INDIA's moon mission may launch race for lunar landgrab
It will be a small step for mankind, but a giant leap forward for India. In a boost to national prestige, the country will launch its first unmanned moon mission tomorrow - blasting its Chandrayaan satellite into space from an island off the Bay of Bengal, using a domestically produced rocket system. In doing so, it will match China, which last year became the first Asian nation to send a satellite to orbit the moon, signalling the possibility of a race for mineral wealth on the lunar surface.
If all goes to plan, India's tricolour flag should be drifting down towards the freezing, airless lunar surface as dawn breaks over the subcontinent on November 11.
The 239,000-mile journey is not straightforward - it took the Americans and Russians almost two decades to master it, from the moment space exploration was born. Once above the Earth's atmosphere the launch vehicle's thrusters will have to manoeuvre and fire the Chandrayaan I rocket with precision.
If all goes to plan, the satellite, weighing half a tonne, will enter a lunar orbit some 62 miles above the moon's surface on November 8 and begin its two-year mission to map the moon in 3D, survey its surface for mineral wealth and start its 11 hi-tech probes, including five from the US, Sweden, Japan, Germany and Bulgaria.
One of India's aims in reaching the moon is the possibility of harvesting helium 3, a key fuel for nuclear fusion. Although fusion is not commercially viable today, scientists say it one day will be, and that once it is a fuel supply will become a problem, as the Earth is believed to have only 15 tonnes of helium 3. The moon is thought to contain up to 5m tonnes.
Officials at the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) remain tight-lipped about the possibility of a lunar land grab. UR Rao, a former director of Isro, was less circumspect, pointing out that the moon might have "enough [helium 3] to produce energy for 8,000 years". This view echoes that of the head of China's Chang'e project, who told the China Daily in 2006 that "each year three space shuttle missions could bring enough [helium 3] for all human beings across the world".
Last month, a Chinese astronaut completed a 15-minute space walk for the first time. However, India has big ambitions. There are proposals to put the first Indian into space by 2014 and to launch a manned lunar mission by 2020 - four years ahead of China's target date.
The Indian agency's next step is to launch a second unmanned lunar mission in 2011, comprising an orbiting spacecraft, a lander and a moon-rover built with Russian help.
The Chandrayaan mission, at a time of economic belt-tightening, has sparked a national debate about whether a country with hundreds of millions of poor people can afford to play catch-up in the skies.
S Satish, director of public relations at Isro, said that the Indian cabinet had given the go-ahead for the second mission in 2011, but other missions awaited approval.
"We have to consider the costs for a [manned] moon mission. Even with our low costs it will be billions of dollars. You need a good reason to send someone to the moon for that amount," Satish said.
Earlier this year India was ranked by analysts at Futron, a hi-tech consultancy, as only a fraction behind China in global space competitiveness rankings, and well ahead of Japan, Israel and Canada. It is also building a low-cost, hi-tech base. China's Chang'e I cost nearly double India's Chandrayaan I bill of $86m.
This thriftiness was born of necessity. With an annual budget of about $1bn - less than a tenth of Nasa's - Isro has to do a lot with little.
Until now India's space agency has concentrated on putting satellites in orbit. It has 11 communications satellites, using them to bring education and healthcare to remote villages via tele-links with schools and hospitals in cities.
"The whole thrust of [India's space programme] has been to get real benefits," said Gopal Raj, author of Reach For The Stars, a book about the country's rocket programme. Raj pointed out that the Madras Institute of Development Studies recently calculated that for every rupee spent on the space programme, two were generated in "indirect and direct returns".
Critics say that the space mission is a cover for an exercise in "national military-industrial ego".
Ominously, earlier this year India's chief of army staff spoke openly of his fears about China's military space programme, and stressed the need for India to accelerate its own.
"Let's face it we have an arms race here," said Praful Bidwai, a long-time critic of the space programme. "Rockets that can be used to fire satellites can be used for nuclear warheads, too. India could be spending the money on getting clean drinking water to the poor, get food in their belly. Instead it chooses to blast its way into a space race."
Reach for the stars
US Nasa put Neil Armstrong on the moon in 1969. Plans include a return manned trip to the moon by 2020.
China Completed its first manned space flight in 2003 and launched a lunar satellite in October last year. This year, Zhai Zhigang became the first Chinese to walk in space. Ambitious plans include its own space station.
Russia First to launch a satellite in 1957, and four years later launched the first human into space.
Europe European Space Agency's Ariane rocket programme became a world leader in commercial space launches in the 90s. Plans a mission to search for signs of life on Mars in 2016.
Japan First ever minister of space development appointed this year.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Tsuunami
A tsunami (pronounced /(t)suːˈnɑːmi/) is a series of waves created when a body of water, such as an ocean, is rapidly displaced. Earthquakes, mass movements above or below water, some volcanic eruptions and other underwater explosions, landslides, underwater earthquakes, large asteroid impacts and testing with nuclear weapons at sea all have the potential to generate a tsunami. The effects of a tsunami can be devastating due to the immense volumes of water and energy involved. Since meteorites are small, they will not generate a tsunami.
The Greek historian Thucydides was the first to relate tsunamis to submarine quakes,but understanding of the nature of tsunamis remained slim until the 20th century and is the subject of ongoing research.
Many early geological, geographic, oceanographic etc., texts refer to "Seismic sea waves"—these are now referred to as "tsunami".
Some meteorological storm conditions—deep depressions causing cyclones, hurricanes—can generate a storm surge which can be several metres above normal tide levels. This is due to the low atmospheric pressure within the centre of the depression. As these storm surges come ashore the surge can resemble a tsunami, inundating vast areas of land. These are not tsunami. Such a storm surge inundated Burma (Myanmar) in May 2008
Causes
A tsunami can be generated when converging or destructive plate boundaries abruptly move and vertically displace the overlying water. It is very unlikely that they can form at divergent (constructive) or conservative plate boundaries. This is because constructive or conservative boundaries do not generally disturb the vertical displacement of the water column. Subduction zone related earthquakes generate the majority of all tsunamis.
A tsunami has a much smaller amplitude (wave height) offshore, and a very long wavelength (often hundreds of kilometers long), which is why they generally pass unnoticed at sea, forming only a slight swell usually about 300 mm above the normal sea surface. A tsunami can occur at any state of the tide and even at low tide will still inundate coastal areas if the incoming waves surge high enough.
On April 1, 1946 a Magnitude 7.8 (Richter Scale) earthquake occurred near the Aleutian Islands, Alaska. It generated a tsunami which inundated Hilo on the island of Hawai'i with a 14 m high surge. The area where the earthquake occurred is where the Pacific Ocean floor is subducting (or being pushed downwards) under Alaska.
Examples of tsunami being generated at locations away from convergent boundaries include Storegga during the Neolithic era, Grand Banks 1929, Papua New Guinea 1998 (Tappin, 2001). In the case of the Grand Banks and Papua New Guinea tsunamis an earthquake caused sediments to become unstable and subsequently fail. These slumped and as they flowed down slope a tsunami was generated. These tsunami did not travel transoceanic distances.
It is not known what caused the Storegga sediments to fail. It may have been due to overloading of the sediments causing them to become unstable and they then failed solely as a result of being overloaded. It is also possible that an earthquake caused the sediments to become unstable and then fail. Another theory is that a release of gas hydrates (methane etc.,) caused the slump.
The "Great Chilean earthquake" (19:11 hrs UTC) May 22, 1960 (9.5 Mw), the March 27, 1964 "Good Friday earthquake" Alaska 1964 (9.2 Mw), and the "Great Sumatra-Andaman earthquake" (00:58:53 UTC) December 26, 2004 (9.2 Mw), are recent examples of powerful megathrust earthquakes that generated a tsunami that was able to cross oceans. Smaller (4.2 Mw) earthquakes in Japan can trigger tsunami that can devastate nearby coasts within 15 minutes or less.
In the 1950s it was hypothesised that larger tsunamis than had previously been believed possible may be caused by landslides, explosive volcanic action e.g., Santorini, Krakatau, and impact events when they contact water. These phenomena rapidly displace large volumes of water, as energy from falling debris or expansion is transferred to the water into which the debris falls at a rate faster than the ocean water can absorb it. They have been named by the media as "mega-tsunami."
Tsunami caused by these mechanisms, unlike the trans-oceanic tsunami caused by some earthquakes, may dissipate quickly and rarely affect coastlines distant from the source due to the small area of sea affected. These events can give rise to much larger local shock waves (solitons), such as the landslide at the head of Lituya Bay 1958, which produced a wave with an initial surge estimated at 524 m. However, an extremely large gravitational landslide might generate a so called "mega-tsunami" that may have the ability to travel trans-oceanic distances. This though is strongly debated and there is no actual geological evidence to support this hypothesis.
Characteristics
While everyday wind waves have a wavelength (from crest to crest) of about 100 m (300 ft) and a height of roughly 2 m (7 ft), a tsunami in the deep ocean has a wavelength of about 200 km (120 miles). This wave travels at well over 800 km/h (500 mph), but due to the enormous wavelength the wave oscillation at any given point takes 20 or 30 minutes to complete a cycle and has an amplitude of only about 1 m (3 ft). This makes tsunamis difficult to detect over deep water. Their passage usually goes unnoticed by ships.
As the tsunami approaches the coast and the waters become shallow, the wave is compressed due to wave shoaling and its forward travel slows below 80 km/h (50 mph). Its wavelength diminishes to less than 20 km (12 miles) and its amplitude grows enormously, producing a distinctly visible wave. Since the wave still has a wavelength on the order of several km (a few miles), the tsunami may take minutes to ramp up to full height, with victims seeing a massive deluge of rising ocean rather than a cataclysmic wall of water. Open bays and coastlines adjacent to very deep water may shape the tsunami further into a step-like wave with a steep breaking front.
The Greek historian Thucydides was the first to relate tsunamis to submarine quakes,but understanding of the nature of tsunamis remained slim until the 20th century and is the subject of ongoing research.
Many early geological, geographic, oceanographic etc., texts refer to "Seismic sea waves"—these are now referred to as "tsunami".
Some meteorological storm conditions—deep depressions causing cyclones, hurricanes—can generate a storm surge which can be several metres above normal tide levels. This is due to the low atmospheric pressure within the centre of the depression. As these storm surges come ashore the surge can resemble a tsunami, inundating vast areas of land. These are not tsunami. Such a storm surge inundated Burma (Myanmar) in May 2008
Causes
A tsunami can be generated when converging or destructive plate boundaries abruptly move and vertically displace the overlying water. It is very unlikely that they can form at divergent (constructive) or conservative plate boundaries. This is because constructive or conservative boundaries do not generally disturb the vertical displacement of the water column. Subduction zone related earthquakes generate the majority of all tsunamis.
A tsunami has a much smaller amplitude (wave height) offshore, and a very long wavelength (often hundreds of kilometers long), which is why they generally pass unnoticed at sea, forming only a slight swell usually about 300 mm above the normal sea surface. A tsunami can occur at any state of the tide and even at low tide will still inundate coastal areas if the incoming waves surge high enough.
On April 1, 1946 a Magnitude 7.8 (Richter Scale) earthquake occurred near the Aleutian Islands, Alaska. It generated a tsunami which inundated Hilo on the island of Hawai'i with a 14 m high surge. The area where the earthquake occurred is where the Pacific Ocean floor is subducting (or being pushed downwards) under Alaska.
Examples of tsunami being generated at locations away from convergent boundaries include Storegga during the Neolithic era, Grand Banks 1929, Papua New Guinea 1998 (Tappin, 2001). In the case of the Grand Banks and Papua New Guinea tsunamis an earthquake caused sediments to become unstable and subsequently fail. These slumped and as they flowed down slope a tsunami was generated. These tsunami did not travel transoceanic distances.
It is not known what caused the Storegga sediments to fail. It may have been due to overloading of the sediments causing them to become unstable and they then failed solely as a result of being overloaded. It is also possible that an earthquake caused the sediments to become unstable and then fail. Another theory is that a release of gas hydrates (methane etc.,) caused the slump.
The "Great Chilean earthquake" (19:11 hrs UTC) May 22, 1960 (9.5 Mw), the March 27, 1964 "Good Friday earthquake" Alaska 1964 (9.2 Mw), and the "Great Sumatra-Andaman earthquake" (00:58:53 UTC) December 26, 2004 (9.2 Mw), are recent examples of powerful megathrust earthquakes that generated a tsunami that was able to cross oceans. Smaller (4.2 Mw) earthquakes in Japan can trigger tsunami that can devastate nearby coasts within 15 minutes or less.
In the 1950s it was hypothesised that larger tsunamis than had previously been believed possible may be caused by landslides, explosive volcanic action e.g., Santorini, Krakatau, and impact events when they contact water. These phenomena rapidly displace large volumes of water, as energy from falling debris or expansion is transferred to the water into which the debris falls at a rate faster than the ocean water can absorb it. They have been named by the media as "mega-tsunami."
Tsunami caused by these mechanisms, unlike the trans-oceanic tsunami caused by some earthquakes, may dissipate quickly and rarely affect coastlines distant from the source due to the small area of sea affected. These events can give rise to much larger local shock waves (solitons), such as the landslide at the head of Lituya Bay 1958, which produced a wave with an initial surge estimated at 524 m. However, an extremely large gravitational landslide might generate a so called "mega-tsunami" that may have the ability to travel trans-oceanic distances. This though is strongly debated and there is no actual geological evidence to support this hypothesis.
Characteristics
While everyday wind waves have a wavelength (from crest to crest) of about 100 m (300 ft) and a height of roughly 2 m (7 ft), a tsunami in the deep ocean has a wavelength of about 200 km (120 miles). This wave travels at well over 800 km/h (500 mph), but due to the enormous wavelength the wave oscillation at any given point takes 20 or 30 minutes to complete a cycle and has an amplitude of only about 1 m (3 ft). This makes tsunamis difficult to detect over deep water. Their passage usually goes unnoticed by ships.
As the tsunami approaches the coast and the waters become shallow, the wave is compressed due to wave shoaling and its forward travel slows below 80 km/h (50 mph). Its wavelength diminishes to less than 20 km (12 miles) and its amplitude grows enormously, producing a distinctly visible wave. Since the wave still has a wavelength on the order of several km (a few miles), the tsunami may take minutes to ramp up to full height, with victims seeing a massive deluge of rising ocean rather than a cataclysmic wall of water. Open bays and coastlines adjacent to very deep water may shape the tsunami further into a step-like wave with a steep breaking front.
A little about MARS
Mars (pronounced /ˈmɑrz/) is the fourth planet from the Sun in the Solar System. The planet is named after Mars, the Roman god of war. It is also referred to as the "Red Planet" because of its reddish appearance.
Mars is a terrestrial planet with a thin atmosphere, having surface features reminiscent both of the impact craters of the Moon and the volcanoes, valleys, deserts and polar ice caps of Earth. It is the site of Olympus Mons, the highest known mountain in the Solar System, and of Valles Marineris, the largest canyon. Furthermore, in June 2008 three articles published in Nature presented evidence of an enormous impact crater in Mars' northern hemisphere, 10 600 km long by 8 500 km wide, or roughly four times larger than the largest impact crater yet discovered, the South Pole-Aitken basin.In addition to its geographical features, Mars’ rotational period and seasonal cycles are likewise similar to those of Earth.
Until the first flyby of Mars by Mariner 4 in 1965, many speculated that there might be liquid water on the planet's surface. This was based on observations of periodic variations in light and dark patches, particularly in the polar latitudes, which looked like seas and continents, while long, dark striations were interpreted by some observers as irrigation channels for liquid water. These straight line features were later proven not to exist and were instead explained as optical illusions. Still, of all the planets in the Solar System other than Earth, Mars is the most likely to harbor liquid water, and perhaps life.Water, in the state of ice, was found by the Phoenix Mars Lander on July 31, 2008.Mars is currently host to three functional orbiting spacecraft: Mars Odyssey, Mars Express, and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. This is more than any planet in the Solar System except Earth. The surface is also home to the two Mars Exploration Rovers (Spirit and Opportunity), the lander Phoenix, and several inert landers and rovers that either failed or completed missions. Geological evidence gathered by these and preceding missions suggests that Mars previously had large-scale water coverage, while observations also indicate that small geyser-like water flows have occurred during the past decade.Observations by NASA's Mars Global Surveyor show evidence that parts of the southern polar ice cap have been receding.Mars has two moons, Phobos and Deimos, which are small and irregularly shaped. These may be captured asteroids, similar to 5261 Eureka, a Martian Trojan asteroid. Mars can be seen from Earth with the naked eye. Its apparent magnitude reaches −2.9,a brightness surpassed only by Venus, the Moon, and the Sun, though most of the time Jupiter will appear brighter to the naked eye than Mars.
Mars is a terrestrial planet with a thin atmosphere, having surface features reminiscent both of the impact craters of the Moon and the volcanoes, valleys, deserts and polar ice caps of Earth. It is the site of Olympus Mons, the highest known mountain in the Solar System, and of Valles Marineris, the largest canyon. Furthermore, in June 2008 three articles published in Nature presented evidence of an enormous impact crater in Mars' northern hemisphere, 10 600 km long by 8 500 km wide, or roughly four times larger than the largest impact crater yet discovered, the South Pole-Aitken basin.In addition to its geographical features, Mars’ rotational period and seasonal cycles are likewise similar to those of Earth.
Until the first flyby of Mars by Mariner 4 in 1965, many speculated that there might be liquid water on the planet's surface. This was based on observations of periodic variations in light and dark patches, particularly in the polar latitudes, which looked like seas and continents, while long, dark striations were interpreted by some observers as irrigation channels for liquid water. These straight line features were later proven not to exist and were instead explained as optical illusions. Still, of all the planets in the Solar System other than Earth, Mars is the most likely to harbor liquid water, and perhaps life.Water, in the state of ice, was found by the Phoenix Mars Lander on July 31, 2008.Mars is currently host to three functional orbiting spacecraft: Mars Odyssey, Mars Express, and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. This is more than any planet in the Solar System except Earth. The surface is also home to the two Mars Exploration Rovers (Spirit and Opportunity), the lander Phoenix, and several inert landers and rovers that either failed or completed missions. Geological evidence gathered by these and preceding missions suggests that Mars previously had large-scale water coverage, while observations also indicate that small geyser-like water flows have occurred during the past decade.Observations by NASA's Mars Global Surveyor show evidence that parts of the southern polar ice cap have been receding.Mars has two moons, Phobos and Deimos, which are small and irregularly shaped. These may be captured asteroids, similar to 5261 Eureka, a Martian Trojan asteroid. Mars can be seen from Earth with the naked eye. Its apparent magnitude reaches −2.9,a brightness surpassed only by Venus, the Moon, and the Sun, though most of the time Jupiter will appear brighter to the naked eye than Mars.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Bermuda Triangle
Known Facts
One well known case in 1962 vividly brings home the need for careful behind-the-scenes probing. Once again, it involves an aircraft. The date was January 8, 1962. A huge 4 engine KB-50 aerial tanker was en route from the east coast to Lajes in the Azores. The captain, Major Bob Tawney, reported in at the expected time. All was normal, routine. But he, his 8 crew and big tanker, never made the Azores. Apparently, the last word from the flight had been that routine report, a report which had placed them a few hundred miles off the east coast. FLASH! the media broadcasted, fed by a sincere Coast Guard issued press statement, that a large oil slick was sighted 300 miles off Norfolk, Virginia, in the plane’s proposed route. The mystery could be breaking. . . . But that was the only clue ever found. Although never proved it was from the plane, publicly the suspicions were obvious: the tanker and its qualified crew met a horrid and sudden death by crashing headlong into the sea. However, the report-- finished months later-- confirmed no such thing. Tawney had been clearly overheard by a Navy transport hours after his last message. This placed him north of Bermuda, hundreds of miles past the spot of the oil slick. There is no evidence, therefore, that the plane and its crew ever met any known fate. The contradiction was hardly the press’s fault. Nor was it totally the blame of the Coast Guard. As soon as scratchy information came in, it was directed to the by-standing media. But this had misleading effects, as the KB-50 case demonstrated.
With almost every case the same thing has happened. By the time concrete information is obtained, the story has lost its appeal, and no follow-ups ever find their way into the papers. I have tried to stay away, therefore, from relying on any newspaper accounts. These, unfortunately, have almost always been the exclusive source for any popular account of an incident, whether in a magazine or book, previous to this web site.
Approaching the subject from the back door, so to speak, free of the hype and public forum, has yielded more startling information. For instance, no more than a few disappearances of airplanes have been reported in the last 2 decades, yet mystery has struck with skillful hands. Searches of the database of National Transportation Safety Board reveal some 75 aircraft have gone missing. Projecting Coast Guard statistics on
Bermuda Triangle.Org tries to bring you much more than just the facts on incidents. Charts & Maps guide you to the geography of the Triangle, plus marking possible locations for the missing. Accurate diagrams of the types of vessels and planes allows you to visualize every type of ship and plane to disappear. Photographs bring the actual victims to life, and original artwork recreates the circumstances in which many of the victims vanished. In Search Of . . . takes you below the silent waters of the Triangle in an attempt to find the grave of the lost. Theories recalls all the conjecture on the Triangle, both old and new, some startling possibilities and some basic concepts, plus exposing some outright mistakes.
Featured Articles highlights some of the most famous cases and other news subjects relevant to the Bermuda Triangle. Go to the Archives now for a look at all of them.
At Site News I’ll keep you posted on anything relevant to the site.
Permission was quickly granted. The turbo jet was then seen ascending from 25,300 feet to its cruising altitude of 29,000. All seemed normal. They were still ascending. Verdi had not yet rogered reaching his new altitude. Radar continued to track the Cougar until, for some unknown reason, it simply faded away. Verdi and Lukaris answered no more calls to respond. They had sent no MAYDAY to indicate a problem. Read-outs of the radar observations confirmed the unusual: The Cougar had not been captured at all descending or falling to the sea. Frankly, it had just vanished while climbing; it simply faded away. One sweep they were there . . . the next?
If you are interested in reading about all this, this web site provides dozens of pages to whet your appetite. Investigations gives you detailed investigations into some of the more interesting and provocative cases and, of course, profiles most any incident, old and new.
missing boats is truly mind boggling, perhaps reaching over 2,000. Often when faced with what these reports contain, I have come away badly jolted. It has caused me to revise several well-known cases, and has made it possible to present accurate accounts of what has transpired in the last 20 years. These last, I must presume, are here to the public presented for the first time since I know of no other research done in this period.
It was Halloween, 1991. Radar controllers checked and rechecked what they had just seen. The scope was blank in a spot now. Everywhere else all seemed normal. Routine traffic was proceeding undisturbed, in their vectors, tracked and uninterrupted. But just moments earlier they had been tracking a Grumman Cougar jet. The pilot was John Verdi. He and trained co-pilot, Paul Lukaris, were on a flight toward Tallahassee Moments before Verdi’s voice had crackled over the receiver at the flight center: “Uh, this is November two four Whiskey Juliet (N24WJ). I am at, uh, two five three zero zero. Request ascent two niner zero. Over.”
One well known case in 1962 vividly brings home the need for careful behind-the-scenes probing. Once again, it involves an aircraft. The date was January 8, 1962. A huge 4 engine KB-50 aerial tanker was en route from the east coast to Lajes in the Azores. The captain, Major Bob Tawney, reported in at the expected time. All was normal, routine. But he, his 8 crew and big tanker, never made the Azores. Apparently, the last word from the flight had been that routine report, a report which had placed them a few hundred miles off the east coast. FLASH! the media broadcasted, fed by a sincere Coast Guard issued press statement, that a large oil slick was sighted 300 miles off Norfolk, Virginia, in the plane’s proposed route. The mystery could be breaking. . . . But that was the only clue ever found. Although never proved it was from the plane, publicly the suspicions were obvious: the tanker and its qualified crew met a horrid and sudden death by crashing headlong into the sea. However, the report-- finished months later-- confirmed no such thing. Tawney had been clearly overheard by a Navy transport hours after his last message. This placed him north of Bermuda, hundreds of miles past the spot of the oil slick. There is no evidence, therefore, that the plane and its crew ever met any known fate. The contradiction was hardly the press’s fault. Nor was it totally the blame of the Coast Guard. As soon as scratchy information came in, it was directed to the by-standing media. But this had misleading effects, as the KB-50 case demonstrated.
With almost every case the same thing has happened. By the time concrete information is obtained, the story has lost its appeal, and no follow-ups ever find their way into the papers. I have tried to stay away, therefore, from relying on any newspaper accounts. These, unfortunately, have almost always been the exclusive source for any popular account of an incident, whether in a magazine or book, previous to this web site.
Approaching the subject from the back door, so to speak, free of the hype and public forum, has yielded more startling information. For instance, no more than a few disappearances of airplanes have been reported in the last 2 decades, yet mystery has struck with skillful hands. Searches of the database of National Transportation Safety Board reveal some 75 aircraft have gone missing. Projecting Coast Guard statistics on
Bermuda Triangle.Org tries to bring you much more than just the facts on incidents. Charts & Maps guide you to the geography of the Triangle, plus marking possible locations for the missing. Accurate diagrams of the types of vessels and planes allows you to visualize every type of ship and plane to disappear. Photographs bring the actual victims to life, and original artwork recreates the circumstances in which many of the victims vanished. In Search Of . . . takes you below the silent waters of the Triangle in an attempt to find the grave of the lost. Theories recalls all the conjecture on the Triangle, both old and new, some startling possibilities and some basic concepts, plus exposing some outright mistakes.
Featured Articles highlights some of the most famous cases and other news subjects relevant to the Bermuda Triangle. Go to the Archives now for a look at all of them.
At Site News I’ll keep you posted on anything relevant to the site.
Permission was quickly granted. The turbo jet was then seen ascending from 25,300 feet to its cruising altitude of 29,000. All seemed normal. They were still ascending. Verdi had not yet rogered reaching his new altitude. Radar continued to track the Cougar until, for some unknown reason, it simply faded away. Verdi and Lukaris answered no more calls to respond. They had sent no MAYDAY to indicate a problem. Read-outs of the radar observations confirmed the unusual: The Cougar had not been captured at all descending or falling to the sea. Frankly, it had just vanished while climbing; it simply faded away. One sweep they were there . . . the next?
If you are interested in reading about all this, this web site provides dozens of pages to whet your appetite. Investigations gives you detailed investigations into some of the more interesting and provocative cases and, of course, profiles most any incident, old and new.
missing boats is truly mind boggling, perhaps reaching over 2,000. Often when faced with what these reports contain, I have come away badly jolted. It has caused me to revise several well-known cases, and has made it possible to present accurate accounts of what has transpired in the last 20 years. These last, I must presume, are here to the public presented for the first time since I know of no other research done in this period.
It was Halloween, 1991. Radar controllers checked and rechecked what they had just seen. The scope was blank in a spot now. Everywhere else all seemed normal. Routine traffic was proceeding undisturbed, in their vectors, tracked and uninterrupted. But just moments earlier they had been tracking a Grumman Cougar jet. The pilot was John Verdi. He and trained co-pilot, Paul Lukaris, were on a flight toward Tallahassee Moments before Verdi’s voice had crackled over the receiver at the flight center: “Uh, this is November two four Whiskey Juliet (N24WJ). I am at, uh, two five three zero zero. Request ascent two niner zero. Over.”
Our Universe
The Universe is defined as everything that physically exists: the entirety of space and time, all forms of matter, energy and momentum, and the physical laws and constants that govern them. However, the term "universe" may be used in slightly different contextual senses, denoting such concepts as the cosmos, the world or Nature.
Astronomical observations indicate that the universe is 13.73 ± 0.12 billion years old[1] and at least 93 billion light years across. According to the prevailing scientific theory, the universe has expanded from a gravitational singularity known as the Big Bang, a point in space and time at which all the matter and energy of the observable universe were concentrated. Since the Big Bang, the universe has expanded to its present form, possibly with a brief period of cosmic inflation.[2] Several independent experimental measurements support this theoretical expansion and, more generally, the Big Bang theory. Recent observations indicate that this expansion is accelerating, and that most of the matter and energy in the universe is fundamentally different from that observed on Earth and not directly observable (cf. dark matter and dark energy). The imprecision of current observations has hindered predictions of the ultimate fate of the universe.
Experiments suggest that the universe has been governed by the same physical laws and constants throughout its extent and history. The dominant force at cosmological distances is gravity, and general relativity is currently the most accurate theory of gravitation. The remaining three fundamental forces and all the known particles on which they act are described by the Standard Model. The universe has at least three dimensions of space and one of time, although extremely small additional dimensions cannot be ruled out experimentally. Spacetime appears to be smoothly and simply connected, and space has very small mean curvature, so that Euclidean geometry is accurate on the average throughout the universe.
The word "universe" is usually defined as encompassing everything. However, using an alternate definition, some have speculated that this "universe" is one of many disconnected "universes", which are collectively denoted as the multiverse. For example, in bubble universe theory, there are an infinite variety of "universes", each with different physical constants. Similarly, in the many-worlds hypothesis, new "universes" are spawned with every quantum measurement. Since these universes are, by definition, disconnected from our own, these speculations cannot be tested experimentally.
Throughout recorded history, several cosmologies and cosmogonies have been proposed to account for observations of the universe. The earliest quantitative models were developed by the ancient Greeks, who proposed that the universe possesses infinite space and has existed eternally, but contains a single set of concentric spheres of finite size – corresponding to the fixed stars, the Sun and various planets – rotating about a spherical but unmoving Earth. Over the centuries, more precise observations and improved theories of gravity led to Copernicus' heliocentric model and the Newtonian model of the solar system, respectively. Further improvements in astronomy led to the characterization of the Milky Way, and the discovery of other galaxies and the microwave background radiation; careful studies of the distribution of these galaxies and their spectral lines have led to much of modern cosmology.
Astronomical observations indicate that the universe is 13.73 ± 0.12 billion years old[1] and at least 93 billion light years across. According to the prevailing scientific theory, the universe has expanded from a gravitational singularity known as the Big Bang, a point in space and time at which all the matter and energy of the observable universe were concentrated. Since the Big Bang, the universe has expanded to its present form, possibly with a brief period of cosmic inflation.[2] Several independent experimental measurements support this theoretical expansion and, more generally, the Big Bang theory. Recent observations indicate that this expansion is accelerating, and that most of the matter and energy in the universe is fundamentally different from that observed on Earth and not directly observable (cf. dark matter and dark energy). The imprecision of current observations has hindered predictions of the ultimate fate of the universe.
Experiments suggest that the universe has been governed by the same physical laws and constants throughout its extent and history. The dominant force at cosmological distances is gravity, and general relativity is currently the most accurate theory of gravitation. The remaining three fundamental forces and all the known particles on which they act are described by the Standard Model. The universe has at least three dimensions of space and one of time, although extremely small additional dimensions cannot be ruled out experimentally. Spacetime appears to be smoothly and simply connected, and space has very small mean curvature, so that Euclidean geometry is accurate on the average throughout the universe.
The word "universe" is usually defined as encompassing everything. However, using an alternate definition, some have speculated that this "universe" is one of many disconnected "universes", which are collectively denoted as the multiverse. For example, in bubble universe theory, there are an infinite variety of "universes", each with different physical constants. Similarly, in the many-worlds hypothesis, new "universes" are spawned with every quantum measurement. Since these universes are, by definition, disconnected from our own, these speculations cannot be tested experimentally.
Throughout recorded history, several cosmologies and cosmogonies have been proposed to account for observations of the universe. The earliest quantitative models were developed by the ancient Greeks, who proposed that the universe possesses infinite space and has existed eternally, but contains a single set of concentric spheres of finite size – corresponding to the fixed stars, the Sun and various planets – rotating about a spherical but unmoving Earth. Over the centuries, more precise observations and improved theories of gravity led to Copernicus' heliocentric model and the Newtonian model of the solar system, respectively. Further improvements in astronomy led to the characterization of the Milky Way, and the discovery of other galaxies and the microwave background radiation; careful studies of the distribution of these galaxies and their spectral lines have led to much of modern cosmology.
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