Earth’s Fiercest Winds

The most powerful winds on Earth were caught in action on Sept. 16, 2009. That’s when the sun peaked over the horizon and lit up this Antarctic scene of atmospheric ferocity. Here are some pretty neat details from NASA’s Earth Observatory:

“The scene provides at least two indications of the bay’s persistent and fierce katabatic winds—downslope winds that blow from the interior of the ice sheet toward the coast. One is the windswept ground in the mountainous terrain. In many places, there is a pattern of bare rock and snow drifts that suggests the winds have scoured snow from upwind (inland-facing) slopes and deposited it on the lee sides.

“The second sign of the strong winds appears in the open waters of Terra Nova Bay. Parallel white streamers are composed of newly formed sea ice, probably frazil—crystals just millimeters wide—and congealed frazil, called “grease ice” because it resembles an oil slick on the water. The ice is continually pushed out to sea by the strong offshore winds, leaving a pocket of open water, a polynya.”

Image credit: NASA

A Stormy Sky Over Brazil

On Oct. 6, 2009 the International Space Station (ISS) Expedition 20 crew looked toward the Earth’s limb (the hazy blue line on the horizon) and snapped this impressive photograph of stormy weather over Brazil. A huge amount of detail has been captured by the station’s Nikon D2Xs digital camera as a part of the ongoing ISS Crew Earth Observations experiment.

Cumulonimbus clouds in various stages of development can be seen in the unstable air of the tropics, causing thunderstorms. Ring-like patterns in the large-scale structure of the stormy cloud cover is evident, possibly generated by the storm activity. The snaking 2,100 mile (3,380 km) long Rio Madeira (Madeira River) in the Amazon Basin can also be seen, glinting in reflected sunlight.

Image credit: NASA/JSC Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth.

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The Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh addressed the National Education Day celebrations to commemorate the birth anniversary of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, the first Union Education Minister, in New Delhi today. Following is the text of Prime Minister’s address on the occasion:

It is a great pleasure for me to participate in these National Education Day celebrations. Today we commemorate the memory of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, a great visionary, a great freedom fighter, a great scholar, an eminent educationist and the first Education Minister of Independent India.

Throughout his life, Maulana Azad served the twin causes of freedom and justice. He was a champion of liberal and secular values. He worked for the unity and integrity of India both during the freedom movement and after independence. It was he who laid the foundation of India’s educational policy and planning.

Maulana Azad was also a great institution builder. He created the University Grants Commission (UGC), the National Academies-the Sangeet Natak Akademy, Sahitya Akademy, Lalit Kala Akademy, and the Indian Council for Cultural Relations. He strengthened the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and oversaw the establishment of a chain of top class technical institutions that now represent the best in the Indian Education System. Under his distinguished leadership, the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur was established in 1951, which was followed by a chain of IITs at Mumbai, Chennai, Kanpur and Delhi.

The celebration of Maulana Azad’s birth anniversary as the National Education Day is a befitting homage to one of our greatest leaders. Today is also an occasion when all of us should re-dedicate ourselves to the cause of education, and through it to building India as a modern, knowledge society.

As you all know, education has received the highest priority from the Central Govt. in the last 5 years or so. Our commitment to this important area of national endeavour has seen the strengthening and expansion of the education system at all levels – primary, secondary, higher, professional and technical education. We had earlier taken important steps in providing quality education to all children through our flagship programme of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan. Now we have extended our initiatives to the secondary level. The objective of the Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA) is to achieve an enrolment ratio of 75% for classes IX-X within five years and to provide universal secondary education by the year 2017. The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act 2009 creates a legal entitlement for compulsory and free education for all our children between the ages of 6 and 14 years. We have recently launched a new literacy initiative, SAAKSHAR BHARAT, on the International Literacy Day on 8th September, 2009.

In higher education, the outlay has been increased by 10 times in the Eleventh Five Year Plan as compared to the Tenth Five Year Plan. A number of new institutions – Indian Institutes of Technology, Indian Institutes of Management, Indian Institutes for Science Education & Research, Indian Institutes of Information Technology and others – are being established.

I am also very happy to note that a National Mission on Education through ICT has been launched in February 2009 with an outlay of about Rs. 5000 crore. This will provide internet connectivity to about 20,000 colleges and educational institutions and will be a major harbinger of use of modern technology in the field of education. As UNESCO plays a very important role as a global clearing house of ideas and knowledge and creation of knowledge based societies, I would like to offer our willingness to share with them the e-learning material prepared under this technical mission by the Indian Institutes of Technologies (IITs).

Improving access to education is not enough. It should be accompanied by efforts to ensure equity and improve quality. Our Government stands committed to provide good and quality education to each and every child in our country, especially those who belong to the underprivileged sections of our society. It is with this end in view that we have started a number of scholarship schemes for those who cannot afford to study on their own – the SCs/STs/Minorities and other such disadvantaged groups. We especially recognize the importance of educating women and they are being given special attention in the SAAKSHAR BHARAT mission.

Improvement in quality at all levels is also receiving increasing emphasis. In higher education this will be achieved through structural reforms on the basis of the recommendations of the National Knowledge Commission and the Yashpal Committee.

The realization of the Right to Education does not depend merely on expansion of educational infrastructure but, equally importantly on availability of trained and qualified teachers with commitment to their profession. UNESCO in its Oslo Declaration 2008 relating to Education for All, has projected a requirement of 18 million new primary teachers throughout the world in the next seven years to achieve universal primary education at the global level. In India too, we would need an extra 1 million teachers to implement the Right to Education Act. For this purpose, apart from the need of augmenting teacher’s training institutes and use of ICT for mass learning, it is necessary to restore the prestige and status of the teaching profession in our society.

The importance of good teachers cannot be over-emphasized. Good teachers not only educate- they also inspire. Good teachers make good students. Good teachers make good citizens. We must therefore find ways and means of improving the quality of our teachers. We must find ways of attracting the best talent as faculty in our premier institutions. We today face difficulty in finding top level professors and lecturers in the newly created IITs, IISERs and other such institutions. This state of affairs cannot be allowed to persist and I urge all of you to work to address these problems of deficiency in the quality of teaching in our schools, in our colleges, and in our universities.

A system of education which is built on the premises of quality and equity is central as it must be to India’s rapid progress as a modern, dynamic society. Let me reaffirm today our government’s commitment to the cause of education. But in the mammoth task that lies ahead, we will need the contribution of all our citizens and all actors in the civil society. I urge all of you to work for this noble cause with renewed energy and vigour that will be a befitting tribute to the memory of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad.

With these words, I wish your celebrations all success. I also wish all of you the very best in your efforts to make our educational system stronger, better and more equitable.

In the early days of computers, when hard drives weighed as much as a piece of furniture, a popular phrase was “Garbage-in, Garbage-out” (GIGO). It meant that computers would unquestioningly process the most nonsensical of input data and produce nonsensical output.

“GIGO” describes the abysmal lack of intelligent thought and critical thinking on the Internet when it comes to all the hysteria about the end of the world coming on December 21, 2012 — just in time to ruin Christmas.

I’m getting e-mail about this weekly and I expect the nonsense to ratchet up.

This latest installment in decades of flaky astronomical apocalypse predictions is loosely based on the Mayan calendar that marks the end of a 5,126-year era. Apparently the Mayans knew something about the heavens we don’t, according to numerous hot-selling 2012 doomsday books on the market. Our multi-billion dollar telescopes, space probes, and 6,000 professional astronomers somehow just can’t keep up with the mystic knowledge of an ancient superstitious culture.

With the much-ballyhooed release of the film “2012″ opening on November 13, end of world chatter will be the topic from backyard cookouts, to bars, to wine and cheese parties.

I am listing the 10 most popular 2012 end-of-world scenarios and providing a quickie reference guide to use in politely dismissing any friends, relatives, or in-laws whose brains have turned into a pile of GIGO mush after being suckered by the End of Days hype.

The ten top 2012 doomsday scenarios:

10. Changes in the Sun’s magnetic field will lead to powerful flares.

So what else is new under the sun? The sun goes though a well-documented 11-year sunspot cycle that is driven by its magnetic field entangling, reforming and flipping polarity. Yes, the peak of the next cycle is in 2012 (or 2013), and some predictions suggest it might be 30 to 50 percent stronger than the last peak.

But experts say it will certainly not be the biggest peak ever recorded.

The bottom line is that no dragon’s breath of flame will stretch across 100 million miles of space and blowtorch Earth. The largest solar flare recorded to date, on Nov. 4, 2003, spewed several billions of tons of plasma in Earth’s direction. The flare’s X-ray radiation that impacted our protective atmosphere had the equivalent radiation of 5,000 suns.

We’re still here.

9. The Earth’s magnetic field will reverse.

Don’t hold you breath. The last field reversal happened nearly 800,000 years ago. Fred Flintstone and our other ancestor cavemen survived. Geological evidence shows that the field has reversed its orientation tens of thousands of times over Earth history. Yet there is no definitive evidence that a magnetic field reversal has ever caused any mass extinction due to increased cosmic ray influx.

8. The Earth’s rotation axis will tip.

This isn’t nearly as easy as tipping cows. Unlike Mars, which does go though wide excursions in it axial tilt, Earth’s tilt is kept steady by the gravitational influence of the moon. An object the size of Mars would have to hit Earth to transfer enough momentum to knock us out of kilter. But Mars-sized protoplanets were kicked into interstellar space over 4 billion years ago. The solar system doesn’t make “planets-gone-wild” anymore.

7. A grand alignment of Jupiter and Saturn will gravitationally perturb Earth.

For the past several decades there have been doomsday claims that the combined gravity from grand planetary alignments will cause geologic and meteorological upheavals on Earth.

None are scheduled for 2012.

In 1962 an extremely rare grand conjunction of the classical naked-eye planets drove astrologers crazy. The conjunction happened on Feb. 4-5 and was accompanied by a solar eclipse! The most infamous grand conjunction was in 1982 and popularized in a book called “The Jupiter Effect,” which predicted earthquakes and massive tides. Life went on as usual both years. The moon has a vastly greater gravitational influence on Earth than Jupiter. It’s called location, location, location! At a whopping distance of 400 million miles from Earth, Jupiter’s tug is pretty wimpy.

6. The Sun will align with the galactic equator on the winter solstice.

So what? These are simply coordinates in the sky. It has no physical reality any more than the intersection of Broadway and 7th Avenue at Times Square influences the geology of Manhattan Island. This is greatly confused with the fact that the sun’s position actually oscillates up and down as it orbits the galaxy, like a horse on a carousel.

We pass through the galactic plane every 35 to 40 million years. It’s possible that an increased number of comets might be hurled towards the Earth because of gravitational interaction with the densest parts of our galaxy during this passage. But we are talking about the consequences spanning many thousands of years, not crashing down on our heads in any one specific year.

5. The black hole in the galactic center will affect us.

The Milky Way’s black hole has no influence on the galactic disk. The black hole is three million solar masses. The Milky Way is several trillion solar masses when we add the tug of dark matter. Any gravitational influence of the black hole over the galaxy would be like the tail wagging the dog. The Milky Way’s collision with the Andromeda galaxy will dump gas into the black hole and it will blaze as a quasar. But that’s several billion years away.

4. An asteroid will smash into Earth.

A threatening near-Earth asteroid that’s gotten the most press is the 900-foot wide Apophis. But its chances of collision have been downgraded to 1 in 250,000 at its next close approach in 2029. In theory, an uncharted asteroid or comet could come out of the blue tomorrow. But if we don’t know about it today, the Mayans certainly didn’t know about it 1,200 years ago. Earth-killer impacts are tens of millions of years apart. So there’s no reason to be a doomsday clock-watcher.

3. The rogue planet Nibiru will swing by Earth.

There isn’t such a planet any more than the planet Naboo from the Star Wars trilogy is real. Purported Internet pictures of the interloper are photographic lens flares or hoaxes. Don’t believe every dot you see photographed in the sky.

2. Supernovae or hypernovae will irradiate Earth.

There are no stars that are so close to Earth that radiation from their supernova demise would seriously affect us. The nearest candidate, the red giant Betelgeuse, is predicted to explode in the next 1,000 years. The monster star Eta Carinae is also on a short fuse. Neither doomed star has a spin axis precisely aimed at Earth, so we don’t have to worry about being fried by a narrow beam of gamma rays ejected from the core’s implosion. In fact the kinds of stars that shoot out these Death Star beams are uncommon in the Milky Way. Earth has a one percent chance of getting zapped over 10 billion years. Scratch gamma ray bursts off of your homeowner’s insurance policy.

1. A cloud of negative energy engulfs the solar system.

Wow! A dark cloud with a bad attitude! This sound suspiciously like a Star Trek episode. Dark energy is all around us already, but it is not packaged into clouds. The same goes for dark matter.

Source: http://news.discovery.com/space/ray-villard-doomsday-theories.html