A severe geomagnetic storm struck Earth Tuesday morning.
Scientists say the storm is rated as G4 on a scale that has a maximum of G5. The storm is the strongest to hit the planet during the current 11-year solar cycle.
The Space Weather Prediction Center says the storm could bring voltage control problems at many power systems. Also electrical systems and devices in areas like Alaska and Canada could be damaged by the intensity of the storm.
The storm could also impact GPS and other satellite based systems throughout the day.
The NWPC says the storm was created by sun activity on March 15th.
The last major storm to strike the planet was January 7th when a G3 rated storm passed over the planet.
The U.S. Geological Survey has released a new estimate saying that the chance of an 8.0 magnitude or greater earthquake striking California is 7%, up from 4.7%.
The USGS said the increase in the percentage is due to new understanding that quakes aren’t always limited to separate faults. A quake could start on one fault and jump to another causing a simultaneous mega-quake.
“The new likelihoods are due to the inclusion of possible multi-fault ruptures, where earthquakes are no longer confined to separate, individual faults, but can occasionally rupture multiple faults simultaneously,” USGS seismologist Ned Field, the lead author of the report, told the L.A. Times.
“This is a significant advancement in terms of representing a broader range of earthquakes throughout California’s complex fault system.”
Data for the report included the April 4, 2010 quake that triggered aftershocks in at least six different fault lines. The report also found quakes jumping over a gap in the fault of over seven miles, more than double the previously observed three miles.
“As the inventory of California faults has grown over the years, it has become increasingly apparent that we are not dealing with a few well-separate faults, but with a vast interconnected fault system,” the report said. “In fact, it has become difficult to identify where some faults end and others begin, implying many more opportunities for multifault ruptures.”
They did it with nowhere near the fanfare of their first announcement, but scientists who last year announced they had proven the “Big Bang” theory for the universe have now admitted they were wrong.
Last March, astronomers using the BICEP2 telescope at the South Pole claimed they had found “primordial gravitational waves” that proved the Big Bang. They called the evidence the “smoking gun” that disproved the Biblical account of creation.
A year after calling it a “genuine breakthrough” and something that would “represent a new era in cosmology and physics”, researcher Jean-Loup Puget confirmed the lack of proof.
“Unfortunately, we have not been able to confirm that the signal is an imprint of cosmic inflation,” Puget said in the statement.
“We are effectively retracting the claim,” BICEP2 researcher Brian Keating told the Associated Press.
“It is the announcement no one wanted to hear,” Space.com reported. “The most exciting astronomical discovery of 2014 has vanished. Two groups of scientists announced today that a tantalizing signal—which some scientists claimed was ‘smoking gun’ evidence of dramatic cosmic expansion just after the birth of the universe—was actually caused by something much more mundane: interstellar dust.”
Meteorologists say that February 2015 could end up as one of the coldest months in Detroit history with an average temperature of just over 13 degrees.
“I’m doing some calculations but I think we are on track here to have the coldest month ever in Detroit, the way things are looking,” said AccuWeather’s Dean DeVore. “And it’s going to be brutally cold here today.”
“It’s like an open spigot from like Barrow, Alaska down to the Great Lakes. Meantime, they can’t buy a drop of rain on the west coast for the past month or so,” AccuWeather’s Dave Bowers added. “It’s been wicked. It really is quite a contrast. The western half of the country is having an extremely warm winter, and here it really is more like the Northwest Territories in our backyard.
“We’re running about almost 12 degrees below normal his month.”
Other cities across the U.S. have been setting records for cold temperatures. Cleveland fell to -5 on Monday breaking a record set in 1873 and the first time since 1889 it was below zero on February 23rd. The temperature hit -17 on Friday, shattering the previous low and was just 3 degrees short of the all time record for low temperature in the city.
Ann Arbor, Michigan hit -7 on Monday which broke the previous record for the date set in 1900.
British scientists say they have found a way to “jam” the genetic code of the common cold and stop the virus from being able to replicate inside the body.
If true, it could mean almost immediate cures to the common cold.
Scientists with the Universities of Leeds and York say they used a computer model to identify the viral genome that causes rhinoviruses. The molecules can be blocked at the genetic level and essentially stop the disease before it starts.
The breakthrough’s news was tempered by the fact the scientists would have to conduct animal testing before they can develop the drug that could deliver the necessary items to block the genetic code.
“We have understood for decades that the RNA carries the genetic messages that create viral proteins, but we didn’t know that, hidden within the stream of letters we use to denote the genetic information, is a second code governing virus assembly,” Dr Roman Tuma, Reader in Biophysics at the University of Leeds, told the London Daily Telegraph.
“It is like finding a secret message within an ordinary news report and then being able to crack the whole coding system behind it.”
Great Britain is now the first country in the world to approve genetically modified children with DNA from three parents.
The vote in the House of Commons was 328 in favor and 128 against the process that scientists say would stop genetic diseases from being passed from a mother to the child. The pro-genetic modification crowd said it was a “light at the end of a dark tunnel” for many families.
The bill now moves to the House of Lords for approval. If the House of Lords approve the measure the first genetically modified babies could be born in 2016. Estimates say 150 modified babies could be born each year.
Prime Minister David Cameron tried to quell criticism of the process.
“We’re not playing god here, we’re just making sure that two parents who want a healthy baby can have one,” the PM said.
Critics were quick to point out no one can know the future of this process.
“This will be passed down generations, the implications of this simply cannot be predicted,” MP Fiona Bruce said. “But one thing is for sure, once this alteration has taken place, as someone has said, once the gene is out of the bottle, once these procedures that we’re asked to authorize today go ahead, there will be no going back for society.”
A British doctor is claiming that he has created the ability to edit DNA at the moment of conception in mice that makes human DNA editing a realistic possibility.
He says this discovery along with others in the last two years mean that scientists can seriously began to pursue creation of “designer babies” which specific hair color, eye color and other features.
“We used a pair of molecular scissors and a molecular sat-nav that tells the scissors where to cut,” Dr. Tony Perry told the BBC. “It is approaching 100% efficiency already, it’s a case of ‘you shoot you score’.”
He says that science fiction is no longer necessarily fiction.
“There’s much speculation here, but it’s not completely fanciful, this is not HG Wells, you can imagine people doing this soon [in animals],” Dr. Perry said. “At that time the HFEA [the UK’s fertility regulator] will need to be prepared because they’re going to have to deal with this issue.”
Dr. Perry says that his science exists in a wider scientific community and that society as a whole should decide what is acceptable when it comes to DNA mutation.
An asteroid about 1/3 of a mile in width will rush past earth on January 26th and mark the closest an asteroid of its size will come to Earth until 2027.
The asteroid, 2004 BL86, will pass the planet at a range of 745,000 miles, or three times the distance between the Earth and the moon. That will be the closest this asteroid will come to Earth in our lifetime according to NASA.
“While 2004 BL86 poses no threat to Earth for the foreseeable future, it’s a relatively close approach by a relatively large asteroid, so it provides us a unique opportunity to observe and learn more,” Don Yeomans, of NASA’s Near Earth Object Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said in a statement.
NASA will track the asteroid from the Deep Space Network in Goldstone, California and the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico.
The asteroid was first detected January 30, 2004 in New Mexico by the LINEAR telescope. NASA says it should be visible in the Northern Hemisphere with small telescopes and strong binoculars.
The current weather front in the northern part of the U.S. may have many residents signing up for a mission to Mars.
The high temperature on the red planet on Thursday was 17.6 degrees, warmer than the high temperatures in 14 northern U.S. states.
Residents of northern states have been fighting bitter cold and wind chills that have caused major outbreaks of frostbite. Hospitals have been reporting people coming in for treatment who didn’t realize how bad the bitter cold would impact their bodies.
Winter Storm Gorgon is moving off the U.S. east coast this weekend and warmer temperatures are expected to cover the northern states. However, the resulting front could bring massive amounts of snow to the Great Lakes region with some models showing up to three feet of snow in some areas.
Wind chill readings of below zero were reported as far south as Alabama, Mississippi and North Carolina.
Many school districts around the nation cancelled their classes Thursday because of the dangerous cold. Detroit reported a high of 3 degrees. Green Bay, Wisconsin, where the Packers are to play a playoff football game this weekend, had a high of 6 degrees. International Falls, historically one of the coldest spots in the continental U.S., reached a high of -1.
Critics say that America has lost their first cyberwar after Sony Pictures pulled the movie “The Interview” after repeated cyber attacks by North Korean hackers.
“No one should kid themselves. With the Sony collapse America has lost its first cyberwar. This is a very very dangerous precedent,” former House speaker Newt Gingrich said after Sony’s announcement.
Sony pulled the film…a comedy film about two bumbling reporters that assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il…even though it was due to open in theaters in just over a week.
The hackers had threatened to have “9/11 style attacks” on theaters in the U.S. that showed the movie. The threats caused the five biggest movie chains in the country to say they were not going to show the film because of fears of incidents.
President Obama addressed the matter in a Wednesday interview.
“The cyber attack is very serious. We’re investigating, we’re taking it seriously,” Obama said during the interview. “We’ll be vigilant, if we see something that we think is serious and credible, then we’ll alert the public. But for now, my recommendation would be that people go to the movies.”
The Department of Homeland Security says there is no credible threat against any movie theater in the U.S.
