Slashdot Mirror

There are interesting projects, yes. But JAXA shows a shocking lack of willingness to share. Case in point: Hayabusa has some excellent shots of the asteroid. So where's the high definition map available for public download? Where's the raw image site (à la JPL's Cassinni) where the public can download the latest processed and unprocessed images? You want publicity, then put your product out there. Show landscapes (real and virtual), named features, etc. In short, make the work as exciting to the public as it is (presumably) to the scientists working on it.

JAXA seems to be keeping all it's data to itself. Great. And so what will make the news? The mission failures. After all, what else is there for the press to work with?

Assuming earth-sized solar panels won't be in the picture anytime soon, I think it would be safe to say that even billions of solar panels won't be enough to block the sun's rays, because the sun is so massive and its light is extending everywhere. The shadow produced from one of these solar catchers would be like that of a gnat flying just over your head--you wouldn't even notice.

I also doubt said panels would have any effect on alien worlds, since those worlds would have their own star / energy source--why would they need light from ours?

For a serious peek at the role of plasma dynamics in the solar system, you need go no farther than NASA: 15.1.1. Applicability of Hydromagnetics and Plasma Physics . For wider application, the Los Alamos National Laboratory has up a nice tour of The Universe (which universe even your neighborhood astronomer, if pressed, will admit is over 99% plasma-phase -- at least the baryonic bits! -- even if he has little inkling what that means), and links to refereed-journal papers.

I'm afraid ceoyoyo and 2008 will need to find their cranks elsewhere. That said, the Velikovskyite cultists at Thunderbolts have a very nice picture-of-the-day archive, with captions that besides being much more fun than the pap on APOD, are remarkably often thought-provoking. You don't have to believe that Venus popped out of Saturn in immediate prehistory (as "proven" by widespread legends) to enjoy them rattling the chains that hold astronomers in their 19th-century Christian-esque universe.

You can't honestly poke fun at a hairy-eyed Velikovskyite without ribbing the Big-bang mooncalves equally. The latter have much less excuse for their silliness, and a lot more to answer for.

For a serious peek at the role of plasma dynamics in the solar system, you need go no farther than NASA: 15.1.1. Applicability of Hydromagnetics and Plasma Physics . For wider application, the Los Alamos National Laboratory has up a nice tour of The Universe (which universe even your neighborhood astronomer, if pressed, will admit is over 99% plasma-phase -- at least the baryonic bits! -- even if he has little inkling what that means), and links to refereed-journal papers.

I'm afraid ceoyoyo and 2008 will need to find their cranks elsewhere. That said, the Velikovskyite cultists at Thunderbolts have a very nice picture-of-the-day archive, with captions that besides being much more fun than the pap on APOD, are remarkably often thought-provoking. You don't have to believe that Venus popped out of Saturn in immediate prehistory (as "proven" by widespread legends) to enjoy them rattling the chains that hold astronomers in their 19th-century Christian-esque universe.

You can't honestly poke fun at a hairy-eyed Velikovskyite without ribbing the Big-bang mooncalves equally. The latter have much less excuse for their silliness, and a lot more to answer for.

Of course you need a big rocket to get the thing off the planet. But then why not use an ion engine? Those long coasting times you get with a chemical rocket are a perfect opportunity to use something that produces low thrust over a long period of time -- like an ion engine.

The engine itself MAY be heavier, but the advantage of ion engines is that they give you a given delta-v with much less reaction mass then chemical engines (ie they are much more efficient), so long as you don't need high acceleration. So your total mass is way less.

NASA seems fairly excited about using these things to explore deep space:

http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/features/nep_p rometheus.html
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2000/ast15jun_1 .htm
http://nmp.jpl.nasa.gov/ds1/tech/sep.html
http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/prop06ap r99_2.htm

From one of those:
Some proposed mission concepts considering ion propulsion include the Comet Nucleus Sampler Return (CNSR), the Saturn Ring Observer, the Titan Explorer, the Neptune Orbiter, and the Europa Lander.

Neptune... sounds pretty Voyagerish. Except Voyager didn't have the fuel to stop and orbit, only to pass by.

An ion engine lets you carry MORE payload AND get there faster. It even lets you do something more than float on past when you do get there.

Of course you need a big rocket to get the thing off the planet. But then why not use an ion engine? Those long coasting times you get with a chemical rocket are a perfect opportunity to use something that produces low thrust over a long period of time -- like an ion engine.

The engine itself MAY be heavier, but the advantage of ion engines is that they give you a given delta-v with much less reaction mass then chemical engines (ie they are much more efficient), so long as you don't need high acceleration. So your total mass is way less.

NASA seems fairly excited about using these things to explore deep space:

http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/features/nep_p rometheus.html
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2000/ast15jun_1 .htm
http://nmp.jpl.nasa.gov/ds1/tech/sep.html
http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/prop06ap r99_2.htm

From one of those:
Some proposed mission concepts considering ion propulsion include the Comet Nucleus Sampler Return (CNSR), the Saturn Ring Observer, the Titan Explorer, the Neptune Orbiter, and the Europa Lander.

Neptune... sounds pretty Voyagerish. Except Voyager didn't have the fuel to stop and orbit, only to pass by.

An ion engine lets you carry MORE payload AND get there faster. It even lets you do something more than float on past when you do get there.

Of course you need a big rocket to get the thing off the planet. But then why not use an ion engine? Those long coasting times you get with a chemical rocket are a perfect opportunity to use something that produces low thrust over a long period of time -- like an ion engine.

The engine itself MAY be heavier, but the advantage of ion engines is that they give you a given delta-v with much less reaction mass then chemical engines (ie they are much more efficient), so long as you don't need high acceleration. So your total mass is way less.

NASA seems fairly excited about using these things to explore deep space:

http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/features/nep_p rometheus.html
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2000/ast15jun_1 .htm
http://nmp.jpl.nasa.gov/ds1/tech/sep.html
http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/prop06ap r99_2.htm

From one of those:
Some proposed mission concepts considering ion propulsion include the Comet Nucleus Sampler Return (CNSR), the Saturn Ring Observer, the Titan Explorer, the Neptune Orbiter, and the Europa Lander.

Neptune... sounds pretty Voyagerish. Except Voyager didn't have the fuel to stop and orbit, only to pass by.

An ion engine lets you carry MORE payload AND get there faster. It even lets you do something more than float on past when you do get there.

Of course you need a big rocket to get the thing off the planet. But then why not use an ion engine? Those long coasting times you get with a chemical rocket are a perfect opportunity to use something that produces low thrust over a long period of time -- like an ion engine.

The engine itself MAY be heavier, but the advantage of ion engines is that they give you a given delta-v with much less reaction mass then chemical engines (ie they are much more efficient), so long as you don't need high acceleration. So your total mass is way less.

NASA seems fairly excited about using these things to explore deep space:

http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/features/nep_p rometheus.html
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2000/ast15jun_1 .htm
http://nmp.jpl.nasa.gov/ds1/tech/sep.html
http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/prop06ap r99_2.htm

From one of those:
Some proposed mission concepts considering ion propulsion include the Comet Nucleus Sampler Return (CNSR), the Saturn Ring Observer, the Titan Explorer, the Neptune Orbiter, and the Europa Lander.

Neptune... sounds pretty Voyagerish. Except Voyager didn't have the fuel to stop and orbit, only to pass by.

An ion engine lets you carry MORE payload AND get there faster. It even lets you do something more than float on past when you do get there.

I dunno about the average Slahxpert (say it out loud, it has a nice Futurama ring to it hehe) or "scientific media whore" but I'd define the edge of the solar system to be the heliosphere.

NASA seems to agree http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/solarsystem/vo yager_agu.html so I guess I'm wrong... at least on Slashdot ;)

While you do, indeed, have to push X amount of stuff downward to move upward, nothing says that has to be 'fuel', as in, the stuff powering the pushing does not have to be the same stuff that you are throwing out the back. Maybe it's air you merely accelerated, at least for the first part of the trip, maybe it's a load of highly compressed dirt you fling downward using electrity. Dirt is free, and electricity is cheap.

So you realize that the 'fuel mass fraction' issue is related to how much fuel it takes to get to orbit right, not about how to get from one point in space to another? That's why you talked about flinging stuff downward?

Hmmm. Let's think about this cheap dirt/electricity idea.

A report complete with lots and lots of brain numbing formulas (at least to my simple brain) that describes trying to optimize a mass driver design for use as space propulsion or on the moon can be found here:

http://www.nas.nasa.gov/About/Education/SpaceSettl ement/spaceres/III-3.html

Their optimized lightweight design was capable of flinging out a 10.5 kg mass with an acceleration of 1,000 G, four times a second. So this should be able to lift a 40,000 kg space ship at 1g. Oh but we still need our fuel, in this case 'cheap electricity'. So now you also need to lift the mass of the huge nuclear plant that you will need to generate all of that 'cheap' electricity to power the mass driver. (Or were you going to be unreeling an extension cord back to the Three Gorges Dam and getting your cheap electricity from there?) How big was the mass driver needed to accomplish this? It came in at 500 meters long and weighed over 3 million kg with the powerplant. And let's not forget that we need to also lift the mass of the dirt that we are going to be shooting out....

A mass driver could never lift itself let alone the spaceship that it was supposed to be pushing.

Go Dirt! Hooray for cheap electricity!

Right now, we have neither the ability to cause significant pollution, nor the capability to avoid it, so it's doubly moot.

Try telling that to NASA the next time that they are about to shift the orbit of the Shuttle or the ISS because of a possible collision with debris in orbit. I sure they will be relieved to find out that it doesn't really matter and they don't need to bother. And the astronauts that have been on orbit during collisions with debris will probably be doubly relieved to find that it was just an insignificant event and nothing to worry about.

some links:

NASA Orbital Debris Program Office : http://www.orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov/
picture of damage to the shuttle front window:
http://www.orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov/photogallery /gallarypage/sts7crack.jpg
picture of a panel that was left in orbit for over 5 years and then brought back for examination:
http://www.orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov/photogallery /gallarypage/ldefpanel.jpg

Right now, we have neither the ability to cause significant pollution, nor the capability to avoid it, so it's doubly moot.

Try telling that to NASA the next time that they are about to shift the orbit of the Shuttle or the ISS because of a possible collision with debris in orbit. I sure they will be relieved to find out that it doesn't really matter and they don't need to bother. And the astronauts that have been on orbit during collisions with debris will probably be doubly relieved to find that it was just an insignificant event and nothing to worry about.

some links:

NASA Orbital Debris Program Office : http://www.orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov/
picture of damage to the shuttle front window:
http://www.orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov/photogallery /gallarypage/sts7crack.jpg
picture of a panel that was left in orbit for over 5 years and then brought back for examination:
http://www.orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov/photogallery /gallarypage/ldefpanel.jpg

Right now, we have neither the ability to cause significant pollution, nor the capability to avoid it, so it's doubly moot.

Try telling that to NASA the next time that they are about to shift the orbit of the Shuttle or the ISS because of a possible collision with debris in orbit. I sure they will be relieved to find out that it doesn't really matter and they don't need to bother. And the astronauts that have been on orbit during collisions with debris will probably be doubly relieved to find that it was just an insignificant event and nothing to worry about.

some links:

NASA Orbital Debris Program Office : http://www.orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov/
picture of damage to the shuttle front window:
http://www.orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov/photogallery /gallarypage/sts7crack.jpg
picture of a panel that was left in orbit for over 5 years and then brought back for examination:
http://www.orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov/photogallery /gallarypage/ldefpanel.jpg

Totally wrong, NASA has an entire facility ( Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Virginia) devoted exclusively to sub-orbital launches. I launched a balloon w/ telescope payload (went up to 20 miles altitude) from there back in the mid-90's. They also launch rockets and all other sorts of sub-orbital payloads, and research suborbital spacecraft from there as well.

> On a serious note, what are the prospects for international organizations bidding for the contracts?
> What are the implications?

The Q&A file on the NASA procurement site answers this question:

Q: Will the opportunity to participate in NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services Space Flight Demonstrations be for US companies only or can foreign companies also participate?

A: U.S. entities shall be the signatories on the agreements, however foreign companies can participate. Foreign participation shall be in compliance with Federal laws, regulations, and policies. A reference to the key laws and policies will be provided in the announcement.

The details are in the Announcement:

4.2 Eligible Participants
The following entities may submit proposals under this announcement: an entity organized under the laws of the United States or of a State, which is

A. More than 50 percent owned by United States nationals; or

B. A subsidiary of a foreign company and the Secretary of Transportation finds that -

(i) Such subsidiary has in the past evidenced a substantial commitment to the United States market through -

a. Investments in the United States in long-term research, development, and manufacturing (including the manufacture of major components and subassemblies); and

b. Significant contributions to employment in the United States; and

(ii) The country or countries in which such foreign company is incorporated or organized, and, if appropriate, in which it principally conducts its business, affords reciprocal treatment to companies described in subparagraph (A) comparable to that afforded to such foreign company's subsidiary in the United States, as evidenced by

A. Providing comparable opportunities for companies described in subparagraph (A) to participate in Government sponsored research and development similar to that authorized under Title 42 U.S.C. Chapter 141 (Commercial Space Opportunities and Transportation Services).

B. Providing no barriers, to companies described in subparagraph (A) with respect to local investment opportunities, that are not provided to foreign companies in the United States; and

C. Providing adequate and effective protection for the intellectual property rights of companies described in subparagraph (A).

> On a serious note, what are the prospects for international organizations bidding for the contracts?
> What are the implications?

The Q&A file on the NASA procurement site answers this question:

Q: Will the opportunity to participate in NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services Space Flight Demonstrations be for US companies only or can foreign companies also participate?

A: U.S. entities shall be the signatories on the agreements, however foreign companies can participate. Foreign participation shall be in compliance with Federal laws, regulations, and policies. A reference to the key laws and policies will be provided in the announcement.

The details are in the Announcement:

4.2 Eligible Participants
The following entities may submit proposals under this announcement: an entity organized under the laws of the United States or of a State, which is

A. More than 50 percent owned by United States nationals; or

B. A subsidiary of a foreign company and the Secretary of Transportation finds that -

(i) Such subsidiary has in the past evidenced a substantial commitment to the United States market through -

a. Investments in the United States in long-term research, development, and manufacturing (including the manufacture of major components and subassemblies); and

b. Significant contributions to employment in the United States; and

(ii) The country or countries in which such foreign company is incorporated or organized, and, if appropriate, in which it principally conducts its business, affords reciprocal treatment to companies described in subparagraph (A) comparable to that afforded to such foreign company's subsidiary in the United States, as evidenced by

A. Providing comparable opportunities for companies described in subparagraph (A) to participate in Government sponsored research and development similar to that authorized under Title 42 U.S.C. Chapter 141 (Commercial Space Opportunities and Transportation Services).

B. Providing no barriers, to companies described in subparagraph (A) with respect to local investment opportunities, that are not provided to foreign companies in the United States; and

C. Providing adequate and effective protection for the intellectual property rights of companies described in subparagraph (A).

This is indeed really great news. Let's not forget the open NASA WorldWind project also has Java/OpenGL versions in development for MacOS X and Linux and that WorldWind itself has been forked into Punt.

If you're serious about geospatial, you might be interested in joining us :-)

GPS Satellite are NOT in LEO. The GPS constellation orbits at 20,200 km. This is between the LEO sats: Iridiums (780km), the Hubble (569 km), the Space Station (351 km); but much lower than geosynchronous communications or weather satellites (35,786 km). They orbit the earth twice/day.

For a really cool visual demonstration, check out J-Track 3D over at the NASA web site. The GPS satellites are just about the only thing you find between the cloud near the earth, and the Clarke Belt.

From the link mentioned above:

"They've also learned what happens during a magnetic flip. Reversals take a few thousand years to complete, and during that time--contrary to popular belief--the magnetic field does not vanish. "It just gets more complicated," says Glatzmaier. Magnetic lines of force near Earth's surface become twisted and tangled, and magnetic poles pop up in unaccustomed places. A south magnetic pole might emerge over Africa, for instance, or a north pole over Tahiti. Weird. But it's still a planetary magnetic field, and it still protects us from space radiation and solar storms."

Supercomputer simulations do not show that. According to the site: "Reversals take a few thousand years to complete, and during that time--contrary to popular belief--the magnetic field does not vanish. 'It just gets more complicated,' says Glatzmaier. Magnetic lines of force near Earth's surface become twisted and tangled, and magnetic poles pop up in unaccustomed places. A south magnetic pole might emerge over Africa, for instance, or a north pole over Tahiti. Weird. But it's still a planetary magnetic field, and it still protects us from space radiation and solar storms."

Well hmm according to http://image.gsfc.nasa.gov/poetry/venus/RevScience .html the earth's magnetic field does not cause mass surface life extinctions. If you would like to make an assertion like that, you really do have to back it up with something. In fact it will cause little change in the way things function, maybe a few thousand extra cases of cancer each year. Now if the field never came back and our atomosphere ionized, then we would be screwed.

Have you read the NASA article that you linked? It says nothing about mass extinction events and polarity reversals in earth's history, it appears to be talking about mars. Now if you look at this link http://image.gsfc.nasa.gov/poetry/venus/RevScience .html you would see that field does not coincide with mass extinctions. Furthermore when the last one happened paleontologists said there were no major changes in plant an animal life. So your mass extinction seems like a leap of imagination.

that would be a very bad thing. The magnetosphere currently protects our planet from the solar wind. A significantly weakened magnetic field would allow the solar wind to ionize Earth's atmosphere and carry it off into space (read this NASA webpage for more info). Needless to say, that would be very bad. Polarity reversals have occurred frequently in Earth's history, and some argue that they coincide with mass extinction events.

There's a long period around the reversal when the earth's magnetic field is dowm. No protection from cosmic rays & other miscellaneous high energy particals. Hundreds of years. One resource on the Brunhes-Matuyama reversal about 780K years ago is: here. Here's another more general one on reversals from NASA.

But this site sure has them and this site has some too.
Read them. They are worth it.

It looks like there are two magnetic norths on the planet. Our current one looks like it is just the additive of the major and minor magnetic fields of the earth with their collective strengths oscillating over time... hence the apparent movement.

As long as the funding comes from somewhere, it's not bad news really.

And yes there is good news out there, just not on Slashdot tonight:
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2005/07dec_moon storms.htm

Freaking Space Elevators!!!

NASA is running contests to help make those more feasible. Unfortunately, Congress currently has a cap on the amount they're allowed to offer for competitive prizes -- it's very hard to turn a competitive prize into pork barrel for one's congressional district.

National Air & Space Administration

NASA website (notice the .gov)

They are now, and always have been, a part of the US government.

http://procurement.jsc.nasa.gov/COTS/default.asp

Actually to get faster people are trying to reduce the capacitance with low-K dielectrics. Not increase (hint: more capacinance = more charge to transfer = slower switch; if you can transfer less current to turn the switch on, it'll work faster). The reason to thin the gate is partially to do with Vp (propagation delay) issues, partially to do with just making the device physically smaller and partally (if I remember this bit of semiconductor physics correctly) to do with getting the gate polysilicon itself closer to the conduction channel causing a more severe depletion layer(and therefore higher conuctivity and faster turn on and turn off).

First google link on Low-K:
http://nepp.nasa.gov/index_nasa.cfm/934/

* San Andreas Fault Observatory at Depth research and "nonvolcanic" tremors.
* Earth is potentially out of new farm land.
* New insights into the rate of ozone recovery.
* Southeast Asia faces another danger of a large tsunami in the next few decades
* Cassino spots icy plumes on Saturn

..not much. Good news is that O'Reilly finally has enough animals to publish "Learning HAL/S ".

This link shows you the last 7 days' worth of new images. They occasionally post some really cool (or interesting for other reasons, e.g. ultra high res) images that don't make it to the newsier sites.

Here is one of my favourites of Valles Marineris at 9002x3126 pixels. A good excuse for a second monitor: "now I can use this as wallpaper". (-:

This link shows you the last 7 days' worth of new images. They occasionally post some really cool (or interesting for other reasons, e.g. ultra high res) images that don't make it to the newsier sites.

Here is one of my favourites of Valles Marineris at 9002x3126 pixels. A good excuse for a second monitor: "now I can use this as wallpaper". (-:

...so I'm about 6 light-nanoseconds tall, the screen I'm facing is about one by one and a half light nanoseconds.

A light-second is about a billion feet or 300,000,000m, roughly the same as the distance to the Moon.

86400 seconds in a day, so a light-day is about 26,000,000,000,000m, or 4-5 times the distance to Pluto and Charon, or 170 times as far away as the Sun is from us.

A light year is 9,500,000,000,000 km; and Proxima Centauri (the nearest star) is about 4 of those away, and the Crab nebula is about 4,000 of those from us.

Putting all of that into scale is kind of difficult. Making the Sun as big as a basketball, gives you a barely-visible Earth about 30m away, Jupiter a squash (or golf) ball about 150m away, and pluto an infinitesimal speck over a kilometer out. A light-day from the basketball sun would be a circle 9km across, and if you put the basketball sun in the middle of the US, the next basketball would be in Greenland, northwest Alaska, or Brasil. If you put it in my home town (Perth, Western Australia), you'd be looking at the next basketball in South Africa, southern Russia, or the middle of the Pacific. And the Crab nebula twenty times as far away as the Moon.

The fastest manned spacecraft has travelled at ~40,000km/h, so it would take about 100,000 years (a thousand lifetimes, two and a half thousand generations) to get to the nearest star and 100,000,000 years to get to the Crab. I imagine that even the spectacular views as you approached would somewhat lose their appeal after a few generations.

The best placee to find pictures of Saturn and it's moons from the Cassini Spacecraft.
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/Cassini

I have my Home Page set to the "Astronomy Picture of the Day"
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/archivepix.html

I tend to get my space image fix from NASA, but this looks good as well. I will be adding this site to my daily round of websites to procrastinate with. **clicky**

Saturn V rockets were big.

'Beep, Beep' has a certain charm as well, remembering that these songs came out not long after Sputnik and that's largely what satelites did. Here's a link to a Sputnik page that has a sound file.

The mechanism of the tropical storm system was worked out by the Japanese meteorologist K.V.Ooyama in 1964. His great fame apparently hasn't reached you, alas.

You didn't read/understand my post. Ooyama is great, but he hasn't discovered how heat transfers to a hurricane.

"How heat is transferred from the ocean's surface into the air is a fundamental question, and understanding the mechanisms of heat transfer will help us make better models of hurricane formation, including models of how they grow in intensity," he says.


Read the full article here:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/MediaAle rts/2003/2003060914930.html

Enjoy.

Given all that, it's not likely the current will stop as a whole. More likely, it will take a turn and move in different areas. The sink will happen somewhere else rather than around Greenland, somewhere with less fresh water flowing into it.

I recall hearing from a Geology prof about some major climate change around 30 million years ago that happened because of sufficient continental drift to open up new ocean current opportunities. I believe it was the separation of Australia from Antarctica enough to allow the conveyor current to enter that passage. The modern changes are likely to be less permanent as it will only last until enough of the fresh water is melted from the arctic to balance climate changes and allow the current to return.

Given all that, it's not likely the current will stop as a whole. More likely, it will take a turn and move in different areas. The sink will happen somewhere else rather than around Greenland, somewhere with less fresh water flowing into it.

I recall hearing from a Geology prof about some major climate change around 30 million years ago that happened because of sufficient continental drift to open up new ocean current opportunities. I believe it was the separation of Australia from Antarctica enough to allow the conveyor current to enter that passage. The modern changes are likely to be less permanent as it will only last until enough of the fresh water is melted from the arctic to balance climate changes and allow the current to return.

I listen to people who have spent their entire lives studying and methodically researching something using strict scientific methods and extensive peer review.

How about Columbia University and NASA? Do they count? That study suggests that increasing solar output may be partially to blame for changes.

Or are they saying weird things that you don't listen to?

Actually, for every molecule of CO2 added to the system,
you are subtracting one molecule of O2 to the system.

So, humans are running out of oxygen far faster than they need to worry about freezing to death.

The Global drop in available oxygen is under reported, most likely to prevent widespread panic.

The Oceans Primary Oxygen Producting Plankton levels have been dropping radically since the 1980s (they make more than 50% of the oxygen you need) and the green space of trees and plants continually gets reduced by urbanization, suburban sprawl, slash and burn, and ongoing desertification in Africa and elsewhere (They make the rest of your O2).

Reseachers have linked the real cause of mass extinction events not to just some rock falling from the sky, but for the worldwide drop of oxygen from 35 percent down to 15 percent of the atmosphere. The Giant Dinos ran out of air.

With the ongoing death of land plants and primary oxygen producing plankton, VERY few humans will survive the upcoming drop from the current 21 percent oxygen levels down to only 9 percent oxygen levels.

Here are some sources of the biggest coverup in human history: 'The Oxygen is vanishing.':

LONG-TERM ATMOSPHERIC OXYGEN DECREASE
- AN UNDERESTIMATED FACTOR FORCING THE PERMIAN-TRIASSIC MASS EXTINCTION.
O. Weidlich (1), W. Kiessling (2) and E. Flügel (3)
(1) Inst. f. Geowissenschaften, Christian-Albrechts-Universität Kiel,
(2) Inst. f. Paläontologie, Museum für Naturkunde Berlin,
(3) Inst. f. Paläontologie, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität
Erlangen-Nürnberg (ow@gpi.uni-kiel.de/Fax: +49-431880-5557)
direct link: http://www.cosis.net/abstracts/EAE03/05406/EAE03-J -05406.pdf
Referenced and Link Located on:
List of Accepted Contributions -
CL32 Phanerozoic history of atmospheric gases (co-sponsored by BG)
EGS-AGU-EUG Joint Assembly. Nice, France, 06 - 11 April 2003
Copernicus Online Service + Information System
http://www.cosis.net/members/meetings/sessions/acc epted_contributions.php?p_id=38&s_id=779

Vulnerability Assessment of the North East Atlantic Shelf Marine Ecoregion to Climate Change
West Coast Energy Limited. Trevor Baker, Project Manager August 2005
World Wildlife Fund (WWF)

Monitoring the Earth from Space with SeaWiFS
http://oceancolor.gsfc.nasa.gov/SeaWiFS/TEACHERS/s anctuary_7.html

Decline in Oceans' Phytoplankton Alarms Scientists
David Perlman - SF Chronicle 6oct03
http://www.mindfully.org/Water/2003/Phytoplankton- Decline-Ocean6oct03.htm

Ocean primary production and climate: Global decadal changes
Watson W. Gregg, Laboratory for Hydrospheric Processes, NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, USA

Don't be such a smart-ass. Here's where I got my information .

From the article:

"Lacking a planet-wide magnetic field, most of the Red Planet is exposed to the full force of the incoming solar wind. "The Martian atmosphere extends hundreds of kilometers above the surface where it's ionized by solar ultraviolet radiation," says Dave Mitchell, a space scientist at the University of California at Berkeley. "The magnetized solar wind simply picks up these ions and sweeps them away."

"In 1989 the Soviet Phobos probe made direct measurements of the atmospheric erosion," he continued. When the spacecraft passed through the solar wind wake behind Mars, onboard instruments detected ions that had been stripped from Mars's atmosphere and were flowing downstream with the solar wind. "If we extrapolate those Phobos measurements 4 billion years backwards in time, solar wind erosion can account for most of the planet's lost atmosphere.""

I can't be sure why Venus still has such a thick atmosphere compared to Mars (probably because it has more mass and/or had more atmosphere to begin with), but I have no doubt that it is also subject to some degree of atmospheric erosion due to its lack of a magnetic field.

People seem to have gotten their cause and effect mixed up regarding the ocean's currents.

The rotation of the earth, along with wind is the primary mechanism for driving the gulf stream. Hot and cold water rising and falling has nothin to do with it - although it does have something to do with nutrient distribution.

The gulf stream current will not stop running unless the entire oceam freezes or the earth stops spinning. It's a matter of fluid mechanics. See this for basic details.

Whether some flow is diverted (making Europe a little cooler) is another story, but the fluctuations are just as likely a part of chaos that is a part of most fluid systems.

m

I think they should go back to the moon instead.

Have you looked at the NASA webpage lately?

Send an unmanned mission first maybe

You mean like the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter?

I think they should go back to the moon instead.

Have you looked at the NASA webpage lately?

Send an unmanned mission first maybe

You mean like the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter?