Whatever climate scientists may currently disagree about (and good scientists are always disagreeing about something) virtually all of them have long since agreed that human activity — burning fossil fuels — has been making the global temperature go up. And now they have two very sobering, visual ways to explain how. The first is in the basement of a futuristic building in the foothills of the Colorado Rockies and requires a special pass, the other is down on the sea floor off the coast of California, requiring SCUBA gear and a waterproof map. The gigantic super-computer in the basement of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., is so big you can walk down the aisles inside it, the walls of the sleek black servers at either elbow, wrapped in the constant hum of air coolers and countless trillions of silicon chip operations working day and night to calculate the climate future over the next several decades of the only home we’ve got: Earth. ‘These super computers are getting more and more powerful every year,’ scientist Jerry Meehl told us as he gave us the tour. ‘It makes the computers we were using for global […]
Elvir Causevic left Sarajevo in 1990, just before the war engulfed Bosnia and smashed it to smithereens. Now 33 and educated in America, a member of Yale University’s research staff, he recently moved back-and continues to be amazed at the town’s transformation. The city he had seen so often on TV during the dark years was devastated, full of scarred and burned-out buildings, bereft of its once vibrant cosmopolitanism. But no more. Sarajevo today is the very image of a thriving European capital, chockablock with chic restaurants and upscale art galleries. Cranes punctuate the skyline, erecting offices and putting a new face on, among many other things, Bosnia’s postmodern Parliament, ruined during the war. Strolling the cobbled streets of the capital’s ancient Old Town-a twisty maze of bars and tourist shops selling everything from Turkish coffee sets to T shirts reading i’m muslim, don’t panic-Causevic is positively boosterish. ‘Now is the time for this country,’ he exults. His plan: to set up branches of his New York medical-instruments company in Sarajevo and Tuzla-a great investment, he thinks, because of Bosnia’s strong engineering tradition and still inexpensive work force. He’s already hired 12 employees and expects to grow to 100 […]
TOKYO — Toyota Motor Company said its income jumped 39.2 percent to $3.2 billion during the second quarter, boosted by strong sales of fuel-efficient vehicles in the United States, where it passed Ford Motor Company in July sales to rank as the second-biggest automaker behind General Motors. Toyota, which already ranks as No. 2 in the world, appears on pace to pass G.M. as the world’s biggest auto company, perhaps as soon as this year. Toyota, which earned $2.3 billion in last year’s second quarter, said its revenue rose 13.2 percent while its vehicle sales rose nearly 8 percent worldwide, to just over 2 million. For the full year, Toyota said it still expects to meet its profit forecast of about $11.3 billion and its sales forecast of $194 billion. Toyota’s sales were led by the Corolla, the best-selling small car in the United States, the RAV-4, a small sport utility vehicle, and the FJ Cruiser, a gutsy S.U.V. aimed at younger buyers. Toyota also said its results were boosted by the strength of the yen. Friday’s results came as Toyota has speeded efforts to deal with a spate of recalls, both in the […]
BAGHDAD, Iraq – While American politicians and generals in Washington debate the possibility of civil war in Iraq, many U.S. officers and enlisted men who patrol Baghdad say it has already begun. Army troops in and around the capital interviewed in the last week cite a long list of evidence that the center of the nation is coming undone: Villages have been abandoned by Sunni and Shiite Muslims; Sunni insurgents have killed thousands of Shiites in car bombings and assassinations; Shiite militia death squads have tortured and killed hundreds, if not thousands, of Sunnis; and when night falls, neighborhoods become open battlegrounds. ‘There’s one street that’s the dividing line. They shoot mortars across the line and abduct people back and forth,’ said 1st Lt. Brian Johnson, a 4th Infantry Division platoon leader from Houston. Johnson, 24, was describing the nightly violence that pits Sunni gunmen from Baghdad’s Ghazaliyah neighborhood against Shiite gunmen from the nearby Shula district. As he spoke, the sights and sounds of battle grew: first, the rat-a-tat-tat of fire from AK-47 assault rifles, then the heavier bursts of PKC machine guns, and finally the booms of mortar rounds crisscrossing the night sky and crashing […]
New observations of the Triangulum Galaxy suggest it is 3 million light years away – 15% farther away than previously thought (Image: Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope/J-C Cuillandre) Enlarge image New observations of the Triangulum Galaxy suggest it is 3 million light years away – 15% farther away than previously thought . Our universe may be 15% larger and older than we thought, according to new measurements of the distance to a nearby galaxy. Researchers led by Alceste Bonanos at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, US, used data from telescopes including the 10-metre Keck-II telescope in Hawaii, US, to measure the distance to a pair of stars in the Triangulum Galaxy. The team used light, velocity, and temperature measurements to calculate the true luminosity of the two stars, which eclipse one another every five days. By comparing this intrinsic luminosity to their observed brightness, the team calculated that the galaxy lies 3.14 million light years away from us. Surprisingly, this is about half a million light years farther than previously thought. Measuring astronomical distances is not simple. Distant, bright objects, for example, can look the same as closer, dim ones. So astronomers have built a ladder-like system that starts […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
