2014-03-31

We are f*cked

While reviled and bashed by some, it still remains an interesting read; "10 Billion" by Stephen EMMOTT details the next decades' evolution of life on planet earth, pointing out some harsh truths that we seemingly WANT to keep on ignoring.


Finish it in a speed-read session and then reflect on his conclusions "we are f*cked".
Asked what the one thing would be to teach someone that could change the course of things, the answer is
"Teach my kids how to shoot a gun".

While you can, remain an optimist!
But it doesn't hurt sometimes to delve a bit deeper into realism...


2014-03-20

Proven - Big MoFo Bang happened, almost instantanously, everywhere, at speeds higher than speed of light: question: what came right before?

Source: FT.com - http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/dd301e00-ade1-11e3-bc07-00144feab7de.html#axzz2wV5hjpjc 

"Astronomers say they have found the first evidence of “gravitational waves”, ripples in the fabric of space-time, bolstering the Big Bang theory of the birth of the universe 13.8bn years ago."

Scientists can now be more confident that the Big Bang triggered expansion at an unbelievable rate, with the newborn universe growing a trillion-trillion-trillion times in an infinitesimal fraction of a second.
“Detecting this signal is one of the most important goals in cosmology today,” said John Kovac of Harvard University, the project leader. Cosmologists not directly involved in the research joined the team in acclaiming the discovery as a landmark in understanding the universe.
Everything we can see today – galaxies, stars, planets and people – originated in tiny “quantum fluctuations” in space that were amplified exponentially by cosmic inflation.
Albert Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves almost a century ago and modern astronomers have been looking for them for several years with increasingly powerful instruments. Now the Bicep 2 radio telescope at the US polar base in Antarctica has achieved success.
“This is the most important result in our field so far this century,” said David Wands, professor of cosmology at Portsmouth University in the UK. The last discovery of comparable significance came in 1998 when astronomers found that mysterious “dark energy” was counteracting gravity and fuelling the expansion of the universe today.
The Bicep 2 telescope was built to analyse the “cosmic microwave background”. This faint radiation, which perfuses space, is often referred to as an “afterglow of the Big Bang”. It was released when the universe was 380,000 years old and, for the first time, cool enough for light to pass through space.
Although the microwave background has been mapped with increasing accuracy by satellite observatories – most recently by Europe’s Planck telescope last year – these maps have so far just shown variations in the temperature or frequency of the radiation.
Bicep 2 found subtle variations in the polarisation or orientation of the electromagnetic waves. Gravitational waves spawned by cosmic inflation would have squeezed space as they travelled through it, producing a characteristic polarisation pattern in the radiation.
“The swirly B-mode pattern [that we detected] is a unique signature of gravitational waves,” said Chao-Lin Kuo of Stanford University, another team scientist.
The South Pole is an ideal place to look for such signals because the atmosphere there is so cold, dry and stable.
The team says the polarisation is stronger than many cosmologists expected. Three years of data analysis ruled out other possible causes of the pattern and left primordial gravity waves as the only plausible explanation. “This has been like looking for a needle in a haystack but instead we found a crowbar,” commented Clem Pryke of the University of Minnesota.
Scientists will be looking to the next release of Planck satellite data later this year, which will include polarisation analysis, to confirm – or possibly disprove – the Bicep 2 discovery. Then they will be able to build confidently on inflationary theory as the basis of cosmology.

La trahison des élites

source: Le Monde

SELON UNE ÉTUDE – La NASA prévoit la fin de la civilisation

Tempête Isaac
Une étude du Centre de vols spatiaux Goddard de la NASA relayée par la RTBFexplique que la civilisation tel que nous la connaissons aujourd'hui pourrait bien disparaître dans les prochaines décennies en raison d'un problème de gestion des ressources naturelles et d'une mauvaise répartition des richesses.
L'étude se fonde sur un nouvel outil analytique, baptisé "HANDY", pour Human and Nature Dynamical, mis au point par le mathématicien Safa Motesharrei du Centre national de synthèse socio-environnemental. L'étude a été publiée dans le Elsevier Journal Ecological Economics.
En étudiant l'histoire des civilisations, les chercheurs ont ainsi mis en évidence les raisons qui ont contribué à leur chute, que ce soit les Mayas ou encore l'empire romain. Une série de facteurs liés entre eux seraient donc à prendre en compte, parmi lesquels le climat, la population, l'eau, l'agriculture ou encore l'énergie.
Selon la RTBF, Safa Motesharri et ses collègues expliquent qu'il y a deux scénarios possibles pour l'homme du XXIe siècle. Le premier serait la réduction, par la famine, des populations pauvres. "Dans ce cas, la destruction de notre monde ne serait donc pas due à des raisons climatiques, mais à la disparition des travailleurs", note le site belge d'information.
"Le second scénario catastrophe repose sur la surconsommation des ressources qui entraînerait un déclin des populations pauvres, suivi par celui, décalé dans le temps, des populations riches", ajoute-t-il.
Fait notable, selon les chercheurs, plusieurs empires ont disparu notamment à cause de l'aveuglement des élites qui, jusqu'au bout, se croyaient protégées et ont refusé de réformer leur système de vivre-ensemble.
Si ces scénarios paraissent difficiles à éviter, les scientifiques mettent en avant la nécessité urgente de "réduire les inégalités économiques afin d’assurer une distribution plus juste des ressources, et de réduire considérablement la consommation de ressources en s’appuyant sur des ressources renouvelables moins intensives et sur une croissance moindre de la population."