problem with answering that question is that it’s not easy to find such planets, Petigura said. A transit-watching telescope like Kepler waits for dips in brightness as a planet travels in front of its star and blocks a tiny fraction of its light. But that only works if we’re properly aligned and can catch them in the act of transiting.

Of those stars whose planetary transits we manage to see, many are simply too noisy, with their light patterns changing, to pick out a tiny dip in starlight from a transiting planet. (To put it in perspective, an Earth-sized planet would cause a 0.01% blip in its star’s light.)

The researchers decided to see if they could figure out how many planets they were missing. They injected synthetic planets into the starlight data, then ran the software that searched for those signals. Not all of them were found. Since they already knew how many fake planets they’d had to start with, the scientists now knew about how many planets were missing.

Based on that analysis, the researchers surmised that about 22% of stars like our sun have planets in the habitable zone that are just one to two Earth radii.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that these planets will actually be habitable – that depends on whether they’re made of rock and iron, have protective atmospheres and ingredients like water and other chemical building blocks for life as we know it.

But the researchers said they were encouraged by the discovery of Kepler-78b – an Earth-sized planet with an Earth-like density that also appears to be made of iron and rock. Though it was far too close to its star to be habitable, scientists said it was a sign that more promising discoveries would be on the way, as astronomers analyze the fourth and final year of data from Kepler, which suffered a malfunction this spring.

Sun will 'flip upside down' within weeks, says NASA

 

The Independent

The sun is set to “flip upside down” within weeks as its magnetic field reverses polarity in an event that will send ripple effects throughout the solar system.

Although it may sound like a catastrophic occurrence, there’s no need to run for cover. The sun switches its polarity, flipping its magnetic north and south, once every eleven years through an internal mechanism about which little is understood.

The swap could however cause intergalactic weather fronts such as geomagnetic storms, which can interfere with satellites and cause radio blackouts.

Nasa said in August that the change would happen in three to four months time, but it is impossible to give a more specific date. Scientist won’t know for around another three weeks whether the flip is complete.

The impact of the transfer will be widespread as the sun’s magnetic field exerts influence well beyond Pluto, past Nasa's Voyager probes positioned near the edge of interstellar space.

The event will be watched closely by researchers at Stanford University’s Wilcox Solar Observatory, which monitors the sun's magnetic field on a daily basis.

Todd Hoeksema, director of the Wilcox Solar Observatory, said the polarity change is built up throughout the eleven year cycle through areas of intense magnetic activity known as sunspots which gradually move towards the poles, eroding the existing opposite polarity.

Eventually, the magnetic field reduces to zero, before rebounding with the opposite polarity.

“It's kind of like a tide coming in or going out,” Hoeksema said. “Each little wave brings a little more water in, and eventually you get to the full reversal.”

One of the most noticeable effect on Earth will be a boost in the occurrence, range and visibility of auroras - the Northern Lights. “It’s not a catastrophic event, it’s a large scale event that has some real implications, but its not something we need to worry about,” added Hoeksema.

Russian meteor shows 20,000,000 space rocks threaten Earth, scientists warn

 

RT

The meteor that shocked Russia in February when it exploded in the skies above Chelyabinsk shows us that the danger from space rocks smashing into Earth is much bigger than previously thought, an international group of scientists has concluded.

The 20-meter-wide meteor, which streaked across the sky and exploded into small pieces on Feb. 15, smashing windows, damaging buildings and damaging residents’ eyesight, could have caused much more damage if it had been more solid, three studies published in US journals Nature and Science on Wednesday found. 

After studying the area around the explosion and a wealth of video and other evidence over the last few months, NASA scientist Paul Chodas said the meteor blast showed that there were about 20 million space rocks whizzing around the solar system that could do serious damage to Earth – not the 3 million previously thought. That’s because it was considered that meteors had to be 30 meters and wider to cause huge devastation, but Chelyabinsk was actually a nearer miss than it seemed at the time, the scientists said. 

Hundreds of videos recorded by car dashboard cameras were analyzed, which helped a great deal to verify the exact trajectory, speed and the energy of the meteor explosion that shattered windows in more than 3,600 apartment blocks,  broke in doors and gates, in some cases collapsing roofs and knocking many pedestrians off their feet.

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NASA's Hubble Sees Asteroid Spouting Six Comet-Like Tails

 This NASA Hubble Space Telescope set of images from Sept. 10, 2013 reveals a never-before-seen set of six comet-like tails radiating from a body in the asteroid belt designated P/2013 P5. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, D.Jewitt/UCLA Larger image and full caption.



NASA

Astronomers viewing our solar system's asteroid belt with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have seen for the first time an asteroid with six comet-like tails of dust radiating from it like spokes on a wheel.

Unlike all other known asteroids, which appear simply as tiny points of light, this asteroid, designated P/2013 P5, resembles a rotating lawn sprinkler. Astronomers are puzzled over the asteroid's unusual appearance.

"We were literally dumbfounded when we saw it," said lead investigator David Jewitt of the University of California at Los Angeles. "Even more amazing, its tail structures change dramatically in just 13 days as it belches out dust. That also caught us by surprise. It's hard to believe we’re looking at an asteroid."

Jewitt leads a team whose research paper appears online in the Nov. 7 issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

P/2013 P5 has been ejecting dust periodically for at least five months. Astronomers believe it is possible the asteroid's rotation rate increased to the point where its surface started flying apart. They do not believe the tails are the result of an impact with another asteroid because they have not seen a large quantity of dust blasted into space all at once.

Scientists using the Pan-STARRS survey telescope in Hawaii announced their discovery of the asteroid Aug. 27. P/2013 P5 appeared as an unusually fuzzy-looking object. The multiple tails were discovered when Hubble was used to take a more detailed image Sept. 10.
When Hubble looked at the asteroid again Sept. 23, its appearance had totally changed. It looked as if the entire structure had swung around.

"We were completely knocked out," Jewitt said.

Careful modeling by team member Jessica Agarwal of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Lindau, Germany, showed that the tails could have been formed by a series of impulsive dust-ejection events. She calculated that dust-ejection events occurred April 15, July 18, July 24, Aug. 8, Aug. 26 and Sept. 4.  Radiation pressure from the sun stretched the dust into streamers.

Radiation pressure could have spun P/2013 P5 up. Jewitt said the spin rate could have increased enough that the asteroid's weak gravity no longer could hold it together. If that happened, dust could slide toward the asteroid's equator, shatter and fall off, and drift into space to make a tail. So far, only about 100 to 1,000 tons of dust, a small fraction of the P/2013 P5's main mass, has been lost. The asteroid's nucleus, which measures 1,400 feet wide, is thousands of times more massive than the observed amount of ejected dust.

Astronomers will continue observing P/2013 P5 to see whether the dust leaves the asteroid in the equatorial plane. If it does, this would be strong evidence for a rotational breakup. Astronomers will also try to measure the asteroid's true spin rate.

Jewitt's interpretation implies that rotational breakup must be a common phenomenon in the asteroid belt; it may even be the main way small asteroids die.

"In astronomy, where you find one, you eventually find a whole bunch more," Jewitt said. "This is just an amazing object to us, and almost certainly the first of many more to come."

Jewitt said it appears P/2013 P5 is a fragment of a larger asteroid that broke apart in a collision roughly 200 million years ago. There are many collision fragments in orbits similar to P/2013 P5's. Meteorites from these bodies show evidence of having been heated to as much as 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit. This means the asteroid likely is composed of metamorphic rocks and does not hold any ice as a comet does.

For images and more information about P/2013 P5, visit:

http://hubblesite.org/news/2013/52

For more information about NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/hubble