Mickeys

The powerful earthquake that killed hundreds of people in Chile on Saturday probably shifted the Earth’s axis and made days slightly shorter, a Nasa scientist has said.

Chile and the Andes mountains, as seen from Space Shuttle Columbia in 1994

Richard Gross, a research scientist at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, calculated how much the axis may have changed in position following the the disaster.

More than 700 people died and two million are estimated to have been affected by the 8.8-magnitude tremor and subsequent tsunamis.

The quake, the most powerful to hit the nation in 50 years, sent shockwaves out from the epicentre 70 miles from Chile’s second city, Concepcion.

Buildings and roads collapsed and 500,000 homes have been left severely damaged.

Six aid workers died when a plane carrying them to Concepcion crashed.

The team was on its way to help organise accommodation for those left homeless by the disaster.

Soldiers were sent to patrol Concepcion’s streets after mobs set fire to shops and started looting them, hindering attempts to rescue survivors.

Devastation after the Chile quake

If the planet’s axis did shift by 8cm during the quake, days would have shortened by 1.26 microseconds, Mr Gross calculated.

A microsecond is one-millionth of a second.

Earth days are 24 hours long because that is the amount of time it takes the planet to make one full rotation on its axis, so shifting the axis would affect rotation.

The quake shifted the Earth’s axis by even more than the 9.1-magnitude tremor off Indonesia that started the deadly tsunami in Asia in 2004, according to Mr Gross.

This was partly because the fault line responsible for the quake in Chile “dips into Earth at a slightly steeper angle than does the fault responsible for the 2004 Sumatran earthquake”, he said.

The different angle made Saturday’s tremor more effective at moving Earth’s mass vertically and shifting the planet’s axis, Mr Gross continued.

The 2004 quake in Asia, which killed hundreds of thousands of people, caused the Earth to move by around 7cm.

It chopped an estimated 6.8 microseconds off the length of a day, Nasa said.

story from SkyNews

taken from News24

Spec-Savers South Africa Sub Tropical Thicket Rehabilitation Project

As part of our Corporate Social Responsibility (Environment) Programme, Spec-Savers South Africa will provide funding to plant a minimum of 4000 trees & spekboom per month for a three-year period and as part of the sub tropical thicket rehabilitation project in the Baviaanskloof, Eastern Cape in partnership with the Wilderness Foundation of South Africa. The project is being implemented by the Wilderness Foundation, and through this sponsorship Spec-Savers is playing our small part in combating global climate change.  We realize that as South Africans we have to play a vital role in reducing carbon emissions as we are the 12th biggest contributor in the world with our carbon contribution of 1.6 % or 437, 037 metric tons per annum.  So, with every purchase of Climate Eyes lenses; variable tint lenses that protect your eyes from the harmful rays of the sun and automatically adjust to variable light conditions; Spec-Savers in association with the Wilderness Foundation will plant a Spekboom tree.

read the full story at Health24

Miami – Hurricane Bill, the first of the Atlantic storm season, doused Bermuda with heavy rain on Saturday as it barrelled past the islands, raising fears of life-threatening waves along the US east coast.

Packing winds of 105 miles (165 kilometres) an hour, the hurricane was set to head perilously close to the upscale island resort of Martha’s Vineyard, where US President Barack Obama and his family are heading for vacation on Sunday.

The US National Hurricane Centre (NHC) warned of “extremely dangerous” surf and “life-threatening rip currents” throughout a vast area including the Bahamas, Bermuda, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico.

But the centre downgraded the hurricane a notch to Category Two on the Saffir-Simpson scale, meaning the storm threatens to cause widespread damage but does not carry the same potential to destroy weak homes as a Category Three storm.

In the Dominican Republic, on the island of Hispaniola, authorities reported waves up to 10 feet (three meters) high churned up due to Bill’s passage.

Hurrican Bill tracked by NASA.

Bermuda shut down its main international gateway, LF Wade International Airport, for the night as the tourist island bunkered in.

“It’s quite wild at the moment, but we’re used to hurricanes in Bermuda,” said Lorna Cervantez, who works at the island’s Royal Palms Hotel. “From our previous experience, we have to get ready.”

Residents of the British overseas territory with gas cylinders were asked to turn them off as they could become dangerous projectiles if winds pick up.

Bermuda was expected to avoid a direct hit from Bill as the hurricane churns past it on its way to near Massachusetts in time for the Obamas’ arrival.

Yacht owners battened down the hatches at Martha’s Vineyard, a popular island of tranquillity for the rich and famous where the US first family was due to spend a week unwinding for the first time since Obama’s inauguration in January.

“Phones are ringing off the hook and the hurricane is all people are talking about,” said Ned Kaiser, the assistant harbour master at Martha’s Vineyard.

“We’re hearing we’ll have pretty big seas with the storm surge coming. Out in the ocean now, the waves are 12 to 15 feet” (3.7 to 4.6 meters).

US oil giant Exxon Mobil said it was evacuating all 200 workers from a gas platform off the Canadian east coast ahead of Hurricane Bill’s expected weekend arrival.

At 06:00 GMT on Saturday, Bill’s eye was about 205 miles (330 kilometres) west of Bermuda, and about 475 miles (765 kilometres) east-southeast of the US coastline at Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, the NHC said.

It was moving northwest at around 20 miles (32 kilometres) per hour.

“On the forecast track, the core of Hurricane Bill is expected to pass over the open waters between Bermuda and the east coast of the United States this morning,” the NHC said.

The Atlantic hurricane season began on June 1 and ends on November 30.

Weather experts specialising in hurricane forecasting predicted above average activity over the next two weeks.

taken from News24

Beijing – China’s giant panda could be extinct in just two to three generations as rapid economic development is infringing on its way of life, state media said on Monday, citing an expert at conservation group WWF.

The problem is that the pandas’ habitat is being split up into ever smaller patches, preventing the animals from roaming freely for mating partners and in turn endangering their gene pool, the Global Times reported.

“If the panda cannot mate with those from other habitats, it may face extinction within two to three generations,” said Fan Zhiyong, Beijing-based species programme director for WWF. “We have to act now.”

The risk of inbreeding is increasing, threatening to reduce the panda’s resistance to diseases and lowering its ability to reproduce, the paper said.

Fan said that highways pose major restrictions on the panda’s free movement.

“We may have to give up building some infrastructure,” Fan said. “I don’t know the solution to this problem.”

There are about 1 590 pandas living in the wild around China, mostly in southwestern Sichuan, northern Shaanxi and northwestern Gansu provinces. A total of 180 have been bred in captivity, according to earlier reports.

In addition to environmental constraints, the animals’ notoriously low libidos have frustrated efforts to boost their numbers.

Breeders have resorted to tactics such as showing them “panda porn” videos of other pandas mating, and putting males through “sexercises” aimed at training up their pelvic and leg muscles for the rigours of copulation.

story from News24

Cape Canaveral – Space shuttle Endeavour and its seven astronauts are back on Earth.

Endeavour landed at Florida’s Kennedy Space Centre late on Friday morning after a 16-day mission that saw them complete all their major construction goals at the international space station.

Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata is back after four-and-a-half months in space. He says he can’t wait to eat some sushi and see his wife and son.

Japan’s space station lab got a porch for experiments during Endeavour’s visit. The crew also installed fresh batteries and stockpiled big spare parts.

It was eventful in other ways. The astronauts celebrated the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing with their own spacewalk. They also coped with a flooded toilet and an overheated air-purifier.

taken from News24

Pictures courtesy of Nick Cobbing/Greenpeace

Washington – New Nasa photos of the moon show leftovers from man’s exploration 40 years ago.

For the first time, photos from space pinpoint equipment left behind from the Apollo landings, and even the well-worn tracks made by astronauts on the moon surface. The images are from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which was launched last month and now circles the moon in search of future landing sites.

The photos were released on Friday, in time for the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing on July 20 1969. A picture of the Apollo 11 site shows the Eagle lunar module used by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.

“It was really great to see the hardware sitting on the surface, waiting for us to come back,” said Arizona State University scientist Mark Robinson, who runs the camera on the orbiter. “You could actually see the descent module sitting on the surface.”

But that’s only if you know where to look. Nasa helps out by putting a giant arrow on each photo. The lunar landers look to be square white blobs; the Eagle is a fuzzy image near a crater.

Nasa landed on the moon six times, but the orbital camera so far has only photographed five of the landing sites. Apollo 12 will be done later. That leaves Apollo 11 and Apollo 14 through 17. Apollo 13 never landed on the moon because of an explosion on board the ship on the way to the moon.

The images for Apollo 14 are the best so far. Taken on Wednesday, they show the path made by astronauts Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell as they went back and forth from the lander to the work site.

Robinson said the route was “a high traffic zone, sort of like when you go in an old building and the carpet is worn down”. A similar but lighter path could be seen at the Apollo 17 site.

Also at the Apollo 14 site, a close examination shows a trail made by the cart used to carry tools, Robinson said.

The photos varied in quality based on how high up the satellite was and the angle of the sun. For Apollo 11, the spaceship was taking pictures from 110km above. For Apollo 14, it was asbout 10km closer.

In the next couple months, as the lunar satellite starts its mission to map the moon for future landing sites for astronauts, it will get much better photos, Robinson said. The mission is a first step in Nasa’s effort to return humans to the moon by 2020.

Other robotic probes, including those launched by Japan and India, have looked for signs that man was on the moon, but their cameras weren’t strong enough, Nasa officials said.

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter was launched with a second spacecraft that was designed to crash into the moon in the fall to try to find buried ice. The total cost of the mission is $583m.

story from News24

PS: Has anyone seen these photographs, if so please send us a copy!

Cape Canaveral – The lightning storms and tank problems that have blighted five attempts to launch the space shuttle Endeavour will leave cash-strapped Nasa footing $4.5m in extra costs, the US space agency said.

“The cost of a scrub is approximately $1m,” said spokesperson Allard Beutel at Nasa’s Kennedy Space Centre here.

Along with the cost of filling, draining and then refilling the external tanks so many times with specialised liquid hydrogen and oxygen fuel, the cost is also boosted by overtime pay for Nasa employees and other workers at the space centres here.

The overall $4.5m cost provided by information from Nasa is “marginal” in Nasa’s overall operating budget, added Beutel. The agency says the space shuttle Endeavour alone, built to replace the shuttle Challenger, cost some $1.7bn.

The weather has been blamed for scuttling chances to launch Endeavour in recent days, but Nasa has promised a sixth attempt late Wednesday to reach the International Space Station mission.

The shuttle is now set to lift off at 18:03 (2203 GMT) on Wednesday from Nasa’s Kennedy Space Centre at Cape Canaveral, Florida, with the US space agency saying there is only a 40% chance of unfavourable weather conditions this time.

A launch was also being considered for Thursday, the last possible date before interfering with the July 24 lift-off of the Russian cargo craft Progress to the ISS, launch integration manager Mike Moses told reporters.

Although Russian space officials have accepted the Thursday launch option, Moses noted that it would force Nasa to abort the fifth spacewalk planned for Endeavour’s mission to the ISS.

If the shuttle does not take off on Wednesday or Thursday, the next launch window would begin on July 26.

Los Angeles – An increase in tremors deep under California’s San Andreas fault may be the harbinger of a major earthquake, according to a study out on Friday in the journal Science.

Seismologist Robert Nadeau of the University of California at Berkeley reached this conclusion after analysing tremors along a segment of the San Andreas Fault near Parkfield, California.

Nadeau found that after the 2003 6.5-magnitude San Simeon quake and the 2004 6.0-magnitude Parkfield quake – both located mid-way between San Francisco and Los Angeles – tremors became more frequent and underground stress increased at the end of a “locked segment” of the San Andreas fault.

A “locked segment” is as a portion of a fault that has not moved in years and is at high risk of a major earthquake.

The researchers believe that the increase in tremors could mean that stress is accumulating faster than in the past along that segment of the fault, “which ruptured in the moment magnitude 7.8 Fort Tejon earthquake of 1857,” read the article in Science.

“We’ve shown that earthquakes can stimulate tremors next to a locked zone, but we don’t yet have evidence that this tells us anything about future quakes,” Nadeau said.

“But if earthquakes trigger tremors, the pressure that stimulates tremors may also stimulate earthquakes.”

Seismologists believe there is a 70% probability that a devastating earthquake will strike California in the next 30 years.

The San Andreas fault runs through much of the western state of California, the most populous in the United States.

story from News24

Cape Town – A storm has battered Cape Town, flooding the Vygieskraal informal settlement near Athlone and wreaking havoc in Camps Bay.

Police spokesperson Ian Bennett said on Sunday night that the Vygieskraal residents had refused to leave their flooded homes.

“We wanted to take them to a temporary shelter, but they refused to leave. We’re handing out soup and bread to keep them warm.”

Several vehicles were trapped in water in Victoria Road in Camps Bay, said the police’s Ian Rudman.

It wasn’t clear what had caused the flooding.

“We’re not sure if the problem was caused by drains or if the sea had washed over the road,” said Charlotte Powell of the city’s emergency services.

She added that a meeting would be held on Monday to try to determine exactly what had happened.

The next few days are expected to be wet and very cold in the Western Cape, with wind adding to people’s woes.

Snow is expected in places.

The SA Weather Service has warned that very cold, wet and windy conditions can be expected over the Northern Cape as well.

•    Have you got any weather pictures or stories to share with the News24 community? Send pictures to photos@news24.com and stories to feedback@news24.com.

taken from News24

Gallery: Heavy rains hit Cape Town

Cape Town – Table Mountain is one step closer to being named one of the New7Wonders of Nature.

South Africa’s iconic mountain, and its only official nominee, has been voted as one of the top 77 sites selected from over 261 participants from around the globe.

The much-loved landmark beat fellow category contenders Mount Everest, K2 and Mount Fiji in round two of the international competition that relied solely on votes from the public.

Table Mountain needed to be ranked in the top 11 of its category – mountains and volcanoes. Other categories include seascapes, lakes, islands, ice formations, waterfalls and forests.

“We are thrilled at the enormous level of support and votes from the citizens of South Africa as well as from fans around the globe,” said Sabine Lehmann, CEO of Table Mountain Cableway, who formed an official supporting committee to promote Table Mountain as a nominee.

A panel of experts will now select 28 finalists (four per category), to be announced on July 21, 2009, when the third and final phase of public voting will begin. The official New7Wonders of Nature will be revealed in 2011.

A number of South African celebrities and sports stars showed their support for Table Mountain’s New7Wonders of Nature campaign.

The Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, comedian Marc Lottering, radio DJ Natalie Becker and the Proteas cricketers all cast their vote for Table Mountain.

The campaign is run by the New7Wonders Foundation which is based in Zurich, Switzerland and works to document monuments and conservation efforts worldwide.

Visit www.votefortablemountain.com for more information.

taken from News24

Clark Little at work photographing the Waimea Shorebreak from the impact zone

Photo Credit: Eric Minugh (Flickr)

Clark Little (website), pictured above photographing the reknowned Waimea Shorebreak, started his career surfing the heaviest shorebreak in the world at Waimea. When he picked up photography, he naturally gravitated toward the impact zone and producing stunning images of the barrel from the shorebreak. Clark’s profile on Club of the Waves.

Clark puts himself in the critical point of the waves and gets rewarded with stunning images. His images are unlike any others. Taken from the heart of the barrel as the wave is balanced between motion and sculpture. Here are a few of his stunning images. (Daily Mail UK post on Clark Little) See Clark’s recent Interview on Good Morning America, Youtube Video of the interview at the end of the post.

Clark Little Putting Himself in the Line of Fire for the Shot

A View Only a Surfer Sees Clark Little Capturing the Wave Dance

Clark Little Capturing the Wave Dance

Clark Little Capturing the Surreal Images of Surf

Sunset Images from the View of the Barrel

Check out more of his stunning images at: SurfThereNow