Portland’s Mayor on Protests, Riots and the ‘Missing Middle’ — U.S. – TIME

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When Ted Wheeler took office this year as the new mayor of Portland, Ore., there had already been signs of trouble in the hipster paradise. Following the election in November, several days of anti-Trump protests eventually turned into what police deemed a riot, as baseball bat-wielding protestors broke windows and refused to disperse. About two…

via Portland’s Mayor on Protests, Riots and the ‘Missing Middle’ — U.S. – TIME

There is a lot of hate going around in Left AND Right. Both factions need to step down and defer to the logical middle-of-the-road people who despise knee-jerk bullshit! Use common sense and avoid all of this strife!!

Hampton Beach Lifeguards On Alert After Young Girl Steps On Needle — CBS Boston

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HAMPTON, N.H. (CBS) – It’s a troubling discovery that at one time was rare on Hampton Beach. A young girl stepped on a small needle while walking on the popular New Hampshire beach, and needed first aid from a lifeguard. “He took it out, administered first aid with hydrogen peroxide and so forth,” said chief…

via Hampton Beach Lifeguards On Alert After Young Girl Steps On Needle — CBS Boston

Of course this is gonna happen. We let these people flop anywhere and it isn’t PC to do anything about it.

Still behind Einstein 100 years later!

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Ligo20160211_tn

Image credit: The SXS (Simulating eXtreme Spacetimes) Project

Gravitational Waves Detected 100 Years After Einstein’s Prediction

News Release • February 11, 2016

Visit The Detection Portal

See also: LIGO Hanford Press Release

LIGO Opens New Window on the Universe with Observation of Gravitational Waves from Colliding Black Holes

WASHINGTON, DC/Cascina, Italy

For the first time, scientists have observed ripples in the fabric of spacetime called gravitational waves, arriving at the earth from a cataclysmic event in the distant universe. This confirms a major prediction of Albert Einstein’s 1915 general theory of relativity and opens an unprecedented new window onto the cosmos.

Gravitational waves carry information about their dramatic origins and about the nature of gravity that cannot otherwise be obtained. Physicists have concluded that the detected gravitational waves were produced during the final fraction of a second of the merger of two black holes to produce a single, more massive spinning black hole. This collision of two black holes had been predicted but never observed.

The gravitational waves were detected on September 14, 2015 at 5:51 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time (09:51 UTC) by both of the twin Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) detectors, located in Livingston, Louisiana, and Hanford, Washington, USA. The LIGO Observatories are funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), and were conceived, built, and are operated by Caltech and MIT. The discovery, accepted for publication in the journal Physical Review Letters, was made by the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (which includes the GEO Collaboration and the Australian Consortium for Interferometric Gravitational Astronomy) and the Virgo Collaboration using data from the two LIGO detectors.

Based on the observed signals, LIGO scientists estimate that the black holes for this event were about 29 and 36 times the mass of the sun, and the event took place 1.3 billion years ago. About 3 times the mass of the sun was converted into gravitational waves in a fraction of a second—with a peak power output about 50 times that of the whole visible universe. By looking at the time of arrival of the signals—the detector in Livingston recorded the event 7 milliseconds before the detector in Hanford—scientists can say that the source was located in the Southern Hemisphere.

According to general relativity, a pair of black holes orbiting around each other lose energy through the emission of gravitational waves, causing them to gradually approach each other over billions of years, and then much more quickly in the final minutes. During the final fraction of a second, the two black holes collide into each other at nearly one-half the speed of light and form a single more massive black hole, converting a portion of the combined black holes’ mass to energy, according to Einstein’s formula E=mc2. This energy is emitted as a final strong burst of gravitational waves. It is these gravitational waves that LIGO has observed.

The existence of gravitational waves was first demonstrated in the 1970s and 80s by Joseph Taylor, Jr., and colleagues. Taylor and Russell Hulse discovered in 1974 a binary system composed of a pulsar in orbit around a neutron star. Taylor and Joel M. Weisberg in 1982 found that the orbit of the pulsar was slowly shrinking over time because of the release of energy in the form of gravitational waves. For discovering the pulsar and showing that it would make possible this particular gravitational wave measurement, Hulse and Taylor were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1993.

The new LIGO discovery is the first observation of gravitational waves themselves, made by measuring the tiny disturbances the waves make to space and time as they pass through the earth.

“Our observation of gravitational waves accomplishes an ambitious goal set out over 5 decades ago to directly detect this elusive phenomenon and better understand the universe, and, fittingly, fulfills Einstein’s legacy on the 100th anniversary of his general theory of relativity,” says Caltech’s David H. Reitze, executive director of the LIGO Laboratory.

The discovery was made possible by the enhanced capabilities of Advanced LIGO, a major upgrade that increases the sensitivity of the instruments compared to the first generation LIGO detectors, enabling a large increase in the volume of the universe probed—and the discovery of gravitational waves during its first observation run. The US National Science Foundation leads in financial support for Advanced LIGO. Funding organizations in Germany (Max Planck Society), the U.K. (Science and Technology Facilities Council, STFC) and Australia (Australian Research Council) also have made significant commitments to the project. Several of the key technologies that made Advanced LIGO so much more sensitive have been developed and tested by the German UK GEO collaboration. Significant computer resources have been contributed by the AEI Hannover Atlas Cluster, the LIGO Laboratory, Syracuse University, and the University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee. Several universities designed, built, and tested key components for Advanced LIGO: The Australian National University, the University of Adelaide, the University of Florida, Stanford University, Columbia University of the City of New York, and Louisiana State University.

“In 1992, when LIGO’s initial funding was approved, it represented the biggest investment the NSF had ever made,” says France Córdova, NSF director. “It was a big risk. But the National Science Foundation is the agency that takes these kinds of risks. We support fundamental science and engineering at a point in the road to discovery where that path is anything but clear. We fund trailblazers. It’s why the U.S. continues to be a global leader in advancing knowledge.”

LIGO research is carried out by the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC), a group of more than 1000 scientists from universities around the United States and in 14 other countries. More than 90 universities and research institutes in the LSC develop detector technology and analyze data; approximately 250 students are strong contributing members of the collaboration. The LSC detector network includes the LIGO interferometers and the GEO600 detector. The GEO team includes scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute, AEI), Leibniz Universität Hannover, along with partners at the University of Glasgow, Cardiff University, the University of Birmingham, other universities in the United Kingdom, and the University of the Balearic Islands in Spain.

“This detection is the beginning of a new era: The field of gravitational wave astronomy is now a reality,” says Gabriela González, LSC spokesperson and professor of physics and astronomy at Louisiana State University.

LIGO was originally proposed as a means of detecting these gravitational waves in the 1980s by Rainer Weiss, professor of physics, emeritus, from MIT; Kip Thorne, Caltech’s Richard P. Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics, emeritus; and Ronald Drever, professor of physics, emeritus, also from Caltech.

“The description of this observation is beautifully described in the Einstein theory of general relativity formulated 100 years ago and comprises the first test of the theory in strong gravitation. It would have been wonderful to watch Einstein’s face had we been able to tell him,” says Weiss.

“With this discovery, we humans are embarking on a marvelous new quest: the quest to explore the warped side of the universe—objects and phenomena that are made from warped spacetime. Colliding black holes and gravitational waves are our first beautiful examples,” says Thorne.

Virgo research is carried out by the Virgo Collaboration, consisting of more than 250 physicists and engineers belonging to 19 different European research groups: 6 from Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in France; 8 from the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN) in Italy; 2 in The Netherlands with Nikhef; the Wigner RCP in Hungary; the POLGRAW group in Poland; and the European Gravitational Observatory (EGO), the laboratory hosting the Virgo detector near Pisa in Italy.

Fulvio Ricci, Virgo Spokesperson, notes that, “This is a significant milestone for physics, but more importantly merely the start of many new and exciting astrophysical discoveries to come with LIGO and Virgo.”

Bruce Allen, managing director of the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute), adds, “Einstein thought gravitational waves were too weak to detect, and didn’t believe in black holes. But I don’t think he’d have minded being wrong!”

“The Advanced LIGO detectors are a tour de force of science and technology, made possible by a truly exceptional international team of technicians, engineers, and scientists,” says David Shoemaker of MIT, the project leader for Advanced LIGO. “We are very proud that we finished this NSF-funded project on time and on budget.”

At each observatory, the two-and-a-half-mile (4-km) long L-shaped LIGO interferometer uses laser light split into two beams that travel back and forth down the arms (four-foot diameter tubes kept under a near-perfect vacuum). The beams are used to monitor the distance between mirrors precisely positioned at the ends of the arms. According to Einstein’s theory, the distance between the mirrors will change by an infinitesimal amount when a gravitational wave passes by the detector. A change in the lengths of the arms smaller than one-ten-thousandth the diameter of a proton (10-19 meter) can be detected.

“To make this fantastic milestone possible took a global collaboration of scientists—laser and suspension technology developed for our GEO600 detector was used to help make Advanced LIGO the most sophisticated gravitational wave detector ever created,” says Sheila Rowan, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Glasgow.

Independent and widely separated observatories are necessary to determine the direction of the event causing the gravitational waves, and also to verify that the signals come from space and are not from some other local phenomenon.

Toward this end, the LIGO Laboratory is working closely with scientists in India at the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, the Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology, and the Institute for Plasma to establish a third Advanced LIGO detector on the Indian subcontinent. Awaiting approval by the government of India, it could be operational early in the next decade. The additional detector will greatly improve the ability of the global detector network to localize gravitational-wave sources.

“Hopefully this first observation will accelerate the construction of a global network of detectors to enable accurate source location in the era of multi-messenger astronomy,” says David McClelland, professor of physics and director of the Centre for Gravitational Physics at the Australian National University.

Additional video and image assets can be found here: http://mediaassets.caltech.edu/gwave

Absolutely amazing and incredible 100 years ago and now today!

Humans, opiates, and human animals.

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Jessica, 28, is hooked on opioids and detoxing during pregnancy.

I have to say that we, as animals, are the most confusing and frustrating creatures on the face of the Earth. We overpopulate it and abuse it, leading to it trying to shake us off, but with little success due to our ability to spread like a fungus and adapt. Truly, we are our own worst enemy. Yes, I am aware of the whole, “what if this was your daughter,” situation, but I really believe that this would be taken out of the equation if we could just live up to our animal potential. The opiate epidemic is just another way that nature is trying to stem the tide of our roaming the Earth like ravenous wolves destroying everything in our paths. This country needs fewer freedoms in order to counter the burden of human stupidity and right some of the wrongs that supposed freedom has wrought.

Jessica went down a wrong path yes, but needed to be sterilized before her meth-addled ass became pregnant with yet another challenged child that the State will eventually care for when it gets here. We pontificate about right and wrong, patting ourselves on the back for our allegiance to the tenets of freedom and righteousness all the while allowing SO much freedom as to fuck over an entire generation born to people who cannot even take care of self. Scores of children populate schools needing special education and lifelong disability checks related to fetal alcohol and drug syndromes that will forever keep most of them from being functioning members of society and also exempting them from ever paying a dime in taxes. This, by ANY economic standard, is unsustainable and completely ludicrous, leading one to ponder what the future will be like when over half the of-age population is incapable of holding gainful employment.

Yes, I am aware that the 1% counts on this strife among it’s plebes, but us plebes need to stand up to correct the system and demand a larger piece of the pie AND temper our freedoms to make sure that those who cannot take care of themselves are not given the opportunity to reproduce. Extreme leftys look at sensibility as ‘Draconian,’ while moderates look at tightening controls on certain people as being a responsibility of higher-functioning animals who actively take care of their ecosystem. Some members could care less about custodial duties as they sit on their asses and exercise the ability to spread their legs, but abuse the subsequent results of those actions. This is because of a system that feels that mentally impaired people and drug addicts deserve the same Constitutional rights as a completely functional responsible person; that is the most profoundly flawed and illogical position that a person could take! If one cannot take care of self then one should be rendered unable to ABUSE another human being by bringing it into an incredibly toxic environment.

I, as a healthcare worker, constantly see cases where schizophrenics are allowed to have children and drug-addicts are on the sixth kid up in OB as Child Protective Services stands by waiting to take, yet another, drug addicted child into custody. Where is our fucking learning curve people??!! Jessica needs to have a mandatory tubal ligation with this one to prevent any more mistakes! Get the net people! Addicts need mandatory sterilization, not prenatal care! We are overpopulated and saving our most idiotic individuals which equates to subverting the Darwin Awards! Do the American people want the Government to enact legislation on this once we have about 9 Billion people on the Earth? Or do the people want to take the lead on this one before draconian measures have to be made? People need to wake up and fast.

via Stopping the opioid crisis in the womb — WTKR.com

via Stopping the opioid crisis in the womb — WTKR.com

Proof of Jesus

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Have you ever heard Gary Habermas, Michael Licona or William Lane Craig defend the resurrection of Jesus in a debate by saying that the resurrection is the best explanation for the “minimal facts” about Jesus? The lists of minimal facts that they use are typically agreed to by their opponents during the debates. Minimal facts […]

This is one of the ways in which these people attempt to prove the existence of the corporeal Christ. This is another specious argument that attempts to draw in those that are searching, but have strong skeptical intuition.

via What criteria do historians use to get to the minimal facts about the historical Jesus? — WINTERY KNIGHT

Minimal proof at best.

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Have you ever heard Gary Habermas, Michael Licona or William Lane Craig defend the resurrection of Jesus in a debate by saying that the resurrection is the best explanation for the “minimal facts” about Jesus? The lists of minimal facts that they use are typically agreed to by their opponents during the debates. Minimal facts […]

via What criteria do historians use to get to the minimal facts about the historical Jesus? — WINTERY KNIGHT