Hubble Finds Unidentified Object in Space, Scientists Puzzled

From Gizmodo:

This is exactly why we send astronauts to risk their life to service Hubble: in a paper published last week in the Astrophysical Journal, scientists detail the discovery of a new unidentified object in the middle of nowhere. I don't know about you, but when a research paper conclusion says "We suggest that the transient may be one of a new class" I get a chill of oooh-aaahness down my spine. Especially when after a hundred days of observation, it disappeared from the sky with no explanation. Get your tinfoil hats out, because it gets even weirder.

The object also appeared out of nowhere. It just wasn't there before. In fact, they don't even know where it is exactly located because it didn't behave like anything they know. Apparently, it can't be closer than 130 light-years but it can be as far as 11 billion light-years away. It's not in any known galaxy either. And they have ruled out a supernova too. It's something that they have never encountered before. In other words: they don't have a single clue about where or what the heck this thing is.

Read more ....

Why People Ignore Hurricane Evacuation Warnings

Boats and debris are piled up Saturday, Sept. 13, 2008 in Galveston, Texas after Hurricane Ike hit the area. AP Photo/David J. Phillip, Pool

From Live Science:

As Hurricane Ike's floodwaters begin to recede from Galveston, Texas, and other areas of the Gulf Coast, emergency responders are surveying the storm's damage and rescuing thousands of residents who ignored evacuation orders.

There are many reasons why some people don't heed evacuation notices — some think they can ride out the winds and surging waters, while others simply have nowhere to go and no way to leave. Still others remember unnecessary evacuations from botched forecasts and enter a "boy who cried 'wolf'" mentality.

"And then some people just don't perceive the risk to be that high," Rebecca Morss of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., told LiveScience.

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Google's Decade

Ten Reasons Why Google Is Still Number One -- Technology Review

David A. Vise is a Pulitzer Prize winner and coauthor of The Google Story: Inside the Hottest Business, Media and Technology Success of Our Time, published by Delacorte Press (Updated edition 2008).

1998: Yahoo and others pass on the chance to buy new search technology developed at Stanford University for $500,000. Their rationale: "Search doesn't matter. Portals do."These rejections forced Sergey Brin and Larry Page to reluctantly take a leave of absence from Stanford (both wanted to become college professors, like their dads) to see if they could turn Google, their new search engine, into a business.

1999: A year later, Google garners $25 million from Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins, even after Brin and Page insist that each venture-capital firm would only be allowed to invest half the money. This "divide and conquer" strategy leaves the denizens of Sand Hill Road to squabble with one another while Brin and Page retain control over their nascent enterprise. It also enables them to frustrate the moneymen by refusing to deface the most valuable piece of real estate on the Internet--the Google home page--by loading it up with ads, and by turning away numerous CEO candidates.

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Universal Flu Vaccine Enters Clinical Trials

From Futurismic:

It’s that time of year again, when doctors recommend everyone from children to old folks get jabbed with the latest influenza vaccine that may or may not actually be effective against this year’s strain. And it’s that time of year again when people start worrying about the presumably inevitable next great ‘flu pandemic, which many fear could be coming as avian influenza continues to mutate.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could just get a single shot that would protect against multiple types…including the possible bird ‘flu pandemic?

Clinical trials of just such a vaccine have begun at Oxford University, led by Dr. Sarah Gilbert of the Jenner Institute. (Via PhysOrg.)

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Delaware Offshore Wind Farm Pattern For Future?

From Future Pundit:

A New York Times article on the politics of wind power looks at the long fight for political approval for an offshore wind power project off the coast of Delaware. The Mid-Atlantic Bight region has large quantities of fairly stable wind power.

The amount of power Dhanju was describing, Mandelstam knew from Kempton, was but a small fraction of an even larger resource along what’s known as the Mid-Atlantic Bight. This coastal region running from Massachusetts to North Carolina contained up to 330,000 megawatts of average electrical capacity. This was, in other words, an amount of guaranteed, bankable power that was larger, in terms of energy equivalence, than the entire mid-Atlantic coast’s total energy demand — not just for electricity but for heating, for gasoline, for diesel and for natural gas. Indeed the wind off the mid-Atlantic represented a full third of the Department of Energy’s estimate of the total American offshore resource of 900,000 megawatts.

Wind projects do not usually operate at nameplate (i.e. max) capacity for most of the time. An onshore wind project might average one third of max output. But wind offshore blows more consistently. I would like to know what average capacity utilization is expected for this Delaware project. I would also like to know how vulnerable a project like this is to a category 3 or 4 hurricane.

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Popular Hallucinogen Faces Growing Legal Opposition In U.S.

Nathan K. calls his use of salvia "just a very gentle letting go, a very gentle relaxing." (Brandon Thibodeaux for The New York Times)

From The International Herald Tribune:

DALLAS: With a friend videotaping, 27-year-old Christopher Lenzini of Dallas took a hit of Salvia divinorum, the world's most potent hallucinogenic herb, and soon began to imagine, he said, that he was in a boat with little green men.

Lenzini quickly collapsed to the floor and dissolved into convulsive laughter.

When he posted the video on YouTube this summer, friends could not get enough. "It's just funny to see a friend act like a total idiot," he said, "so everybody loved it."

Until a decade ago, the use of salvia was largely limited to those seeking revelation under the tutelage of Mazatec shamans in its native Oaxaca, Mexico. Today, this mind-altering member of the mint family is broadly available for lawful sale online and in head shops across the United States.

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Health Officials Fear Spread Of Lung-Destroying Pneumonia

From The L.A. Times:

Deaths from the combination of a skin infection and the common flu have increased, authorities say.


Health authorities have detected the emergence of a rare but deadly lung-destroying form of pneumonia, sparked by the combination of a skin infection and the common flu.

The national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 22 deaths among children last year from the dual infection.

Numbers from the 2007-2008 flu season won't be released until next month, but officials say deaths have increased. The CDC has just begun tracking cases among all age groups.

The number of fatalities, though low, is a sharp increase from previous years, and infectious disease experts worry that an ongoing epidemic of skin infections could drive the numbers higher.

The double infection has appeared before: It was the leading cause of bacterial pneumonia deaths during the 1957-1958 flu pandemic, which killed 2 million people worldwide, including about 70,000 in the U.S.

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Internet Users Need Help To Separate Fact From Fiction As Web Is Full Of Lies, Says Its Inventor

Sir Tim Berners-Lee believes the web spreads too much disinformation

From The Daily Mail:

The internet spreads too much disinformation and needs to be labelled in a way that will help users separate science fact from fiction, the creator of the World Wide Web said.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee sent the first successful communication between an http client and server via the internet in 1990. Now there are more than a 100 million websites in operation.

'One of the things I always remain concerned about is that that medium remains neutral,' the acclaimed British scientist said.

'It's not just where I go to decide where to buy my shoes which is the commercial incentive - it's where I go to decide who I'm going to trust to vote.

'It's where I go maybe to decide what sort of religion I'm going to belong to or not belong to; it's where I go to decide what is actual scientific truth - what I'm actually going to go along with and what is bunkum,' he told BBC News.

Sir Tim was speaking ahead of the launch of a website vetting Foundation he has helped create, which will brand sites it finds to be trustworthy sources of information.

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Astronomers Capture Image Of Alien Planet Orbiting A 'Sun'

From The Telegraph:

Astronomers believe they have captured the first picture of an alien planet in orbit around a star that is similar to our own Sun.

Images of a young star and what is thought to be its companion planet have been taken by astronomers using the Gemini North telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii.

However they are puzzelled by the distance between the two.

Located around 500 light-years from Earth, the planet in the snapshot is around eight times bigger than Jupiter, the biggest in our solar system and lies more than ten times further from its star than the sun does from Neptune.

Even though the likelihood of a chance alignment between such an object and a similarly young star is thought to be small, it will take up to two years to verify that the star and its likely planet are moving through space together.

The parent star - called 1RXS J160929.1-210524 - is similar in mass to the Sun, but is much younger.

"This is the first time we have directly seen a planetary mass object in a likely orbit around a star like our Sun," said David Lafrenicre, one of the three University of Toronto scientists who describe the fascinating object in a paper submitted to the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

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A Biological Clock for Dads Too

From Time Magazine:

Turns out women aren't the only ones with an expiration date on their fertility. An emerging body of research is showing that men, too, have a "biological clock."

Not only do men become less fecund as they age, but their fertility begins to decline relatively early — around age 24, six years or so before women's. Historically, infertility has been seen as a female issue, as has the increased risk of Down syndrome and other birth defects, but studies now also link higher rates of autism, schizophrenia and Down syndrome in children born to older fathers. A recent paper by researchers at Sweden's Karolinska Institute found that the risk of bipolar disorder in children increased with paternal age, particularly in children born to men age 55 or older.

It used to be that "if you had hair on your chest, it was your wife's problem," says Barry Behr, an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the Stanford Medical School and director of Stanford's in vitro fertilization laboratory. Even now, he said, though about half of infertility cases are caused by male factors, such as low sperm count or motility, there are many more tests to evaluate a woman's fertility than a man's.

Read more ....

Testosterone Levels 'Affect Sexual Attraction'

From The Independent:

Women with high levels of testosterone are more attracted to masculine-looking men like James Bond actor Daniel Craig, scientists said today.

Meanwhile men, whose levels of the hormone are increased, are more attracted to feminine faces like Hollywood actress Natalie Portman.

Researchers at Aberdeen University Face Research Laboratory carried out the first study into the role testosterone plays in attraction between the sexes.

During the study, men and women completed four test sessions each conducted a week apart. In each session volunteers provided a saliva sample which was used to measure testosterone levels.

Researchers found that when asked to choose between different types of faces in each session, the subjects' attitudes changed depending on their testosterone level.

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Should Naples Fear A Big Bang From Vesuvius?

From New Scientist:

RESIDENTS of Naples, take note: the hazard posed by Vesuvius may have to be rethought after the discovery that its magma chamber has been moving upwards towards its mouth.

Bruno Scaillet at the University of Orléans, France, and colleagues studied the proportions and types of crystal in rocks erupted from Vesuvius on four different occasions: 7800 years ago, 3600 years ago, 1929 years ago (Pompeii) and 1536 years ago. This allowed them to estimate the pressure, and hence depth, that each sample crystallised at.

By combining this with results from previous research, they were able to show that Vesuvius's magma chamber has moved upwards by between 9000 and 11,000 metres over the last 22,000 years (Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature/07232). It isn't clear why the magma chamber has shifted, but possible reasons include changes in the shape and size of Vesuvius's mouth, a decrease in magma density, and earthquake movements.

Read more ....

Giant Honeybees Use Shimmering 'Mexican Waves' To Repel Predatory Wasps

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 15, 2008) — The phenomenon of "shimmering" in giant honeybees, in which hundreds—or even thousands—of individual honeybees flip their abdomens upwards within a split-second to produce a Mexican Wave-like pattern across the bee nest, has received much interest but both its precise mode of action and its purpose have long remained a mystery.

In a new study published in the journal PLoS ONE this week, researchers at the University of Graz, Austria, and the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, UK, report the finding that shimmering—a remarkable capacity of rapid communication in giant honeybees—acts as a defensive mechanism, which repels predatory hornets, forcing them to hunt free-flying bees, further afield, rather than foraging bees directly from the honeybee nest.

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Fear Of Physics

From New York Times Science:

The new particle collider in Europe hasn’t hurt anyone there yet, but all the talk about a “doomsday machine” seems to be taking a toll elsewhere, according to Reuters (hat tip: Charles Mann). It reports from Bhopal that Indians were so alarmed by reports that the Large Hadron Collider could destroy the world that they flocked to temples to pray and fast. One teenage girl traumatized by the warnings on television committed suicide, according to Reuters, which quoted her father: “We tried to divert her attention and told her she should not worry about such things, but to no avail.”

My colleague Dennis Overbye has done a good job of debunking this week’s fears, and Ron Bailey of Reason Magazine has done a nice analysis of the odds.

For further reassurance, I recommend an analysis by Max Tegmark of M.I.T. and Nick Bostrom of Oxford University. (Dr. Bostrom was featured in my column last year about the possibility that we’re living in a computer simulation.) Dr. Tegmark and Dr. Bostrom estimate, based on the relatively late evolution of life on Earth and on what we observe in the rest of the universe, that the annual risk of our planet’s being annihilated by high-energy particle collisions (or, for that matter, by an asteroid or by extraterrestrials) is one in a trillion.

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Top 10 Human Inventions of All Time

Language Is The Number #1 Invention

From Top Tenz:

This list can’t help but be relative and therefore controversial. As always be kind and appreciate the effort even if you disagree.

Although humans are not alone as tool using animals, we are definitely the planet’s designated experts in the field. Our use of invention, or the innovation of altering an object or process in new ways, may be what truly defines us as a species. Every once in a long while, something is invented which changes, in some small way, the very nature of our lives. Over time, this has made us unique among the animals. While little inventions come out every day, it is these big ones that move us forward into whatever the destiny of mankind turns out to be.

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Blurred Out: 51 Things You Aren't Allowed to See on Google Maps

From IT Security:

IT Security Editors

Depending on which feature you use, Google Maps offers a satellite view or a street-level view of tons of locations around the world. You can look up landmarks like the Pyramids of Egypt or the Great Wall of China, as well as more personal places, like your ex’s house. But for all of the places that Google Maps allows you to see, there are plenty of places that are off-limits. Whether it’s due to government restrictions, personal-privacy lawsuits or mistakes, Google Maps has slapped a "Prohibited" sign on the following 51 places.

Read more and check out the following 51 places ....

The Science Of Glass

The Nature of Glass Remains Anything But Clear
-- New York Times Science

It is well known that panes of stained glass in old European churches are thicker at the bottom because glass is a slow-moving liquid that flows downward over centuries.

Well known, but wrong. Medieval stained glass makers were simply unable to make perfectly flat panes, and the windows were just as unevenly thick when new.

The tale contains a grain of truth about glass resembling a liquid, however. The arrangement of atoms and molecules in glass is indistinguishable from that of a liquid. But how can a liquid be as strikingly hard as glass?

“They’re the thickest and gooiest of liquids and the most disordered and structureless of rigid solids,” said Peter Harrowell, a professor of chemistry at the University of Sydney in Australia, speaking of glasses, which can be formed from different raw materials. “They sit right at this really profound sort of puzzle.”

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The Science Of Lightning Strikes

Struck By Lightning -- The Walrus

In the summer of 2002, I was camped at the mouth of the French River, lying on my Therm-a-Rest waiting out a thunderstorm, when my tent was struck by lightning. It was over before I knew what had happened, before adrenalin had any role to play, before fear took over. My tent poles took the charge and I was spared, completely. The narrow escape got me asking around. How often does this happen? It turns out everybody has a lightning story.

Floyd Woods, a retired truck driver from Ardbeg, Ontario, was twelve years old in 1943 when his house was hit. The strike shot through the radio antenna, exploded in the living room intoa blue fireball that roared down the hall, lifting up the linoleum runner by the tacks, ripping the nails out of the floor, splintering the house walls as fine as kindling before it ran off over the bedrock outside and died. Woods’ guitar was hanging on the wall over his bed. Sixty-five years later, he still shakes his head: “That strike burned the guitar strings off, bing, bing, bing, threw me right out of bed and across the room so I ached for a month. Nothin’ will move you faster than lightning. Nothin’.”

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How Quickly Can Sharks Detect Blood In The Water?

From The Straight Dope:

Dear Cecil:

We've all seen it in a movie: A small group of people are swimming in the sea. Someone gets hurt, blood touches water, and instantly sharks appear who then devour the party in a ruthless and very painful way. But how fast does the odor or taste of blood go in water? Am I right to believe that it takes a while for a shark a mile away to taste it?

— David, Belgium

Cecil replies:

I'll confess I haven't seen a lot of Belgian shark movies, David, but virtually any Hollywood studio exec would see a major problem with the treatment you've outlined above. If the shark shows up the second the hemoglobin hits the water, where's the unbearable tension? What we're missing is that excruciating interval of stillness between the close-up of slowly seeping blood and the moment the here-comes-the-shark music kicks in. You're right, though, to suspect that this interval does tend to run a little shorter on the big screen than in real life.

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Scientists: Is Sleep Essential?

From Med Gadget:

Writing in the latest PLoS Biology, researchers from the University of Wisconsin, Madison are wondering whether sleep is really a biological necessity, or maybe it's just a function created by evolution to kill time and avoid stress.

From the article in PLoS Biology:

Everybody knows that sleep is important, yet the function of sleep seems like the mythological phoenix: “Che vi sia ciascun lo dice, dove sia nessun lo sa” (“that there is one they all say, where it may be no one knows,” Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Lorenzo da Ponte [1790], Così fan tutte). But what if the search for an essential function of sleep is misguided? What if sleep is not required but rather a kind of extreme indolence that animals indulge in when they have no more pressing needs, such as eating or reproducing? In many circumstances sleeping may be a less dangerous choice than roaming around, wasting energy and exposing oneself to predators. Also, if sleep is just one out of a repertoire of available behaviors that is useful without being essential, it is easier to explain why sleep duration varies so much across species. This “null hypothesis” would explain why nobody has yet identified a core function of sleep. But how strong is the evidence supporting it? And are there counterexamples?

So far the null hypothesis has survived better than alternatives positing some core function for sleep [8–10]. In what follows we shall test the null hypothesis by considering three of its key corollaries. If the null hypothesis were right, we would expect to find: (1) animals that do not sleep at all; (2) animals that do not need recovery sleep when they stay awake longer; and, finally, (3) that lack of sleep occurs without serious consequences.

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What Stuff Is Worth More Than Its Weight In Gold?

From Evil Mad Scientist:

It's a common figure of speech to say that x is worth its weight in y, where y is usually (but not always) gold. But most of us don't buy and weigh gold very often, so how do you connect that to real life? Does "worth its weight" in pennies or $100 bills make any more sense?

We have collected here a bunch of examples for different things that represent a wide range of monetary value per unit weight, in what might make a useful calibration chart for your future idiomatic usage.

Let's start this off with a down-to-earth question. Which has a higher monetary density: dimes or quarters? In other words, if you had to carry around $1000 worth of either dimes or quarters, which should you ask for?

Item -- Price per pound
Gold -- $12,000
Platinum -- $20,679
Fifty Dollar Bills -- $22,680
Cocaine -- $22,680
Hundred Dollar Bills -- $45,359
Rhodium -- $77,292
Good-quality, one-carat diamonds -- $11.4 M
LSD -- $55 M
Antimatter -- $26 Quadrillion

Read more ....

Top 10 Amazing Physics Videos

From Wired:

Tesla coils, superconductors, and hilarious music videos are great reasons to be excited about physics. Here are some of our favorites.

Read and watch the videos here ....

Ten Things You Don’t Know About The Earth

From Discover Magazine:

Good advice from the 70s progressive band. Look around you. Unless you’re one of the Apollo astronauts, you’ve lived your entire life within a few hundred kilometers of the surface of the Earth. There’s a whole planet beneath your feet, 6.6 sextillion tons of it, one trillion cubic kilometers of it. But how well do you know it?

Below are ten facts about the Earth — the second in my series of Ten Things You Don’t Know (the first was on the Milky Way). Some things I already knew (and probably you do, too), some I had ideas about and had to do some research to check, and others I totally made up. Wait! No! Kidding. They’re all real. But how many of them do you know? Be honest.

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The Rise And Fall Of The Space Shuttle

From American Scientist:

Since NASA's creation in the 1950s, its history has followed a course that calls to mind the Greek tragedies—tremendous early success, followed by a series of catastrophes and failures, which share the same root cause. Nearly 40 years have passed since NASA had its most notable successes, which culminated in Neil Armstrong's walk on the lunar surface. Since then, the agency has struggled to come up with meaningful goals that could take advantage of the sustained political support the agency has enjoyed over the decades. NASA has a rich tradition and employs the world's best scientists and engineers. Yet in recent decades its most notable moments have come in the form of disasters and their aftermath. And the institutional and cultural problems that led to the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger in 1986 went largely uncorrected for 17 years and contributed to the Columbia accident in 2003. The agency's identity crisis continues and will stretch into the next presidential administration and perhaps beyond. How the story of its space shuttle program will end remains highly uncertain.

Read more ....

Full Coverage Of Hurricane Ike: Hurricane Blogs, News, And Webcam Links -- This Post Is Bumped To The Top Of Cool Science News Till Sunday

Tracking Hurricane Ike

Click Here For Updated Picture

Click Here For Updated Picture

Click Here For Updated Picture

HURRICANE BLOGS, NEWS, WEBCAMS, AND LINKS

Hurricane/Weather News

Storm Pulse
National Hurricane Center -- Home Site
National Hurricane Center -- Satellite Shots
National Hurricane Center -- Sign Up For Email Advisories
Weather.com -- Hurricane Central News Center
Weather.com -- Hurricane Central News Center Updates
NOLA -- New Orleans, Louisiana news
Houston Chronicle -- Hurricane News
NOAA Satellite And Information Service -- Home Page
Crown Weather Services -- Weather Aggregator

Texas/Louisiana Weather Observations

Coastal Texas Observations
Southwest Louisiana Observations
Southeast Louisiana Observations
Ike Marine Weather Observations

Weather And Hurricane Blogs

Weather Underground
Dr. Jeff Masters' WunderBlog
Weather Nerd
Hurricane Track
Miami Hurricane

Blogs For Ike

Twitter search for “Hurricane Ike”
Google Blog Search for “Hurricane Ike”
BlogPulse search for “Hurricane Ike”
Flickr photo/video search for “Hurricane Ike”
YouTube video search for “Hurricane Ike”
HurricanePreparedness.org

News Links For Hurricane Ike

Global Storm Tracker -- Yahoo News
Weather News -- Yahoo News
Hurricane Ike -- Yahoo News (Recent Stories on Ike)
Hurricane Ike -- Google News (Stories For The Past 24 Hours)
News and Newspaper Websites in Louisiana -- ABYZ News Directory
News And Newspaper Websites In Mississippi -- ABYZ News Directory
News And Newspaper Websites In Texas -- ABYZ News Directory

Texas News Media Links (Hat Tip to Crown Weather)

Live News Cameras Hurricane Ike Center
Hurricane Ike Live TV Coverage Wall (FLHurricane)
Hurricane Ike Live TV Feeds From All Houston Stations
Live Hurricane Ike Coverage From All Houston Stations (MaroonSpoon)
Hurricane Ike Resources From OneStorm.org
Broadcast Coverage From Internet Partnership Radio
Broadcast Coverage From Hurricane City
Broadcast Coverage From The Weather Radio Broadcast Network
Texas News Media Links
KTRH AM 740 Radio Houston
MyFox Houston
KHOU TV Houston, TX
ABC 13 TV Houston, TX
Channel 2 TV Houston, TX
Houston/Galveston, Texas Radio Scanner Feed
KGBT TV 4 Local News From Harlingen, Texas
KRGV TV 5 Local News From Weslaco, Texas
Local News From KIII TV 3 From Corpus Christi, Texas
Local News From KRISTV From Corpus Christi, Texas
KURV 780 AM Talk Radio From Mcallen, Texas
Q94.5 Brownsville, TX
KQXX 105.5 From Brownsville, Texas
Wild 104 From Brownsville, Texas

Texas/Louisiana Webcam Links (Hat Tip To Crown Weather)

Webcamplaza.net
Louisiana Webcams
Texas Webcams
Louisiana Webcams
Texas Webcams (WeatherMatrix)
Louisiana Webcams (ABC Webcams)
Texas Webcams (ABC Webcams)
Upper Texas Coast Webcams (HurricaneCity)
Brownsville, Texas-Matamoras, Mexico Webcams
Corpus Christi, Texas Webcam #1
Corpus Christi, Texas Webcam #2
Freeport, TX Webcam
Galveston, TX Webcams
Galveston, TX Webcam (WeatherUnderground)
Galveston-Houston, TX Webcams
Houston, TX Traffic Cams
Houston, TX Webcams (KHOU TV)
Houston, TX Webcams (Ch. 2 TV)
Houston, TX Webcam (WeatherUnderground)
KRGV Tv5 Webcam, Weslaco, Texas
Matagorda Bay Webcam
Port Aransas, Texas Webcam #1
Port Aransas, Texas Webcam #2
Rio Grande Webcam
South Padre Island, Texas Webcams
South Padre Island, Texas Webcam #1
South Padre Island, Texas Webcam #2
South Padre Island, Texas Webcam #3
South Padre Island, Texas Webcam #4
Webcam From A Platform In The Western Gulf of Mexico (NDBC)

Experiment Boosts Hopes for Space Solar Power

From Space.com

WASHINGTON — A former NASA scientist has used radio waves to transmit solar power a distance of 92 miles (148 km) between two Hawaiian islands, an achievement that he says proves the technology exists to beam solar power from satellites back to Earth.

John C. Mankins demonstrated the solar power transmission for the Discovery Channel, which paid for the four month experiment and will broadcast the results Friday at 9 p.m. EDT. His vision is to transmit solar power collected by orbiting satellites as large as 1,102 pounds (500 kg) to lake-sized receiver stations on Earth.

Mankins, who worked at NASA for 25 years and managed the agency's space-based solar program before it was disbanded, transmitted 20 watts of power between the two islands in May. The receivers, however, were so small that less than one one-thousandth of a percent of the power was received, Mankins said.

Read more ....

World's Strongest Hurricanes Could Be Getting Stronger

Gustav and Hanna spin in the Caribbean Sea last week. A study released today found that the strongest Atlantic hurricanes have become stronger due to global warming over the past 25 years.

From USA Today:

The strongest hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean have become more intense due to global warming over the past 25 years, according to a new study in Wednesday's edition of the British journal Nature. The findings add fuel to the simmering argument in the meteorological community about the Earth's changing climate, and its relationship to the power of tropical systems worldwide.

Scientists from Florida State University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison analyzed satellite data from nearly 2,000 tropical cyclones around the world from 1981 to 2006, and found that the strongest storms are getting stronger, especially over the Atlantic and Indian Oceans.

Tropical cyclones are the umbrella term for hurricanes (in the Atlantic and east Pacific), typhoons (in the West Pacific) and cyclones (in the Indian).

"As seas warm, the ocean has more energy that can be converted to tropical cyclone wind," FSU professor of geography and study lead author James B. Elsner explained.

Read more ....

The Science Behind A Storm Surge

Hurricane Ike, still forming in the Gulf of Mexico, caused floods near Surfside Beach, Texas September 12, 2008. Hurricane Ike closed in on the Texas coast on Friday, pushing a wall of water that weather officials warned could bring certain death to those who did not heed mandatory evacuation orders.

From MSNBC:

As Hurricane Ike races toward Texas, it is pushing a mound of water in front of it that could inundate parts of the Gulf coast with up to 25 feet of water. The surge involves some incredible feats of physics, and in many hurricanes it’s the leading cause of death.

Galveston Island, Texas, destroyed at least once before by a major hurricane in 1900, began to see the Ike-related water creeping up along its beaches Thursday and by Friday, parts of the city of Galveston were flooded by the surge coming in from Galveston Bay.

And, "it's only going to get worse," said Lance Wood, the Science and Operations Officer for the Houston/Galveston National Weather Service (NWS) office.

Read more ....

A Guide To Hurricanes

From Scientific American:

Fay, Gustav, Hanna, Ike: What's next for the U.S.? What causes nature's destructive storms? How do scientists study and predict them? How are they linked to global warming?

Scientific American has compiled an extensive and detailed examination of hurricanes and what the future may hold for us. The link to read this guide is here.

With Ike, Size Matters For Killer Storm Surge

From My Way News/AP

Hurricane Ike's gargantuan size - not its strength - will likely push an extra large storm surge inland in a region already prone to it, experts said Thursday.

Ike's giant girth means more water piling up on Texas and Louisiana coastal areas for a longer time, topped with bigger waves. So storm surge - the prime killer in hurricanes - will be far worse than a typical storm of Ike's strength, the National Hurricane Center said.

And because coastal waters in Texas and Louisiana are so shallow, storm surge is usually larger there than in other regions, according to storm experts. A 1900 hurricane following a similar track to Ike inundated Galveston Island, killing at least 8,000 people - America's deadliest storm.

"It's a good recipe for surge," said Benton McGee, supervisory hydrologist at the U.S. Geological Survey's storm surge center in Ruston, La. "We're already seeing water being piled up in the Gulf. On top of that you're going to have water forced into the bays along the coast."

The National Hurricane Center is forecasting a 20-foot surge - a rapid rising of water inundating areas and moving inland - for a large swath of Texas and the Louisiana coasts. Above that, the center predicts "large and dangerous battering waves." Waves could be 50 feet tall, said hurricane center spokesman and meteorologist Dennis Feltgen.

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Antarctic Sea Ice Increases Despite Warming

Cold, snowy, and stuck at the “bottom” of the Earth, Antarctica might seem like a dull place. But this big continent can produce a surprisingly dynamic range of conditions. One example of this range is temperature trends. Although Antarctica warmed around the perimeter from 1982 to 2004, where huge icebergs calved and some ice shelves disintegrated, it cooled closer to the pole.

From the New Scientist:

The amount of sea ice around Antarctica has grown in recent Septembers in what could be an unusual side-effect of global warming, experts say.

In the southern hemisphere winter, when emperor penguins huddle together against the biting cold, ice on the sea around Antarctica has been increasing since the late 1970s, perhaps because climate change means shifts in winds, sea currents or snowfall.

At the other end of the planet, Arctic sea ice is now close to matching a September 2007 record low at the tail end of the northern summer, in a threat to the hunting lifestyles of indigenous peoples and creatures such as polar bears.

"The Antarctic wintertime ice extent increased...at a rate of 0.6% per decade" from 1979 to 2006, says Donald Cavalieri, a senior research scientist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.

At 19 million square kilometres, it is still slightly below records from the early 1970s of 20 million, he says. Since 1979 however, the average year-round ice extent has risen too.

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My Comment: OK .... because it is getting warmer .... we now have more ice in the Antarctic. Is it me, but is this a contradiction?

Sigh..... this article makes no sense. Shame on The New Scientist, they should know better that you need to have data before making explanations on explaining a climatic effect.

Painting Rooftops White Would Slow Global Warming

From Sustain A Blog:

Study: If we painted every rooftop in 100 major cities white, it would offset the entire planet’s carbon dioxide emissions for one year. That’s nearly 44 metric gigatons.

It makes sense. We all know white reflects heat (that’s why we wear white shirts and dresses on hot days), and we even knew that painting rooftops white lessens the need for air conditioning. But until now, we didn’t know that changing dark-colored surfaces to white would help fight against global warming.

The news broke yesterday at California’s Climate Change Research Conference. Hashem Akbari, attending the conference from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, announced that replacing dark shingles on an average-sized household rooftop with a lighter color would offset 10 metric tons of carbon dioxide—comparable to taking two mid-sized cars off the road for a year.

Speaking of roadways, they’re part of the problem too. Because of its cheap nature, most roads are paved with black asphalt instead of light grey concrete, which causes roads to absorb an inordinate amount of heat. Repaving roads with lighter-colored materials would have a similar impact to painting rooftops.

California already mandates that newly-built large buildings have light-colored rooftops, but the law was intended to decrease air conditioning costs. Akbari hopes to enlist the United Nations in an effort to convince major cities to make their roadways and rooftops more pale.

Read a full summary of the report here.

Black Hole's 'Birth Scream' Heard Across Universe

From FOX News:

Six months ago, satellite telescopes spotted an exceptionally bright burst of energy that would have been the most distant object in the universe ever visible to the naked eye, if anyone had noticed it.

Even though no humans have reported seeing it directly, the gamma-ray burst, an explosion that signals the violent death of a massive star, is changing theories of how these events look.

Gamma-ray bursts are typically accompanied by intense releases of other forms of radiation, from X-rays to visible light.

This burst, dubbed GRB 080319B, was first detected by the Swift satellite on March 19, while the spacecraft was serendipitously looking at another gamma-ray burst in the same area of the sky.

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9 Big Questions On NASA Infighting

From Popular Mechanics:

As if a new administration and the rise of the private space industry weren't enough, it's suddenly become an even more critical time for NASA, with its ambitious plans to send manned missions to the moon and Mars while facing mounting fiscal and political realities. The Orion spacecraft at the heart of the agency's next-gen Constellation exploration program is being designed to resupply the International Space Station and fly to the moon, but the space shuttle fleet is due to retire in 2010 and Orion won't be ready to fly in time. The plan is to use Russia's spacecraft to make the supply runs, but that nation's war with Georgia has cast doubt on that plan. Grumbling from engineers and officials inside NASA is joining a chorus of outside critics, so we asked four-time shuttle astronaut Tom Jones to help make sense of the turmoil. —Jennifer Bogo

In the internal e-mail written by NASA administrator Michael Griffin, which was leaked to the Orlando Sentinel recently, he articulates a catch-22 in the space program: If we continue to fly the shuttle past its retirement date, it harms our long-term prospects of manned travel by competing for funds with the Constellation program. But if we retire the shuttle as planned, our short-term prospects are impaired by the tenuous situation with Russia. Have we painted ourselves into a corner?

Remember, Griffin was ordered to stop flying the shuttle in 2010. You know, get it off the stage as soon as possible. Then he was told, "Bring on Orion as quickly as you can after that." The original plan, about four years ago, was for Orion to be ready by 2012. But Congress has been given budgets every year by the president that have not included the funds to do these things at the pace they need. So the two-year gap turned into a five-year gap. Congress figured there was no downside: Just let it slip and, big deal, we have a long gap. That was all fine when it was five or six years in the future, but now the Russians have turned unfriendly, and we don't know where that's going to go. And suddenly a bunch of people are saying, "There's this big, long gap, and it's unacceptable, and, NASA, why didn't you take care of this?"

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Why Ike Could Be Texas' Worst Nightmare

The unnamed Category 4 hurricane that slammed into Galveston, Texas Sept. 8, 1900 remains the deadliest ever to hit the United States, having killed at least 8,000 people (estimates vary) and leveling virtually the entire town. Credit: NOAA

From Live Science:

As Hurricane Ike revs up again over the Gulf of Mexico, residents of coastal Texas, especially Houston and Galveston, are preparing for the arrival of the monstrous storm, which could be the most devastating that the Lone Star State has seen Hurricane Alicia came ashore in 1983, causing nearly $6 billion in damage and 21 fatalities.

Ike is huge. Hurricane-force winds extend out 120 miles (195 kilometers) from the storm's center, and tropical storm-force winds reach out 275 miles (445 km), both measurements exceeding what's seen with many storms. Ike could reach major hurricane status as a Category 3 before it makes landfall late Friday or early Saturday morning somewhere along the Texas coast.

And right now it looks like that somewhere will be the Houston/Galveston area.

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Fifty Years Of Earth-Observation Satellites

Views such as this one are made possible by satellites orbiting the planet, a feat they have been performing for the past half-century. Although such satellites were initially put in place for military uses, most current ones are used to observe the Earth, and they have provided a wealth of information about the world. This image of an aurora was compiled from data collected in July 2000 by NASA’s Polar satellite, which ceased operation earlier in 2008. The data were recorded in ultraviolet light, as the event occurred during daylight hours. False color from blue to red corresponds to increasing magnetic activity.

From American Scientist:

Views from space have led to countless advances on the ground in both scientific knowledge and daily life

A half a century ago, the launch of Sputnik-1 saw the start of an era where we began to launch artificial satellites into orbit to tell us what we look like from above. Hundreds of Earth-observing satellites have followed, and this extensive remote sensing has provided both iconic views and unprecedented insights into our planet. Tatem, Goetz and Hay review the development of these satellites over the past 50 years, as well as the data they have produced, which has lead to a greater understanding of Earth's terrestrial, aquatic and atmospheric processes. They examine current trends and speculate on what the next 50 years of satellite remote sensing may bring.

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The Microchip's 50th Birthday Party

The first integrated circuit invented by Jack Kilby. Kilby won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2000 for his work.

Happy 50th Birthday: Microchip Celebrates Five
Decade Milestone -- Daily Mail

When Jack Kilby demonstrated the first working integrated circuit in Texas in 1958, he could have had no idea how his invention would change the world.

Now 50 years later, microchips are integral to modern-day life in devices as wide-ranging as computers to credit cards, cameras to cookers.

Kilby's design used a strip of germanium, rather than silicon, with one transister and other components glued on to a glass slide.

In July, the electrical engineer had not been allowed to go on holiday because he had only recently joined the company Texas Instruments. Kilby used the time to create his ground-breaking design, which tackled the problem of connecting large numbers of electronic components in circuits in a cost-effective way.

Jim Tully, vice president at the technology analyst Gartner said the microchip slashed the cost in producing electronics, which allowed the technology to spread rapidly through all areas of society.

'Integrated circuits are so woven into our lives that it would be hard to imagine a world without them,' Tully said.

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Eight Organisms That Make You Go 'Eww'

From MSNBC:

Skunk. The mere mention of the black and white mammal is enough to make people plug their noses. That's because these creatures are legendary for deterring predators with an oily, foul-smelling spray emitted from glands on either side of their anus. Eww. Some species can shoot the fetid substance more than ten feet and whatever it hits may forever carry the stench. As a defense mechanism, scientists say the stinky spray is quite effective: Most would-be skunk predators stay away unless they have nothing else to eat. Even humans are well trained to keep their distance.

When the skunk in this photo got its head stuck in a jar of salad dressing, a police officer cracked it off with a pellet gun fired from 40 feet away.

Click here for the other nine.

U.N. Agency Eyes Curbs On Internet Anonymity

From CNET News:

A United Nations agency is quietly drafting technical standards, proposed by the Chinese government, to define methods of tracing the original source of Internet communications and potentially curbing the ability of users to remain anonymous.

The U.S. National Security Agency is also participating in the "IP Traceback" drafting group, named Q6/17, which is meeting next week in Geneva to work on the traceback proposal. Members of Q6/17 have declined to release key documents, and meetings are closed to the public.

The potential for eroding Internet users' right to remain anonymous, which is protected by law in the United States and recognized in international law by groups such as the Council of Europe, has alarmed some technologists and privacy advocates. Also affected may be services such as the Tor anonymizing network.

"What's distressing is that it doesn't appear that there's been any real consideration of how this type of capability could be misused," said Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, D.C. "That's really a human rights concern."

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U.S. Makes 1st Antarctic Night Landing

From CBS News:

(AP) A U.S. Air Force pilot has landed a plane in Antarctica in the dark for the first time using night-vision goggles, a feat that could lead to more supply flights to scientific bases in the frozen continent during its dark winter months, officials said Friday.

The C-17 Globemaster cargo airplane landed in a driving snowstorm on the six-mile ice runway at the U.S. Antarctic research center at McMurdo Station, after months of practice runs by pilots using the goggles.

The Air Force plane took off from Christchurch, New Zealand, and flew nearly six hours before landing Thursday night. It returned to Christchurch early Friday.

Air Force Lt. Col. Jim McGann said the airplane's own lights - reflecting off of traffic cones - allowed it to land without electrical runway lights that are too hard to maintain in the frozen environment.

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Meat: Making Global Warming Worse

From Time Magazine:

Need another reason to feel guilty about feeding your children that Happy Meal — aside from the fat, the calories and that voice in your head asking why you can't be bothered to actually cook a well-balanced meal now and then? Rajendra Pachauri would like to offer you one. The head of the U.N.'s Nobel Prize–winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Pachauri on Monday urged people around the world to cut back on meat in order to combat climate change. "Give up meat for one day [per week] at least initially, and decrease it from there," Pachauri told Britain's Observer newspaper. "In terms of immediacy of action and the feasibility of bringing about reductions in a short period of time, it clearly is the most attractive opportunity." So, that addiction to pork and beef isn't just clogging your arteries; it's flame-broiling the earth, too.

By the numbers, Pachauri is absolutely right. In a 2006 report, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) concluded that worldwide livestock farming generates 18% of the planet's greenhouse gas emissions — by comparison, all the world's cars, trains, planes and boats account for a combined 13% of greenhouse gas emissions. Much of livestock's contribution to global warming come from deforestation, as the growing demand for meat results in trees being cut down to make space for pasture or farmland to grow animal feed. Livestock takes up a lot of space — nearly one-third of the earth's entire landmass. In Latin America, the FAO estimates that some 70% of former forest cover has been converted for grazing. Lost forest cover heats the planet, because trees absorb CO2 while they're alive — and when they're burned or cut down, the greenhouse gas is released back into the atmosphere.

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Russia May Build Own Particle-Colliding Machine

From RIA-Novosti:

MOSCOW, September 11 (RIA Novosti) - A day after the Large Hadron Collider was successfully switched on in Switzerland, a Russian scientist said Russia could build its own collider.

Viktor Matveev said that scientists around the world are currently considering a proposal by their Russian colleagues to build a new collider.

The idea was put forward by scientists from the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, who suggested that a new device be built in the Moscow Region.

He said that a delegation of international scientists had visited the proposed site and concluded that, "It is one of the best places in the world for construction of that kind."

Matveev also said that the idea for the collider "came from Russia," and that the world's first collider had been built by scientists in the West Siberian city of Novosibirsk.

He went on to say that the collider, which could be even more powerful than the European version, would boost Russian scientific progress and allow young researchers to take part in the projects to follow.

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Websites Shed Light On How Humans Value Fresh Ideas

From New Scientist:

Analysing the rise and fall of websites is the perfect way to shed light on the old debate over whether talent or experience matters most, say mathematicians.

The question crops up everywhere, from job interviews to presidential races, says Vwani Roychowdhury, but it's hard to examine the problem using hard figures.

However, the same way of thinking can be applied to websites, which also succeed or fail based on many millions of human decisions. In fact, the web may be one of the few places it is possible to quantify the balance between the two, say the researchers.

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With Hurricane Ike, Size Matters For Killer Storm Surge

From My Way/AP:

Hurricane Ike's gargantuan size - not its strength - will likely push an extra large storm surge inland in a region already prone to it, experts said Thursday.

Ike's giant girth means more water piling up on Texas and Louisiana coastal areas for a longer time, topped with bigger waves. So storm surge - the prime killer in hurricanes - will be far worse than a typical storm of Ike's strength, the National Hurricane Center said.

And because coastal waters in Texas and Louisiana are so shallow, storm surge is usually larger there than in other regions, according to storm experts. A 1900 hurricane following a similar track to Ike inundated Galveston Island, killing at least 8,000 people - America's deadliest storm.

"It's a good recipe for surge," said Benton McGee, supervisory hydrologist at the U.S. Geological Survey's storm surge center in Ruston, La. "We're already seeing water being piled up in the Gulf. On top of that you're going to have water forced into the bays along the coast."

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Sleek Probe To Map Earth’s Gravity

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 10, 2008) — The European Space Agency is launching a new satellite to map variations in the Earth’s gravity field with unprecedented accuracy. The satellite will give UK scientists vital information about ocean circulation and sea level change needed to improve climate forecast models.

The Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) is the first of three Earth Explorer core missions in ESA’s Earth Observation Envelope Programme. Data from GOCE will allow scientists to create a detailed model of the Earth's gravity field, or geoid.

“GOCE will yield details of the Earth's gravity field to an accuracy and resolution that is simply unobtainable by existing terrestrial and space techniques,” says Professor Philip Moore from Newcastle University, who specialises in gravity research.

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Why Female Spiders Eat Their Mates

From MSNBC:

Small males are easier to catch and are more likely to be prey

In many spider species, females eat the males after sex. Studies have suggested various complex evolutionary reasons involving costs and benefits to the species, sperm competition and esoteric sexual selection schemes.

Turns out the motivation for this creepy cannibalism is much simpler.

It's all about size. If males are small, they're easier to catch and therefore more likely to be prey, say Shawn Wilder and Ann Rypstra from Miami University in Ohio. Big females eat their puny mates simply because a) they're hungry and b) they can.

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Converting Fibre Into Fuel Without Using Enzymes

From Fibre To Fuel In A Flash -- Nature

Chemists convert cellulose to potential biofuel without enzymes.
A genuine revolution in biofuels is currently hindered by the difficulty of converting the most recalcitrant parts of plants, primarily the cellulose of their fibres, into useful fuel. Two chemists in California now claim that it might be remarkably easy to do just that with little more than a strong acid to break down the cellulose.

Mark Mascal and Edward Nikitin of the University of California, Davis say their new process is the most efficient way yet described for converting cellulose into small, energy-rich organic molecules, using no more than basic textbook chemistry.

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1843 Stellar Eruption May Be New Type Of Star Explosion

An artist's conception of the fast blast wave from Eta Carinae's 1843 eruption, which today has caught up with a slow-moving shell ejected in a previous outburst about 1,000 years ago, producing a bright fireworks display that heats the older shell and makes it emit X-rays (orange). The well-known two-lobed "Homunculus" nebula, a slow-moving shell of gas and dust also produced in the 1843 eruption, is shown closer to the star, which is a hot blue supergiant. (Credit: Gemini Observatory artwork by Lynette Cook)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 11, 2008) — Eta Carinae, the galaxy's biggest, brightest and perhaps most studied star after the sun, has been keeping a secret: Its giant outbursts appear to be driven by an entirely new type of stellar explosion that is fainter than a typical supernova and does not destroy the star.

Reporting in the Sept. 11 issue of Nature, University of California, Berkeley, astronomer Nathan Smith proposes that Eta Carinae's historic 1843 outburst was, in fact, an explosion that produced a fast blast wave similar to, but less energetic than, a real supernova. This well-documented event in our own Milky Way Galaxy is probably related to a class of faint stellar explosions in other galaxies recognized in recent years by telescopes searching for extragalactic supernovae.

"There is a class of stellar explosions going off in other galaxies for which we still don't know the cause, but Eta Carinae is the prototype," said Smith, a UC Berkeley postdoctoral fellow.

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