Thank you Wolfie! *hugs* How lovely they are! He had trouble seeing it with the naked eye and sent me that picture too - totally black! It was slightly overcase so you see wispy clouds going past the moon... It must have been incredible in a clear sky! Last night with the reports coming in and the pictures, too was about as close as I could get to actually seeing it. Thank you all! Now, to tell his father (who has logged in and can post any time he chooses...) and David as well...*grin*

I'm so excited to see the pix, and fed up that we weren't able to see anything here. Thanks.

I know the feeling...*lol* I am delighted that someone in the family got to see it...and as all good mom's, I would rather he saw it than I if we had to choose.

Great pics, Wolf! Thanks!

This is from the E. Telegraph today. Lost Asteroid is Earth's, new Moon I think you will enjoy. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=001182080732013&rtmo=kLLZ1JNp&atmo=kLLZ1JNp&pg=/et/00/1/25/whub25.html I hope the link works. I know Terry is in the middle of moving.

Love the Eskimo Nebula! What incredible pictures!!! Thanks so much for posting this, Moon (great name for this topic !) I was busy on Geo 14 posting information on "the snow storm of the millennuim" (it is bound to be called something liket that), and had not seen anything about Hubble and the new pictures. Thanks! And, please don't be a stranger!

John Burnett sent this contribution. It is fascinating! Can time run backwards? IN a distant galaxy, a star unexplodes. Just moments ago a shell of tortured matter was flying together at 30 000 kilometers a second. Now it has become a star, and the last shreds of glowing debris are being sucked in. With the explosion undone, the star begins the long journey back to the time when it will be unborn into the gas and dust of an interstellar cloud. Is someone running the film backwards for comic effect? Not necessarily. In a paper published in the last week of 1999, Lawrence Schulman of Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York dropped a bombshell. He showed that regions where time flows in the normal direction can coexist with regions where it flows backwards. There could be places, perhaps even within our Galaxy, where stars unexplode, eggs unbreak and living things grow younger with every second. To understand how time could run backwards, you need to understand why it has a preferred direction at all. The equations of physics say that particles of matter don't care what direction time runs in: any interaction between two particles could happen just as easily in reverse. (Some nuclear interactions do show a small bias, but no one has found a way to turn this into an arrow of time.) But when you have a lot of particles instead of just two, things change. Messy, disordered states tend to develop from tidier ones. This tendency is called the thermodynamic arrow of time. Physicists say that entropy-a measure of disorder-always increases. "It's easy to break an egg, difficult or impossible to put the pieces back together," says Schulman. Say the air in a large room is confined in a 1-metre cube in one corner, then released. It is perfectly possible that, after five minutes, the air molecules will all be back in the same 1-metre cube. Perfectly possible but hugely improbable, because there are far more ways to arrange the individual molecules when they are spread out than when they are confined. In fact, the most disordered state-in which the air molecules are spread more or less evenly throughout the room-can be achieved in far more ways than any other state. "This is the second law of thermodynamics," says Schulman, "which seals the fate of Humpty Dumpty." However, argues Schulman, a reverse arrow is perfectly possible: "It's all down to the 'boundary conditions'-the external constraints imposed on the system." In the room, the air has to be in the 1-metre cube only at the start of the five-minute period. There is no constraint on it at the end of the five minutes-the system can find its own final state. But say a final condition is imposed. After five minutes, the air molecules have to be back in the 1-metre cube. On Earth, this is clearly an artificial situation. But for Schulman, it is perfectly legitimate to consider such a state of affairs. "There is no reason in principle why the Universe might not have a future boundary condition imposed on it," he says. The future condition would constrain the molecules to follow only a tiny subset of trajectories, ending up in the 1-metre cube. From our point of view, time would be running backwards. But there's an objection to having forward and backward time regions in the same universe. Surely the arrow of a reverse-time region would be wiped out by the slightest interaction with a normal-time region, leaving a completely disordered system with no arrow at all? Imagine a game of snooker in which the triangle of red balls is struck by the cue ball and scattered around the table. Now imagine the reverse-time scenario. For the balls to follow the precise trajectories necessary to finish in a triangle will take a monumental amount of coordination. The slightest disturbance will spoil it. Any interaction with a region with normal time-for instance, the smallest cry of amazement from someone watching-could vibrate the air, nudge the balls and wreck everything. So the backward arrow of a reverse-time region would be instantly destroyed by any interaction with a normal-time region. Schulman sees a flaw in this idea. The two systems are on an equal footing, so the reverse-time region is as likely to destroy the arrow of the normal-time region as vice versa. "All we can say is that if the two regions interact their arrows will either both be destroyed or both survive." Most physicists would have put good money on the former possibility. But Schulman's startling conclusion is that as long as the interaction between the two regions is weak, both arrows will survive. He bases this claim on a simple computer model that allows him to set up weakly interacting systems with opposite arrows of time and see what happens. Here's how it works. Take a square 1 unit on each side, and add a particle with coordinates x and y. Move the particle by repeatedly replacing x with x + y and y with x + 2y, and discarding any integer parts of the results (so x and y stay in the range from 0 to 1). The particle will flit about the square chaotically. "This mimics the essential behaviour of a gas particle, while being a lot simpler than reality," according to Schulman. To set up two gases with opposite arrows of time, Schulman imposes appropriate boundary conditions. In one model gas, the particles start in one corner of the square and spread out until they are completely disordered. They have a "normal" arrow of time (that is, the same arrow as us). In the other, Schulman imposes the final condition that after, say 20 moves, corresponding to 20 time steps, the particles are all in the corner of the square. This system has a backward arrow of time. Call the normal-time region Alice and the reverse-time region Bob. The next step is to let Alice and Bob interact. Schulman tweaks the coordinates of each normal-time particle according to the coordinates of the reverse-time test particle, and vice versa. When Schulman lets both systems run, he finds that neither arrow of time is destroyed by the other. "All that happens is that Bob adds a bit of noise to Alice and Alice adds a bit of noise to Bob," says Schulman. The two arrows of time are remarkably robust. "I had no idea when I started my work that this would be the outcome," he says. "The result surprised me as much anyone else." But this surprise, he adds, comes from a prejudice against future boundary conditions. Once you are used to the idea of matter having some memory of what we call its future, it ceases to surprise. From our point of view, the memory of future organization drags any reverse time region in the direction of increasing order, despite any small disturbances from our own "normal" region. The paper has created quite a stir. "This is very cool stuff indeed," says Max Tegmark of the University of Pennsylvania. At the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, where Sculman began this work, Amos Ori agrees. "Schulman has shown that the consistency of a model with two simultaneous time arrows can be explored by relatively simple means. This is a very important observation." And he has some equivocal support from David Pegg of Griffith University in Brisbane. "I see no obvious flaw in the calculations Schulman has done. He makes his case quite well and I am willing to accept it, at least until convinced otherwise." Other physicists don't believe that Schulman's computer model is relevant to the real world. According to Paul Davies of the University of Adelaide, a real physical system with a backward arrow would be so fantastically sensitive to an outside influence that it would be easily destroyed. "Imagine a box of gas with molecular velocities reversed to bring about an ordered state," he says. "The gravity of a single electron at the edge of the observable Universe is enough to throw out the motion of a given molecule by 90 degrees after only 20 or so intermolecular collisions. That's pretty sensitive." Crossing the divide Surprisingly, Schulman does not dispute Davies' point. "He's absolutely right. But the very set-up of his thought experiment, with initial conditions only, precludes an opposite-directed arrow," he says. "My result applies when boundary conditions are imposed at two separate times." Some might attack the realism of Schulman's interaction, which he admits is an abstract mathematical one and not related to a real physical force such as gravity. "Nevertheless, I maintain that the interaction is adequate for treating the conceptual issue of the effects of future-conditioning," he says. So could we actually see reverse-time beings if they exist, and maybe even wave to them? Remarkably, Schulman says yes. Using a theory originally developed by Richard Feynman and John Wheeler, which treats light waves travelling in both time directions on an equal footing, he shows that forward and reverse regions could communicate by light signals. But communicating with the other side has its dangers. If normal-time Alice were to see rain pouring out through reverse-time Bob's window, she could wait until before the rain started and shout to Bob to close his window. "So did Bob's floor get wet or not?" says Schulman. Perhaps something intermediate happens which smears out the paradox. "Alice sees the window open, shouts to Bob but the message gets blurred and Bob doesn't close the window," says Schulman. And there's another, more disturbing possibility. "If you impose initial and final boundary conditions, it may turn out that the events described simply can't happen," he says. "In mathematical terms, they are simply not a solution." In other words, we might just be fated not to cause any paradoxes. So, how would a reverse-time region arise? Schulman says such regions may exist for the same inexplicable reason that regions of normal time exist. But there is one more concrete possibility: perhaps we live in a Universe whose expansion from a big bang will one day be reversed into a contraction down to a "big crunch", a sort of mirror-image of the big bang in which the Universe was born 13 billion years ago. Although the latest cosmological evidence is against this, the question isn't settled. In 1958, Thomas Gold of Cornell University argued that the thermodynamic arrow of time would reverse during the contraction phase, creating order out of chaos. Gold's reasoning turned out to be flawed, but in the 1970s, Schulman used his own model to show that the conclusions were right. As the big bang and big crunch are both highly ordered (all the matter is in a small volume), thermodynamic arrows of time should point away from both ends. The arrow of time depends on the expansion or contraction of the Universe. "Coffee cools because the quasar 3C 273 grows ever more distant," says Schulman. Of course, if you were alive during a cosmic contraction phase you would see nothing untoward-you'd have the same arrow as most of the matter in the Universe, and it would look like expansion (see Diagram). Stepping outside the Universe, the situation appears perfectly symmetrical; it makes just as much sense to call either end the big bang or the big crunch. A bizarre consequence of Schulman's theory is that some reverse-time regions from a future contracting phase of the Universe could have survived until today-and could be only a few tens of light years away. "Some bits of the Universe might have reverse arrows while other bits with forward arrows might survive well into the contraction phase." As the "turnaround" time when the Universe's expansion turns into contraction could be many hundreds of billions of years away, any stars would have burnt out. Unfortunately, there would be little prospect of seeing stellar unexplosions or backwards people among such cold stuff. "We would still feel their gravity, though," says Schulman. "Such reverse-time matter would have all the attributes of the invisible, or 'dark', matter thought to make up most of the mass of our Universe." Colliding arrows Another possibility is that in the 13 billion years since the big bang most of the Universe's matter has collided with reverse-time matter from the future. The result of such collisions would be matter in "equilibrium" with no time direction. "Once again, it would appear exactly like dark matter," says Schulman. Other physicists are skeptical. "I doubt that this has anything to do with the dark matter problem," says Tegmark. So what would it be like in a region that is changing its time direction? Would exploding things suddenly start unexploding? And what would happen to the minds of beings around at the time? Sadly, it would be rather undramatic. For a particular area to change its arrow, it would first have to go through a period of maximum disorder where there could be no stars or explosions or structured, working minds. But if you survived for long enough, you might be able to watch the Universe around you starting to contract, and most of its matter going into reverse. If all this is getting a bit difficult to stomach, there is a way to test it-even if we can't spy on a nearby backwards planet. "Things happening today could be influenced by boundary conditions at the end of the Universe," says Schulman. What he has in mind are ultra-slow processes. In the 1970s, John Wheeler of Princeton University suggested observing the decays of atomic nuclei with ultra-long half-lives, perhaps many tens of billions of years. The suggestion was that the normal exponential decay would be modified by exponential "undecay" and that this might actually be observable in a sample of a few kilograms in the laboratory. Possible candidates are rhenium-187 and samarium-147, which have half-lives of about 100 billion years. Unfortunately, Wheeler was too optimistic. For an experiment of a sensible duration, a few years, say, you'd need roughly the total supply of these isotopes in the Universe to see deviations from exponential decay. "A far better bet is galaxy clustering," says Schulman. He believes that the way galaxies cluster together could be affected by a future contraction phase. Unfortunately, he has not yet worked out what form this effect might take. But over the past few years, a small group of physicists have been claiming that the Universe has an inexplicable fractal structure. Most cosmologists disagree, partly because they have no way to explain such a bizarre pattern. But say there is something in it. Could it perhaps be a memory of the future? ### Further reading: Time's Arrows and Quantum Measurement by L. S. Schulman (Cambridge University Press, 1997) Author: Marcus Chown New Scientist issue 5th February 2000 PLEASE MENTION NEW SCIENTIST AS THE SOURCE OF THIS STORY AND, IF PUBLISHING ONLINE, PLEASE CARRY A HYPERLINK TO : http://www.newscientist.com

In the UK Times today: Found: The hibernation Gene that could send man to the stars! Scientists have discovered genes for hibernation in humans. The discovery could pave the way for human hibernation of the kind forshadowed for astronauts in the 30 year old film 2001: A pace odessey. Human hibernation would ake ultrlong haul space travel feasible, with crews effectively put to sleep for months, even years, by triggering the hibernation genes that man's distant ancestors used millions of years ago to sleepthrough hostile winters. The first use of hibernation technology is likely to be in transplant surgery, where donor organs would be preserved on shelves for weeks or months by putting them into a state of deep sleep. After a five year project, Matthew andrews, associate professor of genetics at North Carolina State University has idenfied two genes - PL and PDK-4 - which appear to mastermind hibewrnation. One stops carbohydrate metabolism ewhich ensures that the glucose that animals have stored in their body from their last meal is preserved for use by the brain and central nervous system. The second gene controls the production of an enzyme that breaks up stored fatty acids, and converts then into usable fats for fuel. As result the animal can tick over on its stored fat. ..... Researchers found the genes can be made to work in similar ways [to animals] in humans. They also hope to dientify what genesare involved in triggering the loss of body fat, and to find a way of kick-starting the same genes in humans as a way of losing weight.

Amazing stuff, Maggie. Thanks for posting this. I had no idea!

I like the idea of the weight loss gene!!!! Seriously, it could revolutionise space travel and make things possible. Did you see anything on the newly discovered black hole that's near earth?

I have seen nothing. I am off to go a search for information about it. Thanks for the reminder. (If your body stayed the same shape would you care what you weighed? It is just a number and is entirely asbitrary!)

I'm just glad I don't have talking scales - numbers have power don't you know!

Yup! Numbers do have power. Even for the long and willowy sort who wishes she were more horizontally endowed. *sigh* Whoever though up talking appliances had nothing else to think about, obviously. Very weird, Indeed!

What do you think about talking spaceships? or computers for that matter. If we were weightless (e.g. in space) would size matter?????

Size would have to matter. The smaller the individuals, the more that could be accommodated, I would think. Everything has a load limit and the support system making the air to breathe and food to eat would have to be considered pr capita. I know of no way to eliminate the mass even if it is weightless!

Oh what a pity, just think of the airline bags you could take if weight didn't matter!!! Sorry, it's late and I'm feeling goofy.

When you ship via air freight, the cost for moving it is by the cubic foot, not by weight. Who said life was fair?!

From http://www.skypub.com/news/news.shtml Tuesday, February 1 New Martian Meteorite Discovered in California About 20 years ago, Robert S. Verish was on a rock-collecting trip in Southern California�s Mojave Desert. While walking around, he spotted a couple of dark basaltic rocks. Interested, Verish scooped them up, took them home, and put them in a box for safe keeping. It wasn�t until last October that Verish realized he stumbled upon a great find. While cleaning, he noticed that the rocks he collected looked surprising like meteorites. Excited, he brought samples of each rock to geochemist Alan Rubin (University of California, Los Angeles). Rubin confirmed the rocks to be meteorites and noted the similarity they had to a Martian meteorite discovered in Antarctica in 1994. "It was immediately obvious it was similar to Martian meteorites," says Rubin. "Within two minutes we were convinced." "There may be other pieces out there," Rubin notes. "The problem is we don�t know where 'out there' is. If we knew specifically where it was, we could look out there for more." This find brings the current number of known Martian meteorites to 14, and the Los Angeles meteorites are only the second piece of Mars to be found in the United States. The first, named Lafayette, was discovered in Indiana in 1931. Meteorites are known to be of Martian origin largely for two reasons. First, gases trapped in the rock match that of the Martian atmosphere. Second, the rock�s oxygen isotopic ratios are unlike other meteorites or any Earth rock, but they match the ratios found on Mars. The rocks were likely ejected from Mars during a large impact event, making their way to Earth in less than a million years.

I think this is the black hole Maggie was asking about... Chandra Finds a "Cool" Black Hole at the Heart of the Andromeda Galaxy CXC PR: 00-03 January 14, 2000 Steve Roy Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, AL Phone: 256-544-6535 http://www.msfc.nasa.gov/news Dr. Wallace Tucker Chandra X-ray Observatory Center Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, MA Phone: 617-496-7998 In its first look at the Andromeda Galaxy (M31), NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has found that the gas funneling into a supermassive black hole in the heart of this galaxy is a "cool" million degrees. This unexpected result adds one more quirk to the strange behavior previously observed at the center of M31. A team of scientists from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Mass., reported on this observation at the 195th national meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Atlanta, Ga. The team is led by Drs. Stephen Murray and Michael Garcia, and includes Drs. Frank Primini, William Forman, Christine Jones, and Ralph Kraft. Chandra took its first X-ray picture of the Andromeda Galaxy with the Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer on October 13, 1999. More than 100 individual X-ray sources were seen. One of these sources was at the previously determined position of the central supermassive black hole, which has the mass of 30 million suns. With many X-ray emitting stars in the center of M31 there was a slight chance that one of them might be at this position just by coincidence. The low temperature of the suspected central source, as compared to the other sources, gave the team the clue they needed. "When we found that what we suspected was the central object was also anomalously cool, we KNEW we had it� one coincidence might be believable, but two was too much to ignore!" said Garcia. While the gas falling into the central black hole is cool, it is only cool by comparison to the 100 other X-ray sources in the Andromeda Galaxy. To be detected by an X-ray telescope, the gas must have a temperature of more than a million degrees. The typical X-ray star in the Andromeda Galaxy has a temperature of several tens of millions of degrees. In contrast, the temperature of the supermassive black hole source is a few million degrees. The Andromeda Galaxy is our nearest neighbor spiral galaxy at a distance of two million light years. It is similar to our own Milky Way in size, shape, and also contains a supermassive black hole at the center. This central black hole has always been a bit odd when compared to central black holes in similar galaxies. Based on its X-ray luminosity, it is much fainter in radio waves than expected. Such behavior, coupled with Chandra�s discovery of the low temperature gas, cannot be accommodated by standard models developed for supermassive black holes in galaxies like the Milky Way and Andromeda. "The Chandra observation is telling us that an entirely different flow pattern is operating around the Andromeda black hole," said Dr. Eliot Quataert, of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, N.J. "This will require a different class of models than usually considered." One possibility is that the gas undergoes a large scale boiling motion which slows down the rate at which gas falls into the black hole. The best previous X-ray pictures were not sharp enough to clearly distinguish the X-ray source associated with the black hole in the center of the Andromeda Galaxy nor did they give information about the temperature of the source. "A good analogy might be to say that previous X-ray images were taken with a slightly out-of-focus black and white camera, while the Chandra image is taken with a sharp, color camera" said Murray. Another intriguing feature of this observation is the detection of a diffuse glow that extends for a thousand light years around the central region. It is not known if this is due to many individual sources, or to a hot wind expanding out from the center. "This is just a first, quick look at our nearest Milky Way analog," Murray emphasized. "I expect that our future pictures will lead to more exciting discoveries in the Andromeda Galaxy." The ACIS instrument was built for NASA by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, and Pennsylvania State University, University Park. To follow Chandra's progress, visit the Chandra site at: http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/cycle1/0007/index.html AND http://chandra.nasa.gov NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra program. TRW, Inc., Redondo Beach, Calif., is the prime contractor for the spacecraft. The Smithsonian's Chandra X-ray Center controls science and flight operations from Cambridge, Mass. High resolution digital versions of the X-ray image (JPG, 300 dpi TIFF ) and other information associated with this release are available on the Internet at: http://chandra.harvard.edu/

Ginny! Thanks for these posts and for finding the black hole which I had not had time to search for. I actually spent yesterday hunting up new graphics (and better ones) for the topics in here with great success. Zowie! Meteorite is number 1 on my wish list. I just need a wee little piece. The closest to anything like that is the tectite David got for me some years ago. I am not all that sure they are ejecta from the moon, but they are very odd-looking rocks, and I am happy to have one.

Space Shuttle Launched From Florida Complex CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - The space shuttle Endeavour roared off the launch pad Friday on a long-delayed radar mapping mission that should produce the best ever three-dimensional images of Earth's surface. The six-astronaut crew will spend 11 days in space as they bounce radar signals off cities, fields, mountains and forests, almost everything, in fact, that shapes the Earth's surface between the polar regions. As those signals bounce back into space, they will be collected by antennae aboard the orbiter and at the end of a 197-foot mast deployed from the shuttle's cargo bay. It is those slightly off-set images, like the ones seen in a 3-D movie or picture, that should make this whole-Earth topographical map the best ever assembled. NASA had been trying to launch this mission since September, but technical glitches and safety concerns kept Endeavour grounded. A launch attempt last week was scrubbed by cold winds and heavy rain, and mission managers used the delay to replace a faulty piece of flight hardware that engineers detected late in the countdown. ``Liftoff of space shuttle Endeavour on a 21st century mission, putting Earth back on the map,'' said launch commentator Joel Wells as Endeavour sailed through the clear blue skies above the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The launch was delayed by about 20 minutes past its 12:30 p.m. scheduled launch time for last-minute technical checks. Once the astronauts have stowed their spacesuits and configured shuttle systems for orbit, the first major task will be to deploy the radar mast, which when fully extended will be the longest fixed structure ever to fly in space. ------------------------------------------------------------ Watch it live http://www.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/countdown/video/video45m.html

I have been watching the Nasa feed all afternoon and watched the antenna which is going to map the world in fine detail operate. I hope you all smiled and looked up every 90 minutes as the shuttle circled the earth. More about this mission will be taken up on http://www.spring.net/yapp-bin/restricted/read/geo/5/new

From http://dailynews.yahoo.com Monday February 21 12:40 PM ET Shuttle Crew Solves Hatch Glitch, Set for Return By Brad Liston CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - Astronauts aboard the space shuttle Endeavour ended their ambitious Earth-mapping work on Monday and prepared to come home, but not without some last-minute anxiety as they struggled to shut a hatch. Following a final mapping pass over Australia, the astronauts began to stow their radar gear for Tuesday's scheduled landing, but there was trouble with the 20-story radar deployed just hours after their Feb. 11 liftoff. Although the 197-foot collapsible truss-structure folded easily into its canister in Endeavour's cargo bay, three latches designed to secure the canister's hatch refused to lock into place. The Endeavour astronauts, working remote controls from the orbiter's crew compartment, tried three times to shut the lid before finally succeeding, using a maximum force setting. Cheers erupted in Houston's Mission Control Center when ground controllers saw the hatch close successfully in a television feed from the orbiter. ``Excellent job. A little extra work and well worth the effort,'' Mission Control told the astronauts. If the astronauts had not been able to close the hatch, Mission Control probably would have ordered the astronauts to detonate small explosives that would have tossed the mast and its canister overboard. Although two of the astronauts were trained to leave the orbiter and repair the mast, NASA discarded that option on Saturday when the space agency ordered an extra nine hours of mapping, using time that had been reserved for the contingency spacewalk. Tense Moments In Space The 2-1/2 hours spent on Monday trying to close the latches provided tense moments on the ground and in space. After one failed attempt, mission commander Kevin Kregel radioed a disappointed assessment: ``It's a little bit closed.'' Even if the mast had been sacrificed, the glitch would not have affected the focus of Endeavour's mission, collecting radar readings that will be used to create the most detailed 3-D surface maps ever assembled. Since taking flight on Feb. 11, the shuttle has mapped more than 46 million square miles of Earth's land formations, most of it twice. The data was stored on 326 digital cassettes inside Endeavour's crew compartment. Only about two to three percent of Earth's topography has been mapped in the kind of resolution that NASA hopes to accomplish with this mission. The U.S. military will be the chief beneficiary. The National Imagery and Mapping Agency, which supplies classified maps for U.S. defense and intelligence agencies, is NASA's primary partner on this flight. Most of the highest resolution images are likely to remain classified. A lower resolution map, still superior to existing planetary topography images, will be made public. Scientists will be given access to the higher resolution images on a case-by-case basis, NASA said.

The U.S. military will be the chief beneficiary. The National Imagery and Mapping Agency, which supplies classified maps for U.S. defense and intelligence agencies, is NASA's primary partner on this flight. You betcha. That's why I was waving and smiling peacefully each time they took my picture. Sheesh! Is anyone surprised?! I have a molten lava flows to sell for your future houselots. Get'em while they're hot!!!

Most of the highest resolution images are likely to remain classified. A lower resolution map, still superior to existing planetary topography images, will be made public. Scientists will be given access to the higher resolution images on a case-by-case basis, NASA said. Sorta, need-to-own basis? And, I wanted a new atlas to add to my library. Mine is very old... phooey! (Still have those hot lava flows for ya if you're interested...*grin*)

I found all that to be very disappointing, too. Our tax dollars support all this, just so the government can turn around and say we don't need to see it?? phooey is right! :-P

Dontcha wonder where our right to know and their obsession with being the most powerful begin and end?! Be sure to check on Bechtel. Your Boston dig is just a legit front for a REALLY big deal going on. Years ago, when A Rockefeller was vice president of the US, one of his brothers built the Mauna Kea Beach Resort on the Kona side of this island. When we drove by and my dad saw the Bechtel sign on the construction "shack" he simply uttered the name and fell silent. Those were the days when Scandia laboratories had highly-guarded test facilities high up on Mauna Loa. ...and, my Dad was a Knights Templar and a 33� Mason. Anyone get a connection (not sure I do, but there are those out there nodding!)

This is an old news story, but I thought it might still be of interest since we were talking about black holes recently. It's really exciting that they are finally starting to find evidence of black holes; they've theorized about supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies for more than a decade! New evidence of black hole at Milky Way's center January 7, 1998 Web posted at: 10:03 p.m. EST (0303 GMT) WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A massive black hole, with a mass 2.6 million times that of the sun, sits at the center of our Milky Way galaxy, providing its gravitational anchor, according to new evidence unveiled by astronomers Wednesday. Research teams in Germany and the United States found that some stars near the black hole, named Sagittarius A, are speeding along at more than 600 miles a second -- nearly 2.2 million miles per hour (3.5 million kph). "This is the strongest case we have yet for a super, massive black hole at the center of the Milky Way," said astronomer Andreas Eckart at a news conference sponsored by the American Astronomical Society. Sagittarius A is about 26,000 light years from our sun and the planets that revolve around it. A light year is about 6 trillion miles (9.6 trillion km). A black hole is an entity of such density and gravitational strength that nothing -- not even light -- can escape from its grasp. Because it doesn't reflect light, a black hole cannot be seen and can only be detected by measuring the motion of stars, gas and dust nearby. The theory that a black hole exists in the center of the Milky Way -- the galaxy in which Earth is located -- has long been controversial, and many astronomers have rejected previous evidence supporting such a theory. But researchers at Wednesday's news conference said the latest data bolsters the idea of a black hole because that is the best explanation for their findings. Astronomers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics used radio telescopes to make independent measurements of the motion of the object at the center of the galaxy. They found that it stood relatively still compared to the rest of the galaxy -- which is consistent with a black hole. Another team of researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany found that thousands of stars existed in the area around the black hole, zipping around in tight circles. In order to cause stars to move that quickly, the black hole would have to have 2.6 million times as much mass as our sun. Many of the stars zipping around Sagittarius A are old -- "a retirement village for stars," says Eckart -- suggesting that the black hole grows more and more massive by sucking in stars over the eons and eventually swallowing them. Astronomers also unveiled evidence of another unusual black hole, nicknamed Old Faithful, about 40,000 light years from Earth. Old Faithful, more powerful the Sagittarius A, sucks matter into a doughnut-like disk, then ejects it in eruptions that throw out an amount of material as massive as Mount Everest at a speed of more than 171,000 miles per second (274,000 km per second.) "It's incredibly violent," said Steven Eikenberry of the California Institute of Technology. "We're talking about something that is trillions of times the annual energy output of the United States." And when the black hole is active, these eruptions take place in consistent 30-minute intervals. Those regular eruptions led NASA scientists to nickname the black hole after the Old Faithful geyser in Yellowstone National Park, which also erupts regularly. Reporter Rick Lockridge and Reuters contributed to this report.

I really appreciate your posting that article, Ginny. I kept missing it and forgetting to look it up. Now it is here...! You cannot imagine how happy I am in this little conference of mine lately. My favorite stuff being discussed by the greatest posters anywhere. Mahalo nui loa!

Today in Space 4 Mar 2000 Aurora Watch: An increase in geomagnetic activity levels could occur late today in response to a glancing blow from recent coronal mass ejections (CMEs) associated with the M6 and X1-class flares observed on March 2. A direct hit is not likely since neither of these CMEs were observed as a halo event. Solar activity has subsided since late in the day on March 3 (Universal Time). Nevertheless, the large sunspot groups 8891 and 8882 have complicated beta-gamma magnetic fields, which makes them likely sites for solar flares. 8891 is stll close to the center of the solar disk. Flares or coronal mass ejections from that region will likely be directed toward Earth.

Will that show up on photos?

Chcek http://www.spring.net/yapp-bin/restricted/read/geo/24.41 You can see the holes in the solar disk as brighter places where the cooler exterior were blown away. The entire discussion is fascinating and available: http://www.spaceweather.com/

Solar prominences are visible on photographs as streams of hot gases looping over the solar disk. Mostly, however, they are hightly charged particles which get to Earth and not visible until they get to the ionosphere where they cause Auroral displays. Look skyward these next few evenings!

Space Science News for March 5, 2000 Residents of Canada and the northern United States should be on the alert for aurora borealis during the night of March 5 and morning of March 6. The best time to view aurorae is usually around local midnight. Tonight's new moon will make even faint activity easy to see. Early on March 5, 2000, the interplanetary magnetic field in the vicinity of Earth developed a significant southward-directed component. This condition often means that solar wind plasma can penetrate Earth's magnetosphere and trigger auroral activity. Data from NOAA's polar orbiting meteorological satellites late on March 5 show an expanded auroral oval. If this high level of activity continues, auroral displays could be visible as far south as the Great Lakes states and in New England. For continuing coverage of aurora and all forms of space weather, please visit http://www.SpaceWeather.com

Space Science News for March 9, 2000 New pictures from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft show exotic terrain made of dry ice near the Red Planet's south pole. Differences between the north and south poles suggest that the opposite ends of Mars have had divergent climates for thousands or perhaps even millions of years. FULL STORY at Martian Swiss Cheese

Propagation Forecast Bulletin 10 There was a nice surprise for participants in last weekend's DX contest. ARLB009 predicted stormy geomagnetic conditions, but it turned out that the energy from solar eruptions did not affect the earth's geomagnetic field. Instead of the predicted planetary A indices of 12, 28 and 25 for Friday through Sunday, the A index for those days was 5, 5 and 7, which is very quiet. Solar flux was 189, 167 and 181. Average solar flux was about the same last week as the week before, and average sunspot numbers were slightly lower. Average A indices have also been lower. Solar flux is expected to dip below 200 this weekend. Predicted flux values for Friday through Tuesday are 200, 195, 190, 185 and 180. Solar flux is expected to bottom out around 150 on March 17 or 18, then rise above 200 by March 23 and stay around 220 from March 25 to April 4. Geomagnetic indices are expected to remain quiet until March 22-23, then settle down again until March 31 and April 1. We are moving toward the spring equinox, which always means better HF conditions, especially with the rising solar flux. Look for more frequent worldwide openings on 10, 12 and 15 meters. Cable News Network has an email service which delivers weekly space news, and some of it concerns solar activity of interest to hams. The email service sends URL links to articles, such as the one at http://CNN.com/2000/TECH/space/03/01/sunspots/index.html. You can subscribe at http://cnn.com/EMAIL. In the mail this week was an interesting tip from a ham in Vermont, who wrote, ''This is Zach Manganello, K1ZK, I am a freshman at Middlebury College, and I just attended a lecture that I thought was absolutely fascinating, pertinent to HF propagation, and worthy of sharing with you at the ARRL. The lecture was about the Super Dual Auroral Radar Network (SuperDARN), and these scientists have giant radar arrays at several locations near the Earth's poles which they use to study interaction of solar radiation with the Earth's geosphere and ionosphere. Check out their web site at http://superdarn.jhuapl.edu ''. NASA Space Science News has an item this week about predicting disturbances by seeing what is happening on the other side of the sun that faces away from earth. This uses the Michelson Doppler Imager on the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, on the web at http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2000/ast09mar_1.htm . This is important because solar forecasts for the short term are based on calculating when known active regions will rotate back into view. If activity can be observed on the far side of the sun, then more accurate forecasts can be made which are not dependent on the last glimpse of the active region before it rotated out of view. Finally, check out http://www.solarmax2000.com/, a site devoted to this year's peak in solar activity. Sunspot numbers for March 2 through 8 were 209, 189, 167, 181, 172, 164 and 212 with a mean of 184.9. 10.7 cm flux was 213.2 203.8, 200.2, 220.3, 222.4, 221.8 and 214.9, with a mean of 213.8, and estimated planetary A indices were 8, 5, 5, 7, 11, 16 and 13, with a mean of 9.3.

Space Science News for March 10, 2000 NASA's durable Galileo spacecraft is joining forces with Saturn-bound Cassini on a mission to study Jupiter's magnetosphere -- the biggest thing in the solar system. How big is it? If Jupiter's magnetosphere were visible, it would appear to be larger than the Sun or Moon in spite of its great distance from Earth. This story also includes plasma wave sounds recorded by Galileo in 1996 as it sailed past Jupiter's largest moon Ganymede. Galileo will swing past Ganymede two more times before the end of 2000.FULL STORY at The Biggest Thing in the Solar System

I'm gonna start putting these Space science notices in Geosites for Kids - Geo 15. More people will see them as they are linked the parents conference.

It's all his fault: On This Date in History: March 13 In 1781, the distant planet Uranus was discovered by British

astronomer William Herschel.

Blame it on Herschel. It was all because he had a classical education. There were already the planets Jupiter and Saturn, so that led to Uranus, the grandfather and father of them respectively in mythology.

Not only that...he was of the same school as Handel and was German born, as well. He went to England under the tutilage of the Hanoverian kings as did Handel. German engineering again...and glorious music, too. Fortunately the Titan-planets did not devour their own children - or did they?

I shall ask Alexander how Uranus is pronounced in German...it might just give us a new slant on the sound of the name in question!

I don't know if the Titan planets tried to devour their children. Maybe they did, which might explain why they all have rings. Of course, none can compare with Saturn's ring system. Uranus (the Sky) in Greek mythology was the consort to Gaia (the Earth) which gave birth to the Titans.

Ah...yes! I was slightly ahead of myself with Uranus. I can still see Blake's woodcut (was it? or etching?) of Saturn devouring his children...terrifying. Interesting that Earth is the only one who supposedly spawned her own moon rather than devouring it.

...or am I seriously confused on this Monday in particular?! Going to look up the artwork and will post it when I find it...

It was etching by Blake. There is also a painting by Goya of the same subject. Old Goya had a bit of bizarre sense of humor; the Saturn devouring his children painting hung in Goya's dining room.

Thank you! I was about to do some serious brain revamping. Yuck! What a painting to hang in your dining room. Bet his kids behaved! Thanks, Cheryl - don't even think of not posting in here - I cannot possibly remember everything and I need you! *hugs*

You're too kind. I knew those art history courses would be useful someday.

My Bullfinch is in the other room. Saturn was not a Titan, I guess...?

You might be right. I thought he was though, Gaia and Uranus gave birth to the Titans. Among the Titans were Rhea and Chronos (Saturn) who gave birth to the Olympian gods. The brothers Zeus (Jupiter), Poseidon (Neptune), and Hades (Pluto) divided the rule of all creation among themselves. Hades got the Underworld, (talk about a bum deal), Poseidon got dominion of the Seas, (not to shabby), and Zeus got the Sky, because he was the oldest and got everyone else out of Chronos's tummy.

Right!!! Now I remember. Mahalo nui loa!

Space Science News for March 13, 2000 With a little help from the Sun, NASA's NEAR spacecraft has spotted a telltale x-ray glow from elements on asteroid Eros. Scientists discussed that and other accomplishments at a press conference today. FULL STORY at One month around asteroid Eros

Yes, Kronos and Rhea were Titans (there were 12 in all), but Zeus was the youngest of their children. Rhea hid Zeus from Kronos because she was tired of losing all her children as soon as they were born. She even helped Zeus overthrow Kronos. It's an interesting succession. Uranus was overthrown by his son, Kronos, who in turn was overthrown by his son, Zeus. What a lovely bunch of gods to worship!! It's a wonder the ancient Greeks didn't kill themselves in despair...

Since you are the resident Greek person, did not the ancients like gods to whom they could relate, so along with the divinity, they gave them the same shortcomings we have, as well. Made them less fearsome - until you angered them. I think most of the worship was spent appeasing them rather than worhshipping as we do in OT / NT religions. (Please correct me if this analysis is off base!)

Right Ginny, Zeus was the youngest, I don't know why I thought him the oldest Titan. As the Greeks became more sophistocated many of the most educated ceased to believe in their own religion by classical times. Pythagoras formulated his own religion based on -- what else -- geometry.

Space Science News for March 15, 2000 What do asteroids and cosmic gamma-ray bursts have in common? NASA's NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft is helping astronomers learn more about both. The gamma-ray spectrometer on NEAR -- designed to study the elements of asteroid Eros -- helped pinpoint an an unusual gamma-ray burst on March 1st. Now, telescopes around the world are tracking the explosion's afterglow. This could be the first of many high-energy discoveries during NEAR's one-year mission to Eros. FULL STORY at Gamma-ray bursts are NEAR MORE GAMMA-RAY NEWS: The NASA/Marshall Space Flight Center reports that amateur astronomers have imaged the optical afterglow from the gamma-ray burst detected by NEAR on March 1, 2000. In collaboration with the AAVSO, NASA plans to organize a global network of amateurs to monitor gamma-ray burst fireballs. FULL STORY atAmateurs catch a gamma-ray burst

Space Science News for March 16, 2000 Fragments of a meteor that exploded over the Yukon in January, 2000, have been collected and turned over to Canadian and NASA scientists for analysis. The find is potentially the most important recovery of a rock from space in at least 31 years. FULL STORY at Yukon meteorite recovered! ---

The last time a carbonaceous chondrite was quickly recovered after its fall to Earth was September 28, 1969 near Murchison, Australia. The Murchison meteorite, pictured here, has fascinated students of life's origins since 1970, when investigators discovered that the rock is rich in amino acids and other complex organic compounds.

I did read today that the meteorite fragments found in the Yukon was causing some excitement because they thought they might have been formed before the solar system - am I right?

Not sure, Anne, but I shall investigate at the url above. If I am not mistaken, most, if not all meteorites which land on Earth are debris left over from the formation of the Solar System. Let me check! Propagation Forecast Bulletin 11 Average solar flux was down slightly and average sunspot numbers rose over the past week. There were no really disturbed days, but the geomagnetic field was active on March 12. The spring equinox is coming up this Monday, and this is always an exciting time for HF operators. Conditions should be good this season with the rising solar flux. Solar flux has been declining this week, and is expected to reach a short term minimum near 170 from March 19 to 21. Flux values should quickly rise to another short term peak that is expected to be very broad. Solar flux should be around 220 from March 25 through April 4. The projected solar flux for the next five days, Friday through Tuesday, is 180, 175, 170, 170 and 170. Planetary A index for these same days is expected to be 8, 8, 8, 8 and 12. Upcoming dates that may be disturbed are March 22-24, March 31 and April 1, and April 18 and 19. Chip, K7JA, wrote to alert readers to fantastic conditions on 10 meters, including long path propagation. He is in Southern California, and writes ''You might want to mention in your column the tremendous LP openings on 10 meters lately. Saturday night of ARRL Phone was one, and last night (perhaps 0300z to 0800z at least, out here, earlier on Right Coast) was a doozy. The band started over the top into UA9, etc., and about 0300z went to Long Path. Loud UA9s, 3B8FG, JY9NX, A41LZ, A45XR, 5Z4WI, SU9ZZ, and stations from literally everywhere in Europe (like PA, DL, OH etc.) filled the band. I gave up at midnight, but the band was still hopping. The East Coast got into this one, as did stations in Texas and other Midwestern areas. I saw a number of spots by W3UR. Basically, about 7 PM is a good time to be watchful to the south, beaming about 90 degrees. Last night's opening, however, had a broad peak into Europe, maybe as far up as 220 degrees or so. Guess we finally have a sunspot cycle!'' Sunspot numbers for March 9 through 15 were 225, 231, 178, 188, 172, 193 and 167 with a mean of 193.4. 10.7 cm flux was 205.8 203.4, 203.2, 203.2, 188.1, 182.6 and 177.8, with a mean of 194.9, and estimated planetary A indices were 5, 10, 12, 19, 4, 6 and 3, with a mean of 8.4.

Saw (some of ) a fascinating programme on planets beyond the solar system last night. Trouble was I fell asleep watching it so I didn't make any notes. Sorry!

*sigh* Will they do reruns?! planets BEYOND the solar system?! Gotta see that one, for sure!

re: .155 & .156 Marcia, I agree with your analysis. The ancient Greeks believed in the notion of "hubris", which was basically pride, insolence, and general defiance of the gods. Anyone who angered the gods was sure to be punished. Many of the myths involved mortals who ran afoul of the gods (Sisyphus, Tantalus, Arachne, Andromeda, Phaethon... to name a few). Cheryl, I haven't really studied the downfall of the ancient Greek religion, but it makes sense that the philosophers and scientists would be the first ones to stop believing. Wasn't Socrates put to death for being a non-believer and speaking against the pagan gods? I'll have to look that one up.

I think Socrates was charged with impiety leading up to his trial. One of the main charges at the trial which culminated in his being sentenced to death was corrupting the youth of Athens. Socrates advocated moral philosophy over blind adherence to religion. Most of the Greek philosophers, Socrates among them, espooused a rational vision of the universe. Their belief was that the intellectual component of human nature was the most important. The force of truth was examplified by reason. Even if a person desired to do otherwise, his reason (the force of truth) would force him to accept the logical conclusions. The historical context of Socrates trial should be considered. He was tried in the years just after Athens had lost the Peloponnesian War to Sparta. Democracy in Athens was overthrown, and the Spartans enstated an oligarchy of 30 tyrants to rule over Athens. Socrates was viewed as a threat to public order by undermining the moral conventions of the city and brought to public trial at the age of 70. The fact that he led a private life and chose not to be concerned with Athenian politics was to his detriment. He served only when called upon. Although he held full rights of Athenian citizenship for 40 years, he never took it upon himself to take on public service. Socrates himself claimed that he wished to preserve his own moral principles, therefore took no interest in politics. This did not sit well with the Athenians. The Athenian leader Pericles stated at his funeral oration at the time of the outset of the Peloponnesion War: ...this is a peculiarity of ours: we do not say that a man who takes no interest in politics is a man who minds his own business; we say he has no business here at all. Not only did Socrates harbor what might construed as a disdain for democracy; he also held indiosyncratic and unconventional views of the gods. He was critical and questioning in his view of religion. He was as well interested in the new knowlege of philosophers, since referred to as the presocratics. They believed in natural theories for the existence of the cosmos. To them reality could be explained by the movement of matter or the recombination of elements. One of the best known of these natural philosophers was Anaxagoras, for whom Socrates accused his critics of mistaking him. Socrates accusers seem to have thought him quilty of doing the same inquiring into the domains of the gods, into things below the earth and sky. Which brings us back to the title of this topic: Beyond Planet Earth. Remember what Socrates said, "The unexamined life is not worth living."

As an aside, Wasn't Socrates convicted of Corruption of the Nation's Youth?! How terribly modern that sounds and how nasty the inplication nowadays!

Space Science News for March 19, 2000 As the Sun sets at the south pole on March 20, 2000, Earth will join two other planets in the solar system where it is northern Spring. FULL STORY at Sunset at the South Pole

Yes, Marcia that was the offence for which Socrates was convicted. What is interesting is that in the later Hellenistic culture and the Roman Empire the Socratic Method was deemed the proper method for education. This entailed requiring the student to argue both sides of a topic.

Today is Monday, March 20, the 80th day of 2000 with 286 to follow. Spring begins today in the Northern Hemisphere at 2:35 a.m. EST. The moon is waning, moving toward its last quarter. The morning stars are Mercury and Venus. The evening stars are Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.

Indeed - and until one understands both sides of the subject in question, one cannot know the truth about it! Still as relevant today as it was then!

Space dust disappears into black holes. British astronomers have found that black holes at the centre of galaxies get bigger with age by consuming dust and gas. The first evidence of black hole appetites was found by astronomers at Nottingham and Birmingham universities who compared the ages of galaxies with the dark mass at their centres. The older the galaxy, the bigger the b. The astronomers determoined the age of 23 galaxies, concluding that some were as young as four billion and others as old as 12 billion years. "One of the basic properties of a black hole is that material can fall into it, but can't get out" professor Merrifield of Nottingham University, said. The findings will be presented next week at a conference in Oxford, and published in the Monthly notices of the royal Astronomical Society, next month. See http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/~ppzmrm/blackhole.html

Maggie's Black hole picture:

Interesting story and incredible picture. I wish I could have dared to post the enlarged one but thought it better for Terry's bandwidth that I make a smaller version for posting here. Thanks, Maggie - Fantastic stuff!

That didn't come out too badly did it, considering it came from a newspaper! (the size above was the size it came up on my screen, didn't realise it sent as larger - still sorting that out!). Still can't figure how to put that in myself if it's from my computer.

It is probably better that you send the biggest possible one and let me downsize it. It has worked well so far on Geo and other places I have posted images. You did an excellent scanning job. I am envious of your talents and Wolfie's as well. Guess I'm just gonna have to take the plunge and get one, too.

The graphic you are posting must first be on the internet, not just your home computer. After I downsized your image, I ftp'd it to Spring's hard drive (hosts have space allotted to them for such things). From there I got the image location by accessing my webspace url then did the command string to post it. Simple, once you've done it a few dozen times *grin* but I still occasionally mess it up...*sigh*

Mine's only a cheapy (�49). I got it to scan academic text documents - I've got a pretty nifty text scan programme that does really well. But it's doing pretty well on pics too now I've sussed the right settings. Trouble is I can't run the scanner and zip drive at the same time, and it's complicated to change the wires round.

Hmmm...there is not a splitter available like an extension cord with several outlets on the end?! I am afraid I am going to have that same problem!

I've also run out of plug space on my extension lead. Under my desk looks like some kind of geek's paradise! Mind you the top doesn't look much better. Yes, I'm off to have my bath now - don't nag!

LOL...is there a cyber knee-hole which is not filled with extensions and plugs and such?! If there are, they are not trying hard enough - and my feet are atop my tool box under there, too! The top is hopeless. As soon as one project gets done another takes its place....*sigh*

Space Science News for March 22, 2000 The Earth's magnetosphere is being buffeted by high-speed solar wind particles from a coronal hole straddling the center of the Sun's disk. The solar wind velocity has increased from 350 to 600 km/s during the past 12 hours. Follow the action at http://www.spaceweather.com MORE SPACE SCIENCE NEWS: #1 Curiouser and Curiouser: The exotic world of gamma-ray astronomy has taken yet another surprising turn with the revelation that half the previously unidentified high-energy gamma ray sources in our own galaxy actually comprise a new class of mysterious objects. FULL STORY at http://spacescience.com/headlines/y2000/ast23mar_1m.htm #2 Solar Cycle Update: Is the real Y2K problem just starting? The solar cycle appears to be on schedule for a peak in mid-2000. FULL STORY at http://spacescience.com/headlines/y2000/ast22mar_1m.htm

Henceforth Space Science News will be posted in http://www.spring.net/yapp-bin/restricted/read/news/36 This will enable a wider readership. For some reason surfers avoid Geo like it was a deadly disease. Suggestion?

Propagation Forecast Bulletin 12 Spring is here, and 10 and 12 meters are the place to be. A high solar flux and shifting seasons are again producing conditions where low power mobiles can work the world on the highest HF bands. Last year at this time, the average solar flux for the week was 147.5. This week it was 207.8, much higher, and almost 13 points higher than last week's average. A steady upward recent trend can be seen in the graph at http://www.dxlc.com/solar/. Geomagnetic indices have been quite low, but this should change. Active conditions are predicted for the next few days due to recurring coronal holes and some recent flare activity. A large coronal hole that has been returning for several months has split into three groups, and one of them crosses the sun's equator and is well positioned for disturbing radio conditions here on earth. Weekend conditions for the CQ Worldwide WPX Phone Contest could be stormy. The predicted planetary A index for the next five days, Friday through Tuesday, is 25, 30, 20, 10 and 10, so it looks like the best contest conditions may be on Sunday. On March 31 and April 1 conditions may be unsettled or active again, but should be quiet until April 18. Solar flux predicted for the next five days is 230, 240, 245, 245 and 235. Flux values are expected to bottom out around 185 on April 12 or 13, then peak near 250 around April 22 or 23. The High-Energy Solar Spectrograph Imager mission was set back at least six months when the satellite was mistakenly vibrated too hard in a test on a shake table at the Jet Propulsion Lab. The deployment of the satellite, which is designed to observe solar flares in their most energetic wavelengths, was expected to coincide with the solar maximum this year. You can read about the accident at http://www.msnbc.com/news/386019.asp?0a=23232C5 and about the HESSI mission itself at the NASA web site http://hesperia.gsfc.nasa.gov/hessi/index.html and at a University of California site, http://hessi.ssl.berkeley.edu/. Sunspot numbers for March 16 through 22 were 138, 152, 142, 208, 240, 191 and 212 with a mean of 183.3. 10.7 cm flux was 184.4, 192.4, 194.8, 208.2, 210.3, 230.5 and 233.8, with a mean of 207.8, and estimated planetary A indices were 4, 6, 7, 8, 8, 6 and 11, with a mean of 7.1.

How to persuade the others to look. Is the Sun sexy! or something like that - difficult and a shame because it is all so interesting.

Sex definitly sells and attracts attention. Oh well, I posted something in Porch where more people will see it. Today I posted the Discovery Channel Online in Geosites for Kids (Geo 15) with the schedule of good things to watch on the telly this week on their channel. I hope others see it. I'll put it in each Saturday hoping....!

NASA is now concerned about how to avoid showering the earth with huge shards of red-hot metal. The space agency announced this weekend that it is to crash-land a satellite the size of a railway engine in the Pacific Ocean to prevent it from spiralling out of control perhaps onto an inhabited area. The Compton gamma ray observatory studies mysterious natural explosions in space. Scientists had desperately tried to save it as no other instrument gives such good insight into the highest energy parts of the spectrum, where most energetic events in the universe show themselves. Last week NASA confirmed that it had suffered a catastrophic failure in one three gyroscopes that keep it pointing the right way. As it was deemed too expensive to send up a space shuttle to repair it, NASA scientists now plan to use Compton�s remaining fuel to bring it down in a controlled descent in June. If they did not, NASA admitted, the satellite would veer off course, lose its balance and fall more than 100 miles to earth. It is so big that large chinks of metal would not burn up, like most space debris, but would land with the force of a substantial meteorite. This has happened before in 1979 when the Skylab station was being decommissioned and spread burning debris across Australia. (The Times, 26.3.2000)

I glad John sent in that thing about time. i saw that and then lost it and could'nt find it again.

What did John send in? Did I miss something? Yikes!!! More debris heading for us out in the Pacific (which is very large until you start talking about something from space...)

I'm sure i didn't imagine it, but i can't see it. it was about space time continuum and time reversal. Maybe I've gone mad!

No...it is there somewhere. Hmmmm...I just might have to look it up again. I would ask him but he is currently doing a midnight to 6am shift as production manager at the station as well as taping the 6 hour morning show he does daily, and tomorrow through Saturday he will be also doing Play-by-play baseball games for UHHilo - one televised, as well - from Kona. Poor dear is not all that fit and I am more than a little concerned about it. He needs as much rest as he can get so I do not bother him with email during weeks like this.

I was sure i saw it as I scrolled through. then it had disappeared. (Humpy noises coming from off stage. Gotta go. probably offline for a coupla days. Bye)

Bye!!! Good luck, Dear!

Space Weather News for March 29-30, 2000 Aurora Watch: Skywatchers in northern Europe, Canada, Alaska, and the northermost tier of US states could be treated to a display of aurora borealis tonight thanks to elevated levels of geomagnetic activity late in the day on March 29. Also today, the SOHO spacecraft captured beautiful images of a full-halo coronal mass ejection (CME) from the Sun. Full-halo CMEs are massive bubbles of hot gas headed either directly toward or away from Earth. This one appears to have erupted on the back side of the Sun and is proceeding away from our planet. Details on both are available at http://www.spaceweather.com

If this image updates you will be able to watch the aurora wax and wane from http://www.sec.noaa.gov/pmap/pmapN.html This plot shows the current extent and position of the auroral oval in the northern hemisphere, extrapolated from measurements taken during the most recent polar pass of the NOAA POES satellite. The yellow, clock-like, arrow in the plot points toward the noon meridian. The statistical pattern depicting the auroral oval is appropriate to the auroral activity level determined from the power flux observed during the most recent polar satellite pass. The power fluxes in the statistical pattern are color coded on a scale from 0 to 10 ergs .cm-2.sec-1 according to the color bar on the right. The pattern has been oriented with respect to the underlying geographic map using the current universal time, updated every ten minutes. This presentation provides an estimate of the location, extent, and intensity of aurora on a global basis. For example, the presentation gives a guide to the possibility that the aurora is located near a given location in the northern hemisphere under the conditions that existed at the time of the most recent polar satellite pass.

Mauna Kea team finds the smallest planets yet beyond our solar system By Gregg K. Kakesako Star-Bulletin Two more planets -- which may be smaller in mass than Saturn -- have been discovered by scientists at W.M. Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea in the hunt for extra-solar planets. The latest planets are far smaller than the planets that have previously been found orbiting suns beyond our solar system. Saturn, the sixth planet in our solar system, is about nine times wider than Earth, but has only one-third the mass of its neighbor Jupiter. Of the 30 planets previously found around stars like Earth's sun, all have been Jupiter-sized or larger. The finding was made by Geoff Marcy of San Francisco State University and the University of California at Berkeley; Paul Butler of the Carnegie Institution of Washington; and Steve Vogt of the University of California at Santa Cruz, using the 10-meter Keck I telescope. In a written statement, Marcy said that searching for planets orbiting distant stars is "like looking at a beach from a distance." "Previously we only saw the large boulders, which were Jupiter-sized planets or larger," he said. "Now we are seeing the 'rocks,' Saturn-sized planets or smaller." Sighting Earth-sized objects, said Marcy, would be like seeing pebbles on that beach. Astronomers are not yet able to do that. One planet, with at least 80 percent the mass of Saturn, is orbiting 3.8 million miles from the star HD-46375, 109 light years away in the constellation Monoceros. Another planet, with 70 percent of Saturn's mass, was found 32.5 million miles from the star 79 Ceti (HD16141), 117 light years away in the constellation Cetus. The planets are presumably gas giants, the scientists say, made mostly of primordial hydrogen and helium, rather than the rocky materials that make up Earth. They orbit so close to their parent stars that they are extremely hot and not conducive to life. The planet orbiting 79 Ceti has an average temperature of 1,530 degrees; while the planet orbiting HD46375 has an average temperature of 2,070 degrees. The planets probably formed at a farther distance from the star, the scientists say, where they accumulated cool gas and then migrated into their present orbits. Discovery of the Saturn-sized planets, however, supports a theory that planets such as those in Earth's solar system formed around many stars in the universe. It also supports the theory that most planets are relatively small, such as Earth, Mars and Venus. The planets are not actually seen by astronomers. Instead, they measure the gravitational effect of planets on their star. As a planet orbits, it causes the star to wobble very slightly. By measuring this wobble, scientists can detect the presence and size of a planet. Astronomers have used this technique to catalog at least 21 extrasolar planets. The group is searching some 1,100 stars within 300 light-years of Earth to find evidence of planets. A light-year is the distance that light travels in a year in a vacuum, about 6 trillion miles. Other astronomy groups are also searching and have found additional extrasolar planets.

found the above article on msn today but you beat me to it *wink*

I got it almost straight from the source...then Honolulu newspaper. The telescope mentioned (the Keck) is visible atop Mauna Kea from my yard!

NASA Science News for March 30, 2000 Next Thursday, April 6, three planets and the thin crescent Moon are going to put on a memorable sky show when the quartet converge inside a circle 9 degrees across. The grouping is just the prelude to a grander alignment of planets on May 5, 2000. Is doom at hand, as many mystics assert? Find out by reading the FULL STORY at http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2000/ast30mar_1m.htm Planets for Dessert Also, for kids and kids-at-heart, a younger person's version of this article is available at the NASA Kids web site: http://kids.msfc.nasa.gov/news/2000/news-planetalign.asp?se The Planets Line Up

NASA Science News for April 1, 2000 On April Fools Day, 2000, NASA researchers are questioning the fate of five high-flying sweet treats that disappeared after a meteor balloon flight in April 1999. FULL STORY at http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2000/ast01apr_1m.htm