Welcome!

Benvenuti in queste pagine dedicate a scienza, storia ed arte. Amelia Carolina Sparavigna, Torino

Saturday, March 12, 2011

Paesaggio invernale



Paravento, Periodo Edo
Museo Arte Orientale, Torino

Dedica al Giappone

A un paese che vive le ore peggiori della sua storia moderna dopo lo tsunami che ha causato distruzione e morte.


Gyokusen - Schizzo
Museo Arte Orientale, Torino


U.S. Geological Survey

The United States Geological Survey (USGS) is a scientific agency of the United States government. The scientists of the USGS study the landscape of the United States, its natural resources, and the natural hazards that threaten it. The organization has four major science disciplines, concerning biology, geography, geology, and hydrology. The USGS is a fact-finding research organization with no regulatory responsibility. http://www.usgs.gov/
http://www.usgs.gov/natural_hazards/
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/
http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/

Northern Honshu devastated

"Rescuers struggled to reach survivors on Saturday morning as Japan reeled after an earthquake and a tsunami struck in deadly tandem. The 8.9-magnitude earthquake set off a devastating tsunami that sent walls of water washing over coastal cities in the north. Concerns mounted over possible radiation leaks from two nuclear plants near the earthquake zone."
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/world/asia/13japan.html

Friday, March 11, 2011

Karangetang

Just hours after the earthquake stuck Japan, triggering a powerful tsunami, a volcano has erupted in Indonesia. This is one of Indonesia’s most active volcanos, Mount Karangetang
http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=126132
Volcán Karangetang erupciona en Indonesia
http://connuestroperu.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=15908&Itemid=1
"Horas después del terremoto de 8.9 grados que golpeó a Japón, un volcán entró en erupción en Indonesia, sin que haya todavía datos precisos sobre daños o víctimas."

NOAA-DART forecasting

DART (Deep-ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunamis) is a service for real-time monitoring the ocean waves. The network has sites positioned at strategic locations throughout the ocean and play a critical role in tsunami forecasting. http://nctr.pmel.noaa.gov/Dart/
http://nctr.pmel.noaa.gov/honshu20110311/
"Tsunamis are giant waves caused by earthquakes or volcanic eruptions under the sea. Out in the depths of the ocean, tsunami waves do not dramatically increase in height. But as the waves travel inland, they build up to higher and higher heights as the depth of the ocean decreases. The speed of tsunami waves depends on ocean depth rather than the distance from the source of the wave. Tsunami waves may travel as fast as jet planes over deep waters, only slowing down when reaching shallow waters. While tsunamis are often referred to as tidal waves, this name is discouraged by oceanographers because tides have little to do with these giant waves."http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/tsunami.html

INGV - Istituto Geofisica Vulcanologia

Segnalo il sito dell'istituto INGV
http://www.ingv.it/eng/http://www.ingv.it/http://cnt.rm.ingv.it/earthquakes_list.php

Tsunamis hit Japan

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/03/11/japan.quake/index.html
Massive 8.9 quake, tsunamis hit Japan, By the CNN Wire Staff


March 11, 2011 -- Updated 0902 GMT (1702 HKT)

Simon van der Meer

Simon van der Meer: 1925–2011 - physicsworld.com

Distant galaxy helped relight the universe

"The discovery of a small but distant galaxy 12.8 billion light years from Earth is providing important clues about the earliest years of the universe's life. By measuring the age of the galaxy's stars, astronomers in Europe and the US say the galaxy began to shine when the universe was just 150–300 million years old. The work suggests that such galaxies were responsible for dispersing the atomic fog that once cloaked the cosmos, during a period in the history of the universe that astronomers know very little about." by Ken Croswell
Distant galaxy helped relight the universe - physicsworld.com

Thursday, March 10, 2011

SuperMoon, ovvero la SuperLuna

"The moon will be at its closest to earth since 1993 on March 19th next.
The “Lunar Perigee”, or ‘SuperMoon’ as some astrologers refer to it as, is the opposite of the “Lunar Apogee”, when the Moon is furthest from Earth. Generally, the Moon looks about 12-14% larger at its perigee compared to its apogee. Full moon (19 March) will occur during Lunar Perigee meaning it will look much larger than normal especially when it rises on the eastern horizon at sunset, or given the right atmospheric conditions."
"La "superluna” el 19 de marzo alimenta especulaciones. El anuncio de una “superluna” para el 19 de marzo comienza a levantar una serie de especulaciones sobre los efectos apocalípticos que ésta tendrá sobre la Tierra. Para este 19 de marzo nuestro satélite alcanzará su distancia más cercana a la Tierra en 19 años, acercándose a 356,578 kilómetros.."

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Measure for measure

Measure for measure, 9 March 2011, by Stuart Nathan
"There’s a new gadget in my flat. It’s small and unflashy, it’s sitting on the corner of a worktop in my kitchen, and it tells me, from second to second, how much carbon dioxide the electricity I use is generating. And already it’s proving strangely fascinating....So for the past couple of days, everytime I or my partner switches on anything electrical, we’ve been dashing into the kitchen to see what’s happened ...
Having this little chunk of plastic handy has really pointed out what physicists always knew and engineers have been saying since the industrial revolution: if you can’t measure something, you can’t control it. Just knowing, vaguely, in the back of your mind that a certain appliance is a bit juice-hungry is no substitute for seeing the hard numbers when you switch the thing on. Knowledge is power; or, in this case, cutting the amount of power."
 Read more: Measure for measure | Opinion | The Engineer

The Sixth Extinction (ActionBioscience)

The Sixth Extinction, by Niles Eldredge
"There is little doubt left in the minds of professional biologists that Earth is currently faced with a mounting loss of species that threatens to rival the five great mass extinctions of the geological past. As long ago as 1993, Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson estimated that Earth is currently losing something on the order of 30,000 species per year — which breaks down to the even more daunting statistic of some three species per hour. Some biologists have begun to feel that this biodiversity crisis — this “Sixth Extinction” — is even more severe, and more imminent, than Wilson had supposed."

Life from Space: An Emerging Paradigm

Life from Space: An Emerging Paradigm (ActionBioscience)
"This article summarizes Evolution of Life: A Cosmic Perspective, an original paper by Chandra Wickramasinghe and Sir Fred Hoyle posted on this site (click on above title to read their paper). There, readers will also find a link to the commentary by the peer reviewer of that paper, which provides counterpoint views to the authors’ controversial ideas. The hypothesis, called cosmic ancestry/panspermia, posited by the authors is not widely accepted by the mainstream scientific community. It is published on this site in consideration of the authors’ distinguished contributions to science to date and to provide an opportunity for both scientists and the public to evaluate ideas presented in their paper."
More http://www.actionbioscience.org/newfrontiers/wickramasinghe.html

Sunday, March 6, 2011

Archaeoastronomy in Ancient India

The Journal of Cosmology, 2010, Vol 9, 2063-2077. JournalofCosmology.com, July, 2010
is publishing the paper "Visions of the Cosmos: Archaeoastronomy in Ancient India" by Subhash Kak, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK, USA
Abstract This paper is an overview of archaeoastronomy in ancient India. It describes the Vedic conception of the cosmos and the representation of the knowledge of the motions of the sun and the moon in the design of fire altars. Sites of archaeoastronomical interest described include Neolithic and Megalithic sites and the Sanchi Stupa.
"In the Indian view, the cosmos is seen as being tripartite and recursive (see Kak, 2000a and Kak, 2008 for review and additional references). The universe is viewed as three regions of earth, space, and sky (Dumézil, 1988) which in the human being are mirrored in the physical body, the breath (prāna), and mind. The processes in the sky, on earth, and within the mind are taken to be connected."