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You are browsing the archive for September 2011 - Dan's Wild Wild Science Journal.

30 September 2011

Sixty Symbols Video On Neutrinos Exceeding Light Speed

I was hoping the folks at Sixty Symbols would do something on this! For those who are intrigued about the biggest scientific mystery of the year, this is a must watch video. Two UK astrophysicists at the Univ. of Nottingham talk about the possibilities, and their reaction to the news that neutrinos might be exceeding light speed. Did you hear about the neutrino supercomputer that finished an infinite loop 3.8 …

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29 September 2011

The Hubble Time Machine

HubbleSite has a pretty amazing graphic up showing just how far back in time astronomers have looked using this amazing telescope and no other modern scientific instrument has captured the imagination of humans like Hubble. Eventually Hubble will burn up in the atmosphere, and that is a real shame since the most famous telescope (since Galileo made one) will be lost to history. To say that Hubble has revolutionized our …

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First Widespread Autumn Chill Headed For the Eastern U.S.

  Get ready for a cool down if you live in the East! For many folks from the Plains to the Deep South, this weekend will be the first time they have to turn on the heat and it will be a stark reminder that the hot summer of 2011 is in the history books. The NWP models are in close agreement that as the cold core low over the …

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27 September 2011

An Atmospheric Train Wreck

The folks at the NOAA Environmental Visualization Lab have a nice long loop from the GOES water vapor channel out today. It shows the huge cutoff low that has been stuck over the Midwest for several days. I’ve been dealing with this in my day-to-day forecasting as well, and these things can be very tricky to forecast. These are what meteorologists call a cold core low and they are more …

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How Salty Is Your Ocean?

  The Aquarius satellite was recently launched to learn more about the oceans and answer some very nagging questions in a variety of fields (especially climate science). Notice how much saltier the Atlantic is than the Pacific, and if you have ever gotten a mouthful of ocean off of Miami Beach, you know it’s true. The Pacific is less salty and having swam in both, I can attest that the …

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26 September 2011

Major Solar Storm Underway

A major coronal mass ejection has occurred on the sun and while it will only glance Earth, it is big enough to have caused a major warning from NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center. This is called a G3 warning and that means it’s a biggy. From NOAA SWPC: A strong Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) has been observed and is partially-directed at Earth. The Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) has issued …

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25 September 2011

La Nina Is Back- What it means for the upcoming winter.

Colder Than Normal The temperature anomalies in the equatorial Pacific have reached -0.7C in the Nina 3.4 region, and anything below -0.5 C is considered La Nina conditions. There seems little doubt now that La Nina conditions will prevail over the upcoming NH winter, and the signature of La Nina is very evident in the weekly sea surface temp. anomalies. The large area of cooler than normal water stretching westward …

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23 September 2011

Astrophysicist Brian Cox Comments On Neutrino Mystery

In case you missed it- this is on the Beeb this evening. Click the image for the audio from BBC Radio 6.    

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Happy Equinox!

The autumnal equinox was at 09:05 GMT this morning which is 4:05 AM USA Central Daylight time. I thought it would be fun to show the 18Z Meteosat image of the Earth from the Solstice on 21 June and compare it with today’s at the same moment. June 21:   and today   We meteorologists have another way of knowing it is fall. Just look at the sunset spikes on …

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Neutrinos Travelling Faster Than Light??

Adrian Cho has a story on Science NOW about the scientists at OPERA in Italy asking for some help. OPERA is studying neutrinos released from CERN and they keep coming up with a result that shows the neutrinos are traveling faster than light! Cho rightly points out that this would be the greatest discovery in physics for a half century, but I think it would rank higher than that. This …

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