Birth of Radio Astronomy

Sat, 03 May 2008 18:44:09 GMT

clipped by: Rustee
clipper's remarks: This now includes seeing some of it visually as "snow" on televisions. Yet with the new transition to digital tv coming next year (in the U.S. at least), I wonder if "snow" will be a thing of the past?

Clip Source: stardate.org

The Milky Way glows in just about every form of energy, from radio waves to X-rays. In fact, the discovery of radio waves from the Milky Way made headlines 75 years ago this month.

Bell Labs had assigned a young engineer named Karl Jansky to check out sources of static on the radio waves used for long-distance radio transmissions.

Jansky found that most of the static came from thunderstorms. But there was a “hiss” that he couldn’t explain. It peaked once a day, so he first thought it came from the Sun.

After tracking it for a few months, though, Jansky found that the signal peaked about four minutes earlier each day. Since the distant stars rise and set four minutes earlier each day, Jansky concluded that the static came from the stars. The strongest signal came from the Milky Way -- and particularly from the constellation Sagittarius, which is home to the galaxy’s heart.

Clip Source: antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov

The Galactic Center Radio Arc

Tags: astronomy, science, energy

Global Warming Nonsense

Sat, 03 May 2008 07:12:06 GMT

clipped by: Rustee

Clip Source: online.wsj.com

The concept of malaria as a "tropical" infection is nonsense. It is a disease of the poor. Alarmists in the richest countries peddle the notion that the increase in malaria in poor countries is due to global warming and that this will eventually cause malaria to spread to areas that were "previously malaria free." That's a misrepresentation of the facts and disingenuous when packaged with opposition to the cheapest and best insecticide to combat malaria – DDT.

It is true that malaria has been increasing at an alarming rate in parts of Africa and elsewhere in the world.

But throughout history the most critical factors in the spread or eradication of disease has been human behavior (shifting population centers, changing farming methods and the like) and living standards. Poverty has been and remains the world's greatest killer.

But anyone truly worried about malaria in impoverished countries would do well to focus on improving human living conditions, not the weather.

Tags: disease, climate change

Clipmarks | Rustee's clips

Birth of Radio Astronomy

Global Warming Nonsense