Large earthquakes have rumbled along a southern section of the San Andreas fault more frequently than previously believed, suggesting that Southern California could be overdue for a strong temblor on the notorious fault line, a new study has found. The Carrizo Plain section of the San Andreas has not seen a massive quake since the much-researched Fort Tejon temblor of 1857, which at an estimated magnitude of 7.9 is considered the most powerful earthquake to hit Southern California in modern times. But the new research by UC Irvine scientists, to be published next week, found that major quakes occurred there roughly every 137 years over the last 700 years. Until now, scientists believed big quakes occurred along the fault roughly every 200 years. The findings are significant because seismologists have long believed this portion of the fault is capable of sparking the so-called Big One that officials have for decades warned will eventually occur in Southern California. ‘It’s been long enough since 1857 that we should be concerned about another great earthquake that ruptures through this part of the fault,’ said Ken Hudnut, a geophysicist at the U.S. Geological Survey in Pasadena who was not involved […]
On Jan. 21, former U.S. intelligence official Russell Tice appeared on MSNBC’s ‘Countdown with Keith Olbermannn’ and broke a sobering bit of news that, sandwiched between Obama’s inauguration and sweeping executive orders, went largely ignored by the media: Under the Bush administration’s notorious warrantless spying program, not only did the NSA eavesdrop on millions of Americans, it turns out it specifically targeted ‘U.S. news organizations, reporters and journalists.’ As Olbermannn put it, ‘non-terrorist Americans, if you will.’ ‘It has taken less than 24 hours after the Bush presidency ended for a former analyst with the National Security Agency to come forward to reveal new allegations about how this nation was spied on by its by its own government,’ Olbermannn said on Wednesday night. ‘Russell Tice has already stood up for truth before this evening as one source for the revelation in 2005 by the New York Times that President Bush was eavesdropping on American citizens without warrants ¦ tonight, the next chapter for Mr. Tice — a chapter he feared to reveal while George Bush occupied the Oval Office.’ The contents of the exclusive interview, if not surprising, were chilling nonetheless. Tice, […]
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama has overturned what he described as an ‘unwarranted’ eight-year ban on US government funding for family-planning groups which carry out or facilitate abortions overseas. Shortly after he signed an executive order canceling the restrictions, on the third full day of his presidency, Obama said in a statement the ban had ‘undermined efforts to promote safe and effective voluntary family planning in developing countries,’ and that the issue had become too politicized. The so-called ‘global gag rule’ cut off US funding to overseas family planning clinics which provide any abortion services whatsoever, from the operation itself to counseling, referrals or post-abortion services. First introduced by Republican president Ronald Reagan in 1984, it has been repeatedly overturned by Democratic administrations and reintroduced by the Republicans. Obama’s action reversed the orders of president George W. Bush, who when he came into office in 2001 immediately froze funds to many family planning groups working overseas. ‘It is clear that the provisions … are unnecessarily broad and unwarranted under current law,’ Obama said. For too long, he added, the ban ‘has been used as a political wedge issue, the subject of a back and […]
Scientists have come a bit closer to achieving the ‘Star Trek’ feat of teleportation. No one is galaxy-hopping, or even beaming people around, but for the first time, information has been teleported between two separate atoms across a distance of a meter - about a yard. This is a significant milestone in a field known as quantum information processing, said Christopher Monroe of the Joint Quantum Institute at the University of Maryland, who led the effort. Teleportation is one of nature’s most mysterious forms of transport: Quantum information, such as the spin of a particle or the polarization of a photon, is transferred from one place to another, without traveling through any physical medium. It has previously been achieved between photons (a unit, or quantum, of electromagnetic radiation, such as light) over very large distances, between photons and ensembles of atoms, and between two nearby atoms through the intermediary action of a third. None of those, however, provides a feasible means of holding and managing quantum information over long distances. Now the JQI team, along with colleagues at the University of Michigan, has succeeded in teleporting a quantum state directly from one atom to another over […]
As Barack Obama takes office, the public’s focus is overwhelmingly on domestic policy concerns – particularly the economy. Strengthening the nation’s economy and improving the job situation stand at the top of the public’s list of domestic priorities for 2009. Meanwhile, the priority placed on issues such as the environment, crime, illegal immigration and even reducing health care costs has fallen off from a year ago. While it is not unusual for the public to prioritize domestic over foreign policy, the balance of opinion today is particularly one-sided. Roughly seven-in-ten Americans (71%) say that President Obama should focus on domestic policy, while just 11% prioritize foreign policy. By comparison, last January, 56% cited domestic policy as most important while 31% said Bush should focus on foreign policy. The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted Jan. 7-11 among 1,503 adults on cell phones and landlines, finds that strengthening the economy and improving the job situation are higher priorities today than they have been at any point over the past decade, and the recent upward trend has been steep. The share of Americans saying that strengthening the nation’s economy should be […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
