Scientists tracking the sun’s activity say the star has gone quiet and the solar maximum for Solar Cycle 24 has likely ended as one of the weakest in over a century.
The weaker than normal solar cycle means that “space weather” has been relatively benign with geomagnetic storms that were much less than feared in early predictions of the solar maximum.
Scientists are warning, however, that in the downturn of weak solar cycles there is a significant possibility of serious solar storms. Strong solar flares are still possible as the sun begins to wind down over the next few years to the solar minimum.
History also shows that a weaker solar cycle means that temperatures on the Earth will be lower than average.
In the last two major periods of low solar activity, 1645 to 1715 and 1790 to 1830, the Earth recorded below-normal temperatures with the latter era being called a “Little Ice Age.” The weaker solar winds can lead to more clouds that keep the Earth cooler by blocking more solar rays.
Some solar scientists say the next cycle, Cycle #25, could be weaker than this one.
The massive supervolcano under Yellowstone National Park is melting roads throughout the national park.
The National Park Service is banning visitors from entering some parts of the park because the roads and the ground has become too dangerous for human passage.
“It basically turned the asphalt into soup. It turned the gravel road into oatmeal,” Yellowstone spokesman Dan Hottle said.
Park officials are telling visitors not to hike into the area because what appears to be solid ground could actually be dirt on top of boiling hot water. They characterized the risk of stepping into potentially fatal pools of water as “high.”
“There are plenty of other great places to see thermal features in the park,” park spokesman Al Nash told The Weather Channel. “I wouldn’t risk personal injury to see these during this temporary closure.”
Scientists last year determined the supervolcano under Yellowstone was twice the size as previously believed by researchers.
Scientists in Britain have developed a test that can detect as much as a year in advance if a patient will develop Alzheimer’s disease.
The test comes after a decade of research by Oxford University and King’s College London. A study showed that the brain develops 10 proteins just before the disease takes hold in the brain.
The doctors hailed the test as groundbreaking because once someone develops Alzheimer’s, there’s no real way to treat it. With the development of an early warning test, doctors hope to find a way to treat a patient to stop the development of Alzheimer’s.
“Although we are making drugs [to treat Alzheimer’s] they are all failing. But if we could treat people earlier it may be that the drugs are effective,” said Simon Lovestone, professor of translational neuroscience at Oxford. “Alzheimer’s begins to affect the brain many years before patients are diagnosed with the disease. If we could treat the disease in that phase we would in effect have a preventative strategy.”
The test has been proven to have 87 percent accuracy in predicting the onset of Alzheimer’s.
The Big Bang theory for the creation of the universe has taken a big blow.
A new study conducted by secular scientists based on the discovery of the Higgs Boson, called the “God particle”, shows that the Big Bang would not have been possible for the creation of the universe because of shaking of particles.
“During the early universe, we expected cosmic inflation — this is a rapid expansion of the universe right after the Big Bang,” study co-author Robert Hogan, a doctoral candidate in physics at King’s College in London, said to Christian News Network. “This expansion causes lots of stuff to shake around, and if we shake it too much, we could go into this new energy space, which could cause the universe to collapse.”
The intense shaking in the energy field, known as quantum fluctuation, should have collapsed the entire universe shortly after creation according to the model based on Higgs physics.
The scientists explained the lack of answers and holes in the Big Bang theory by saying their must be some kind of new physics that man hasn’t been able to discover yet.
A new study is showing that environmental toxins are leading to premature aging.
The study says a class of environmental toxins called gerontogens put humans at risk for accelerated again. The toxins can be found in a wide range of items from second-hand cigarette smoke to UV rays and chemotherapy.
“Genetic studies have taught us only 30 percent of aging is genetic, meaning the other 70 percent comes from the environment,” Dr. Norman Sharpless told Fox News. “Having a few [of these cells] is not a big deal. But over the course of a lifetime, as they accumulate, they [contribute to] aging and many of the diseases we associate with aging.”
The study, published in Trends in Molecular Medicine, has allowed the doctors to create a test for substances to see their impact on aging. The aging process begins when the body undergoes a process called senescence where healthy cells are damaged and are no longer able to divide. The test will expose cells to substances until they cause the senescence process.
“Our work reasonably says cigarette smoking is the thing we could really do something about that would benefit the aging biology of a large number of people,” Dr. Sharpless said. “But we’re also reasonably certain there are other gerontogens we don’t know about yet.”
A new report shows that asteroids caused more than two dozen nuclear-level explosions in the Earth’s atmosphere.
The report from the B612 Foundation shows that the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization recorded 26 nuclear-level explosions between 2000 and 2013. One blast was dozens of times stronger than the Hiroshima bomb with an equivalent power of 16 kilotons of TNT.
Scientists quoted in the report say that the explosions were too high in the atmosphere to cause serious damage on the ground. However, the explosions show the significant threat to the planet from asteroid impacts.
“While most large asteroids with the potential to destroy an entire country or continent have been detected, less than 10,000 of the more than a million dangerous asteroids with the potential to destroy an entire major metropolitan area have been found by all existing space or terrestrially operated observatories,” former astronaut Ed Lu said.
Lu referenced the 2013 500-kiloton meteor explosion over Russia that caused significant damage to hundreds of square miles of homes and businesses.
A genetic disease has been cured in an adult animal for the first time in history.
Scientists at MIT have recorded using a procedure where they edit the DNA of a live adult animal to replace a defective gene that causes liver disease. The scientists say the procedure, known as Crispr, allows them to edit a single “letter” in the genetic alphabet.
“We basically showed you could use the Crispr system in an animal to cure a genetic disease, and the one we picked was a disease in the liver which is very similar to one found in humans,” said Professor Daniel Anderson.
The MIT team believes because the DNA is so similar, they should be able to begin testing of the Crispr protocol in humans within the next few years.
The process would have to be altered, however, to carry the mutations into the human body via harmless adeno-associated viruses.
A new report from three former NASA astronauts shows that asteroid impacts on Earth are up to ten times more common than previously believed by scientists.
The report, scheduled to be issued to the public on Earth Day April 22nd, presents evidence that it’s been a miracle no major city has been decimated by a major asteroid strike.
“This network has detected 26 multi-kiloton explosions since 2001, all of which are due to asteroid impacts,” Ed Lu of the B612 Foundation said. “It shows that asteroid impacts are NOT rare—but actually 3-10 times more common than we previously thought. The fact that none of these asteroid impacts shown in the video was detected in advance is proof that the only thing preventing a catastrophe from a ‘city-killer’ sized asteroid is blind luck. The goal of the B612 Sentinel mission is to find and track asteroids decades before they hit Earth, allowing us to easily deflect them.”
The B612 Foundation is building a special infrared satellite that once launched in 2017 will allow scientists to detect hundreds of near-Earth objects that cannot be currently seen by telescope and satellite systems.
Residents of Nicaragua have been on edge for days after a series of earthquakes rocked the country.
A string of quakes that started Thursday night with a magnitude 6.1 quake has caused many residents to sleep on the ground outside of their homes in fear that a quake while they are sleeping would collapse their houses.
The country’s government has placed the nation on red alert and is urging them to continue sleeping outside until further notice.
The Thursday quake was followed by a stronger 6.6 magnitude quake on Friday. Sunday night, 4.6 and 5.6 magnitude quakes kept most of the nation awake through the night.
“We didn’t sleep a wink last night,” Ana Maria Echaniz, 30, told the Associated Press. “It’s continuous anxiety, fear that comes and goes all the time.”
The first lady of Nicaragua, the government’s official spokeswoman, told state media that the recent activity has reactivated the Managua fault that caused a 6.2 magnitude quake in 1972 that killed close to 10,000 people.
One resident told the AP that the fear is so bad people jump in the night from a gust of wind because it “breaks the silence.”
A new study shows that Earth was nine days away from suffering the effects from a massive solar burst.
Scientists say the burst from the sun would have at least matched the severity of the 1859 Carrington Event which blew out the telegraph system across the entire United States.
Berkeley research physicist Janet Luhmann, who led the study, said that the burst would have had more impact than the 1859 event.
“Had it hit Earth, it probably would have been like the big one in 1859, but the effect today, with our modern technologies, would have been tremendous,” Luhmann said.
The coronal mass ejection that burst from the sun on July 23, 2012 would have been aimed directly at Earth if the event happened nine days earlier. The blast of southward magnetic fields would clash with the Earth’s northward field, causing electrical transformers to burst into flames, disabling many older satellites, damaging electronic devices on Earth and causing problems for the GPS system.
The scientists hope by being able to study the results of the 2012 burst they can better predict future events.
