Mysterious Volcano Lightning Creates Pretty Pictures`

Lightning in the ash plume of Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano. Credit: Olivier Vandeginste.

From Live Science:

It may look like the special effects from a disaster movie, but the bolts of lightning photographed in the plume of the ash-spewing Icelandic volcano are real. Thing is, the process that creates volcano lightning remains a bit of a mystery.

Several photographers have taken pictures of the stunning light show shooting from the angry mouth of Eyjafjallajokull, which has been pumping a cloud of ash into the atmosphere for several days. In addition to the spectacular electric storm in its plume, the volcano has created colorful sunsets around the world with its ash, which has also hampered air travel over Europe.

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A Trick Of The Light -- Mankind’s Ability To Look For Planets Like Earth Just Got Five Times Bette

First rock from the sun

From The Economist:

THREE centuries have passed since the polymath Sir Christopher Wren predicted that “a time will come when men will stretch out their eyes—they should see planets like our Earth.” By most astronomers’ accounts, that time is just about nigh. Indeed, detecting big planets orbiting other stars is no longer tricky—nearly 450 such exoplanets have been catalogued. Smaller, rocky planets orbiting at a comfortable distance from their stars—as the Earth does—remain more elusive.

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Head-Ramming Dino Had 'Gears' in Skull

A reconstruction of Texacephale langstoni shows how the dinosaur may have used its head. Nicholas Longrich

From The Telegraph:

The new Texas dino featured a skull with a domed top and side bones that may have allowed its skull bones to mesh on impact.

A new species dinosaur found in Texas featured flanges on the side of its skull that may have allowed its skull bones to mesh like gears -- a useful feature when it likely rammed heads with other dinosaurs, say researchers.

"It's possible that this would prevent the skull bones from dislocating under stresses," speculated Nicholas Longrich, a postdoctoral associate in Yale University's Department of Geology and Geophysics who was project leader for a study about the find published in the latest issue of the journal Cretaceous Research.

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The Image Microsoft Doesn't Want You To See

Worn out: Some of the workers making computer accessories for Microsoft at a Chinese factory

From The Daily Mail:

Showing Chinese sweatshop workers slumped over their desks with exhaustion, it is an image that Microsoft won't want the world to see.

Employed for gruelling 15-hour shifts, in appalling conditions and 86f heat, many fall asleep on their stations during their meagre ten-minute breaks.

For as little as 34p an hour, the men and women work six or seven days a week, making computer mice and web cams for the American multinational computer company.

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Is God A Mathematician?

From afar, Richard Feynman seemed as dangerous as plutonium (Image: CERN/SPL)

From New Scientist:

THE physicist Richard Feynman said, "It doesn't seem to me that this fantastically marvellous universe, this tremendous range of time and space and different kinds of animals, and all the different planets, and all these atoms with all their motions, and so on, all this complicated thing can merely be a stage so that God can watch human beings struggle for good and evil - which is the view that religion has. The stage is too big for the drama."

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New Tech Sees Dead People

Using hyperspectral imaging, scientists from McGill University have found unmarked animal graves with special cameras that measure changes in the light coming from soil and plants. (Getty Images)

From ABC News:

Technology Can Detect Chemicals Released by Decomposing Bodies

A spooky sounding technology is finding old, unmarked graves. Using hyperspectral imaging, scientists from McGill University have found unmarked animal graves with special cameras that measure changes in the light coming from soil and plants.

Hyperspectral imaging collects and processes light from across the electromagnetic spectrum, including visible light as well as ultraviolet and infrared light. The research could help police solve missing persons cases or reveal new mass graves from hundreds, if not thousands, of years ago.

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The Page: An E-Ink Newspaper That Won't Smudge Your Fingers

From Gizmodo:

For some reason I'm skeptical that the one thing keeping newspaper readers from switching to E-Ink readers is the form factor, but that doesn't make this semi-transparent E-Ink newspaper display concept any less cool.

The key word, of course, is concept, but flexible/foldable displays aren't anything new. Nor are interactive content or E-Ink. It's bringing these concepts together in a workable package that might take some time. Meanwhile, though, here's how it would ideally work (without all the wobbly images):

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Microsoft Debuts 'Fix It' Program

From The BBC:

Microsoft has launched "Fix It" software that keeps an eye on a PC and automatically repairs common faults.

The software basically adds the automatic diagnostics system in Windows 7 to older versions of Microsoft's operating system.

The software, currently available as a trial or beta version, is intended for users of Windows XP and Vista.

The package also tries to anticipate how security updates will affect a PC before they are installed.

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Why Can't Planes Fly Through Volcanic Ash? NASA Found Out The Hard Way

Jet Engine Meets Volcanic Ash This British Airways engine experienced a run in with a volcanic ash plume in 1982. Image: Eric Moody, British Airways

From Popular Science:

If you’ve been anywhere near a television or Web enabled device in the last week (and you must have been), you know that a volcanic eruption in Iceland has grounded airline flights across Europe and even halted a few flights into the northeastern-most areas of Canada. What you probably don’t know is how to pronounce the name of the volcano (Eyjafjallajökull) or why an eruption in Iceland is grounding flights in London, Madrid and Berlin.

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Dry Regions Becoming Drier: Ocean Salinities Show an Intensified Water Cycle

An Argo robotic profiling instrument being deployed from the research vessel, Southern Surveyor. (Credit: Alicia Navidad)

From Live Science:

ScienceDaily (Apr. 18, 2010) — The stronger water cycle means arid regions have become drier and high rainfall regions wetter as atmospheric temperature increases.

The study, co-authored by CSIRO scientists Paul Durack and Dr Susan Wijffels, shows the surface ocean beneath rainfall-dominated regions has freshened, whereas ocean regions dominated by evaporation are saltier. The paper also confirms that surface warming of the world's oceans over the past 50 years has penetrated into the oceans' interior changing deep-ocean salinity patterns.

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Will The Iceland Volcano Change The Climate?

This image, acquired on 15 April 2010 by Envisat's Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS), shows the vast cloud of volcanic ash sweeping across the UK from the eruption in Iceland, more than 1000 km away. The ash, which can be seen as the large grey streak in the image, is drifting from west to east at a height of about 11 km above the surface Earth. Credit: ESA

From Live Science:

The vast plume of material spewing from this week's eruption of an Icelandic volcano is reddening sunsets and clouding skies across Europe. If the eruptions continue and get bigger — a possibility given the explosive history of Iceland's volcanoes — even the global climate could be affected. But the current eruption is too wimpy to have any significant impact, scientists say.

The eruption of Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull volcano may be treating European sky watchers to spectacular sunsets and hampering air travel due to the ash and gas it has spewed into the atmosphere. But "there will be no effect on climate," said Alan Robock of Rutgers University, who studies the effects of volcanic eruptions on climate.

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Ash Cloud Reminds Us That We Should All Be Afraid Of Volcanoes

From The Telegraph:

Eyjafjallajökull's giant cloud of ash is a nuisance, but a supervolcano's catastrophic eruption could threaten the fabric of civilisation, says Kate Ravilious.

Every so often the Earth chooses to remind us that we really aren't in control of this planet. The volcanic eruption in Iceland, which began on Wednesday, is just such a reminder. As ash spews out across northern Europe, grounding all flights across Scandinavia and the UK, we begin to realise how powerless we humans are.

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Space Shuttle Discovery Soars Over Crystal Clear Caribbean On Long Journey Home

Astronaut Soichi Noguchi sent this amazing picture of the underside of the Discovery Shuttle from the International Space Station

From The Daily Mail:

Gliding over the deep blue waters of the Caribbean, the shuttle Discovery has started its long journey back to Earth.

The crew, including a record-breaking trio of female astronauts, wrapped up a two-week mission on the International Space Station on Saturday before undocking from the orbiter.

Pilot Jim Dutton performed a loop the loop, which gave ISS astronaut Soichi Noguchi a fantastic view of the shuttle's well-weathered underside. Mr Noguchi was quick to snap the impressive sight and share his pictures with his 200,000 followers on Earth.

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The Biggest Bangs In History

From New Scientist:

The colossal Toba supervolcanic eruption 74,000 years ago was big – but not the biggest in Earth's history. Here's our rundown of chart-topping blasts from the past.


The Tunguska event

One of the 20th century's most notorious bangs happened at 7.14 am on 30 June 1908. At that moment, something exploded with enormous force over the Tunguska river in Siberia, Russia.

The resulting shock wave flattened trees over an area of 2000 square kilometres, and people tens of kilometres away were knocked off their feet.

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For Prom, Teens Let YouTube Do The Asking

From ABC News:

High School Students Woo Would-Be Prom Dates With Online Creativity.

Sweaty-palmed, tongue-tied teens take note: If you want to score a date to the prom, asking the simple question just might not cut it anymore.

Hallway conversations and handwritten notes might have worked for previous generations, but with prom season under way, high school students across the country are turning to YouTube to give an age-old rite of passage a new media moment of fame.

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This Is Apple's Next iPhone

From Gizmodo:

You are looking at Apple's next iPhone. It was found lost in a bar in Redwood City, camouflaged to look like an iPhone 3GS. We got it. We disassembled it. It's the real thing, and here are all the details.

While Apple may tinker with the final packaging and design of the final phone, it's clear that the features in this lost-and-found next-generation iPhone are drastically new and drastically different from what came before. Here's the detailed list of our findings:

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Water - Another Global 'Crisis'?

Sharper, more intense rains may reduce the water available to farmers

From The BBC:

If you look at the numbers, it is hard to see how many East African communities made it through the long drought of 2005 and 2006.

Among people who study human development, it is a widely-held view that each person needs about 20 litres of water each day for the basics - to drink, cook and wash sufficiently to avoid disease transmission.

Yet at the height of the East African drought, people were getting by on less than five litres a day - in some cases, less than one litre a day, enough for just three glasses of drinking water and nothing left over.

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Behind The Air Force's Secret Robotic Space Plane

Behind The Air Force's Secret Robotic Space Plane -- Popular Mechanics

Move over NASA. The U.S. Air Force has spent decades on the concept: an unmanned space plane that can be used to spy, reposition satellites, possibly even bomb targets, then return to base. A successful launch next week could turn that vision into a reality.

When the engines of a 19-story Atlas V ignite in April at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, the liftoff will look like any other for the workhorse launch vehicle. After about 4 minutes, the engines will cut off and the rocket's first stage will fall away, freeing the second stage to boost the upper section of the rocket into low Earth orbit.

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My Comment: A lot of eyes are now focused on this program .... from NASA to foreign powers. After many years and mega-billions spent .... they better succeed.

A Mobile Touchscreen Projectable On Any Flat Surface

Light Blue Optics Light Touch Price not set; lightblueoptics.com Gregor Halenda

From Popular Science:

This tiny projector casts images that you can click and swipe.

When you go to a restaurant in the near future, you might order your food by poking at icons on your table -- they'll vanish when the plates arrive, and spilled drinks won't do them any harm. Light Blue Optics's pico projector is the first to turn any flat surface into a computer touchscreen. It beams a 10-inch display, which can show photos, videos, Web sites or apps running on its simple interface, and uses an infrared sensor to track your fingers' movements. Done browsing?

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Climatologists Ponder Earth's Missing Heat

From Science A Go-Go:

Astonishingly, climatologists can't account for roughly half of the heat that is believed to have built up on the Earth in recent years. "The heat will come back to haunt us sooner or later," lament National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) scientists in an article in the journal Science.

The scientists believe that satellite sensors, ocean floats, and other instruments used to measure energy are inadequate to track this "missing" heat, which may be building up in the deep oceans or elsewhere in the climate system. "The reprieve we've had from warming temperatures in the last few years will not continue. It is critical to track the build-up of energy in our climate system so we can understand what is happening and predict our future climate," said NCAR scientist Kevin Trenberth, the article's lead author.

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