Imagined Worlds

Is there life on other planets? Astronomers and science-fiction writers have considered this question for years. Aliens, mutant monsters and other life forms, both menacing and friendly, have starred in many books, films and series, such as Star Wars

and Star Trek.

People all over the world regularly report sightings of Unidentified Flying Objects (UFO’s) and encounters with strange beings from space. Is this fact or fiction? Many astronomers believe that life-forming conditions do exist elsewhere in the Milky Way. For many years, people looked to our solar system and thought that Mars was the other planet most likely to support life. Technology has now made it possible to study Mars in detail and this idea today seems unlikely. Much of space, however, remains unknown territory. Science-fiction writers imagine worlds and events beyond our own. In 1865, writer Jules Verne predicted that we would reach the Moon. Some of our imagined worlds may also come true.

ANYONE OUT THERE?

In New South Wales, Australia, the Parkes radio telescope has been listening to the heavens for more than 30 years. But in 1995, as part of Project Phoenix (a worldwide search for life in the outer space), the telescope examined areas around some nearly stars for regular signals that could come from intelligent life. The normal levels of radiation in the universe produce a random noisy hiss. If a radio telescope picks up a more orderly signal, such as that from a radio transmission, this could be evidence that life exists elsewhere.

WARP SPEED

The distances in space are astronomical. In order to move from one star system to another, the makers of Star Trek developed the idea of travelling at what they called warp speed, which is many times faster than the speed of light. Such speed would be essential to make travel between stars possible within a human lifetime.

 

WAR OF THE WORLDS ON HALLOWEEN

In 1898, the British novelist H.G. Wells wrote a book about Martians invading Earth called The War of the Worlds. It was full of pictures showing the menacing invaders.

Forty years later, on the eve of Halloween 1938, actor Orson Welles broadcast an updated radio version of the novel. He made it sound as if Martians were invading America that very night! Before the program was over, millions of people believed that Martians were really invading the Earth. Many people panicked and fled their homes.

Here’s a part of the original radio broadcast that caused the big panic:

There was also a 2005 film adaptation of War of the Worlds that starred Tom Cruise. This movie scared the shit out of me when I was a child. A must watch, I would say.

 

Sources:                                                                                                                                        Dr. Talbot, F.H.(2000). Discoveries Library Stars and Planets. Sydney, Australia: Time Life Asia.

Checked by: Prof. Crisencio M. Paner

Ocean Mysteries. “Where did they go?”

There are many ocean mysteries that have fascinated and frustrated people for hundreds of years. One region in the world that seems particularly mysterious is the Bermuda Triangle, which lies between Bermuda, Florida, and Puerto Rico.

Many ships and aircraft have vanished completely in the Triangle. No-one has been able to explain their disappearance, and their wrecks have never been found. Strong storms, powerful currents and deep seas probably claimed any wreckage quickly. But what of the Mary Celeste and It’s missing crew? In 1872, this American ship was found floating, in seaworthy condition, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. There were no sailors in sight, and few clues as to where they had gone. One of the most intriguing mysteries from the past surrounds the legendary continent of Atlantis. Plato, a Greek philosopher, wrote that it sank into the Atlantic ocean. But did it ever really exist? Many People believe the story of Atlantis was based on the Greek Island of Thera, which was ruptured by volcanic explosions.

SAILING SOLO

When the Mary Celeste was discovered abandoned and drifting, the lifeboat and navigational instruments were missing. Did the captain order the crew to leave the ship, and with his wife and two-year-old daughter , take the lifeboat and the endless horizon sea?

STRANGE BUT TRUE

Did the Mary Celeste sail itself? The last log entry put the ship near the Azores, some 1,130 km (700 miles) and 9 days away from where it was found. She had been at sea for a month and had over six months’ worth of food and water on board. Her cargo was virtually untouched and the personal belongings of passengers and crew were still in place, including valuables. The crew was never seen or heard from again. The Mary Celeste crew’s disappearance is often cited as the greatest maritime mystery of all time.

FLIGHT 19’S LAST MISSION

                                                                                Artist’s depiction of five Avengers

On 5 December 1945, the sky droned with the engine noises of five torpedo bombers on a training flight from Florida. But flying across the Bermuda Triangle, the whole squadron vanished. During the last radio contact with their base, they said they were low on fuel and might have to land in the water. Rescue crews  scoured the ocean for five days. They discovered no trace of the missing men or planes.

ALIEN ABDUCTIONS

Alien abductions come in as one of the reasons for the Bermuda Triangle disappearances. I know it’s crazy, but I like it! Even Steven Spielberg in this science fiction film, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, features the lost Flight 19 aircrew that went missing in 1945 while over the Triangle. Flight 19 was made up of a 13 men with neither bodies nor wreckage ever being found including the rescue plane or the other 14 men who went in search of Flight 19. Shot down or beamed up to Mars?

THE LOST KINGDOM

The Greek Philosopher Plato was the first to write about the lost civilization of Atlantis. He said that thousands of years ago there was a large island in the Atlantic Ocean. The temples were decorated with gold, silver, copper and ivory; the people were very wealthy and lived in magnificent buildings. But, according to Plato, the people became greedy and dishonest, and the gods decided to punish them. During one day and night, violent eruptions shook the island and it disappeared, forever, into the sea.

MAPPED OUT

A map from the seventeenth century shows Atlantis as a very large island, midway between America and the Pillars of Hercules, at the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea.

Sources:                                                                                                                                        Dr. Talbot, F.H.(2000). Discoveries Library Under the Sea. Sydney, Australia: Time Life Asia.                                                                                                          http://www.toptenz.net/top-10-explanations-for-the-bermuda-triangle.php

Checked by: Prof. Crisencio M. Paner

Tipping Point? Earth Headed for Catastrophic Collapse, Researchers Warn

by Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior Writer

Date: 06 June 2012 Time: 12:59 PM ET

This composite image uses a number of swaths of the Earth’s surface taken on January 4, 2012.
CREDIT: NASA/NOAA/GSFC/Suomi NPP/VIIRS/Norman Kuring

Earth is rapidly headed toward a catastrophic breakdown if humans don’t get their act together, according to an international group of scientists.

Writing Wednesday (June 6) in the journal Nature, the researchers warn that the world is headed toward a tipping point marked by extinctions and unpredictable changes on a scale not seen since the glaciers retreated 12,000 years ago.

“There is a very high possibility that by the end of the century, the Earth is going to be a very different place,” study researcher Anthony Barnosky told LiveScience. Barnosky, a professor of integrative biology from the University of California, Berkeley, joined a group of 17 other scientists to warn that this new planet might not be a pleasant place to live.

“You can envision these state changes as a fast period of adjustment where we get pushed through the eye of the needle,” Barnosky said. “As we’re going through the eye of the needle, that’s when we see political strife, economic strife, war and famine.” [Top 10 Ways to Destroy Earth]

The danger of tipping

Barnosky and his colleagues reviewed research on climate change, ecology and Earth’s tipping points that break the camel’s back, so to speak. At certain thresholds, putting more pressure on the environment leads to a point of no return, Barnosky said. Suddenly, the planet responds in unpredictable ways, triggering major global transitions.

The most recent example of one of these transitions is the end of the last glacial period. Within not much more than 3,000 years, the Earth went from being 30 percent covered in ice to its present, nearly ice-free condition. Most extinctions and ecological changes (goodbye, woolly mammoths) occurred in just 1,600 years. Earth’s biodiversity still has not recovered to what it was.

Today, Barnosky said, humans are causing changes even faster than the natural ones that pushed back the glaciers — and the changes are bigger. Driven by a 35 percent increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide since the start of the Industrial Revolution, global temperatures are rising faster than they did back then, Barnosky said. Likewise, humans have completely transformed 43 percent of Earth’s land surface for cities and agriculture, compared with the 30 percent land surface transition that occurred at the end of the last glacial period. Meanwhile, the human population has exploded, putting ever more pressure on existing resources. [7 Billion Population Milestones]

“Every change we look at that we have accomplished in the past couple of centuries is actually more than what preceded one of these major state changes in the past,” Barnosky said.

Backing away from the ledge

The results are difficult to predict, because tipping points, by their definition, take the planet into uncharted territory. Based on past transitions, Barnosky and his colleagues predict a major loss of species (during the end of the last glacial period, half of the large-bodied mammal species in the world disappeared), as well as changes in the makeup of species in various communities on the local level. Meanwhile, humans may well be knotting our own noose as we burn through Earth’s resources.

“These ecological systems actually give us our life support, our crops, our fisheries, clean water,” Barnosky said. As resources shift from one nation to another, political instability can easily follow.

Pulling back from the ledge will require international cooperation, Barnosky said. Under business-as-usual conditions, humankind will be using 50 percent of the land surface on the planet by 2025. It seems unavoidable that the human population will reach 9 billion by 2050, so we’ll have to become more efficient to sustain ourselves, he said. That means more efficient energy use and energy production, a greater focus on renewable resources, and a need to save species and habitat today for future generations.

“My bottom line is that I want the world in 50 to 100 years to be at least as good as it is now for my children and their children, and I think most people would say the same,” Barnosky said. “We’re at a crossroads where if we choose to do nothing we really do face these tipping points and a less-good future for our immediate descendents.”

Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitter @sipappas or LiveScience @livescience.

SOURCE:                                                                                      http://www.livescience.com/20778-earth-headed-environmental-collapse.html

Checked by: Prof. Crisencio M. Paner