We were just talking about “punch hole clouds” and after having received e-mail today from NASA about more clouds from space as well one in particular that has some amazing hole in it, I thought to post it right away and not wait until next weekend. There is also a video link to go with it.

From NASA:

Strange Clouds at the Edge of Space

August 25, 2008: When in space, keep an eye on the window. You never know what you might see.

Last month, astronauts on board the International Space Station (ISS) witnessed a beautiful display of noctilucent or "night-shining" clouds. The station was located about 340 km over western Mongolia on July 22nd when the crew snapped this picture:

Above: Noctilucent clouds photographed by the crew of the ISS: more.

Atmospheric scientist Gary Thomas of the University of Colorado has seen thousands of noctilucent cloud (NLC) photos, and he ranks this one among the best. "It's lovely," he says. "And it shows just how high these clouds really are--at the very edge of space."

He estimates the electric-blue band was 83 km above Earth's surface, higher than 99.999% of our planet's atmosphere. The sky at that altitude is space-black. It is the realm of meteors, high-energy auroras and decaying satellites. What are clouds doing up there? "That's what we're trying to find out," says Thomas.

People first noticed NLCs at the end of the 19th century after the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa. The Indonesian supervolcano hurled plumes of ash more than 50 km high in Earth's atmosphere. This produced spectacular sunsets and, for a while, turned twilight sky watching into a worldwide pastime. One evening in July 1885, Robert Leslie of Southampton, England, saw wispy blue filaments in the darkening sky. He published his observations in the journal Nature and is now credited with the discovery of noctilucent clouds.

Scientists of the 19th century figured the clouds were some curious manifestation of volcanic ash. Yet long after Krakatoa's ash settled, NLCs remained.

"It's a puzzle," says Thomas. "Noctilucent clouds have not only persisted, but also spread." In the beginning, the clouds were confined to latitudes above 50^o; you had to go to places like Scandinavia, Siberia and Scotland to see them. In recent years, however, they have been sighted from mid-latitudes such as Washington, Oregon, Turkey and Iran:

Above: Noctilucent clouds over Mt. Sabalan, a 15,784 ft extinct volcano in northwestern Iran. Photo credit: Siamak Sabet. [more]

"This year's apparition over Iran (pictured above) was splendid," says Thomas. The Persian clouds appeared on July 19th, just a few days before the ISS display, and were photographed from latitude 38^o N. "That's pretty far south," he says.

The genesis and spread of these clouds is an ongoing mystery. Could they be signs of climate change? "The first sightings do coincide with the Industrial Revolution," notes Thomas. "But the connection is controversial."

NASA is investigating. The AIM satellite, launched in April 2007, is now in polar orbit where it can monitor the size, shape and icy make-up of NLCs. The mission is still in its early stages, but already some things have been learned. Thomas, an AIM co-Investigator, offers these highlights:

1. Noctilucent clouds appear throughout the polar summer, are widespread, and are highly variable on hourly to daily time scales. A movie made from daily AIM snapshots shows the 2007 NLC season unfolding over the north pole: watch it.

http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a003400/a003484/AIM2007NLCseason_512x288.m1v

click on link to view

Above: A daily snapshot of noctilucent cloud activity over the North Pole in 2007. Click on the image to set the scene in motion. Credit: AIM/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio.

2. There is a substantial population of invisible noctilucent clouds. Thomas explains: "NLCs are made of tiny ice crystals 40 to 100 nanometers wide—just the right size to scatter blue wavelengths of sunlight. This was known before AIM. The spacecraft has detected another population of much smaller ice crystals (< 30 nm) that don't scatter much sunlight." Clouds made of these smaller crystals are stealthy and hard to see, but a key part of the overall picture.

3. Some of the shapes in noctilucent clouds, resolved for the first time by AIM's cameras, resemble shapes in tropospheric clouds near Earth's surface. AIM science team members have described the similarities as "startling." The dynamics of weather at the edge of space may not be as unEarthly as previously supposed.

These findings are new and important, but they don't yet unravel the central mysteries:

Why did NLCs first appear in the 19th century?

Why are they spreading?

What is ice doing in a rarefied layer of Earth's upper atmosphere that is one hundred million times dryer than air from the Sahara desert?

AIM has just received a 3-year extension (from 2009 to 2012) to continue its studies. "We believe that more time in orbit and more data are going to help us answer these questions," says Thomas.

Meanwhile, it's a beautiful mystery. Just ask anyone at the edge of space.

Just last week I had made a post about “Wars of the Worlds” and the probabilities of having an Extra Terrestrial visitation. A couple of days later I came upon an image posted on Spaceweather.com of what I recognized was similar of what Tom Cruise first saw when he looked up towards the skies.

This past weekend in Pucking, Austria, Thomas Puehringer saw some strange clouds approaching his neighborhood. "It was like a UFO," he says.

I would imagine real life scientists and real life meteorologists when having first looked up and seen a phenomenon such as this would be looking up rocking on their heels with hands in their pockets and eyes squinted also wondering what it could be. For Steven Spielberg it was a scene of a wormhole the Aliens were punching through space/time and they were heeeeere. For scientists scratching the back of their heads, it was an anomaly and to this day they still don’t really know.

But they do have two theories, logical theories, not a rip in space creating a wormhole but a hole-punch in the clouds. Aptly named a hole-punch cloud. I know I know absolutely no imagination; they could have given it a name with some kind of flair such as Alice’s Looking Glass or maybe Heavenly Wabbit’s Hole or something like that.

A leading hypothesis holds that the hole-punch cloud is caused by falling ice-crystals. The ice-crystals could originate in a higher cloud or be facilitated by a passing airplane exhaust. If the air has just the right temperature and moisture content, the falling crystals will absorb water from the air and grow. For this to happen, the water must be so cold that all it needs is a surface to freeze on. The moisture lost from the air increases the evaporation rate from the cloud water droplets so they dissipate to form the hole. The now heavier ice crystals continue to fall and form the more tenuous wispy cloud-like virga seen inside and just below the hole. Water and ice from the virga evaporates before they reach the ground. An alternate explanation (A distrail) has the airplane itself flying through the clouds.

Distrail Cloud

A distrail, short for dissipation trail, forms when an aircraft flies through a supercooled cloud. The cloud freezes due to the disturbing airflow created by the aircraft, as well as by the addition of plenty of freezing nuclei due to the aircraft's exhaust gases. Altocumulus is usually either frozen or supercooled and can show distrails. They are uncommon, especially the clear distrails. Distrails are usually not very long, since they usually show in altocumulus which is not at a cruising altitude of the aircraft (i.e. the aircraft is either descending or ascending through the cloud). In some cases a distrail may transform into a cloud hole: a large elliptical hole in altocumulus with virga in the middle.

Since we’re already on the topic of ice crystals, I thought to include some other roles ice crystals play should we in the event look up and see something strange around our Sun or even our Moon.

22 Degree Halo

A ring of light 22 degrees from the sun

Our Moon

A halo is a ring of light surrounding the sun or moon. Most halos appear as bright white rings but in some instances, the dispersion of light as it passes through ice crystals found in upper level cirrus clouds can cause a halo to have colour.

Light undergoes two refractions as it passes through an ice crystal and the amount of bending that occurs depends upon the ice crystal's diameter.

A 22 degree halo develops when light enters one side of a columnar ice crystal and exits through another side. The light is refracted when it enters the ice crystal and once again when it leaves the ice crystal.

The two refractions bend the light by 22 degrees from its original direction, producing a ring of light observed at 22 degrees from the sun or moon.

No telescope required, just some amazing phenomenon we can see just by looking up.

Warning; do not walk when looking up, you just never know what you could step into.

A comment I had made yesterday morning in reply to “wildminx’s” reply to one of Vikki’s vacation pictures, set my wheels in motion, and for those who know me, would understand that once my wheel starts rolling it’s like mass rolling downhill a ramp picking up speed.

So I thought to write it down and share it with you.

My response yesterday morning:

Hmmmm interesting Minxie - rubs chin and ponders for a moment. Have you seen War of the Worlds? This kind of reminds me of those tall Aliens walking with those looong steely legs, dressed in steely clothing. OK OK I got to stop watching *those* kind of movies, or have stronger coffee on Saturday mornings lol

I often get e-mail such as the one below and as a rule they get sent into the number 13 folder. Once in a while however a letter softens my heart and I respond….

If in case the picture wont' open - this is what he wrote:

 

I hope this message finds you in best of health. I had travelled to nigeria for official purposes, Unfortunately for me all my money was stolen at the hotel where I lodged, I am so confused right now, I dont know what to do or where to go,I didn't bring my phone here, I have access to only emails, Please can you send me $4,000 today so I can return home, As soon as I get home I would refund it immediately.Write me so I can let you know how to send it. Keep this to your self only please!!. Thanks

.

My response

Dear TOBA AHMED NASR RADY

Your urgent e-mail message was well received and so I thought to respond immediately.

By some very strange co-incident I also like you was recently in Nigeria, staying at a Hotel where suddenly a whole lot of money appeared while I was sleeping. When I checked around I found Santa Clause raiding the little fridge, (would I lie to you?) he really did raid the fridge. So I asked Santa Clause from where he got all this money? He replied that Robin Hood has been going to different hotels stealing money from those who were stealing money from the very trusting and good-hearted people who are always glad to help people in distress, and giving it to Santa Clause who always knows who’s naughty or nice.

I would suggest you find that hotel where Santa Clause makes his regular deposits of money or look for the man in tights with a feather in his cap. They’ll gladly return your stolen money in no time.

Good luck.

Summer has finally made its appearance, well it sort of came in with a push through the atmospherically gates. After a month and some of daily rain, what some of you might call spring, I call the mud season, and we also got the unusual cold weather. I’ll rephrase that – Someone had asked if I’d make a veggie garden this year and I had responded with a smug smirk “When hell freezes over”; well it did and I made a veggie garden.

What does the weather have to do with life’s lesson? Probably nothing – I just need to complain, then again…. as you know I had built a Taiga Critter Spa (aka pond) a school of goldfish and all its trimming. You know the saying “Things that have a probability to go wrong will go wrong” Here I was, faithfully every weekend, first thing in the morning until the sun went down or the black flies and mosquitoes put on their bibs and sharpened their utensils to feast on me, to get my project done, including my veggie garden. In the rain, in the high winds and oh yes lets not forget hell having frozen over. Which of course is where my veggie garden went, straight to hell.

Nevertheless in spite of all the odds the Taiga Critter Spa got completed and Lord Michael and the troop are completely enjoying their own little private garden and spa. Daily. Did I mention twice per day and as often as possible on the weekends?

Master Murphy being the leader and the dominant male of the troop, would ritualistically position himself to the far reaches over the water with his hereafter high in the air while waving his paw over the surface in a serene meditative ohm chant. Urging his adoptive sons and subjects to follow his examples.

I in the meantime was busy planting rose bushes and baby trees. This is where Master Murphy decided to teach his adoptive sons how to climb trees, but having one day chosen a mighty gigantic tree to begin on and got royally stuck, he then decided the baby trees were ideal to teach how to master a tree. Sadly the little tree bent under his weight and finally snapped and this is how Murphy taught all about instant deforestation.

I replanted baby trees trying my best to explain to Murphy we need trees, they give shade, which in turn keeps our well water flowing as well as once the trees have grown they supply wood for the fire and give us heat. Speaking of heat …..

Over this weekend the cold spell snapped and someone left the door open and we had a heat spell. Yep 91°F – 112°F with the humidity. This is when Master Murphy and the rest of the troop decided while Lord Michael and I went outside to take care of what needed to be taken care of, the students (school of goldfish) had to wait, they would remain inside the house where it was nicely cooled by the air-conditioning. I know there is a lesson in all of this, alas, I just haven’t found it yet. So meanwhile, I’ll be soaking in high concentrated salt water to get rid of the mosquito stings, Master Murphy is teaching his secrets of successful living to his adopted sons.

Master Murphy teaching his adopted son Timber the secrets of life.

While Lord Michael and I are refilling the bird feeder with fruit pellets

Trying to catch a bird in the bush - makes a dog have a sore snout.

Tundra - on the lookout

Tundra - warning the troop - dog alert

mine!! GRUFF

ALL MINE!!

A dog's carpet shall not be touched by kitty feetsies

And ... that's life's lesson

*****

***

there are more images on my Multiply Photo Album

http://truemaskedwabbit.multiply.com/photos

Our world, the earth, from space it’s easy to see the distinctive pattern of land that makes up the continents. North America, South America, Africa, Antarctica, Europe, Asia and Australia. Giant landmasses separated by oceans that stabilize the environment with hospital weather patterns, suitable for civilization and cities to evolve and prosper. Now imagine our planet ravaged by storm forced winds, subjected to extremes of temperature, giant freezes, heat waves and droughts. A world where cities are crushed and destroyed, where Africa tramples New York underfoot, and London freezes at the North Pole. The world as we know it, will be unrecognizable.

This is not our earth after a devastating global disaster; this is how nature will shape our planet many millions of years into the future. This incredible remodelling is just part of a natural cycle that has shaped the earth for the last four billion years and will continue to do so until the sun finally destroys its surface once and for all.

Previously when I had posted The Romance and the Science of our Moon,

Practical Hermit had come up with a very interesting theory and question.

do you think the impact that created the moon may have also been responsible for shoving all the lighter rock to the opposite side of the planet and creating the original panengae ??

Monday March 3, 2008 - 07:30pm (PST)

Also, as we had conversation back and forth he added

fluid dynamics in a highly viscous medium,it was a passing thought...it's a good question....gravitational attraction by the newly formed moon Must have been a major initial influence in continental drift...given the conditions-still having teraforming in mind regarding the question.

And so I thought I might as well put it all together into a post, since yes the moon does have a major influence on our earth, and although it is only a relatively new discussed theory among scientists that earthquakes are the influence of the moon, although this is still only a theory and still on the debating table.

Pangaea is a latecomer of the super continent formation, 300 million years ago, but by no means the last super continent. Vaalbara is the first super continent formed something like 3.6 billion years ago.

Ur (~3 Ga ago, though probably not a supercontinent; but still however, the earliest known continent. Ur, however, was probably the largest, perhaps even the only continent three billion years ago, so one can argue that Ur was a supercontinent for its time, even if it was smaller than Australia is today). Still, an older rock formation now located in Greenland dates back from Hadean times.

Pangaea – Colliding Continents

Today, our continents may seem solid, safe and forever fixed in place, but they are none of those things. These great landmasses are constantly on the move. If you could speed up the globe over the past billion years you would see the continents sailing across the globe, powerful forces deep within the planet rib the continents apart and then smash them together in an ever-changing cycle of death and rebirth. Oceans disappear, mountains crumble and rise again. Landmasses form and reform.

To understand how the continents shape our world we must first travel back in time to the very birth of the earth. F.4 billion years ago the earth is created from the debris left over from the formation of the sun (see also Death of a Star) Dust and debris collide and clump together, once these clumps grow into objects about half a mile in diameter they create enough gravity to attract more material. Slowly these clumps grow into as many as 20 planets. As these new planets orbit the sun they begin to collide. One collision with the planet Thea which creates the moon obliterates the surface of the earth. The energy of the collision makes the earth incredibly hot.

Earth is a massive molten ball of boiling lava; this is primeval hell, with thousands of asteroids and comets bombarding our world. But deep within our planet a process starts that will lead to the first land. The heaviest elements led and nickel sink down towards the centre of the earth to form a molten core. The lighter elements including oxygen and silicon rise towards the surface where they erupt in volcanoes of molten rock. Slowly the earth surface cools. Molten lava solidifies to form patches of crusts, the seeds of the first continents. But even as the first land is born it faces a battle to survive.

We were being bombarded by a large number of asteroids early into the history of our planet, so there is a lot of dynamic change from being walloped from giant impacts disturbing things. Preserving and new-formed land chunk would be very low. Eventually as the barrage from asteroid slows down land has a better chance to form and remain allowing the surface of the earth to cool and harden. But the earth is missing one vital ingredient oceans. From where earth got its water is a controversial topic but most scientists now agree that meteorites contain quite a lot of water.

When our planet was approximately 150million years old, and the first primitive land masses have formed, they’re not like the seven instant recognizable continents of today, the are just small rafts of rock floating on the mantel. But now a type of rock appears on the earth’s surface that will form the nucleus of the future continents, a rock that’s buoyant enough not to sink into the bowls of the earth. Granite. The very first continental nuclei can still be seen in Africa, as well as North America and Australia, they are called cratons. (A craton is an ancient raft of rock that floats on the mantel and around which a continent will grow.) The Kaapvaal Craton in Africa stretches for 463,000 square miles, almost twice the size of Texas.

But cratons are not the only factors at work more powerful forces are building up deep within the planet. Forces that have the power to rip apart landmasses and smash them together, changing the face of the planet forever.

The surface of the earth, the crust is made up of a giant jigsaw of interlocking pieces, called tectonic plates. The separate plates themselves sit on a mantel, a layer between the crust and the earth’s core. Although the mantel is made of rock the heat and pressure deep down makes it flexible enough to allow the plates above to move up to several inches per year.

Evidence of the theory of continental drifts was first proposed in 1912 by German Scientist Alfred Wegener. He noticed that identical fossils were being found oceans away from each other. Wegener noted that a fresh water organism cannot cross a salty sea so if you find a fresh water organism or a land creature greatly separated by distance they must once have been closer together. By mapping which fossils were identical on which continent scientists can map how the continents had drifted.

Plate tectonics is powered by heat. The centre of the earth is 10,000°F, that’s as hot as the outer parts of the sun. Much of this heat is left over from the collision and massive bombardments of the early days of the earth, the rest comes from radioactive decay of heavy elements in the core. Heat escaping from the core creates convection currents in the next layer of the earth, the mantel. The process is like a lava lamp where heat from the bulb at the bottom creates convection currents in the oil pushing the synthetic lava upward. The heat melts part of the mantel and sends plumes of magma and molten rock rising to the surface. It rises between the cracks of the plates creating new rock that pushes the plates apart.

Today the majority of this new rock forms under the sea creating vast inter-connecting volcanic mountain ranges that extend to all the major oceans in the world.

Water, a single drop of it is a miracle, colourless, tasteless odourless, part of every living thing on this planet. And it’s been here since almost the beginning of the birth of the earth. It’s been belched out of volcanoes in the form of vapour, risen to great heights and fallen back to earth as rain, spent life returns to the soil, to rivers and to the sea, perhaps to be sucked down into the molten earthy bowel.

A journey that each molecule in just one drop may have taken thousands of times over millions of years. In it life teams and that’s just a drop in a bucket. And what a bucket!

No other planet in this solar system can lay claim to this strange blue liquid that made life possible, and can also destroy it. More than 70% of the surface of this planet is covered with water. And that’s just the surface. In volume water fills up 320million cubic miles some 95% of the liveable habitats on this earth are in the ocean.

Five different oceans dominate the globe, the Arctic. Atlantic, the Indian, Antarctic, and the stupendous Pacific, mother of all oceans. All of these bodies of water however are profoundly connected to each other that most Oceanographers refer to it as the world ocean. A single marvellous complex entity, it is tossed by wind, tugged by the moon, driven by invisible conveyer belts and warmed by the sun. It can never rest.

A mere substance so enormous, it can take the form as solid, liquid or gas. To make matters even more dizzying and complex the ocean energies reaches high into the atmosphere, each day they absorb enough of the sun energy to feed the world’s oil demand three times over. The equivalent of two hundred and fifty billion barrels of oil. Each day a trillion tons of water evaporates taking millions of megawatts of potential energy into the atmosphere. The results are titanic.

(The continuance of our Ocean might come up in another blog sometimes in the future)

One range can clearly be seen at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean along the Mid Atlantic Ridge. It stretches more than twelve thousand miles from the sub Antarctic to the Arctic. It comes to the surface in some places; Iceland was created from volcanic lava. It’s one of the few places on earth where one can see continents being pushed apart by about an inch per year. So by the end of the century Europe and America will be almost eight feet further apart.

When the first proto continent formed there were several inter connecting tectonic plates constantly bumping and grinding against each other. Pushing the new land over the planet. Today the earth has over a dozen plates, some colliding together, and some moving apart. They are powerful enough to move a continent the size of North America over three thousand miles in two hundred million years. That’s fifteen miles every million years.

The earth – 3.4 billion years ago – and plate tectonics pushes the proto continents together, they combine to form ever-larger tracks of land. Scientists suggest that cratons combined with other cratons to form a super continent, a huge continuous stretch of land, it’s called Vaalbara. Scientists aren’t sure of its exact shape or size since only a few pieces like the one in South Africa remain. But Vaalbara’s days are numbered. A rising plume of heat is growing beneath it and it’s about to rip its first super continent into pieces.

2.7 billion years ago – Vaalbara the world’s first super continent still dominates the planet but plate tectonics powered by heat from the earth’s core is about to split it apart. Rock is a good insulator when the rock gets very large it traps heat underneath it. As it gets hotter and hotter a plume of super heated magma swells up beneath the giant continental mass. The temperature continues to rise and pressure in the mantel increases eventually the crust can no longer contain the pressure and the hot lava breaks through ripping the land apart. You can see this process happening today in Africa. Deep from the earth’s core is ripping the continent apart. A giant rift valley runs from the Red Sea down to Mozambique, giant cracks are opening up the land. Volcanoes like Kilimanjaro mark spots where molten rock have risen to the surface in the past. In ten million years the eastern half of the continent will have split away.

The molten lava trapped beneath the giant super continent Vaalbara eventually smashes through the surface rocks and the continent ruptures into several smaller pieces where these bits of land sail across the earth but nobody knows what happens to them or what the planet looks like at this time.

The earth is entering the dark ages; it is over two and half billion years since the earth was formed. It will be over a billion years before another super continent forms.

The earth is entering a deadly cycle of destruction and rebirth.

The separate pieces travel away from each other pushed by the creation of new land at the ridge between plates, because the earth has a constant surface area the same amount of earth created must be absorbed into the earth. This process happens at subduction zones and injunctions of plates. At a subduction zone the crust darts down into the mantel to be melted to form new rock. When the plate subducts into the earth it brings two pieces of land together, when they collide a new super continent starts to form.

It is now 1.1 billion years ago and the next known super continent has formed, its name is Rodinia and it holds almost all the rocks on the continental surface of the earth. Still no one knows exactly what it looked like but at its heart is an area that will eventually become North America. Three hundred and fifty million years later the cycle of annihilation and creation starts again as the built up of heat beneath the surface of the earth tears Rodinia apart. When Rodinia splits, it forms several smaller continents that for millions of years drift apart and then drift back together again to form Gondwanna a super continent in the Southern Hemisphere. Eventually after several hundred million years Gondwanna slowly splits apart, plate tectonics pushed the land together to create the world’s last super continent. It’s a huge land mass known as Pangaea.

Pangaea

All the continents we know today are here joined together. Geologists are able to plot the continents’ relative positions because three hundred and fifty million years ago there are numerous species on earth. Each living in distinct regions. The fossil records show that North America and Europe rest next to one another. The land where New York now sits is next to Morocco in North Africa. The Atlantic Ocean does not exist. The East Coast of South America nestles against the Western Coast of Africa, while Australia, India and Antarctica are joined to the south east of Africa.

Pangaea is one giant continuous landmass, it not only makes the whole world look very different it also has a very dramatic effect on the climate. Because much of the land is located far from the sea the climate of the interior changes radically from season to season. It gets very hot in the summer time and extremely cold in the winter.

You don’t have moderating influence from the ocean that we have today so it’s a very different world. And it’s a world in some ways is harsher and less hospital at least to life on land.

It’s thought the climate change caused life on Pangaea’s formation may have played a role of the largest mass extinctions on earth. This event known as the Permiantriasic mass extinction wipes out about 90% of all life on earth.

Pangaea is called the mother of all mass extinctions

Two Hundred and fifty million years ago and the super continent of Pangaea is breaking up, the continents we know and recognize today begin to take shape, over the next of tens of millions of years South America drifts away from Africa, North America away from Europe, Australia splits off from Antarctica and heads north to warmer climates. The positions of our continents are becoming familiar although their distinguishable features are not.

The world’s vast mountain ranges, the Alps, the Himalayas and its great valleys like the Grand Canyon are yet to form. They will emerge out of one of the biggest battles in nature.

Earth, one hundred million years ago – a battle is raging between the continents that will change the face of the earth forever and create some of the most extraordinary geological features on the planet.

Pangaea

To be continued

Pangaea Revisted

Wish you all a great weekend and a safe week ahead

Huugs and love to all

Wabbit

Tundra and Timber

*****

***

Tundra had a little adventure out into the wilderness last weekend, running happily back and forth enjoying the snow, diving into the snow banks and showing off of what he could do. The night was here and it would be time soon to go to sleep but not for Tundra, this newly refreshed freedom was something he needed to revel in. MrWabbit and I called and called him but he’d show up only to quickly run and jump nilly willy all over the land chasing the snow he had kicked into the air. Timber, his much less adventurous brother, who preferred the heat from the fireplace, in the meantime went from window to window peering outside hoping his brother would come to his senses and come back inside.

Finally it got to be too late, we had to go to bed and we wondered if Tundra decided to cherish this regained freedom into the wilderness, leave mom and brother behind never to return? We wondered.

Tundra must have seen the lights in the house one by one being turned off, no one was watching his antics anymore, even his brother finally left the window and went to sleep beside the fire place. Tundra suddenly felt the vast land, the very cold snow and realized he was alone. Very, very alone.

With no audience left to cheer him on (as he had thought all this fuss was about) Tundra realized he missed the warmth of the fire, but when he decided to come back he was met with an obstacle he hadn’t expected.

Spunky, a feral cat that had taken up resident on our property this winter was named spunky because he had fought the Big Boy, the resident feral tom who had claimed the barn as his own. Spunky however chose the shelter closest to the kitchen door and first in line to get food and warm milk. Big Boy wouldn’t have it and would often chase Spunky away, but Spunky remained determined and somehow figured out the timing of when Big Boy would come around and then mysteriously vanish during Big Boy’s visit for warm milk.

But now Spunky was in Tundra’s way to get back to the kitchen door and let everyone know he was ready to come in. Tundra was afraid of Spunky from the time he was just a toddler and would come to eat with his Mom and brother. Only with his mom’s encouragement and of course Spunky taking off like the wind would the area be clear to eat and drink. They were not afraid of Big Boy; perhaps he is the father of Timber and Tundra. Often Big Boy would come first and clear the area where soon after Tobie, the mother; Tundra and Timber would come waddling behind her.

It would be a long sleepless night for Tundra, he’d find shelter and perhaps even some heat where Big Boy also spends the night, but the night noises of whatever it is that make these sounds in the snow would not let him sleep. Big Boy would surely tell him of the wolves that love kitties….. For lunch that is! And of course Big Foot or even the Abominable Snowman. The silence of the night can be incredibly deafening where the breaking of a twig under the heavy snow can sound like a cannon going off echoing through your ears.

The next morning over coffee MrWabbit and Wabbit had to come up with a plan. The kitchen door was the only way Tundra had learned before he and his mom and brother were brought in for the winter. The only solution was to capture Spunky, bring him inside until Tundra could be coaxed, shuffled or nudged back into the house. Plan went into action and one hour later Spunky was in the house, welcomed by Murphy. This went well MrWabbit and Wabbit sighed with relief and another hour later Tundra being adventurous as he is, was brought into the house by letting him chase after a wiley toy that happened to be attached to a string manipulated by MrWabbit.

Tundra experienced his first solo adventure and only he would be able to tell his brother Timber of what he had experienced through the night. After a good warm meal and warm milk both settled on a blanket by the window and while Tundra spoke of his ordeal that only a feline could fathom, Timber quietly fell asleep. Tundra nudged himself closer to his brother knowing how good it feels to have a warm and safe home. Soon the snow will melt and soon warmer days will be here where then both brothers can enjoy the outdoors and find new adventures waiting for them.

Wish you all a very happy and safe Easter Weekend

Huuugs and love to all

Wabbit

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Some blog posting back titled Speed I had mentioned about time slowing down according to Albert Einstein’s theory of General Relativity, called *Time Dilation*. With it I made a quick comment in regards to déjà vu – (“I also would suspect this is where you experience déjà vu. You know you just did that and now you’re doing the exact same thing again. I would guess because you were approaching to the near speed of light and kept slipping back in time.”)

It was a side remark made in jest drawn from medical facts. Well pointed out by our beloved Doctor Guacamole -c'est si bon … her comment ...

Blog Entry: SPEED

We doctors attribute deja vu to a misfiring of neurotransmitter associated electrical impulses..It was interesting to read your version of how deja vu perhaps is associated with the concept of time slowing down..Very interesting
btw..I was wanting to know how exactly would they know that the time slowed down by 11 minutes..Do explain with patience if you have some time on your hands..i am all eager ears
hugs from guacie and much love too

Tuesday March 4, 2008 - 06:12am (EST)

My response:

I can only tell you from what I remember in biology classes of the functions of the brain and then translate that into layman’s language of what is déjà vu.

The human brain is without any doubt the most complexly organized form of matter in the universe. The brain is made up of 100 billion nerve cells or neurons. Someone has calculated that the number of possible permutations and combinations of brain activity exceeds the number of elementary particles in the universe. And this gives you some idea of the staggering complexity one is faced with in trying to understand the functions of this mysterious organ.

Now, despite this staggering complexity of all these different areas, there seems to be a simple overall pattern of organization. In fact, the visual input, as it comes in, seems to divide into two parallel streams of processing. There is one pathway which we call the "how" pathway, to which some of these areas belong. And that "how" pathway seems to be concerned mainly with navigation—with being able to walk around...avoid bumping into obstacles...avoiding uneven terrain, reaching out and grabbing something.

The "how" pathway leads from the main visual areas to the parietal lobes at the top of the brain. The other pathway, the "what" pathway, leads from the main visual areas to the temporal lobes located just behind our temples.

The "what" pathway is concerned with recognizing the object. "What am I looking at? What does it mean for me? Is this an edible object? Is it a flower? Is it a person's face? What is it that I'm looking at, and what does it mean for me?" That's what the "what" pathway is concerned with.

Whenever we look at an object or a face, the message reaches the temporal lobes, where it's identified, but then it gets relayed to a structure called the "amygdala," which is the gateway to the limbic system that contains the emotional centres of the brain. And it's here that we generate the appropriate emotional response to whatever it is we're looking at.

WHAT IS DÉJÀ VU?

Déjà vu means, literally, ‘already seen’. In colloquial English it is often used indiscriminately to refer to familiar events and experiences. In its more technical or medical context it refers to the disconcerting sense that one’s current experience is familiar when, in fact, it is novel. This phenomenon has been described repeatedly in literature, for example by Charles Dickens:

‘We have all some experience of a feeling which comes over us occasionally, of what we are saying or doing having been said or done before, in a remote time – of our having been surrounded, dim ages ago, by the same faces, objects and circumstances – of our knowing perfectly ...

Déjà vu suggests that the sensations associated with remembering are separate to the contents of memory, that there are two different systems in the brain at work a circuit in our temporal lobe fires up when we recall the past, creating the experience of remembering but also a ‘recollective experience’ – the sense of the self in the past.

In short, what I was saying is as the information travels through your brain and everything is being absorbed and channelled collectively through the appropriate part of the cortex but here is where as Guacamole mentioned in her comment the misfiring occurs and the information is in a sense slowed down and then relayed as a memory instead of currently happening. This is what makes you say “hey I’ve been here before” “I’ve said this before” “I’ve done this before”.

I hope this explains why I’ve allowed that little tid-bit of my comment of time slowing down in space and time, but for detailed information you’ll have to ask Dr. Guacamole because I’m not a neurologist and for those who know me well I’m sure you’d worry if I’d ever would decide to become one. Gives a naughty smirk and winks.

Now we’ll get to the second portion of my explanation of time slowing down and the experiments having been made. This weekend we are about to reset our clocks by one hour which proves that time is a man made measure. In physics it doesn’t work that way, but how to explain it in simple terms I have absolutely no clue and I’m sure if you ask any astro-physicist he/she’ll look at you and then with many hand gestures proceeds to try and explain it.

In simple terms time slows down; the faster we move the more time slows down. There is no set amount of time gained because it depends on the speed you would be going. So anywhere from a billionth of a nano-second to centuries would depend how fast you’d be moving through space.

When the tests first began our planes could fly a speedy some odd 400mph ouuuuu that’s fast, but today we can fly much faster. Officially, the world's fastest jet-powered aircraft remains the SR-71 Blackbird. Although the official record is about Mach 3.3 (or 3.3 times the speed of sound – the speed of sound is 340.29mps), many believe the aircraft could actually fly much faster. However, it seems unlikely that the SR-71 could go much faster than about Mach 3.5, with a very slim chance of Mach 4, due to propulsion and structural limitations.

Pegasus booster rocket ignites to send the X-43A on its record setting flight on Nov. 16, 2004. NASA photo

Guinness World Records recognized NASA's X-43A scramjet with a new world speed record for a jet-powered aircraft - Mach 9.6, or nearly 7,000 mph.

Here is how the test would calculate;

Kinematic Time Shift Calculation

If the kinematic time dilation expression

is expanded in a binomial expansion, then for small velocities it becomes

This expression can be used to compute the time dilation in the Hafele-Keating experiment in which an atomic clock was taken aboard an aircraft and compared to a ground-based clock. The problem encountered with measuring the difference between a surface clock and one on an aircraft is that neither location is really an inertial frame. If we take the centre of the earth as an approximation to an inertial frame, then we can compute the difference between a surface clock and the aircraft clock. Taking a "proper time" at the earth's centre as if the master clock were there, the time measured by a clock on the surface would be larger

and that for the airborne clock would be approximately

since to the level of the approximations used, the height of the aircraft does not significantly change the radius R. The difference in the times compared to our hypothetical master clock would then be

Now this relationship is just the reverse of the actual experiment, since we have assumed that the clock is at the centre of the earth, whereas the actual clocks are in the frames which are moving with respect to the centre. The time difference expression should be valid, but in comparing the aircraft clock to the surface clock, we should find that it has fallen behind, so we can model that time difference by

Note that the "earth centre" time has been replaced by the surface time in this expression. This is a valid approximation in this case since the time difference is many orders of magnitude smaller than the time itself, and this allows us to model the difference between two measurable times.

Still confused? Don’t worry. The person I’ve heard give the best explanation of time slowing down is Carl Sagan (of course I was still in diapers then – cough). Carl Edward Sagan (November 9, 1934 – December 20, 1996) was an American astronomer and astrochemist and a highly successful popularizer of astronomy, astrophysics, and other natural sciences. He pioneered exobiology and promoted the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI).

In this video excerpt below he elegantly explains how time dilation works.

Carl Sagan - Cosmos - Time Dilation

Wish you all a wonderful weekend and a safe week ahead

Huuugs and love to all

Wabbit

I always love receiving questions or theories on the topic of space and our home the Earth. It delights me to get completely submerged into the topic even if at times our theories are at odds where we agree to disagree or just get into a feverish discussion how wondrous our Universe is and everything that makes up our solar system. The physics that can leave us wondering with amazement and at times even burn some brain cells to comprehend it all.

I had promised to continue in the explanation of the effects our moon has on our earth where I would also give more details on the Age of Bombardment as well as the Hades Era. Along with that I would also like to respond to a comment left on my post from our dear friend Frank of how our solar system was born to put things into a clearer perspective of how our moon was created.

Frank’s comment:

“HI TRUDI. I AGREE WITH PART OF THIS. I DO AGREE THE MOON WAS FORMED BY LEFT OVER SCRAPTS OF MATTER THAT CLUMPED AND FUSED TOGETHER BUT IT DIDNT HAPPEN FROM MATERIAL FROM THE EARTH. FROM WHAT I UNDERSTAND IS THAT THE PLANETS WERE BORN FROM THE LEFT OVER SCRAPS OF MATTER OF THE SUNS OWN CREATION AND ALL THE MATTER THAT DIDNT FUSE WITH THE YOUNG SUN BECAME OUR PLANETS FROM THE LEFT OVER MATERIAL. ALL THAT LEFT OVER MATIRIAL CLUMPED TOGETHER TO FORM THE PLANETS. BUT NOT ALL THE MATIEAL ENDED UP CLUNPT TOGETHER SO THE MOON WAS CREATED IN THE AFTER MATH OF EARTHS CREATION. MATERIAL THAT WENT ITS OWN WAY AND DIDNT CLUMP WITH THE EARTH.”

Frank has brought out a very good point and a good theory. To understand the physics we’ll have to play detective so to speak and look at the earth and moon as in a pathology forensic of a crime scene.

To do this we’ll have to go back 5 billion years before our solar system was born.

The Birth of Our Solar System

Where the earth now sits in the outer reaches of our galaxy there was just a large cloud of gas and dust. It all begins with a big cloud of gas and dust, little particles of dirty stuff (not bigger than grains of salt), grains of sand, grains of silicon – scientists call these grains of dust, molecular clouds, but they’re not like any clouds we see on earth.

Molecular clouds are vast they cover hundreds of light years in size and it was from clouds like these as the picture pictured above of the Horse Head Nebula and other nebulas pictured by the Hubble Telescope that our solar system was born. The clouds are made up from a hundred debris of dead stars (super novas are dying stars creating stellar nurseries). The large molecular clouds had a small rotation, and when it shrank this rotation speeded up. As the cloud contracted; the energy of the material flying in from space caused its centre to heat up. This spinning ball in the centre became our sun, the rest of the cloud was spinning so fast that it spread out into a vast disc of dust and gas. This was the cradle of life the material that would form the earth and all the other planets in our solar system.

The earth’s journey for supporting life on our planet has begun.

The first step didn’t take long once particles had clumped together and grown into objects to about half a mile in diameter their mass was great enough for their gravitational pull to attract material from the surrounding disc. In the inner solar system these clumps grew to about twenty planets. This process took about three million years.

The next stage of the earth’s evolution was incredibly violent. As these twenty planets orbited the sun their gravity affected each other and they began to collide, with each collision two planets combined.

You also have to imagine that the inner solar system was incredibly hot, planets were liquid hot and their outer mantle as high as 850,000°F including our earth.

Over time these collisions reduced our solar system to just a few planets, including Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars. It took approximately 30 million years to come to this stage.

The Hades Era

The energy from the collisions of the other planets made our earth incredibly hot at about 850,000°F that’s a temperature more than five times that inside a cremation oven. The earth was not as we would like to imagine it, green with trees and foliage and clear blue skies, but instead it was a hellish place. CO2, Sulphur and Methane filled the atmosphere, the skies were a reddish tint and rivers of red hot lava moved across the globe. The heat was so intense that even rocks melted; the lighter elements rose to the surface and the heaviest elements including iron sank down towards the centre, here they formed a molten core. It’s this molten core that protects us from the sun’s solar blasts or CME and its radiation, called the magnetosphere.

A closer look at the birth of the moon.

In 1963 NASA launched the Apollo program one of the mission’s aims was to discover how the moon was formed. In the late 1960’s early 70’s American Astronauts made six visits to the moon collecting 840 lbs of varied moon rocks for scientists back home to study. After almost thirty years of study and the similarities of rocks from the moon and rocks from the earth but the iron missing in the moon rocks, after many theories and speculations, in the early 1990’s the final standard resulted of how our moon was created; the results was a revelation.

Keeping in mind that our solar system in its early years was incredibly hot and so were the planets colliding with other planets, where the outer mantle was liquid rocks from the heat, another planet also as hot as our earth is on a collision course with our earth. If you could witness this collision what you would see i