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LONDON (AP) -- Britain's biggest-selling tabloid newspaper was fighting to contain the damage after five of its employees were arrested Saturday in an inquiry into the alleged payment of bribes to police and other officials, detectives and the newspaper's parent company said. Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. said the five employees from The Sun tabloid had been detained and that police had searched their homes and the group's London offices, potentially deepening the scandal over British tabloid wrongdoing.

LONDON (Reuters) - A weaker sun over the next 90 years is not likely to significantly delay a rise in global temperature caused by greenhouse gases, a report said Monday. The study, by Britain's Meteorological Office and the university of Reading, found that the Sun's output would decrease up until 2100 but this would only lead to a fall in global temperatures of 0.08 degrees Celsius. Scientists have warned that more extreme weather is likely across the globe this century as the Earth's climate warms. The world is expected to heat up by over 2 degrees Celsius this century due...

A powerful solar eruption is expected to blast a stream of charged particles toward Earth tomorrow (Jan. 24), as the strongest radiation storm since 2005 rages on the sun. Early this morning (0359 GMT Jan. 23, which corresponds to late Sunday, Jan. 22 at 10:59 p.m. EST), NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory caught an extreme ultraviolet flash from a huge eruption on the sun , according to the skywatching website Spaceweather.com. The solar flare spewed from sunspot 1402, a region of the sun that has become increasingly active lately. Several NASA satellites, including the Solar Dynamics Observatory, the Solar Heliospheric Observatory...

An immense blast of plasma spewed late Sunday night from the sun led to the strongest radiation storm bombarding our planet since 2005, and a rare warning from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency -- and even a plan to redirect certain high-flying airplanes. NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center -- the nation’s official source of warnings about space weather and its impact on Earth -- issued a watch for a geomagnetic storm expected to hit our planet Tuesday morning after a satellite witnessed an ultraviolet flash from the massive solar eruption, according to Spaceweather.com.

THIS is the moment a group of chimpanzees sees daylight for the first time in 30 years — after being locked in cages for medical testing. The animals hugged each other in delight before they took their first steps outside. Emotional footage, below, shows how they reacted to their new surroundings. The outing marked the end of a 14-year bid to re-integrate the 38 primates after they spent most of their lives cooped up inside. One commentator said: "They hugged as if saying, 'We're finally free'. And then they laughed." The chimpanzees were taken from their mothers shortly after their...

Nature Journal of Science, ranked as the world’s most cited scientific periodical, has just published the definitive study on Global Warming that proves the dominant controller of temperatures in the Earth’s atmosphere is due to galactic cosmic rays and the sun, rather than by man. One of the report’s authors, Professor Jyrki Kauppinen, summed up his conclusions regarding the potential for man-made Global Warming: “I think it is such a blatant falsification.” The research was conducted by CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, which invented the World Wide Web, built the multi-billion dollar Large Hadron Collider, and now has...

Science: Experiments performed by a European nuclear research group indicate that the sun, not man, determines Earth's temperature. Somewhere, Al Gore just shuddered as an unseasonably cool breeze blows by. The results from an experiment to mimic Earth's atmosphere by CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, tell researchers that the sun has a significant effect on our planet's temperature. Its magnetic field acts as a gateway for cosmic rays, which play a large role in cloud formation. Consequently, when the sun's magnetic field allows cosmic rays to seed cloud cover, temperatures are cooler. When it restricts cloud formation by...

Some unusual solar readings, including fading sunspots and weakening magnetic activity near the poles, could be indications that our sun is preparing to be less active in the coming years. The results of three separate studies seem to show that even as the current sunspot cycle swells toward the solar maximum, the sun could be heading into a more-dormant period, with activity during the next 11-year sunspot cycle greatly reduced or even eliminated. ...Currently, the sun is in the midst of the period designated as Cycle 24 and is ramping up toward the cycle's period of maximum activity. However, the...

Astronomers will unveil a "major result" on Tuesday (June 14) regarding the sun's 11-year sunspot cycle. The announcement will be made at a solar physics conference in New Mexico, according to an alert released today (June 10) by the American Astronomical Society. The discussion will begin at 1 p.m. EDT (1700 GMT). Sunspots are blotches on the sun that appear dark because they are significantly cooler than the rest of the solar surface. While they look small from our vantage point on Earth, these enigmatic structures can be huge — up to 30,000 miles (48,280 kilometers) across, or as wide...

I woke up this morning first to a NOAA solar proton storm warning then an email from my office mate and helioviewer.org creator, Dr. Jack Ireland. The email was titled, ”Never seen anything like this before -- spectacular”. And he wasn’t kidding! The event had everything, a solar flare, a coronal wave, a filament eruption, a coronal mass ejection, coronal rain and a coronal mass ejection, just to name a few. Here is a quick video I made this morning just after getting up. A few points that might be helpful. The solar flare occurs at the very beginning of...

GENEVA (AP) -- A senior official at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says solar storms pose a growing threat to criticial infrastructure such as satellite communications, navigation systems and electrical transmission equipment. NOAA Assistant Secretary Kathryn Sullivan says the intensity of solar storms is expected to peak in 2013 and countries should prepare for "potentially devastating effects." Solar storms release particles that can temporarily disable or permanently destroy fragile computer circuits. Sullivan, a former NASA astronaut who in 1984 became the first woman to walk in space, told a U.N. weather conference in Geneva on Tuesday that "it...

SOLAR FLARE: Sunspot 1158 has just unleashed the strongest solar flare of the year, an M6.6-category blast @ 1738 UT on Feb. 13th. The eruption appears to have launched a coronal mass ejection (CME) toward Earth. It also produced a loud blast of radio emissions heard in shortwave receivers around the dayside of our planet. Stay tuned for updates! BEHEMOTH SUNSPOT 1158: Sunspot 1158 is growing rapidly (48 hour movie) and crackling with M-class solar flares. The active region is now more than 100,000 km wide with at least a dozen Earth-sized dark cores scattered beneath its unstable magnetic canopy....

Does the sun revolve around the Earth? One in every three Russians thinks so, a spokeswoman for state pollster VsTIOM said on Friday. In a survey released this week, 32 percent of Russians believed the Earth was the center of the Solar system; 55 percent that all radioactivity is man-made; and 29 percent that the first humans lived when dinosaurs still roamed the Earth.

Does the sun revolve around the Earth? About one third of Russians appear to believe so, according to a survey published today. Thirty-two percent of Russians reject a sun-centered Solar system, four percent more than in 2007 when a similar survey was conducted (Snip) The survey also found 55 percent of Russians believe that radioactivity is a human invention. Twenty-nine percent believe humans lived in the era of dinosaurs. Women are more likely than men to believe scientific superstitions, the survey found.

(CHICAGO) - NASA has been warning about it…scientific papers have been written about it…geologists have seen its traces in rock strata and ice core samples… Now "it" is here: an unstoppable magnetic pole shift that has sped up and is causing life-threatening havoc with the world's weather. Forget about global warming—man-made or natural—what drives planetary weather patterns is the climate and what drives the climate is the sun's magnetosphere and its electromagnetic interaction with a planet's own magnetic field. When the field shifts, when it fluctuates, when it goes into flux and begins to become unstable anything can happen. And...

SOLAR ACTIVITY HEATS UP: Formerly quiet sunspot 1153 is suddenly crackling with C- and M-class solar flares. NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded this eruption during the waning hours of Feb. 8th: Because sunspot 1153 is rounding the sun's western horizon, these eruptions are not Earth-directed. They are, however, Venus-directed. The second planet from the sun could receive glancing blows from solar plasma clouds in the days ahead. Readers with solar telescopes are encouraged to monitor the action.

NASA has been warning about it…scientific papers have been written about it…geologists have seen its traces in rock strata and ice core samples... Now "it" is here: an unstoppable magnetic pole shift that has sped up and is causing life-threatening havoc with the world's weather. Forget about global warming—man-made or natural—what drives planetary weather patterns is the climate and what drives the climate is the sun's magnetosphere and its electromagnetic interaction with a planet's own magnetic field. When the field shifts, when it fluctuates, when it goes into flux and begins to become unstable anything can happen. And what normally...

CORONAL HOLE: A dark croissant-shaped hole has opened up in the sun's atmosphere, and it is spewing a stream of solar wind into space. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory took this picture of the vast opening during the early hours of Jan. 30th: Researchers call this a "coronal hole." Solar rotation is turning the coronal hole toward Earth. The stream of solar wind pouring from it will swing around and hit our planet in early February, possibly sparking polar magnetic storms. High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras between Feb. 2nd and 4th.

People love to hype 2012 as the end of the world. It's BS, but hey, when it gets into the public consciousness, things stick. Anywho, a scientist named Brad Carter is predicting that the star Betelgeuse is expected to go super-nova very soon. If this happens, the sky that we look at could have two stars in it, even though Betelgeuse is 1,300 light years away. On the bright side, Carter assures us that we won't all die

Florian Mueller has been killing it these past few months with his analysis of various tech patent suits on his FOSSpatents blog, and today he's unearthed a pretty major bombshell: at least 43 Android source files that appear to have been directly copied from Java. That's a big deal, seeing as Oracle is currently suing Google for patent and copyright infringement in Android -- which isn't a hard case to prove when you've got 37 Android source files marked "PROPRIETARY / CONFIDENTIAL" and "DO NOT DISTRIBUTE" by Oracle / Sun and at least six more files in Froyo and Gingerbread...

Everyone’s concept of the perfect day is different. My perfect day would likely involve a whole lot of fish, hiking, sports, good food, a campfire, and board games. The surroundings would be a few select friends, the ocean, and the mountains. It would be warm enough not to need a sweater, but cool enough to be completely comfortable! That is the kind of day which should not end. Let the sun just sit on the horizon and never go down. The truth of the matter is the sun does go down each day. It will continue doing so until God...

A Deep-Sky Look at Lensing by Paul Gilster on January 13, 2011 As we continue to investigate the parameters of the proposed FOCAL mission to the SunÂ’s gravitational lens, itÂ’s worth recalling how the idea of lensing has taken hold in recent decades. Einstein noted the possibilities of such lensing as far back as 1936, but it wasnÂ’t until 1964 that Sydney Liebes (Stanford University) worked out the mathematical theory, explaining how a galaxy between the Earth and an extremely distant object like a quasar could focus the latterÂ’s light in ways that should be detectable by astronomers. And...

French photographer Thierry Legault knew he had .86 seconds to get the shot. He'd flown to the Sultanate of Oman for the perfect vantage point. January 4th that part of the world saw a partial solar eclipse, but Legault, who's a veteran astrophotographer, didn't want just a spectacular shot of the moon crossing in front of the sun. No, he wanted to capture that millisecond moment when the moon and the International Space Station eclipsed the sun at the same time. He explained the logistics of getting the shot to us:

I have linked two previous posts regarding this story. An old video of Lou Dobbs on CNN (in January of 2009) with some specialists in this topic debating the suns effects and the prediction of coldest temps to support the video already in this post that will give the reader more than enough ammo to respond to the ever shrinking Global Warming defender. Not to mention a connecting story from Australia and snow when there shouldn't be any. The weather station link is a MUST as well.

-- snip --The science "consensus" has not only collapsed, it has raised the white flag and confessed that the skeptics were right all along. I think we can stick a fork in the climate change agenda. A few nuts will continue to wander the streets, mumbling to themselves and each other. But as a significant political agenda, I think it's over. I sure hope it is.

After billions of years the Sun finally has an owner -- a woman from Spain's soggy region of Galicia said Friday she had registered the star at a local notary public as being her property. Angeles Duran, 49, told the online edition of daily El Mundo she took the step in September after reading about an American man who had registered himself as the owner of the moon and most planets in our solar system. There is an international agreement which states that no country may claim ownership of a planet or star, but it says nothing about individuals, she...

After billions of years the Sun finally has an owner -- a woman from Spain's soggy region of Galicia said Friday she had registered the star at a local notary public as being her property. Angeles Duran, 49, told the online edition of daily El Mundo she took the step in September after reading about an American man who had registered himself as the owner of the moon and most planets in our solar system.

(AFP) - After billions of years the Sun finally has an owner -- a woman from Spain's soggy region of Galicia said Friday she had registered the star at a local notary public as being her property. Angeles Duran, 49, told the online edition of daily El Mundo she took the step in September after reading about an American man who had registered himself as the owner of the moon and most planets in our solar system. There is an international agreement which states that no country may claim ownership of a planet or star, but it says nothing about...

Scientists studying sunspots for the past 2 decades have concluded that the magnetic field that triggers their formation has been steadily declining. If the current trend continues, by 2016 the sun's face may become spotless and remain that way for decades—a phenomenon that in the 17th century coincided with a prolonged period of cooling on Earth. Sunspots appear when upwellings of the sun's magnetic field trap ionized plasma—or electrically charged, superheated gas—on the surface. Normally, the gas would release its heat and sink back below the surface, but the magnetic field inhibits this process. From Earth, the relatively cool surface...

Photo 1: Snapped while orbiting over the North Pacific Ocean (latitude 1.5, longitude -114.6) on January 3, 2010 at 12:28:57 GMT. Via http://ChamorroBible.org/gpw/gpw-20061021.htm (medium, large, huge) Photo 2: Male' and the Male' International Airport, Republic of Maldives on January 12, 2010 at 08:38:57 GMT. The length of the runway is 10,499 feet (3,200 meters). Via http://ChamorroBible.org/gpw/gpw-20060917.htm (medium, large, huge)

When probing the deepest reaches of the Cosmos or magnifying our understanding of the quantum world, a whole host of mysteries present themselves. This is to be expected when pushing our knowledge of the Universe to the limit. But what if a well-known -- and apparently constant -- characteristic of matter starts behaving mysteriously? This is exactly what has been noticed in recent years; the decay rates of radioactive elements are changing. This is especially mysterious as we are talking about elements with "constant" decay rates -- these values aren't supposed to change. School textbooks teach us this from an...

This year Russia was hit by a record-breaking heat wave that led to wildfires which killed dozens and left thousands homeless. Weather forecaster Piers Corbyn says this is a result of weather cycles, not global warming. “What we have is a tremendous amount of activity on the sun and that affects the rush of particles from the sun to the earth and that changes the ionosphere and that also changes the circulation patterns of the globe in what is known as the jet stream,” Corbyn explained. “And that caused a shifting of the weather patterns so the south wind in...

"Look! UFOs are coming!" With that cry, citizens of Leshan City saw a peculiar sight in the sky around 10 p.m. on July 26, reported by Sichuan Online. Three round illuminated discs shined in the sky, lasting for more than 10 minutes before disappearing. Professor Wang Sichao, from Purple Mountain Observatory of Chinese Academy of Science, said the identity of those discs still can't be determined before comprehensive analysis. Wang explained that formation of a mock sun could be influenced by many respects, including directions of ice crystals in sky, the number of ice crystals and the number of cirrus...

Storms on Jupiter For more than 300 years, Jupiter’s gaseous atmosphere has hosted a gigantic storm known has the Giant Red Spot. Then in 2006, another red storm appeared and produced what appeared to be a few other whitish storm spots. When Hubble snapped this image in 2008, astronomers were surprised to discover that a third red storm spot had appeared. They speculate that this storm outbreak is due to a large climate shift on Jupiter . What's being sucked up into these storms or what causes them is still unknown.

On Sunday, NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory detected a complex magnetic eruption on the sun. The NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) also spotted a large coronal mass ejection (CME) The eruption happened around (3:50 am EST), the SDO detected a C3 class solar flare originating from a group of sunspots (called sunspot 1092). The flare itself was not that large, but the filament located about 70,000 miles away erupted at the same time. A filament is a large, bright feature extending outward from the Sun's surface, often in a loop shape. Filament is anchored to the Sun's surface in the...

INFURIATING Scott G. McNealy has never been easier. Just bring up math textbooks. Mr. McNealy, the fiery co-founder and former chief executive of Sun Microsystems, shuns basic math textbooks as bloated monstrosities: their price keeps rising while the core information inside of them stays the same. “Ten plus 10 has been 20 for a long time,” Mr. McNealy says. Early this year, Oracle, the database software maker, acquired Sun for $7.4 billion, leaving Mr. McNealy without a job. He has since decided to aim his energy and some money at Curriki, an online hub for free textbooks and other course...

My new position has me dealing with several Sun Terminals controlling industrial equipment. I have ZERO experience with this O/S though I did manage thru an fsck command the night before (multiple power outages). I am looking for FReeper advice: recommended books, forums, classes, etc. Thanks in advance . . .

Sometimes a problem is so big, one country cannot handle it alone. That's the message scientists are delivering at today's International Living with a Star (ILWS) meeting in Bremen, Germany, and representatives from more than 25 of the world's most technologically-advanced nations have gathered to hear what they have to say. "The problem is solar storms—figuring out how to predict them and stay safe from their effects," says ILWS Chairperson Lika Guhathakurta of NASA headquarters. "We need to make progress on this before the next solar maximum arrives around 2013." The sun and Earth are separated by 93 million miles...

Good Day, Sunshine: The Happy Image Of A 'Smiling' Sun [Pic in URL] 2nd July 2010 There is a lot to smile about today - it's Friday, it's summer, and Andy Murray is still in the running at Wimbledon (for now). This extraordinary image is just one more thing to be cheerful about. The photograph, which has gone viral on the internet, shows clouds passing in front of the sun - creating what appears to be a smiley face. Happy summer: Clouds pass in front of the sun in this image that is doing the rounds on the internet Little...

The sun's temper ebbs and flows on what scientists had thought was a pretty predictable cycle, but lately our closest star has been acting up. Typically, a few stormy years would knock out a satellite or two and maybe trip a power grid on Earth. Then a few years of quiet, and then back to the bad behavior. But an extremely long stretch of low activity in recent years has scientists baffled and scrambling for better forecasting models. An expected minimum of solar activity, between 2008 and 2009, was unusually deep. And while the sun would normally ramp up activity...

07 June 2010 Author and researcher Mitch Battros discussed a variety of Earth changes and environmental issues including the hurricane season and the BP oil spill, as well as the implications of Solar Cycle 24, and Mayan prophecy. Fluid displacement can make an area vulnerable to quake activity-- such as when companies drill deeply for oil, he noted. Strong hurricanes this year, category 3 or higher, may be good or bad for the oil spill, possibly taking the oil out to sea or causing it to surge up the East Coast, he outlined. Charged particles that we call solar flares...

June 4, 2010: Earth and space are about to come into contact in a way that's new to human history. To make preparations, authorities in Washington DC are holding a meeting: The Space Weather Enterprise Forum at the National Press Club on June 8th. Many technologies of the 21st century are vulnerable to solar storms. [more] Richard Fisher, head of NASA's Heliophysics Division, explains what it's all about: "The sun is waking up from a deep slumber, and in the next few years we expect to see much higher levels of solar activity. At the same time, our technological society...

The Nazi swastika is apparently not considered illegal in the Lithuanian city of Klaipeda, despite former assumptions that the symbol was not to be displayed nationwide, a common legislative ruling in Eastern Europe. A local court has ruled the sign is a centuries-old symbol that depicts the sun. The judge in the case, which lasted three months, justified his ruling by adding that the symbol is found on numerous historic artifacts.

Like everyone else, I have days when my outlook on life isn't exactly as Christian as it should be. The cloudy days with no sun are days that can sometimes be harder to get through. My zip and zest for life seems to wane. I realize that a day without the son of God is much much worse. The words of Jesus inspire me and make everything tolerable. The days without a sun are one thing, a day with out the son of God would seem to be intolerable to me now.

The Sun As You've Never Seen It: Nasa Reveals Stunning Footage From New Satellite [Pics in URL] By CLAIRE BATES and DAVID DERBYSHIRE 22nd April 2010 Forget Iceland's volcano. If you want to see a really big eruption, you need to head to the Sun. This astonishing image - captured by a new Nasa space telescope - shows a ferocious solar flare looping out the Sun with the power of 100 hydrogen bombs. The ring of fire, heated to tens of millions of degrees, stretches out tens of thousands of miles - and is so big it could contain more...

One of the biggest prominences in years erupted from the sun's northwestern limb yesterday. The massive plasma-filled structure rose up and burst during a ~2 hour period around 0900 UT on April 13th. Observers in Europe had a great view: Updated: The eruption hurled a bright coronal mass ejection (CME, movie) into space. The expanding cloud could deliver a glancing blow to Earth's magnetic field around April 15th. NOAA forecasters estimate a 35% chance of polar geomagnetic activity when the CME arrives.

Decaying sunspot 1060 delivered a parting shot on April 8th. The active region's magnetic field erupted, sparking a B3-class solar flare and hurling a faint coronal mass ejection (CME) almost directly toward Earth. Geomagnetic disturbances are possible when the cloud arrives on April 11th or 12th. [UPDATED: aurora gallery] SUNGRAZING COMET: Today, the sun had a comet for breakfast. The icy visitor from the outer solar system appeared with no warning on April 9th and plunged into the sun during the early hours of April 10th. One comet went in, none came out. The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) had...

A US nuclear sub rammed another ship causing nearly £60MILLION damage - while its navigator was listening to his iPod. Sailors aboard the USS Hartford had also rigged up loudspeakers so they could play MUSIC on duty, an official report found last night. Sonar operators and radio men were missing from their posts. Others drove the attack sub while "with one hand on the controls and their shoes off", it said. The report slammed the navigator, who was listening to his iPod in his cabin while revising for an exam at the time. The captain, Commander Ryan Brookhart, was relieved...

March 12, 2010: What in the world is the sun up to now? In today's issue of Science, NASA solar physicist David Hathaway reports that the top of the sun's Great Conveyor Belt has been running at record-high speeds for the past five years. I believe this could explain the unusually deep solar minimum we've been experiencing," says Hathaway. "The high speed of the conveyor belt challenges existing models of the solar cycle and it has forced us back to the drawing board for new ideas." The Great Conveyor Belt is a massive circulating current of fire (hot plasma) within...