botanika

Pet bats?

That's what I thought at first but it was really pronounced and then shifted. The natural ring was there too but this was a schweird circular cloud, much larger in diameter and had straight lines coming off it (why I thought it may have been from an aircraft).

Don't forget his university sweetheart and scientific collaborator Mileva Maric...

I got a shock last night looking up at the moon. There was this glowing ring around it and at first I thought WTF? But then realised it was a cloud/vapour trail in a circle left by a plane, or an unusual circular cloud formation. I just happened to look up right when the moon was in the centre of this circle as it shifted a few minutes later. Looked pretty cool though.

In the beginning, God created earth and rested. Then God created man and rested. Then God created woman. Since then, neither God nor man has rested. AMEN

My bands playing Saturday - we've changed our name to 'atomic werewolves' for the show!

I used to sell some Porno mags to the tough kids. They left me alone

Well I mean the instant paradigm shift a lot of people seem to be looking for ain't going to happen until were forced to. We are of course always changing, every nano second evolution is at work. Compared with the 1950's humanity is vastly more conscious of nature and our place in it. We don't go around like barbarians anymore. The future will be full of catastrophe just like the past and I believe it will also be full of abundance and exceptional positive life experiences. We are definately fertile soil

Just remember how many nukes have been set off around the world for testing. While its not a perfect world we're all still here, people still live in Hiroshima and Chernobyl is a new overgrown ecosystem. Most people do care and are not intentionally selfish - the big issue is there are just simply a lot of us on the planet and we don't change in drastic ways until nature has affected us in drastic ways and for that to happen globally we'll need something like a major event (comet strike, supervolcano, global police takeover to enforce population control, mass competition wars for resources etc). Look at the differences between NZ when Tasman sailed by - they had turned cannibalistic - and when Cook sailed into NouMea (a healthy egalitarian society that only changed its social structure when it hit the end of the line with no food left, the difference is that island was settled and stripped of food far earlier than NZ). Re-incarnation is partly what drives suicide bombers to kill innocent people, what drives religion to control people in the belief of a God and afterlife we have no proof whatsoever exists. There is no supernatural afterlife - this is it. You only gain immortality by passing on your genes. The sooner people of the world stop putting what is sacred into a religous book or hoping for supernatural intervention and start looking at the world through rational common sense the better.

Death awaits us all - live life to the fullest and see past sensationalist journalism. Countries seeking nuclear energy don't build them without 'council approval' - it's a bit more complex and regulated than a DA submission! INSC

With China's pollution it may not even be noticeable Im in Shanghai

That's why natural disasters are good - because they target everyone irrelevent of wealth or morality. I'm not convinced yet we have the communal frontal lobe to plan far enough ahead or change instantly to live completely sustainably in the long term unless we are absolutely forced to as a matter of survival and even if we could a meteor or super volcano could come along at anytime and take us back to square one. Life goes where it goes. Nature eventually self corrects irrelevent of our utopian desires. Everyone keeps talking about change but change and renewal is all we do - change IS innovation and nature is the ultimate teacher of innovation - the desire to unlock the underlying structure of nature, to dream, plan and pursue a better future brought us around the globe to where we are today irrespective of culture or sustainability. Our history is one of rising and falling civilisations and will likely continue to be so. Nature is not staticly sustainable, it is adaptable and constantly evolving often with evolution being a cruel process. Whether one lives a subsistence life in a tee pee or a billionaire life - both are part of the human endeavour. Most subsistence people around the world want a higher standard of living and most of the educated developed world can't afford to buy land to live a subsistence life if they wanted to. It's the irony of the human race - as I've said before we are about what we can do and how as much as we are about what we should do and why. Really a $200 fine for not watering your lawn? Mad.

For fucks sake Japan is hardly alone in it's gluttony for technology, use of GE built nuclear power plants or want of a higher standard of living and China can hardly keep it's own country going energy-wise whilst manufacturing iPhones to the world let alone provide the currently impractical wind, water and solar power for export on such a large scale. You've got to be kidding. Most Chinese hate the Japanese, they aren't going to become fairy godmothers to them and if they were able to provide that kind of energy export in the first place they wouldn't be buying up the bulk of australia's uranium. I never said Japan was a closed self sustaining system or anything about whether it's culture is sustainable or ethical. The moral issue of technology and resource use is one for all mankind. Japan has little practical choices just like many other countries, including China and the US, who already experienced 3 mile island and also has reactors close enough to major faultlines to be considered potentially hazardous. You think they are just going to stop mining uranium and grow flowers? Nobody wants dirty energy, we all want safe clean, renewable energy but for the time being most of us are stuck with it and we will pay the consequences just as we have throughout history. Human life and morals are dispensable in the pursuit of political and economic power and natural disasters or catastrophic change is part of what made us who we are in the first place.

http://www.alternative-energy-news.info/technology/hydro/tidal-power/

Well on the brightside it would cover a lot of the US in some (eventually) nice topsoil... http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/article-1350340/Super-volcano-Yellowstones-National-Park-soon-erupt.html

This was supposed to be a plant that would never fail even in the event of a catastrophe like this. The number of redundant backup systems on it is astounding even given the plants age. This was a worst case scenario when all the backup systems failed. The tsunami did most of the damage, not the earthquake - it did its safe-shutdown just as designed. Even if they'd built the backup generators higher up, if they ran the power lines above ground on towers they would have been downed by the tsunami. Then for power, what choices do the Japanese have? They have no oil, and I'm not sure about natural gas. Coal? I don't think so. Imagine the air pollution. And a lot of people and large cities. To be self-sustaining with that large of a population they really had no choice. Was it designed to withstand a 9.0 quake, AND 10+M Tsunami coming in at 500+ MPH? probably not. I hope they can get this thing under control. It is pretty well known that publically estimates of the extent of damage are underrated to prevent panic. It is just utterly bizarre how much bad luck there seems to be involved. -All three reactors are now thought to be in some state of meltdown. -The wind is about to turn into an unusual direction for this time of year. It will be turning North East tonight, blowing any released radioactivity directly into Tokio. -Then it is expected to rain, which would help depositing much of the radioactive particles onto the city. If this was a movie plot, it would be unbelievable. On one hand nuclear power has some serious risks but on the other hand it is one of the absolute greatest accomplishments of science and engineering this world has ever seen. Rather than focus on agendas, I think people should instead marvel at the magnificance of those who have really pulled together to help Japan in their time of crisis. That's the human race at it's absolute finest. Now if only we could harness tsunami's and earthquakes for electricity a little better...

Excellent work - and prolific!

Really cool - very striking and dramatic!

Disaster in nature = new life. Disaster in media = money. On a geological/historical scale were not experiencing anything out of the ordinary. Wait until we get hit by a big meteor/comet or we have another Krakatoa and watch the media go nuts.

More than half the observed solar systems out there are binary (2 or more stars) so it's entirely plausible our solar system could be too. http://www.amazon.com/Lost-Star-Myth-Walter-Cruttenden/dp/0976763117/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1300076821&sr=1-1 http://www.amazon.com/Great-Year-Walter-Cruttenden/dp/B0000YHVMG/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_b The Great Year is an interesting 'new age' watch. The 'dark star' companion is also sometimes called 'vulcan' influencing comet swarms. http://www.barry.warmkessel.com/index.html The exploding planet theory that the asteroid belt is remnants of old planet(s). http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/node/1691 Virtually all financial and experimental resources in cosmology are devoted to big bang studies. Funding comes from only a few sources, and all the peer-review committees that control them are dominated by supporters of the big bang. As a result, the dominance of the big bang within the field has become self-sustaining, irrespective of the scientific validity of the theory. The big bang is not the only framework available for understanding the history of the universe...or more to the point it perhaps needs to be updated in name to better describe contemporary multiverse/string theories. Maybe it could be called 'the big meh' theory I like the idea of multiple universes inflating or branching off each other infinitely than the traditional theory the whole universe exploded out of nothing or a singularity smaller than an atom. Then there is Tom Van Flanders controversial theories! http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Matter-Missing-Planets-Comets/dp/1556432682 In a nutshell from a reviewer: "Faster than light motion in time is possible / Gravitation progresses faster than light / the physical universe has five and only five dimensions / it is infinite in extent in all five dimensions / there was no Big bang to start the universe / the universe is not expanding / the universal microwave radiation is of nearby origin / there are no black holes in the universe / quasars are associated with our own and nearby galaxies / galaxies are arranged in waves in an immense medium /gravitational shielding is possible / the classical description of quantum entities is incorrect / the Bell inequality in quantum physics should be violated / There is no "Oort Cloud" of comets / comets and asteroids are quite similar in nature / comets and asteroids are accompanied by satellites / a former major planet exploded between Mars and Jupiter / this explosion occurred just 3 million years ago / this explosion was the origin of comets and asteroids / this explosion may be connected with the origin of man / the great pyramids in Egypt are perhaps 9000 years old / artificial structures may exist on the surface of Mars / tidal forces on the sun and giant planets are significant / there may be a sunspot-planet link / solar eclipses are best viewed away from the centre line / Mercury was originally a moon of Venus / our Moon originated from the Pacific basin of the Earth / the Moon no longer shows us the same face it used to / the Martian moons are the survivors of a great many moons/ a great rift on Mars is the impact site of a former moon / Jupiter's Red Spot is a floating impact remnanat / Saturn's rings are only a few million years old / Solar system bodies have received black carbon deposits / the moons of Neptune were violently disrupted / Pluto and Charon are escaped moons of Neptune / Another undiscovered planet probably exists beyond Pluto"

Wow, tragedy... Poor guy, a legend of the 60's. As well as manufacturing quality LSD he was an early pioneer in PA systems for the Dead. RIP

It would kind of ironic if some meteors did contain life and are also often mistaken as UFO's. So even if someone mistook meteor phenomena for an alien spacecraft they still may have technically seen a UFO containing extra terrestrial life! http://naturalradiolab.com/content/view/10/11/ http://www.mysterious-america.net/ufoplasmascondig.html "Considerable evidence exists to support the thesis that the events are almost certainly attributable to physical, electrical and magnetic phenomena in the atmosphere, mesosphere and ionosphere. They appear to originate due to more than one set of weather and electrically-charged conditions and are observed so infrequently as to make them unique to the majority of observer. There seems to be a strong possibility that at least some of the events may be triggered by meteor re-entry, the meteors neither burning up completely, nor impacting as meteorites, but forming buoyant plasmas. The conditions and method of formation of the electrically-charged plasmas and the scientific rationale for sustaining them for significant periods is incomplete or not fully understood."

It is important to remember that although many parts of the Dogon legends seem to ring true, other portions are clearly mistaken. One of the Dogon's beliefs is that Sirius B occupied the place where our Sun is now. Physics clearly prohibits this. Also, if the Dogon believe that Sirius B orbits Sirius A every 50 years, why do they hold their celebrations every 60 years? So did alien fish-men pay a visit to ancient Earth and give the Dogon their knowledge? Or was the Dogon's culture contaminated by western visitors? (The story of the Dogon and their legend was first brought to popular attention by Robert K.G. Temple in a book published in 1977 called The Sirius Mystery. Science writer Ian Ridpath and astronomer Carl Sagan made a reply to Temple's book, suggesting that this modern knowledge about Sirius must have come from Westerners who discussed astronomy with the Dogon priests. The priests then included this new information into the older traditions. This, in turn, mislead the anthropologists.) Or could the Dogon's have had ancient technical or non-technical means to find this information out? Or is the whole thing just a matter of coincidence?

Your not being nasty and im not being ignorant. Did you actually see extraterrestrial life?