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Weird sink holes all over the world
How aircraft make rain (and snow): Planes influence local weather when they take off and land
Living near airports might not only lead to residents suffering sleepless nights – they could also have terrible weather, scientists say.
For aircraft increase the chances of snow and rain when they take off and land, an extraordinary study suggests.
Apparently the effects of jet planes punching through clouds are similar to ‘cloud seeding’ operations, where ice crystals are created in the atmosphere to make it rain.
This picture shows the affect a plane can have. The hole was created by an aircraft flying through a super-cooled cloud. This creates ice crystals that in turn affect neighbouring drops of water. This causes the hole to expand and increase the chances of snow or rain
The findings – published in the respected academic journal Science – are based on satellite images of clouds around airports and computer models of cloud behaviour.
The side-effect of flying is likely to be most obvious around the world’s busiest airports, such as Heathrow where more than 1,200 planes land or take off every day.
As an aeroplane passes quickly through a cloud, the air behind the wings and propellers expands and cools rapidly.
These sudden drops in temperature can be enough to freeze droplets of super-cooled water – turning them into a stream of ice crystals.
Scientists have found that aircraft punching through the clouds at take off and landing creates an effect which influences weather around airports
Over time, ice crystals grow and affect neighbouring drops of water – creating a hole in the cloud that expands for several hours and increasing the chances of snow or rain on the ground underneath.
Dr Andrew Heymsfield, of the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, said aircraft increased the chances of snow when they punched holes in clouds after taking off and when they created ‘canals’ in clouds when descending.
‘Whether an airplane creates a hole or a canal in the clouds depends on its trajectory,’ he said.
‘When they climb through a super-cooled cloud layer, they can just produce a hole. But when they fly level through the cloud layer, they can produce long canals.’
The side-effect is more likely to affect areas around the world’s busiest airports, such as Heathrow
The study found that super-cooled cloud layers are found with 62 miles of the world’s major airports at least five per cent of the time. The cloud seeding effects are more noticeable closer to the north and south poles.
The researchers looked at 20 satellite images of cloud cover with holes suspended over Texas on one day in January 2007. Some of the holes were visible for more than four hours and grew more than 60 miles long.
The team then looked at flight data from the US Federal Aviation Administration to find out what aircraft had flown in each area, between 4.3 and five miles high, on that day.
They discovered that a range of aircraft can produce holes including jumbo jets, military planes and private single engine jets.
The researchers say it is unlikely that aircraft affect the global climate.
However, it may increase the need to de-ice planes more often in the future, they say.
It’s not the first time scientists have linked aircraft to weather.
Earlier this year, a study concluded that condensation trails – formed when the water vapour from aircraft engines freezes – may be doing more to warm the planet than the greenhouse gases released from aircraft engines.
The clouds trap heat radiating back from the Earth’s surface, German researchers reported in the journal Nature Climate Change.
Israeli Rabbi Urges Killing of Non-Jews
Friday, 01 July 2011 07:06
In a sequel to his earlier book The King’s Torah, Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira justifies the killing of non-Jews that “pose a threat to Israel,” while describing “practical” ways of dealing with the people in the Gaza Strip.
The King’s Torah was first published in 2009.’
Holometer experiment to test if the universe is a hologram
October 28, 2010 by Lisa Zyga 
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A conceptual design of Fermilab’s holometer. Image credit: symmetry magazine
(PhysOrg.com) — Many ideas in theoretical physics involve extra dimensions, but the possibility that the universe has only two dimensions could also have surprising implications. The idea is that space on the ultra-small Planck scale is two-dimensional, and the third dimension is inextricably linked with time. If this is the case, then our three-dimensional universe is nothing more than a hologram of a two-dimensional universe.
This idea of the holographic universe is not new, but physicists at Fermilab are now designing an experiment to test the idea. Fermilab particle astrophysicist Craig Hogan and others are building a holographic interferometer, or “holometer,” in an attempt to detect the noise inherent in spacetime, which would reveal the ultimate maximum frequency limit imposed by nature.
As Hogan explains in a recent issue of Fermilab’s symmetry magazine, the holometer will be “the most sensitive measurement ever made of spacetime itself.” Hogan and others have already built a one-meter-long prototype of the instrument. They have just begun building the entire 40-meter-long holometer and plan to start collecting data next year.
The holometer consists of two completely separate interferometers positioned on top of one other. In each interferometer, a light beam is split into two different parts that travel in different directions. After bouncing off a mirror, the light beams are brought back together where the difference in their phases is measured. Even the smallest vibration will interfere with the light’s frequency during its travels and cause the two light beams to be out of sync.
While interferometers have been used for more than 100 years, the key to the holometer is achieving extreme precision at high frequencies. The scientists say that the holometer will be seven orders of magnitude more precise than any atomic clock in existence over very short time intervals. By having two interferometers, the researchers can compare them to confirm measurements. In addition, the scientists are making sure that any vibration that is detected isn’t coming from the holometer itself. They will arrange sensors outside the holometer to detect normal vibrations, and then cancel these vibrations by shaking the mirrors at the same frequency.
After taking these precautions, any detected high-frequency noise could be the jitter of spacetime itself, or “holographic noise.” The noise is expected to have a frequency of a million cycles per second, which is a thousand times higher than what the human ear can hear, noted Fermilab experimental physicist Aaron Chou. If the experiment does find this holographic noise, it would be the first glimpse beyond our three-dimensional illusion and into the universe’s true two-dimensional nature at the Planck scale.
http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-10-holometer-universe-hologram.html
Lightning Kills 22 Students, Teacher in Uganda
Twenty-two students and a teacher died when lightning struck their school in Uganda, officials said.
Another 51 students, aged 7 to 16 were injured in the freak strike 160 miles northwest of Kampala, said local police spokeswoman Zura Ganyana.
Lightning strikes in recent weeks have killed at least 38 people around the country in recent weeks, as unseasonably heavy storms have ravaged the area. Experts said the school was prone because it is on high ground and does not have a lighting conductor to ground strikes.
Another lightning strike injured 37 students at a school 200 miles away, officials said.
One member of parliament called the situation a crisis.
“I don’t know which minister is in charge of the lightning but let the government come up with a statement to inform the country on what is going on and how we can manage it,” Parliament Speaker Rebecca Kadaga told Reuters.
Uganda’s Minister of State for Disaster Preparedness Musa Ecweru told the BBC the deaths could be blamed on buildings not having lightning rods.
“There are very many schools and brand new health centres which are lacking lightning arrestors,” Mr Ecweru said.
http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/weird/Lightning-Kills-22-Students-Teacher-in-Uganda-124723149.html
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