The Solar wind is a calm 280 km/sec and even though there are ten sunspots on the Sun today. With all that, A phalanx of new sunspots rotating over the sun's southeastern limb was expected to boost solar activity this weekend. So far, however, the spots have not produced strong flares. Solar activity is low.
Ice Quakes hit Wisconsin
Some strange booms have shaken residents in Fond du Lac County, Wisconsin.
The series of explosion-like sounds rattled residents from Waupun, Campbellsport and elsewhere Tuesday and sent Fond du Lac County sheriff's deputies out looking for a cause.
Geologists say the booms were likely a phenomenon commonly known as an ice quake.
Cracking up: Dennis Olsen measures a giant fissure, which he measured to be an inch wide and at least eight to ten inches deep, in his rural driveway in Waupun, Wisconsin, after a weather phenomenon known as an ice quake occurred recently
They are the after-effects of the frost quakes - or cryoseism - which are more commonly found on glaciers in the polar regions.
It's caused by water that sinks into the soil and bedrock where it freezes and expands, causing an explosive popping sound that feels like a mild earthquake.
Most frost quakes occur after a heavy rainfall or snow fall when there is a large amount of moisture on the ground.
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee seismologist Brett Ketter tells Action Reporter Media he experienced an ice quake this week and initially thought the pipes had burst in his house.
MrKetter says he ran outside in his slippers to see if something had hit his house.
One family had to deal with a giant, 100-foot long crack in their rural driveway.
Cold weather phenomena: It results from water freezing and expanding in the soil and bedrock
Dennis Olsen heard an explosive sound and initially thought his garage might have blown up. That wasn't the case. Then he checked his basement, thinking a wall had split. Everything looked fine.
It wasn't until the next morning that Olsen discovered the driveway fissure.
He called the Fond du Lac County Sheriff's Department. Deputies knew what happened because other residents in the area had experienced the same booming sounds of an ice quake.
Olsen said it's the first time he's ever seen the effects of an ice quake.
Frost quake or cryoeism: This graph explains how the frost quakes come about due to expansion caused by water that has frozen quickly
Earlier this month, Canadian residents also reported hearing similar booms.
'We had the ice storm or freezing rain event, then we had warm temperatures, or just about freezing at the surface.
Then the temperatures plummeted after that,' said DaynaVettese, a meteorologist with the Weather Network.
'That's why we've seen a couple of these events between the ice storm and the beginning of 2014.'
Around Toronto just after Christmas there was a thaw after some heavy snow fall that allowed ice to accumulate under the soil.
'It's almost like an earthquake because it's very close to the surface. You will feel a little bit of shaking, maybe if you're sitting in a chair and it happened, or you're lying in bed, or some of your dishes might rattle,' said Ms. Vettese.
However, while unusual for Wisconsin and southern Canada, frost quakes are definitely the norm in the north of the notoriously cold nation.
Once in a Blue Star
The discovery of this new set of “hypervelocity” stars was described at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society this week in Washington, D.C., and was published in the Jan. 1 issue of the Astrophysical Journal.
Top and side views of the Milky Way galaxy show the location of four of the new class of hypervelocity stars. These are sun-like stars that are moving at speeds of more than a million miles per hour relative to the galaxy: fast enough to escape its gravitational grasp. The general directions from which the stars have come are shown by the colored bands.
Credit: Graphic design by Julie Turner, Vanderbilt University. The top view of the galaxy comes from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the side view comes from the European Southern Observatory.
“These new hypervelocity stars are very different from the ones that have been discovered previously,” said Vanderbilt University graduate student Lauren Palladino, lead author on the study. “The original hypervelocity stars are large blue stars and appear to have originated from the galactic center. Our new stars are relatively small – about the size of the sun – and the surprising part is that none of them appear to come from the galactic core.”
The discovery came as Palladino, working under the supervision of Kelly Holley-Bockelmann, assistant professor of astronomy at Vanderbilt was mapping the Milky Way by calculating the orbits of Sun-like stars in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, a massive census of the stars and galaxies in a region covering nearly one quarter of the sky.
“It’s very hard to kick a star out of the galaxy,” said Holley-Bockelmann. “The most commonly accepted mechanism for doing so involves interacting with the supermassive black hole at the galactic core. That means when you trace the star back to its birthplace, it comes from the center of our galaxy. None of these hypervelocity stars come from the center, which implies that there is an unexpected new class of hypervelocity star, one with a different ejection mechanism.”
Astrophysicists calculate that a star must get a million-plus mile-per-hour kick relative to the motion of the galaxy to reach escape velocity. They also estimate that the Milky Way’s central black hole has a mass equivalent to four million suns, large enough to produce a gravitational force strong enough to accelerate stars to hyper velocities. The typical scenario involves a binary pair of stars that get caught in the black hole’s grip. As one of the stars spirals in toward the black hole, its companion is flung outward at a tremendous velocity. So far, 18 giant blue hypervelocity stars have been found that could have been produced by such a mechanism.
Now Palladino and her colleagues have discovered an additional 20 sun-sized stars that they characterize as possible hypervelocity stars. “One caveat concerns the known errors in measuring stellar motions,” she said. “To get the speed of a star, you have to measure the position really accurately over decades. If the position is measured badly a few times over that long time interval, it can seem to move a lot faster than it really does. We did several statistical tests to increase the accuracy of our estimates. So we think that, although some of our candidates may be flukes, the majority are real.”
The astronomers are following up with additional observations.
The new rogues appear to have the same composition as normal disk stars, so the astronomers do not think that their birthplace was in the galaxy’s central bulge, the halo that surrounds it, or in some other exotic place outside the galaxy.
“The big question is: what boosted these stars up to such extreme velocities? And you know, with every action there is a equal and opposite reaction. Black holes are spinning at there maximum rotation, according to Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz during 1676–1689 who first attempted a mathematical formulation of the kind of energy which is connected with motion (kinetic energy). Leibniz noticed that in many mechanical systems (of several masses, mi each with velocityvi ),
was conserved so long as the masses did not interact. He called this quantity the vis viva or living force of the system. If a massive blue star is flung out onto space at a million miles an hour, then an equal force counter to the rotation of the black hole was exerted. If the black hole begins to slow down, the event horizon shrinks, and the structure become more capable of emitting energy. There are thousand and perhaps millions of sun worth of information inside a black hole. Who knows what changes ripple through the galaxy because of such an event? The gravitational waves of a Sun traveling at such speeds could be very geomagnetically exciting. That may not be a good thing.
South Carolina Tritium
A radioactive plume has been confirmed in South Carolina and it is now on the move as shared in this newly released video from ShantiUniverse. Radioactive tritium has been detected and on the move in groundwater. This is the 2nd water contamination issue in days including the West Virginia scare over the past weekend.
Columbia, SC (WLTX) -The Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC) confirmed to the Governor’s Nuclear Advisory Council a plume of radioactive Tritium is in the groundwater.
“DHEC has documented there is a plume leaking from the site but the problem with Tritium is it’s hard to remediate, it’s hard to clean it up,” said Tom Clements, Southeast Nuclear Campaign Coordinator for Friends of the Earth. “So we have to look at ways to stop it from leaking from the dump.”
The plume is moving off the Barnwell Nuclear site southwest toward the Savannah River Site. Traces of Tritium have also been found in Mary’s Branch Creek.
“It combines with oxygen to form basically radioactive water.So, it gets everywhere in the environment,” Clements said. “The level was far above the drinking water standard but fortunately it doesn’t look like anyone is drinking the water.”
Chinese Hypersonic Missile Test
China’s military last week conducted the first flight test of a new ultra-high speed missile vehicle aimed at delivering warheads through U.S. missile defenses, Pentagon officials said.
The test of the new hypersonic glide vehicle was carried out Jan. 9 and the experimental weapon is being dubbed the WU-14 by the Pentagon, said officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The hypersonic vehicle represents a major step forward in China’s secretive strategic nuclear and conventional military and missile programs.
The new hypersonic vehicle was detected traveling at extremely high speeds during the flight test over China, said officials who discussed some details of the test.
The hypersonic craft appears designed to be launched atop one of China’s intercontinental ballistic missiles, and then glides and maneuvers at speeds of up to 10 times the speed of sound from near space en route to its target, the officials said.
A Pentagon spokesman confirmed the test but declined to provide details.
“We routinely monitor foreign defense activities and we are aware of this test,” Marine CorpsLt. Col. Jeffrey Pool, the spokesman, told theWashington Free Beacon.
“However, we don’t comment on our intelligence or assessments of foreign weapon systems,” Pool said in a statement. “We encourage greater transparency [by the People’s Republic of China] regarding their defense investments and objectives to avoid miscalculation,” he added.
The United States, Russia, and China are all engaged in a hypersonic arms race. All three nations are developing high-speed aerospace vehicles. India is also developing a hypersonic variant of its BrahMos cruise missile.
Hypersonic weapons use cutting edge technology for flying and maneuvering at ultra-high speeds in space and air. Future weapons will include powered and unpowered hypersonic vehicles fired from the last stages of ICBMs and submarine missiles, and from the bomb-bays of strategic bombers. Hypersonic cruise missiles and surveillance drones also are expected.
The military advantages of hypersonic craft include precise targeting, very rapid delivery of weapons, and greater survivability against missile and space defenses.
Hypersonic speed is between 3,840 miles per hour and 7,680 miles per hour, also known as Mach 5 to Mach 10.
China military affairs specialists said the hypersonic vehicle test is a significant milestone and appears to be part of China’s development of asymmetric warfare weaponry that Beijing calls “assassin’s mace” weapons—high-technology arms that would assist China’s overall weaker military forces to defeat the more technologically advanced U.S. military.
Mark Stokes, a former U.S. Air Force officer and specialist on China’s strategic weapons systems, said China is working on two hypersonic flight vehicle programs that are long-range strategic arms. Last week’s test appears to be a new post-boost vehicle designed to launch from a missile.
China is also developing a hypersonic, scramjet-powered vehicle that can take off independently or be launched from a bomber.
The hypersonic glide vehicle is likely missile-launched after the rocket’s initial boost phase that then takes off toward its target from near space, or less than 62 miles from earth, Stokes said.
“A boost glide missile theoretically would be intended to counter existing mid-course missile defenses,” he said, noting that Chinese technical studies have shown the vehicle would use penetrating radar for its high-altitude targeting.
The vehicle is part of China’s aerospace weaponry designed to blend the characteristics of space-transiting ballistic missiles with ground-hugging cruise missiles, Stokes said.
“Hypersonic aerospace flight vehicles exemplify the merging of the air and space domains from both operational and industrial perspectives,” Stokes said.
Stokes, an analyst with the Project 2049 Institute, said Chinese military reports indicate that its hypersonic glide vehicles will travel from the edge of space at speeds ranging between Mach 8 and Mach 12, or between 6,084 miles per hour and 9,127 miles per hour.
Such speeds would challenge the current system of U.S. missile defenses. Those defenses include a combination of long-range interceptors, medium-range sea and land-based interceptors, and interceptors designed to hit incoming missiles closer to targets.
Lora Saalman, a specialist on Chinese strategic systems with the Carnegie Endowment, said China’s hypersonic arms are part of a program to develop precision-guided missiles and other advanced weapons capabilities.
Saalman, who spent years in China studying Chinese military and other writings, said writings on Chinese hypersonic arms indicate Beijing may be seeking high-speed weapons that are more limited in range and conventionally armed, although with strategic nuclear potential.
The U.S. Prompt Global Strike program seeks hypersonic and other conventional and nuclear weapons capable of attacking any location on earth within an hour. Elements of the U.S. system are expected to be fielded in the next 10 to 15 years.
China’s hypersonic capabilities also appear to be an outgrowth of precision strike missiles, like the DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missile, and China’s own version of missile defenses, which use high-speed hit-to-kill capabilities, Saalman said, noting that China has been streamlining its weapons development process.
“With the integration of strategic analysis and planning into technical research, China’s pursuit of hypersonic and high-precision weaponry promises to be faster and more focused than that associated with its previous [anti-satellite] and [ballistic missile defense] related research and programs,” Saalman said in an email. “This recent test is a manifestation of this trend.”
Hypersonics and precision guidance “are growth areas within China in terms of what they are intending to do with their military,” she said in a recent speech.
Rick Fisher, another China military affairs expert, said the Chinese hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV) test represents a significant military advance for Beijing.
“The beauty of the HGV is that it can perform hypersonic precision strikes while maintaining a relatively low altitude and flat trajectory, making it far less vulnerable to missile defenses,” said Fisher, an analyst at the International Assessment and Strategy Center.
Fisher said arms control advocates often view the U.S. Prompt Global Strike and similar Chinese hypersonic weapons as part of an isolated competition caused by misperceptions that can be resolved through arms talks.
“I’m not against that, but the lessons of recent history are pretty stark: a paranoid Communist dictatorship is going to seek maximum power to sustain its position no matter how friendly you try to treat it,” Fisher said.
Fisher said that in addition to China’s hypersonic weapons and other weaponry similar to the arms in the U.S. Prompt Global Strike program, China is also building its strategic military capabilities to support its global power projection.
The Chinese are “actively seeking global military power to challenge the United States, and it is not yet in any mood to talk, or engage in arms control, about it,” he said.