Space Weather 

A Nearly Mile-Wide Asteroid With Its Own Moon Hurtles Past Earth This Weekend

Binary asteroid system 1999 KW4 poses no threat of collision with our planet, scientists say. HUFFPOST.COM An asteroid that’s nearly a mile wide and has its own moon is set to zip by Earth during the weekend. Together, the two space rocks are known as a binary asteroid system, meaning two asteroids that orbit each other. The binary asteroid, called 1999 KW4 by NASA, will be around 3 million miles away from Earth at its closest point around 7:05 p.m. ET on Saturday, NBC News reports. Although some outlets have…

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Projections 

Deep solar minimum is here and it could cause travel CHAOS and FREEZING

EXPRESS.CO.UK THE solar minimum has arrived and scientists are warning of travel and climate CHAOS on Earth as they notice an all time high in cosmic rays. A lack of solar particles from the Sun is a sign the solar minimum is here, and it is allowing more cosmic particles – particles from deep space – to penetrate Earth. During a solar maximum, the Sun gives off more heat and is littered with sunspots. Less heat in a solar minimum is due to a decrease in magnetic waves. Fewer magnetic…

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Aurora Borealis Earth's Magnetic Field 

EARTH’S MAGNETIC NORTH POLE IS RACING TOWARDS SIBERIA. WILL THIS SHIFT THE NORTHERN LIGHTS?

NEWSWEEK The shifting of the earth’s magnetic poles will leave civilization more vulnerable to the coming changes in our sun. Like most planets in our solar system, the Earth has its own magnetic field. Thanks to its largely molten iron core, our planet is, in fact, a bit like a bar magnet. It has a north and south magnetic pole, separate from the geographic poles, with a field connecting the two. This field protects our planet from radiation and is responsible for creating the northern and southern lights—spectacular events that…

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Space Weather 

NASA’s First Planetary Defense Technology Demonstration to Collide with Asteroid in 2022

SOLARSYSTEM.NASA.GOV The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) – NASA’s first mission to demonstrate a planetary defense technique – will get one chance to hit its target, the small moonlet in the binary asteroid system Didymos. The asteroid poses no threat to Earth and is an ideal test target: measuring the change in how the smaller asteroid orbits about the larger asteroid in a binary system is much easier than observing the change in a single asteroid’s orbit around the Sun. Work is ramping up at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics…

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Projections 

Huge Chinese cosmic-ray observatory begins operation

PHYSICS WORLD One of the world’s largest and most sensitive cosmic-ray facilities has begun operation with its first set of detectors. Located about 4410 m above sea level in the Haizi Mountain in Sichuan Province in southwest China, the 1.2 billion yuan ($180m) Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory (LHAASO) will attempt to understand the origins of high-energy cosmic rays. Cosmic rays are particles that originate in outer space and are accelerated to energies higher than those that can be achieved in even the largest man-made particle accelerators. Composed mainly of high-energy protons and…

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FrontPage Projections 

Scientists predict a new solar cycle is about to begin and that it might be stronger than the last one

WASHINGTON POST The latest 11-year cycle of the sun is almost over and scientists have just released predictions for the next one. Based on the number of sunspots that formed, scientists considered the last solar cycle, No. 24, “weak.” They predict that the upcoming cycle, No. 25, may follow suit, but there are a range of views. Some scientists say the latest data point to a stronger cycle. The solar cycle forecast was made public at the annual Space Weather Workshop last week, hosted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space…

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Earth's Magnetic Field Human Response 

Scientists Discover That Humans Can Sense Earth’s Magnetic Field

Researchers have discovered that humans can detect changes in Earth-strength magnetic fields. INTERESTING ENGINEERING Scientists from Caltech and The University of Tokyo have determined that many humans are able to unconsciously detect Earth’s magnetic field. The new study shows that human brain waves respond to changes in Earth-strength magnetic fields. The research team led by geoscientist Joseph Kirschvink (BS, MS ’75) and neuroscientist Shin Shimojo at Caltech as well as neuroengineer Ayu Matani at the University of Tokyo suggest evidence that there is a new human sense they are calling magnetoreception. Animals…

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Cycles of War FrontPage 

Are we on the road to civilization’s collapse?

Studying the demise of historic civilisations can tell us how much risk we face today, says collapse expert Luke Kemp. Worryingly, the signs are worsening. BBC Great civilisations are not murdered. Instead, they take their own lives. DEEP CIVILISATION This article is part of a new BBC Future series about the long view of humanity, which aims to stand back from the daily news cycle and widen the lens of our current place in time. Modern society is suffering from “temporal exhaustion”, the sociologist Elise Boulding once said. “If one is…

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Cycles of War 

Studying a Solar Storm From 1972 Unlocks Vietnam War Mystery

COLORADO.EDU According to documents from the the Vietnam War, scientists observed an enormous solar storm about 15 hours befores the mines detonated. On Aug. 4, 1972, U.S. military pilots flying south of Haiphong harbor in North Vietnam saw something unexpected. More than two dozen sea mines suddenly—and without apparent explanation—exploding in the water.  Now, CU Boulder engineering professor Delores Knipp and her colleagues have dug into this four-decades-old naval mystery. In a commentary published recently in the journal Space Weather, the team reports that the mines were likely triggered by magnetized gas…

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Paranormal 

Interactive map tracks every US alien sighting since 1940

Webmasters note: I am adding this because I suspect increase sunspots are linked to these periods of increased sightings. NEWS.COM.AU THE search for extra terrestrial life has occupied human beings for hundreds of years. Many people have dedicated their entire careers to the hunt for other intelligent life forms outside of Earth, while others spend their days watching the skies for unidentified flying objects. One US-based betting company has taken UFO enthusiasm to the next level by producing an interactive map that reveals every alien sighting across the country in the past…

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