Mind Soup

Map of the Bermuda Triangle SALEM NEWS : Oceanographic surveyors of the sea floor in the area of the Bermuda Triangle and the North Sea region between continental Europe and Great Britain have discovered significant quantities of methane hydrates and older eruption sites. According to two research scientists the mystery of vanished ships and airplanes in the region dubbed "The Bermuda Triangle" has been solved. Step aside outer space aliens, time anomalies, submerged giant Atlantean pyramids and bizarre meteorological phenomena ... the "Triangle" simply suffers from an acute case of gas. Natural gas—the kind that heats ovens and boils water—specifically methane, is the culprit behind the mysterious disappearances and loss of water and air craft. The evidence for this astounding new insight into a mystery that's bedeviled the world is laid out in a research paper published in the American Journal of Physics. Professor Joseph Monaghan researched the h...

DAILY RECORD : A blast of violent space weather is due to hit the Earth today following a massive explosion on the Sun. It is likely to spark spectacular displays of the northern lights. Scientists witnessed a huge flare above a giant sunspot the size of our planet, linked to an even larger eruption across the surface of the Sun. By chance, the explosion faced directly towards Earth, sending a solar tsunami racing 93million miles across space. Experts estimate the wave of supercharged gas will reach us today when it will buffet the natural magnetic shield protecting Earth.

TEHRAN, Iran - Iran announced Wednesday it has successfully launched a 10-foot-long research rocket carrying a mouse, two turtles and worms into space — a feat President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said showed Iran could defeat the West in the battle of technology. The launch of the Kavoshgar-3, which means Explorer-3 in Farsi, was announced by Defense Minister Gen. Ahmad Vahidi as part of Iran's ambitious space program. It comes a year after Iran sent its first domestically made telecommunications satellite into orbit. The program has worried Western powers who fear the same technology used to launch satellites and research capsules could also deliver warheads. Iranian state television broadcast images Wednesday of officials putting a mouse, two turtles and about a dozen creatures that looked like worms inside a capsule in the rocket before it blasted off. Vahidi gave no details on the research and the report did not disclose when or where the launch took place. The rocket is...

In meteorology, a corona is produced by the diffraction of light from either the Sun or the Moon by individual small water droplets (and sometimes tiny ice crystals) of a cloud. The corona consists of small number of concentric colored rings around the celestial object and a central bright aureole. The angular size of the corona depends on the diameters of the cloud droplets - small droplets produce bright coronae. Coronae differ from haloes in that the latter are formed by refraction (rather than diffraction) from comparatively large rather than small ice crystals. Reddish colors always occupy the outer part of a corona's ring. Photos taken by amateur photographers using cell phone cameras.

The sun is reduced to a ring of gold against the black sky as the Moon slips between it and Earth. This solar eclipse yesterday lasted for 11 minutes and eight seconds, setting a record that will not be beaten until December 23, 3043. A Chinese couple watches the solar eclipse over Zhengzhou, in the country's central Henan province The skies over Hongdao, China, where the spectacular 'ring of fire' could be seen.  The eclipse was annular, meaning the Moon blocked most of the Sun's middle This image show a total solar eclipse which passed over Europe and the Middle East, and into India.  The Moon's umbra can be clearly seen as a black disc, approximately 63 miles across Such events, which only blot out the middle of the Sun, are known as annular eclipses. They occur about 66 times a century and can only be viewed in the narrow band on the Earth’s surface below their path. Yesterday’s light show began in Africa before crossing the Indian Ocea...

WASHINGTON – The Hubble Space Telescope has captured the earliest image yet of the universe — just 600 million years after the Big Bang, when the universe was just a toddler. Scientists released the photo Tuesday at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society. It's the most complete picture of the early universe so far, showing galaxies with stars that are already hundreds of millions of years old, along with the unmistakable primordial signs of the first cluster of stars. These young galaxies haven't yet formed their familiar spiral or elliptical shapes and are much smaller and quite blue in color. That's mostly because at this stage, they don't contain many heavy metals, said Garth Illingworth, a University of California, Santa Cruz, astronomy professor who was among those releasing the photo. "We're seeing very small galaxies that are seeds of the great galaxies today," Illingworth said in a news conference. Until NASA's Hubble telescope...

This year provided plenty of cosmic eye-openers for astronomers and casual stargazers alike. Neighborhood planets such as Mercury and Jupiter received makeovers in both a scientific and literal sense. The discovery of water on the moon and Mars provided clues to the past, not to mention hints for the future of space exploration. A class of newly-detected "Super-Earth" planets around alien stars may ultimately prove more habitable than Earth. And a growing fleet of existing, new and revived space telescopes promises another stellar year ahead. Here are the stories that stood out: 9. Oddball Objects Earth had a front row seat to a multitude of space objects in 2009, with stunning meteor showers, wayward space rocks buzzing the planet and weird lights in the sky – both natural and man-made. Annual light shows such as the Leonid meteor shower continued to dazzle, but some space rocks came a bit too close for comfort. An asteroid exploded over Indonesia with the force of ...

(CNN) -- NASA said Friday it had discovered water on the moon, opening "a new chapter" that could allow for the development of a lunar space station. The discovery was announced by project scientist Anthony Colaprete at a midday news conference. "I'm here today to tell you that indeed, yes, we found water. And we didn't find just a little bit; we found a significant amount" -- about a dozen, two-gallon bucketfuls, he said, holding up several white plastic containers. The find is based on preliminary data collected when the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, intentionally crashed October 9 into the permanently shadowed region of Cabeus crater near the moon's south pole. After the satellite struck, a rocket flew through the debris cloud, measuring the amount of water and providing a host of other data, Colaprete said. The project team concentrated on data from the satellite's spectrometers, which provide the best in...

Today (September 22) marks the beginning of the Autumn season this year, and in Lebanon it has officially began a couple of days ago with the heavy rain we were witnessing. The first day of autumn arrives on varying dates in different years for two reasons: Our year is not exactly an even number of days; and Earth's slightly noncircular orbit, plus the gravitational tug of the other planets, constantly changes our planet's orientation to the sun from year to year. And weather-wise, Earth's seasons have shifted in the past 150 years or so, according to a study that came out earlier this year. The hottest and coldest days of the years now are occurring almost two days earlier. This year, fall starts Tuesday, because that is when the so-called autumnal equinox occurs (at 5:18 p.m. EDT). Equinoxes (which mark the onset of spring and autumn) and solstices (which mark when summer and winter begin) are points in time and space that mark a transition in our planet's ann...

The man who plans to be "the first clown in space" has said he will liven up the atmosphere on the international space station by playing pranks on the astronauts. Guy Laliberte, founder of Cirque du Soleil, told reporters he plans to tickle the professional astronauts while they're sleeping, and he's will also bring a consignment of red clown noses aboard. "I'm a person with a pretty high spirit, who's there to crack jokes and make jokes to those guys, and while they're sleeping, you know, I'll be tickling them," Mr Laliberte said. The 50-year-old Canadian creator of the circus group is paying $35 million to blast off later this month on a Russian spacecraft, accompanying cosmonaut Maxim Surayev and astronaut Jeffrey Williams on the two-day journey to the station. The three spoke to reporters ahead of their flight to the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, where Soyuz is scheduled to blast off from on Sept. 30. Mr Laliberte hopes ...