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Dark Energy Survey AdvancesJune 25th, 2008 Figuring out what makes up 73 percent of the universe is no small matter. But the late 20th Century discovery that the rate of expansion of the universe is not slowing but accelerating makes the research all but imperative. The Dark Energy Survey is behind the construction of an extraordinarily sensitive camera that will be installed on the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIA) 4-meter telescope in Chile, with the aim of creating an unprecedented sky survey to probe these questions. I’m looking at the original proposal for the DES survey as submitted to...

Some had hoped it might be just an illusion. But it looks like dark energy is real and here to stay, as astronomers "image" the mysterious entity in action. In 1998, astronomers found that distant supernovae were dimmer, and thus farther away, than expected. This suggested that the expansion of the universe is accelerating – and "dark energy" was named as the culprit. Since then, astronomers have struggled to explain what dark energy actually is – leading some to speculate that it may not exist at all...

The first stars to appear in the Universe may have been powered by dark matter, according to US scientists. Normal stars are powered by nuclear fusion reactions, where hydrogen atoms meld to form heavier helium. But when the Universe was still young, there would have been abundant dark matter, made of particles called Wimps: Weakly Interacting Massive Particles. These would have fused together and obliterated each other long before nuclear fusion had the chance to start. As a result, the first stars would have looked quite different from the ones we see today, and they may have changed the course...

A set of simple silicon filters could dramatically improve the quality of X-ray images produced in hospitals and at airport checkpoints. The technique provides a more detailed picture of fractured bone and could help airport security scanners distinguish plastic explosives from harmless substances. X-ray images normally reveal the way different materials, including body tissue, absorb X-ray radiation. Strongly absorbing areas are white and weakly absorbing ones black. But finer details are often lost in a fog caused by areas with intermediate radiation-absorbing ability.

You would think that a star anywhere from 400 to 200,000 times wider than the Sun would be fairly easy to detect. But not if it’s a ‘dark star,’ the name for a new, theoretical entity about to make its appearance in Physical Review Letters. Astrophysicist Paolo Gondolo (University of Utah) makes the case that dark matter would have affected the temperature and density of the gases that formed the first stars. Dark stars would mostly contain normal matter — hydrogen and helium — but they would have been much larger than the Sun, glowing largely in the infrared. Hypothetical...

A special effects technician working on the new Batman film was killed when a vehicle he was in crashed while on a stunt test run. The accident happened off-set and there was no filming taking place, movie company Warner Bros Pictures said. The victim was on a camera truck which was following a stunt vehicle, believed to have been the Batmobile. An ambulance spokeswoman said he was pronounced dead at a test track in Longcross, near Chertsey, in Surrey. Warner Bros said in a statement: "There was a fatal accident at a special effects facility for Batman: The Dark Knight....

Astronomers have discovered a chaotic scene unlike any witnessed before in a cosmic "train wrecK" between giant galaxy clusters. NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and optical telescopes revealed a dark matter core that was mostly devoid of galaxies, which may pose problems for current theories of dark matter behavior. Astronomers have discovered a chaotic scene unlike any witnessed before in a cosmic “train wreck” between giant galaxy clusters. NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and optical telescopes revealed a dark matter core that was mostly devoid of galaxies, which may pose problems for current theories of dark matter behavior. "These results challenge our...

Enlightened Medicine Found in Dark Ages By Heather Whipps, Special to LiveScience posted: 23 July 2007 08:42 am ETThe way sick people are treated is a reflection of the prevalent cultural norms, and in the Dark Ages, being sick was much more common than today, so people accepted and dealt with ill people on a daily basis." People living in Europe during early Medieval times (400—1200 A.D.) actually had a progressive view of illness because disease was so common and out in the open, according to the research presented at a recent historical conference. Instead of being isolated or shunned,...

I have a few questions about living in Alaska...

Caption: Fig. 1: Image of the mass distribution over a patch of sky about one quarter of the area of the Full Moon. These images were made by PhD student Stefan Hilbert using the Millennium Simulation, the largest computer simulation of cosmic structure formation ever carried out. The left panel represents the kind of image which could be made by a low-frequency radio telescope with a diameter of 100 kilometres, using the gravitational distortion of images of pregalactic structure in the neutral hydrogen distribution. The right panel represents the kind of image which could be made for the same region...

I have searched and searched for the thread that was present late last week. Someone named Old sargeant or something like that started this story that was to be carried on by others on the thread. However, this person did such a good job that they continued the story. Can anyone provide the link please?

Dark times ahead for chocolate By David Derbyshire, Consumer Affairs Editor (Filed: 14/10/2006) Britain's taste for chocolate is growing more sophisticated, figures out yesterday suggest. Sales of dark chocolate have trebled in a year, while the number of dark mainstream brands has risen tenfold. Confectionary analysts say the figures reflect a more discerning palate. They also follow several studies — some funded by chocolate makers — indicating that dark chocolate can have health benefits. Antioxidants in dark chocolate can help lower cholesterol and blood pressure, say researchers. However, dark and milk contain the same amount of fat and sugar. Although...

16th of June DEFEATING DEPRESSION PART 1 “Anxiety in the heart of man causes depression, but a good word makes it glad” Proverbs 12:25 Depression- from Webster’s New Unabridged Dictionary Low spirits, gloominess, dejection, sadness, a decrease in force, or activity, or amount, a decrease in functional activity. An emotional condition either normal or pathological characterized by discouragement, a feeling of inadequacy, the act of humbling abasement as a depression of pride. Abasement, reduction, sinking, fall, humiliation, dejection, melancholy. Major Depression Facts Major depression is the No.1 psychological disorder in the western world.(1) It is growing in all age groups,...

Everyone is scientific circles is abuzz with the big news: there's proof that dark matter exists! The paper from the scientists who made the discovered is here; and a Sean Carroll (no relation) has a very good explanation on his blog, Cosmic Variance. This discovery happens to work as a great example of just why good science needs good math. As I always say, one of the ways to recognize a crackpot theory in physics is by the lack of math. For an example, you can look at the electric universe folks. They have a theory, and they make predictions:...

Remains of past emerge from the dark - Ancient buddhist stupas discovered in bihar districts SANTOSH SINGH A mound discovered recently at Turki in Bihar’s Vaishali district. Telegraph picture Patna, May 7: A forgotten chapter of ancient history is emerging, slowly and silently, in Bihar with Patna’s KP Jaiswal Research Institute identifying as many as 70 Buddhist stupas, 50 of which remain buried underground. The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) approved project plans to document all the stupas by September this year, said director of the institute Vijay Chaudhary. Buddhist texts indicate that when the Buddha died, he was cremated...

Reformist Writer Dr. Kamel Al-Najjar: "If the Muslims are Serious About Presenting the Radiant Face of Islam… They Must… Acknowledge Their Dark Past" In January 2006, the Austrian-Iraqi Association for Development held its first conference on extremism and terrorism around the world, in Vienna. The conference was attended by Arab, Muslim and European researchers, intellectuals and diplomats. In the closing statement, the participants made the following recommendations: to present the humane and rational side of Islam which calls for co-existence and acceptance of the other; to condemn all forms of violence and terrorism; to promote dialogue and cooperation among all...

Week of March 4, 2006; Vol. 169, No. 9 , p. 133 Smoldered-Earth Policy: Created by ancient Amazonian natives, fertile, dark soils retain abundant carbon Ben Harder Shortly after the U.S. Civil War, a research expedition encountered a group of Confederate expatriates living in Brazil. The refugees had quickly taken to growing sugarcane on plots of earth that were darker and more fertile than the surrounding soil, Cornell University's Charles Hartt noted in the 1870s. The same dark earth, terra preta in Portuguese, is now attracting renewed scientific attention for its high productivity, mysterious past, and capacity to store carbon....

Hamas' victory in Palestinian parliamentary elections is already being sanitized by the politically correct, despite the terrorist group's bloody track record and its fallacious and dubious historical claims to the land of Israel. Thankfully, some Western leaders are condemning the selection of murderers by Palestinians for their government. At the top of a BBC article yesterday regarding the Hamas terrorist group winning Palestinian elections: The win poses problems for efforts to restart peace talks with Israel, say analysts. Israel insists it will not deal with an authority including Hamas. So this is all just Israel's problem/fault because the majority of...

The disciplinary arm of the N.C. State Bar dropped charges of felonious misconduct against two former Union County prosecutors Friday because of a 1999 clerical error at the state Supreme Court. The State Bar had charged Kenneth Honeycutt and Scott Brewer with lying, cheating and withholding evidence in a 1996 death penalty case. The ruling Friday marks the second time that Honeycutt and Brewer won on procedural grounds before the bar's Disciplinary Hearing Commission, which sits as judge and jury in disciplinary cases. . . . Prosecutors around the state are concerned that the case is damaging their reputation and...

Chocolate's dark secret: it's good for your heart By Celia Hall (Filed: 20/12/2005) A couple of squares of dark chocolate every day could help stave off heart disease, researchers say today. Swiss scientists say that just two ounces of good quality chocolate with a high cocoa butter content can help to prevent narrowing and hardening of the arteries. A study was carried out on smokers - smoking is known to damage arterial function - but the effect of eating dark chocolate is believed to be true for non-smokers. The subjects ate either two squares of dark chocolate with 74 per...

'Iran is on brink of a dark age' By Lillian Swift (Filed: 20/11/2005) Iran is on the brink of entering another dark age under its new conservative regime, according to one of its leading artistic luminaries. Ali Reza Sami-Azar, who recently resigned as the head of the Teheran Museum of Contemporary Art, said the cultural glasnost of the past five years had come to an end. "We are in very grave danger of reverting back to the post-revolutionary days, when only those artists who were deemed as expressing so-called Islamic values were displayed," he said in an interview with the...

A man who compared a woman's anatomy to a carburetor won an annual contest that celebrates the worst writing in the English language. Dan McKay, a computer analyst at Microsoft Great Plains in Fargo, N.D., bested thousands of entrants from North Pole, Alaska to Manchester, England to triumph Wednesday in San Jose State University's annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. "As he stared at her ample bosom, he daydreamed of the dual Stromberg carburetors in his vintage Triumph Spitfire," he wrote, comparing a woman's breasts to "small knurled caps of the oil dampeners." The competition highlights literary achievements of the most dubious...

Roya Hakakian's story of growing up Jewish during the Iranian Revolution. Revolution. Everything in Iran changed on February 1, 1979, the day Ayatollah Khomeini returned to our country a few days after the departure of the Shah. Suddenly, millions were demanding an end to 2,500 years of monarchy--including hundreds of young Jews who joined the revolution against the wishes of their elders, hoping to recast their identities as secular Iranians who could assimilate seamlessly into the fabric of the promised utopia. Khomeini quickly took on the status of an "imam," only a step away from prophet in the Shi'ite tradition,...

Right wing stepping up war on Hillary Clinton Monday, June 20, 2005 By DICK POLMAN PHILADELPHIA - These are dark days for the conservative activists who despise Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, and they're itching to brighten their mood by taking her down. Much to their horror, she appears to be shedding her 1990s image as a leftist Lady Macbeth, winning plaudits as a hawkish senator who talks about God and breaking bread with many of the same Republicans who impeached her husband. It's gotten to the point where a Fox News poll last week found that her national favorability rating...

Prison Could Mean Famous Digs for Jackson By KIM CURTIS, Associated Press Writer 20 minutes ago A Michael Jackson fan who gave her name as Muna, from Switzerland, right, faces off with a Jackson critic known as Billy Bible in front of the Santa Barbara County Courthouse in Santa Maria, Calif., Friday, June 10, 2005. The jury in the Jackson child molestation case entered their sixth day of deliberation. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes) SAN FRANCISCO - If the child molestation case against Michael Jackson ends with a prison sentence, the pop star's likely new home would be almost as exclusive as...

An illustration of the inivisible galaxy The invisible galaxy could only be 'seen' using radio waves Astronomers say they have discovered an object that appears to be an invisible galaxy made almost entirely of dark matter. The team, led by Cardiff University, claimed it is the first to be detected. A dark galaxy is an area in the Universe containing a large amount of mass that rotates like a galaxy, but contains no stars. It was found 50 million light years away using radio telescopes in Cheshire and Puerto Rico. The unknown material that is thought to hold these...

Subject: Fw: "Dark and Stormy Night Contest" winners For you lovers of good writing, listed below are the 10 winners of this year's Bulwer-Lytton Contest, aka the "Dark and Stormy Night Contest" run by the English Department of San Jose State University, wherein one writes only the first line of a bad novel: 10. "As a scientist, Throckmorton knew that if he were ever to break wind in the echo chamber, he would never hear the end of it." 9. "Just beyond the Narrows, the river widens." 8. "With a curvaceous figure that Venus would have envied, a tanned, unblemished...

Plans to trace the Moon's orbit with extraordinary new accuracy could reveal kinks in Einstein's theory of gravity and help explain the mysterious accelerating expansion of the universe, says a US researcher. The acceleration cannot be explained by known forces in the Universe. To account for the behaviour, cosmologists have introduced the concept of a new, as yet unseen, force - dark energy. But Gia Dvali, of New York University, US, believes there could be another explanation. He thinks the accelerating expansion might be caused by unexpected properties of gravity, which are only seen over very large distances. Taking inspiration...

Must see TV this morning to see if Katie Couric is showing her "bitter main stream media" face this morning as she discusses the Iraqi elections. It'll be curious to see if her sad angry steely eyed gaze will be worse than back on November 3rd after Kerry's loss.

New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) has long been rumored as desperately seeking the democratic nomination for president in 2008. And while many political observers fully expect the power hungry former First Lady to hit the campaign trail within only a few months of being re-elected as a US Senator in 2006, US News & World report claims to have a confirmation of sorts. From USNews.Com's Washington Whispers: Hillary's in… You don't have to take it from us about Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton 's desire to run for president. Her brothers, Hugh and Tony Rodham, say it's true. Friends...

Cretan excavation sheds light on Dark Ages of Greek historyFinds from ancient Eleutherna at Cycladic Museum A marble statue of Aphrodite, from a second- to first-century-BC bathhouse in Eleutherna. By Nicholas Paphitis - Kathimerini English Edition On a narrow spur under the shadow of Mount Ida in central Crete, archaeologists for the past 20 years have been excavating a town that flourished from the Dark Ages of Greece’s early history until Medieval times. The Eleutherna project, a systematic dig carried out by a three-pronged team of top archaeologists from the University of Crete, is in itself unusual in a country...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

Europe's Mars Express spacecraft has taken its most detailed image yet of the Red Planet's largest moon, Phobos. The photo was taken from a distance of about 200km (124 miles) from the irregular-shaped satellite and shows the side of the object that faces Mars. Scientists hope to explain the origin of a network of grooves that extend from the equator to the north pole. Phobos is slowly falling down to Mars and is expected to crash into the planet in the next few million years.

Three weeks ago, San Jose's city council got its latest big-ticket surprise from Mayor Ron Gonzales -- this time, an additional $11.7 million he said was needed for the city's garbage hauler to pay higher labor costs the company didn't expect when it submitted its low bid. Here's what Gonzales didn't tell his colleagues. In order to keep the contract with eventual winner Norcal on track, the mayor's office offered Norcal assurances of his support for higher compensation than the contract would call for. This promise was made not years later, as the mayor has said, but before the council...

Sean Penn Links Dark Nixon Film to Anger with Bush 2 hours, 11 minutes ago By Cameron French TORONTO (Reuters) - His sunglasses were heavy and so was the theme when Sean Penn met the press at the Toronto International Film Festival on Tuesday after screening a dark look at the Nixon era that unleashed a new wave of Oscar buzz about Penn's performance. "The Assassination of Richard Nixon" traces the meltdown of Samuel Bicke, a failed husband and salesman and self-described "grain of sand" whose mounting frustrations drive him to make an unsuccessful attempt to hijack a jetliner and...

John Kerry's election team is to suspend advertising during August, opening itself to what it expects will be a barrage of attacks from the Bush-Cheney campaign. After a debate with his senior advisers, Mr Kerry has opted to "go dark" in the weeks after the Democratic National Convention to conserve limited federal funds for the weeks immediately before the November 2 election. The decision was a "risky step", Mary Beth Cahill, the Kerry campaign manager, acknowledged yesterday. The Kerry campaign hopes that the convention, which opened in Boston yesterday amid boasts of unprecedented party unity and discipline, will help introduce...

BOSTON (AP) - As thousands of delegates, journalists and dignitaries stream into the FleetCenter, protesters for the next few days will be enclosed in a shadowy, closed-off piece of urban streetscape just over a block away. The maze of overhead netting, chain link fencing and razor wire couldn't be further in comfort from the high-tech confines of the arena stage where John Kerry is to accept the Democratic nomination for president during the four-day convention that kicks off Monday. Abandoned, elevated rail lines and green girders loom over most of the official demonstration zone that slopes down to a subway...

Dark Days Doomed Dinosaurs, Say Purdue Scientists WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. ? Though the catastrophe that destroyed the dinosaurs' world may have begun with blazing fire, it probably ended with icy darkness, according to a Purdue University research group. By analyzing fossil records, a team of scientists including Purdue's Matthew Huber has found evidence that the Earth underwent a sudden cooling 65 million years ago that may have taken millennia to abate completely. The fossil rock samples, taken from a well-known archaeological site in Tunisia, show that tiny, cold-loving ocean organisms called dinoflagellates and benthic formanifera appeared suddenly in an ancient...

...Take for instance Philip Pullman’s trilogy His Dark Materials, which will soon become a movie series. Pullman’s books are enormously popular with children and adults alike for their appealing central characters, imaginative touches, and thrilling adventures. The movie adaptations will no doubt attract a loyal following as well. That’s a disturbing thought, because one of the major themes in His Dark Materials is the foolishness and wickedness of Christianity and the need to get rid of it. The characters essentially re-enact the story of Satan’s rebellion against God and the temptation in the Garden of Eden. But this time, the...

LOS ANGELES Feb. 20 — The mysterious "dark energy" that is pushing apart the universe appears to be the constant force that Albert Einstein once predicted, according to measurements made by the Hubble Space Telescope. NASA scientists announced their findings Friday, and details are to appear in an upcoming issue of Astrophysical Journal.The force is an unknown form of energy that behaves in an opposite manner from the pull of gravity. Dark energy causes the galaxies within the universe to move apart from one another at ever-increasing speeds. Einstein called the force the "cosmological constant." He theorized its existence to...

McSorely's celebrates 150th yearBy MICHAEL GANNON THE JOURNAL NEWS (Original publication: February 17, 2004)NEW YORK — Amid the smell of stale beer and ancient smoke, a few feet from the pot-bellied stove warming the early afternoon customers in the middle of the room, Joe McKiernan stood yesterday over his twin mugs of light ale resting on the bar at McSorley's Old Ale House. "I'm probably one of their older customers," McKiernan, a 57-year-old security guard from the Bronx, said as he contemplated ordering the bar's turkey sandwich he has come to enjoy during 40 years of patronage. Pausing for a...

Jan. 28, 2004 - Icy roads and power outages prompted Governor Mark Sanford to declare a state of emergency on Tuesday. All the ice forced heavy tree limbs onto frozen power lines, sending residents across the state in search of warmth at hotels or makeshift shelters. And, electric companies say the high number of outages makes it impossible to predict when all power will be returned. At one point some 300,000 homes in South Carolina were without power, but that number was cut to about 160,000 Wednesday morning. Several schools are closed Wednesday and many are planning delayed classes. Crews,...

Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition. Subscribe and get 4 free issues. Astronomers have found the first "dark galaxy" - a black cloud of hydrogen gas and exotic particles, devoid of stars. The gloomy galaxy lurks two million light years from Earth. Joshua Simon, Timothy Robishaw and Leo Blitz of the University of California, Berkeley, observed a cloud of hydrogen gas called HVC 127-41-330 using the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico. It appears to be rotating so fast it would fall apart unless it contains a strong, hidden source of gravity. The researchers therefore argue that the cloud must...

Before jumping to any conclusions based on the title, read a little further; or with keeping in context, see past the cover to the content. In regard to race, most of us in mainstream life see this as little more than a normal occurrence. Unwilling, and {let us hope}, morally unable, it is always the value of the individual, as opposed to the mass. But this sentiment is not as manifest as we would like it to be. Rather, it is obscure. Republicans, behaving as if there is no color divide within the country, are continually demagogued on the politics...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2003 August 20 The E Nebula in Aquila Credit & Copyright: Chris Cook Explanation: Several unusual strands of darkness are prominent toward the constellation of Aquila. This particular dark nebula is known as the E Nebula, for its evocative shape, or B142 and B143, for its position(s) on a list of such nebula compiled by Barnard. The E Nebula spans roughly the angle of a full Moon and...

AUBURN NY--I heard from my old friend, D.J. Fulton, who came to the Y-field reunion from Atlanta, Ga. D.J. firmly believes, and rightfully so, that Phil Kent, formerly of Auburn, is mostly certainly a legend of Auburn. What about Phil Kent and why is he a legend? Phil was born Nov. 24, 1951, to Wilbur T. and Helen Andrews Kent at Auburn Memorial Hospital. The Kent family lived on North Hoopes Avenue, and Phil recalled one of his favorite activities was ice skating in the winter at Hoopes Park. Phil attended Herman Avenue School, and his favorite teacher at Herman...

Stephen Beres writes: Cleaning out my basement, I came across some Dark Matter. I couldn't sweep it up, or vacuum it or anything. It just lay there, very dark. Just kidding. Seriously now, if you had a kilogram of Dark Matter, what would its physical and chemical properties be? Would it be invisible? Containable? Measurable? In short, how would Dark Matter manifest itself in our world? Would it just sink invisible into the Earth's gravitational field? Is there any way to contain it or study it? How would you know Dark Matter if it were present? Could it be present...

TORONTO (CP) - A pair of Canadian astronomers and an American scientist have for the first time measured the shape and size of dark matter surrounding galaxies and its effect on light emitted from more distant sources - findings that tip the scale in favour of the existence of the mysterious substance. The existence of dark matter has been hotly debated among astronomers for years. It's believed to comprise about 25 per cent of the total mass of the universe, with the rest consisting of normal matter (five per cent) and dark energy (70 per cent). Dark energy is believed...

The Dark Ages : Were They Darker Than We Imagined? By Greg Bryant Published in the September 1999 issue of Universe As we approach the end of the Second Millennium, a review of ancient history is not what you would normally expect to read in the pages of Universe. Indeed, except for reflecting on the AD 837 apparition of Halley's Comet (when it should have been as bright as Venus and would have moved through 60 degrees of sky in one day as it passed just 0.03 AU from Earth - three times closer than Hyakutake in 1996), you may...

Dark days await armies gathering for the mother of all showdowns around Baghdad By Donald Macintyre in Qatar 25 March 2003 The United States and Britain began a ferocious air and missile attack on the Republican Guard divisions protecting Baghdad yesterday in their first concerted effort to force a way through the treacherous "red zone" surrounding the Iraqi capital. The US confirmed that one Apache helicopter gunship was downed in the first wave of air assaults, launched as a precursor to what military planners see as the decisive phase of the campaign. And the US 3rd Infantry Division was slowed...