Month: December 2018

Indonesia Tsunami Caused By Collapse Of Volcano, Experts Confirm

Saturday’s tsunami in Indonesia was caused by a chunk of the volcanic Anak Krakatau island slipping into the ocean, it was confirmed on Monday, as officials at the country’s natural disaster agency said it must develop a new tsunami early warning system.

At least 373 people were killed, hundreds injured and many buildings were heavily damaged when the tsunami struck, almost without warning, along the rim of the Sunda Strait, between Java and Sumatra islands.

Anak Krakatau had been spewing ash and lava for months before a 64-hectare section of its south-west side collapsed, an Indonesian official said. “This caused an underwater landslide and eventually caused the tsunami,” Dwikorita Karnawati, the head of the meteorological agency, said.

Images captured by the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-1 satellite showed that a large portion of the southern flank of the volcano had slid off into the ocean, scientists said.

The fact the tsunami was triggered by a volcano rather than an earthquake meant no tsunami warning was triggered, scientists said. Coastal residents reported not seeing or feeling any warning signs before waves of up to three meters high surged in.

Hundreds of military personnel and volunteers spent Monday scouring beaches strewn with debris in search of survivors. At least 1,459 people were injured and more than 600 homes, 60 shops and 420 vessels damaged when the tsunami struck.

Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, the chief spokesman for the Indonesian disaster agency, said the country had no early warning system for landslides or volcanic eruptions. “The current early warning system is for earthquake activity,” he wrote on Twitter.

“Indonesia must build an early warning system for tsunamis that are generated by underwater landslides & volcanic eruptions … Landslides triggered the 1992 Maumere tsunami and the Palu 2018 tsunami.”

He also said Indonesia’s tsunami buoy network had “not been operational since 2012”. “Vandalism, a limited budget, and technical damage mean there were no tsunami buoys at this time,” he said. “They need to be rebuilt to strengthen the Indonesian tsunami early warning system.”

Sutopo said on Twitter: “Anak Krakatau has been erupting since June 2018 until now,” he said. “Yesterday’s eruption was not the biggest. The October-November 2018 period had a larger eruption.”

The death toll is expected to rise as 128 people were still missing on Monday. At least 1,600 people have also been displaced.Dody Ruswandi, a senior official at the disaster agency, added that the rescue effort was likely to last a week.

Sutopo warned locals to stay away from the coast. “People should not carry out activities on the beach and stay away from the coast for a while,” he told reporters.

The University of Queensland volcanologist Teresa Ubide said Anak Krakatau had been erupting for the past few months, which was not unusual. “It seems like the volcano is active at the moment and it may happen again,” Ubide said.

“The volcano is very close to the shoreline so … there wouldn’t be much time to warn because it’s close and the tsunamis can travel very fast,” she said. The lack of seismic activity that would accompany an earthquake was also significant, she said.

Richard Teeuw of the University of Portsmouth said sonar surveys were needed to map the seafloor around the volcano, but that work usually took months. “The likelihood of further tsunamis in the Sunda Strait will remain high while Anak Krakatau volcano is going through its current active phase because that might trigger further submarine landslides,” he said.

Kathy Mueller from the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said aid workers were helping evacuate injured people, bring in clean water and tarpaulins and provide shelter.

he said the group was preparing for the possibility of diseases breaking out in the tsunami zone, adding: “The situation, and the death toll, will remain fluid over the next days and even weeks.”

The water washed away an outdoor stage where a local rock band, Seventeen, were performing, killing their bassist and manager. Other people who had been watching the band on the beach were missing.

Azki Kurniawan, 16, said his first warning about the tsunami was when people burst into the lobby of the Patra Comfort Hotel shouting: “Sea water rising!”

Kurniawan, who was undergoing vocational training with a group of 30 other students, said he was confused because he had not felt a big earthquake. He said he ran to the parking lot to try to reach his motorbike but discovered it was already flooded.

“Suddenly, a one-metre wave hit me,” he said, his eyes red and swollen from crying. “I was thrown into the fence of a building about 30 metres from the beach and held onto the fence as strong as I could, trying to resist the water, which felt like it would drag me back into the sea. I cried in fear … ‘This is a tsunami?’ I was afraid I would die.”

Merry Christmas to All and to All a Wake Up

Too many things going on to say good night… 🙂
Christmas is just a few days away and I have noticed there are a few of you who take joy in gifting my two kids…Alexa, now 10 and Sophia, now 6. If you have a specific gift you wish to give, there will be a place to leave a note in your check out. You can describe what gift you wish to obtain along with any note you wish to present to one or both. I plan on being out to the stores until they kick me out.

Also, I just wanted to say thank you for believing in me, and perhaps most importantly, supporting the direction I am heading….First, in the way of outlining and putting into formula what we now describe as “Space Weather”. Secondly, for turning my attention beyond the Sun – Earth connection and venturing into a similar connection between Earth, our solar system and our galaxy Milky Way. I will continue to research the driving forces which is the impetus of all natural rhythmic cycles….hence; Science Of Cycles.

Merry Christmas, Mitch

WREATHS ACROSS AMERICA UPDATE

Friday at 12 midnight Wreaths Across America will end. Wreath’s will be laid the following morning at military cemeteries across the nation. This will be done with full ceremonies honoring those who game their lives. My two girls will be in full scout dress for this event. See below to sponsor your wreath today.

What does it mean to sponsor a veteran’s wreath? It means you will honor an American hero at one of more than 1,400 locations nationwide this year on Wreaths Across America Day. It is a day that is been set aside to lay wreaths at the places where we remember, honor, teach about our veterans.

We cannot do that without your support, though. Your sponsorship will ensure that a wreath is hand-crafted of all-American balsam and hand-tied with a red velvet bow here in Columbia Falls, Maine. It will then be sent to one of our participating locations, where a volunteer will place it on the marker of a fallen hero. That volunteer will then “say their name” to ensure that the legacy of duty, service, and sacrifice of that veteran is never forgotten.

So, what does it mean to sponsor a wreath? It means you have the opportunity to join a grateful nation in saying “thank you” to our veterans.

My two daughters are in scouts and will personally be placing wreaths at our local military cemetery. Your sponsored wreath will go to a central location and will be disseminated to more than 1400 military cemeteries nationwide. Each sponsored wreath is $15 and there is no limit to your order.

BREAKING NEWS: Earth’s Magnetic Poles Could Start to Flip


Today’s article will come as no surprise to Science Of Cycles readers. There have been several articles SOC published regarding this issue going back to 2012. One of the highly contested questions regarding the pole shift…is ‘where’ on the time line are we measured as of today. I address this in a few of my previous articles. A significant conveying influence to the makings of a magnetic pole reversal is the deluge of cosmic rays which has an effect on the Earth’s mantle and outer core.

The process of convection is amplified which can produce an imbalance that could cause a ‘bulge’, also can produce an acceleration of mantle plumes – which in-turn causes heating of the oceans. These processes can have an effect of Earth’s dipole which creates the North and South magnetic direction. 

Furthermore, my research presents a hypothesis suggesting the influx of cosmic rays during extended solar minimum cycles which could range from 40,000 years to 700,000 years – each being its own cycle within a cycle, could be a contributing factor in historic global extinctions.

As you might have guessed, a large part of my research is the study of cycles, hence, my company’s title; Science Of Cycles.  I will be presenting my article titled “Cosmic Rays Role in Historic Extinctions” tomorrow, which will comprise the latest research published on December 6th 2018.

As Earth’s magnetic shield fails, so do its satellites.First, our communications satellites in the highest orbits go down. Next,astronauts in low-Earth orbit can no longer phone home. And finally, cosmic rays start to bombard every human on Earth.

If Earth’s magnetic field were to decay significantly, it could collapse altogether and flip polarity – changing magnetic north to south and vice versa. The consequences of this process could be dire for our planet. Most worryingly, we may be headed right for this scenario.

‘The geomagnetic field has been decaying for the last 3,000 years,’ said Dr. Nicolas Thouveny from the European Center for Research and Teaching of Environmental Geosciences (CEREGE) in Aix-en-Provence, France. ‘I fit continues to fall down at this rate, in less than one millennium we will be in a critical (period).’

Dr. Thouveny is one of the principal investigators on the five-year EDIFICE project, which has been running since 2014. Together with his colleagues, he has been investigating the history of Earth’s magnetic field,including when it has reversed in the past, and when it might again.

Cosmic rays: Our planet’s magnetic field is predominantly created by the flow of liquid iron inside the core. It has always been a feature of our planet, but it has flipped in polarity repeatedly throughout Earth’s history. Each time it flips – up to 100 times in the past 20 million years, while the reversal can take about 1,000 years to complete – it leaves fossilized magnetization in rocks on Earth.

By taking cores – or columns – of sediments from the seafloor, like a long straw that can extend down up to 300 meters with the help of a drill, we can look back in time and see when these reversals occurred. Dr. Thouveny and his team looked at two particular forms of elements that allowed them to probe the history of our planet’s magnetic field in greater detail.

For a polarity reversal to occur, the magnetic field needs to weaken by about 90% to a threshold level. This process can take thousands of years, and during this time, the lack of a protective magnetic shield around our planet allows more cosmic rays – high-energy particles from elsewhere in the universe – to hit us.

When this happens, these cosmic rays collide with more and more atoms in our atmosphere, such as nitrogen and oxygen. This produces variants of elements called cosmogenic isotopes, such as carbon-14 and beryllium-10, which fall to the surface. And by studying the quantities of these in cores, we can see when polarity reversals took place.

FULL ARTICLE – CLICK HERE

Bringing Balance To The Universe: New Theory Could Explain Missing 95 Percent Of The Cosmos

Scientists at the University of Oxford may have solved one of the biggest questions in modern physics, with a new paper unifying dark matter and dark energy into a single phenomenon: a fluid which possesses ‘negative mass’. If you were to push a negative mass, it would accelerate towards you. This astonishing new theory may also prove right a prediction that Einstein made 100 years ago.

Our current, widely recognised model of the Universe, called LambdaCDM, tells us nothing about what dark matter and dark energy are like physically. We only know about them because of the gravitational effects they have on other, observable matter.

This new model, published today in Astronomy and Astrophysics, by Dr Jamie Farnes from the Oxford e-Research Centre, Department of Engineering Science, offers a new explanation. Dr Farnes says: “We now think that both dark matter and dark energy can be unified into a fluid which possesses a type of ‘negative gravity’, repelling all other material around them. Although this matter is peculiar to us, it suggests that our cosmos is symmetrical in both positive and negative qualities.”

The existence of negative matter had previously been ruled out as it was thought this material would become less dense as the Universe expands, which runs contrary to our observations that show dark energy does not thin out over time. However, Dr Farnes’ research applies a ‘creation tensor’, which allows for negative masses to be continuously created. It demonstrates that when more and more negative masses are continually bursting into existence, this negative mass fluid does not dilute during the expansion of the cosmos. In fact, the fluid appears to be identical to dark energy.

Dr Farnes’s theory also provides the first correct predictions of the behaviour of dark matter halos. Most galaxies are rotating so rapidly they should be tearing themselves apart, which suggests that an invisible ‘halo’ of dark matter must be holding them together. The new research published today features a computer simulation of the properties of negative mass, which predicts the formation of dark matter halos just like the ones inferred by observations using modern radio telescopes.

Albert Einstein provided the first hint of the dark universe exactly 100 years ago, when he discovered a parameter in his equations known as the ‘cosmological constant’, which we now know to be synonymous with dark energy. Einstein famously called the cosmological constant his ‘biggest blunder’, although modern astrophysical observations prove that it is a real phenomenon. In notes dating back to 1918, Einstein described his cosmological constant, writing that “a modification of the theory is required such that ’empty space’ takes the role of gravitating negative masses which are distributed all over the interstellar space.” It is therefore possible that Einstein himself predicted a negative-mass-filled universe.

Dr Farnes says: “Previous approaches to combining dark energy and dark matter have attempted to modify Einstein’s theory of general relativity, which has turned out to be incredibly challenging. This new approach takes two old ideas that are known to be compatible with Einstein’s theory — negative masses and matter creation — and combines them together.

“The outcome seems rather beautiful: dark energy and dark matter can be unified into a single substance, with both effects being simply explainable as positive mass matter surfing on a sea of negative masses.”

Proof of Dr Farnes’s theory will come from tests performed with a cutting-edge radio telescope known as the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), an international endeavour to build the world’s largest telescope in which the University of Oxford is collaborating.

Dr Farnes adds: “There are still many theoretical issues and computational simulations to work through, and LambdaCDM has a nearly 30 year head start, but I’m looking forward to seeing whether this new extended version of LambdaCDM can accurately match other observational evidence of our cosmology. If real, it would suggest that the missing 95% of the cosmos had an aesthetic solution: we had forgotten to include a simple minus sign.”

COSINE-100 Experiment Investigates Dark Matter Mystery

Yale scientists are part of a new international experiment that challenges previous claims about the detection of non-luminous dark matter.

Astrophysical evidence suggests that the universe contains a large amount of non-luminous dark matter, yet no definite signal of it has been observed despite concerted efforts by many experimental groups. One exception to this is the long-debated claim by the DArk MAtter (DAMA) collaboration, which has reported positive observations of dark matter in its sodium-iodide detector array.

The new COSINE-100 experiment, based at an underground, dark-matter detector at the Yangyang Underground Laboratory in South Korea, has begun to explore DAMA’s claim. It is the first experiment sensitive enough to test DAMA and use the same target material of sodium iodide.

COSINE-100 has been recording data since 2016 and now has initial results that challenge the DAMA findings. Those findings are published online this week in the journal Nature.

“For the first time in 20 years, we have a chance to resolve the DAMA conundrum,” said Yale physics professor Reina Maruyama, who is co-spokesperson for COSINE-100 and co-author of the new study.

The first phase of COSINE-100’s work searches for dark matter by looking for an excess of signal over the expected background in the detector, with the right energy and characteristics. In this initial study, the researchers found no excess of signal in its data, putting DAMA’s annual modulation signal at odds with with results from other experiments. COSINE-100 scientists noted that it will take several years of data to fully confirm or refute DAMA’s results.

The COSINE-100 experiment uses eight low-background, thallium-doped sodium iodide crystals arranged in a 4-by-2 array, giving a total target mass of 106 kg. Each crystal is coupled by two photo sensors to measure the amount of energy deposited in the crystal.

The sodium iodide crystal assemblies are immersed in 2,200 L of light-emitting liquid, which allows for the identification and subsequent reduction of radioactive backgrounds observed by the crystals. The detector is contained within a nested arrangement of copper, lead, and plastic shielding components to reduce the background contribution from external radiation, as well as cosmic ray muons.

The COSINE-100 collaboration includes 50 scientists from the U.S., South Korea, the United Kingdom, Brazil, and Indonesia. The Yangyang Underground Laboratory, where the experiment is based, is operated by the Center for Underground Physics of the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) in South Korea.

“The initial results carve out a fair portion of the possible dark matter search region drawn by the DAMA signal. In other words, there is little room left for this claim to be from the dark matter interaction unless the dark matter model is significantly modified,” said Hyun Su Lee, the other co-spokesperson for COSINE-100, and an associate director of the Center for Underground Physics at IBS.

WREATHS ACROSS AMERICA SPONSORSHIP

What does it mean to sponsor a veteran’s wreath? It means you will honor an American hero at one of more than 1,400 locations nationwide this year on Wreaths Across America Day. It is a day that is been set aside to lay wreaths at the places where we remember, honor, teach about our veterans.

We cannot do that without your support, though. Your sponsorship will ensure that a wreath is hand-crafted of all-American balsam and hand-tied with a red velvet bow here in Columbia Falls, Maine. It will then be sent to one of our participating locations, where a volunteer will place it on the marker of a fallen hero. That volunteer will then “say their name” to ensure that the legacy of duty, service, and sacrifice of that veteran is never forgotten.

So, what does it mean to sponsor a wreath? It means you have the opportunity to join a grateful nation in saying “thank you” to our veterans.

My two daughters are in scouts and will personally be placing wreaths at our local military cemetery. Your sponsored wreath will go to a central location and will be disseminated to more than 1400 military cemeteries nationwide. Each sponsored wreath is $15 and there is no limit to your order.