Kiwis in Space

Well  maybe. According to the news article below our cousins across the ditch have managed to launch an private rocket into Space. However there seems to be no independent verification of the altitude reached.:

New Zealand’s first space rocket has launched this afternoon.

The Atea-1 took off from its launch site at Great Mercury Island just before 3pm, after technical problems delayed this morning’s planned launch.

The launch company, Rocket Lab Ltd, started up three years ago with the aim to develop a series of Atea rockets that would make space more accessible, company director Mark Rocket said last week.

“This is the first step in a long journey,” he said.

The 6-metre-long craft should reach speeds of up to Mach 5, flying 120km into the air, before splashing down in the sea, where it will be picked up.

It is the first time in the southern hemisphere a privately owned company has launched a rocket to space.

Atea is the Maori word for space as the team wanted an indigenous name for the rockets.

The first rocket Atea-1 has been named Manu Karere by the local Thames iwi, which means Bird Messenger.

Supervolcanoes

Today on Discovery Enterprise we will focus our attention on perhaps the least understood and the most destructive natural phenomena on Earth – Supervolcanoes.

Only a handful exist in the world but, when one erupts it will be unlike any volcano we have ever witnessed. The explosion will be heard around the world. The sky will darken, black rain will fall, and the Earth will be plunged into the equivalent of a nuclear winter.

Normal volcanoes are formed by a column of magma – molten rock – rising from deep within the Earth, erupting on the surface, and hardening in layers down the sides. This forms the familiar cone shaped mountain we associate with volcanoes.

Supervolcanoes, however, begin life when magma rises from the mantle to create a boiling reservoir in the Earth’s crust. This chamber increases to an enormous size, building up colossal pressure until it finally erupts.

Supervolcanoes

The Universe: Dark Matter – Dark Energy

Today on Discovery Enterprise we explore the dark side of the Universe. Less than five percent of our universe is comprised of matter that is radiant or interacts with light or other forms of electromagnetic radiation.

For thousands of years we have looked at the night sky and believed the illuminated stuff was all that made up our universe. Scientists now realize it’s not what shines in the light but what hides in the dark that holds the true secrets of our sky. There is a mysterious dark matter that binds stars and galaxies together, and strange particles like wimps, axions and machos might be to blame. And there is a dark, repulsive energy that is creating space in the universe, that’s driving the galaxies further and further apart, to a dismal fate. Combined, dark matter and dark energy make up 96% of the universe and uncovering their secrets is like making the one-in-a-million shot. If uncovered, the ultimate fate of the universe might be revealed. Will it crash and burn in a horrific collision of gravitational forces? Or will dark energy tear the universe apart? This is a trip to the dark side of the universe; this is the hunt for dark matter and dark energy.

These are relatively new discoveries in Astronomy and have fundamentally altered our perception of the nature and ultimate fate of the Universe.

The Universe: Dark Matter – Dark Energy

Journey to 10,000 B.C.

Today on Discovery Enterprise we journey to the year 10,000 BC and experience the suspense and heart-pounding action of a woolly mammoth hunt. A single kill could feed the tribe for weeks. As the winters grow curiously colder and longer, this vital source of nourishment becomes even more critical. Experience the land where giant ground sloths, great saber-toothed cats, and camels roamed. Witness their extinctions and live through the cataclysms that we are only now beginning to understand.

Journey to 10,000 B.C.

The Huge Mistake: Why cap and trade would be bad for the environment and the economy

Here are two global warming believers explaining the flaws in the American version of  ETS. They propose an alternative, Fee and Rebate.  Note the Tony Abbott is also considering replacing the ETS with a simpler carbon tax.

Abbott is right

Tony Abbott is a big government conservative, I’m one of those small government types who thought his book “Battle lines” was just a recipe for greater state power and higher taxes but he is spot on the ETS legislation.:

Climate change certainly takes place. The issue is how much of it is due to man’s activity and what is the best response to it. We only have one planet and we have to look after it. Of course, we should take prudent precautions against foreseeable risk.


Still, it’s far from certain that the best response to rising sea levels, for instance, is lifting the price of electricity, rather than the kind of measures that have been used in The Netherlands for centuries. If there’s to be a carbon price to wean us off coal-fired electricity and oil-driven cars, an ETS may be the most market-oriented way to do so. The Howard government thought so, but many respected economists think a carbon tax would be more certain, less complex and far less open to manipulation than traded carbon permits.


At this point, though, the argument is not so much about the merits of an ETS as about whether it makes sense for Australia to have one before the US, Canada, China and India; and whether it’s good governance to have one designed in political horse-trading rushed through the parliament before its implications can really be digested.

Its completely wrong to think all the people against the ETS are global warming sceptics, What Tony and I are sceptical of is the ETS.

ATOM – Part 1 – Clash of the Titans

Today on Discovery Enterprise we explore the microverse of the atom with British theoretical nuclear physicist Professor Jim Al-Khalili. The discovery that everything is made from atoms has been referred to as the greatest scientific breakthrough in history.

As scientists delved deep into the atom, they unravelled nature’s most shocking secrets and abandoned traditional beliefs, leading to a whole new science which still underpins modern physics, chemistry and biology, and maybe even life itself. Nuclear physicist Professor Jim Al-Khalili tells the story of this discovery and the brilliant minds behind the breakthrough.

ATOM – Part 1 – Clash of The Titans

2001: A Who Odyssey?

I just came across this wonderful video today on The Thrilling Wonder Stories blog site. One of the most stunning web sites devoted to the genre of science fiction that I have seen to grace the web.

In the April of 1968 two great space epics were to grace the silver screens of television and cinema – Doctor Who: The Wheel in Space and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Just image the possibility of merging these two great epics into a new Hollywood blockbuster – 2001: A Who Odyssey.

2001: A Who Odyssey

The Day the Earth Nearly Died

Today we live in a world teeming with life but, some two hundred and fifty million years ago that nearly change and life on earth was very nearly wiped out.

The evidence of this event takes us to Siberia in a region known as the Traps. Today it’s a sub-Arctic wilderness but 250 million years ago, over two hundred thousand square kilometres of it was a blazing torrent of lava. The Siberian Traps were experiencing a ‘flood basalt eruption’, the biggest volcanic effect on Earth. Instead of isolated volcanoes spewing out lava, the crust split and curtains of lava were released. And the Siberian flood eruption lasted for millions of years. Could volcanic activity over such a long time alter the climate enough to kill off ninety five percent of life on Earth?

The Day The Earth Nearly Died

Living With Sharks

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When we were in Hawaii recently, a friend shared the details of his relatively recent shark attack. (Please do not reveal his name on replies if you guys know him. He has asked for privacy.) It was totally horrific – he came within inches of death and was hospitalized for over a month. Within an hour of his story we were in the ocean diving with him. I took my first night dive in the ocean off Honolulu an hour after I saw JAWS for the first time in 1976. I was a younger man then and impulsive and was definitely looking around for the great beasts. But this weekend, diving alongside a man who was seriously attacked, it was a wholly different story. I am not as young as I was and not so much impulsive. The dive in broad daylight was far more intense than the night dive off Waikiki beach. I have been diving in this very spot for hundreds of hours and knew that this was definitely NOT a haven for sharks, but having just heard his story I was definitely looking around.

I know the statistics for shark attacks is lower than being struck by lightning – UNLESS – you live in Florida, that is. And nearly all shark attacks occur in water you can stand up in and most bites are relatively minor leg and ankle bites (ie – surfing injuries). But I also remember the photo that some of my environmental management colleagues took from the air off launch pad 39A. There were countless sharks in the photograph – about one shark every 50 feet or so.

Not all sharks are killers and man-eaters. But all sharks have to eat. They are not known for their intelligence and probably have no idea what a man is, much less swim around and dream up plots against him. But when man encounters shark – it is entirely up to the shark to do whatever he – or they – are going to do.

The shark has very sensitive sensors on its nose. It can detect activity in the water long before it sees its prey and far in advance of the prey seeing the shark. The good news is that sharks apparently do not like the taste of humans. That is why my friend was not killed.

Swimming off the Honolulu Boat Harbor about half a mile out, the shark just ‘tasted’ him and left. In a single instant, the shark clung to his abdomen with its rear teeth. Held him with the back teeth and then took two severing bites with its top teeth in less than half a second. He felt no pain. He thought he had collided with a log. He stood upright in the water and reached his hand out for the ‘log’ and felt the nose of a huge shark. It was at that moment that he saw the ocean around him was ‘purple’. The he felt the huge flap of skin that used to be on his back fold around his arm. The shark turned and left. But he was a half mile out in the ocean bleeding profusely with half his back hanging loose in the water. It was nothing less than a miracle that he survived, and one key part of the miracle is that he apparently didn’t taste very good to the great beast.

As we look forward to longer periods in the water, the site we have selected for the Atlantica I expeditions is also a breeding site for the Bull shark – one of the most aggressive sharks in the world. We will definitely seek ore training on diving in those waters from shark experts and diving in and around the habitat will be done with special attention to the activities and behavior characteristics of the rather mean-spirited Bull shark.

Having said all that, we also recognize that our activities are in its waters where it has lived for countless millennia. We are the observers, not the conquerors. We are the scientists there to observe it in its element and we are most definitely not there to remove or injure a single shark. If anything, we wish to study them and count them and understand how the activities of man are encroaching on their habitat. In so doing, we hope to make life easier on them and thereby encourage them to achieve their ultimate balance in the aquatic realm where we have presumed to join them.