Whale vs Yacht.. [ 1507 ]

Whale of a tale for couple yachting off Cape Town

 

The picture apparently showing the moment before the whale hit the boat

BBC News.,21 July 2010 Last updated at 14:46 GMT

A couple on a whale-watching trip off Cape Town, South Africa, say they had a lucky escape when a 10m (33ft) specimen leapt on to their yacht.

The southern right whale, a species known for poor eyesight, snapped the mast before sliding back into the water, said Paloma Werner.

She and her partner had just seconds to take cover, she said. A nearby tourist caught the moment on camera.

"I still like whales," Ms Werner told the BBC afterwards.

The southern right whale navigates by sound, leading Ms Werner to suspect it was an accident.

"Our boat's engine was off and so the whale just didn't know we were there," she said.

"We were just the wrong boat, in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Diving for cover

Ms Werner and her companion Ralph Mothes had headed out to Table Bay on their yacht in fine weather before catching sight of the whale in the distance.

Cutting the engine, they floated for an hour watching the whale, she told the BBC.

 

Ms Werner says the damage may cost £8,500 to repair

"It appeared about 120m away from our boat and then it went under the water again.

"A few moments later, I saw it resurface just 10m away.

"Suddenly I heard my partner shout and when I looked around, I saw the huge thing breaching on to the deck.

"Instinctively, I took cover as the mast came crashing down. I saw my partner, Ralph, dive for cover behind the yacht's wheel. Then the whale slid down the side of the boat and back into the water."

"As soon as I realised that we were unhurt, we checked to see how much damage had been done.

"Luckily, we weren't taking on water so we started the engine and headed for shore. I saw the whale reappear further away.

"When we got back to land, I realised how lucky we were to have survived."

The leaping whale was caught on camera, apparently by a tourist on another boat who later passed it on through a tour guide.

The decision to release the Lockerbie bomber...[ 1506 ]

Salmond defends al-Megrahi release

the London Evening Standarad .,22.07.10

 

Scotland's First Minister has written to US senators defending his government's decision to release the Lockerbie bomber.

In a letter to John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Alex Salmond made clear that the Scottish Government made the decision to free Abdelbaset al-Megrahi on compassionate grounds and had received no representations from BP on the matter.

The triumphant return of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, left, to Libya sparked anger in the US

He said the decision was made with "integrity" and following a "clear legal process".

Libyan Megrahi is the only man to have been convicted of the Lockerbie atrocity which killed 270 people in the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 on December 21, 1988. 

He was released from a Scottish prison last August, having been given three months to live, but is still alive and living with his family in the Libyan capital, Tripoli.

David Cameron's first visit to Washington as Prime Minister has been overshadowed by the row over his release, with US senators suspicious that oil giant BP may have had a hand in the affair.

Mr Salmond said he had written the letter making clear the Scottish Government's stance in order to assist the committee with a proposed hearing on July 29.

He wrote: "I want first of all to restate the revulsion of the Scottish Government and the people of Scotland at the bombing of Flight Pan Am 103 and to acknowledge the terrible pain and suffering inflicted on the victims and the relatives of all those who died in the Lockerbie atrocity. Whatever different views we have about the release of Al-Megrahi, I am sure we stand together on that."

"I can say unequivocally that the Scottish Government has never, at any point, received any representations from BP in relation to Al-Megrahi."

Mr Salmond has previously criticised ex-premier Tony Blair for negotiating a prisoner transfer agreement (PTA) with Libya in 2007 - which was not invoked for Megrahi's release - at the same time as sealing a deal for BP in the country, saying it gave rise to suspicions of "deals in the desert".

He wrote in the letter: "I must make clear that the Scottish Government strongly opposed the PTA and the memorandum that led to it was agreed without our knowledge and against our wishes."

NASA image of the Day July 21..[ 1505 ]

The latest NASA "Image of the Day" image.

Take Your Children to Work Day

Children experience NASA from the inside during the annual "Take Your Children to Work Day" held each summer at NASA facilities across the country. Children get to see NASA facilities, participate in education activities and shadow their parents during the workday. 

They can also observe the agency's many different careers, learning about occupations as varied as engineering, graphic design, accounting, maintenance and many other professions. Pictured here, children explore the Exploration Experience exhibit at the Marshall Space Flight Center during a previous "Take Your Children to Work Day." 

The exhibit showcases NASA's accomplishments and goals, from the benefits of space exploration here on Earth, to the technologies NASA develops to explore our solar system. 

Image Credit: NASA/MSFC/Doug Stoffer

Τετάρτη, 21 Ιούλιος 2010 7:00:00 πμ

Most Massive Star discovered..[ 1504 ]

Scientists Discover Most Massive Star

Published July 21, 2010

| Associated Press

AP Photo/European Southern Observatory

Scientists have indentified the star R136a1 -- thought to be the heaviest star ever discovered, hundreds of times more massive than the sun -- Wednesday after working out its weight for the first time. This montage shows a visible-light image of the Tarantula nebula (left) along with a zoomed-in visible-light image from the Very Large Telescope (middle). A new image of the R136 cluster, obtained with the Very Large Telescope is shown in the right-hand panel, with the cluster itself at the lower right.

LONDON -- A huge ball of brightly burning gas drifting through a neighboring galaxy may be the heaviest star ever discovered -- hundreds of times more massive than the sun, scientists said Wednesday after working out its weight for the first time.

Those behind the find say the star, called R136a1, may once have weighed as much as 320 solar masses. Astrophysicist Paul Crowther said the obese star -- twice as heavy as any previously discovered -- has already slimmed down considerably over its lifetime.

In fact, it's burning itself off with such intensity that it shines at nearly 10 million times the luminosity of the sun.
"Unlike humans, these stars are born heavy and lose weight as they age," said Crowther, an astrophysicist at the University of Sheffield in northern England. "R136a1 is already middle-aged and has undergone an intense weight loss program."

Crowther said the giant was identified at the center of a star cluster in the Tarantula Nebula, a sprawling cloud of gas and dust in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a galaxy about 165,000 light-years away from our own Milky Way.

The star was the most massive of several giants identified by Crowther and his team in an article in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Astronomers discover enormous star

While other stars can be larger, notably the swollen crimson-colored ones known as red giants, they weigh far less.
Still, the mass of R136a1 and its ilk means they're tens of times bigger than the Earth's sun and they're brighter and hotter, too.

Surface temperatures can surpass 40,000 degrees Celsius (72,000 degrees Fahrenheit), seven times hotter than the sun. They're also several million times brighter, because the greedy giants tear through their energy reserves far faster than their smaller counterparts.

That also means that massive stars live fast and die young, quickly shedding huge amounts of material and burning themselves out in what are thought to be spectacular explosions.

"The biggest live only 3 million years," Crowther said. "In astronomy that's a very short time."

Small lifespans are one of several reasons why these obese stars are so hard to find. Another is that they're extremely rare, forming only in the densest star clusters.

Astronomers also have a limited range in which to look for them. In clusters that are too far away, it isn't always possible to tell if a telescope has picked up on one heavyweight star or two smaller ones in close proximity.

In this case, Crowther's team re-examined previously known stars to see if they could find an accurate measurement of their weight. The team reviewed archival data from the Hubble Space Telescope and gathered new readings from the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope at Paranal in Chile.

Scientists who weren't involved in the find said the results were impressive, although they cautioned it was still possible, although unlikely, that scientists had confused two very close stars for a bigger, single one.

"What they're characterizing as a single massive star could in fact be a binary system too close to be resolved," said Mark Krumholz, an astronomer at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Both he and Phillip Massey, an astronomer with the Lowell Observatory in Arizona, also cautioned that the star's weight had been inferred using scientific models and that those were subject to change.

But both scientists said the authors had made a strong case, arguing that the solar material being thrown off from feuding stars in a binary system would produce much more powerful X-rays than have been detected.

Crowther acknowledged that R136a1 could have a partner, but he said it was likely to be a much smaller star, meaning that the star's its birth weight was still considerable -- perhaps 300 solar masses instead of 320.

UK.,Families will be £3,000 a year poorer ..[ 1503 ]

Budget will cost familes £3,000 a year

Families will be an average of £3,000 a year poorer under measures introduced by George Osborne in last month’s emergency Budget, a leading economic forecaster has warned.

George Osborne's Treasury forecast said the austerity drive would cost the top 10 per cent of households £1,600 in two years' time

By Philip Aldrick, Economics Editor
Telegrapg co.uk., 11:16PM BST 21 Jul 2010 

Household disposable incomes would fall by one per cent next year, the first decline since 1982, and would not improve until 2012, Capital Economics said.

It would be “the tightest squeeze” on families since the mid-1970s, Vicky Redwood, senior UK economist, said.

By 2015, the £40billion of tax rises and spending cuts unveiled in the Budget would have eroded about 8pc of average household income – or £3,000 out of £36,000, the forecaster said. Next year would be the toughest single stretch as VAT is increased to 20pc, public sector pay is frozen and jobs are cut – leaving households £1,100 worse off.

“Consumers clearly stand to be amongst the biggest losers in the fiscal squeeze,” Miss Redwood said.
The figures paint a much gloomier picture of post-recession Britain than the Budget statistics. The Treasury predicted that the austerity drive would cost the top 10 per cent of households £1,600 in two years’ time, average earners between £300 and £600, and the poorest £180. But Capital Economics, which admits to a more pessimistic outlook than most, believes the tax measures alone next year will cost the average household £550. The figure doubles after the impact of pay freezes and job cuts.

The Office for Budget Responsibility, the Treasury’s public finances watchdog, has warned workers of a real-terms pay cut this year and next as inflation outstrips salary rises.
The bleak forecast came as the Bank of England reported that the economy had “deteriorated a little” in the past month and that the Budget may have harmed short-term growth prospects, despite reducing longer-term risks. For the first time since February, the Bank raised the prospect of restarting its so-called “money printing” programme to stimulate growth.
Economists said the minutes from this month’s rate-setting meeting suggested that interest rates, currently at a record low of 0.5 per cent, would remain lower for longer. James Knightley, of ING Financial Markets, said: “We forecast the first rate hike for 3Q11 [the third quarter of next year]”.

Ms Redwood warned that the outlook for households could be worse than her predictions. “We expect overall real household disposable incomes [after inflation] to rise by 0.5pc or so this year, before falling by 1pc or so in 2011 and flatlining in 2012.

“This would be the tightest squeeze on incomes since the mid-1970s, when real incomes fell by almost 3pc in 1976 and 1977. And if we are right in thinking more fiscal tightening is yet to come, the squeeze could turn out to be worse.”

Families were hit hard in the Budget to pay for a £6billion tax cut to business in an attempt to preserve jobs. Although the Budget con­tain­ed overall tax rises of £8.2billion, households’ taxes rose by nearly £11billion “to help pay for cuts in corporation tax and the rise in the threshold for employers’ national insurance contributions”, she said.

Ms Redwood added: “The fiscal squeeze, combined with continued deleveraging (cutting debt), will condemn consumer spending to a period of extraordinary weakness,” she said.