The assault on life by radio waves that began in 1896 — that is now increasing so rapidly, and is injuring so many people and so many forms of life — must finally be acknowledged and halted. We do not have much time. Scientists, doctors, government officials, and injured people must all meet together in one place to put a stop to it. It is the most immediate threat to life … [Read more...]
NASA launches carbon tracking satellite
The ability of scientists to make accurate predictions about future effects of CO2 will be boosted by vital data from a new US satellite sent to take a detailed inventory of the planet’s sinks and sources of carbon. The US space agency NASA sent up a satellite on 2 June, which will provide vital data for predicting future effects of CO2by taking the measure of the planetary … [Read more...]
SKA SA research fellow publishes in Nature
University of the Western Cape (UWC) researcher, Dr Mattia Vaccari recently co-authored a Nature paper that could help explain the mystery of large elliptical galaxies in an early Universe. Vaccari is an SKA SA postdoctoral fellow in UWC's astrophysics group. For this prestigious publication, he was part of a team of scientists that observed what seems to be the collision … [Read more...]
Asteroid Mining our way to intergalactic colonisation
As our planet runs out of minerals and resources to support our even expanding need for development, is asteroid-mining a possible and viable option in the foreseeable future? Asteroid mining may sound like a science fiction term and it has had some pretty awful notions associated with it. Our imagination and history of the past often makes us picture certain greedy and … [Read more...]
Better choices critical to future life on earth
Humanity's demands exceed our planet's capacity to sustain us by 50%. So we need the equivalent of 1.5 planets to provide what we ask for. The Living Planet Report, launched by WWF this week, provides a sobering wake-up call to the reality that human activity is exceedingly impacting negatively on our planet. This list of evidence is the world's leading, science-based … [Read more...]
The sun’s impending temper tantrum
In late January and again in the second week of March, the sun lashed out in a bit of a temper tantrum, on both occasions sending out a powerful interplanetary coronal mass ejection whose full effects reached Earth in a few days. We got lucky: Nothing much happened, and the resulting space weather storm didn’t pack as big a punch as expected. This won’t always be the … [Read more...]
Africa: On fire from space
30% of the earth’s surface is affected by fire. Fire destroys forests and vegetations which are our sources of food – it is both a driver and an indicator of climate change. When biomass is burned, copious amounts of gases and particulate matter are released, billowing smoke plumes fill the sky, and entire ecosystems can change in seconds. “We’ve seen very saddening … [Read more...]
Solar flare causing problems for technology
Having a problem with your internet or cellphone connection? Or making strange bleeps yourself? You may have to blame a higher power – the sun. On Wednesday, Nov. 9th a magnetic filament in the vicinity of sunspot complex 1342-1343 erupted, producing a M1-class solar flare and hurling a coronal mass ejection (CME) into space. But what are CME's? CME's are 'flames' that shoot … [Read more...]
