ROME, Ga. (AP) - A week after a tornado struck northwest Georgia, an examination of damage has resulted in losses estimated at $1.82 million in the Rome area.
The Rome News-Tribune reports (http://bit.ly/tog9f5 ) Floyd County Emergency Management Agency Director Scotty Hancock says two-thirds of the losses were incurred by six businesses, with none listed as destroyed.
Keith Clark, owner of the West Rome IGA grocery, says he's still assessing damage to his store but says the roof over the shopping center will have to be replaced. He says thousands of dollars worth of food had to be dumped.
Thirty-one other businesses or commercial establishments also sustained losses that are being listed as minor, meaning losses of at least $20,000 were estimated.
Hancock says Floyd County is eligible for assistance through the Small Business Administration.
Information from: Rome News-Tribune, http://www.romenews-tribune.com
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
NEW YORK ? Treasury prices climbed Wednesday as more signs of strain emerged in the European banking system.
The price of the benchmark 10-year Treasury note rose 75 cents per $100 invested. Its yield fell to 1.93 percent from 2 percent late Tuesday.
News that European lenders parked a record amount of cash with the European Central Bank rather than lend it to each other got investors worried. Also the yield on Italy's 10-year government bond was still dangerously high at 6.97 percent, even after two successful auctions of short-term debt.
The latest worries about Europe kept demand strong for Treasurys.
The yield on the 30-year bond fell to 2.92 percent from 3.03 percent as its price rose $2.19 per $100 invested. The yield on the two-year note fell to 0.27 percent from 0.29 percent.
The three-month T-bill paid a yield of 0.01 percent. Its discount was not available.
Trading was quiet in the holiday-shortened week. U.S. markets were closed Monday in observance of Christmas.
Ford has just announced that they will be rolling out a new addition in the Ford Focus range for 2012, with the new Focus with one litre ?EcoBoost petrol engine?. The new one litre Ford Focus will be just one of the vehicles in the Ford car range that will getting the new one litre EcoBoost power unit.
Dorset (PRUnderground) December 29th, 2011
If you are thinking about buying a new car in 2012 or possibly you have already purchased a Ford car from a used Ford Car Dealers, you have come to be reassured of the build quality and great driving experience you would expect from a Ford car.
With this in mind, Ford has just announced that they will be rolling out a new addition in the Ford Focus range for 2012, with the new Focus with one litre ?EcoBoost petrol engine?. The new one litre Ford Focus will be just one of the vehicles in the Ford car range that will getting the new one litre EcoBoost power unit.
This a clear step for producing an even more environmentally friendly Ford Focus with this new one litre, 123bhp petrol engine, as the figures look very promising with114g/km of CO2 and at the same time still managing to return 56.5mpg. Added to this with these low emission figures will mean it will place the Focus into one of the lowest road tax brackets in its sector, which will prove appealing to motorists looking to reduce their annual motoring costs.
Ford are even planning to produce an even more frugal version of this engine which will be a 99bhp unit, which should see a reduction of emissions even further, down to a mere 109g/km.
For anyone who might think this is engine could be under powered, think again! As the new 1-litre EcoBoost petrol engine has the highest power output per litre compared to any other Ford production car, which amazingly includes the Ford Focus RS hot hatch and also the Ford GT supercar, so this little car punches above its weight.
So if you are possibly looking for Ford cars for salein the near future, or you are thinking of waiting till the launch of the new Ford Focus with the 1-litre ?EcoBoost petrol engine, speak to you local Ford dealer soon to get the best deal available.
About Foray Motor Group:
Foray Motor Group are leading providers of new and used Ford cars and are committed to providing comprehensive choice and competitive pricing to all of their customers. With dealerships in Salisbury, Poole, Dorchester, Yeovil, Taunton, Andover, Shaftesbury, Trowbridge, Bridgwater and Chard, Foray Motor Group offer servicing and vehicles throughout the South West.
###
Tags: Ford car dealers, Ford car dealership, Ford Cars Dorset, Ford Cars for sale, Ford Focus Econetic, low emissions, new 1.0-litre engine, Used Ford Car dealers, Used Ford Cars, Used Ford Cars Dorset
???????? Dade County continues to recover from the April 27th tornadoes, and now a former Alabama football player donates NCAA championship tickets to raffle off. ????????The Dade Organization Acting In Disaster has done several fundraisers so far to help disaster victims. ????????This is their first house to rebuild, and they're planning on 4 more, plus repairs to other homes. ????????Just a 20-dollar donation gets you entered to win the two tickets to the LSU and Alabama game, and you can enter multiple times! ????????DOAD Treasurer Capt. David Duvall says,?"I look at it like it could be my family that needs help, and so if people think about it that way, what if it was my family, what if I needed help? Would people be willing to help me? ????????For more information on how you can donate and enter to win the tickets, click on the link. ????????The organization is planning more fundraisers. ????????They say they'll need about 300-thousand-dollars to do everything on their to do list.
There are only a few pivotal moments in politics that really live up to the billing; most incremental, tactical decisions matter far less than reporters and strategists are inclined to believe.
But every year, there are a handful of decisions, good and bad, that shift an election cycle in meaningful ways. A good number of those choices fall into the category of ?amazingly self-destructive political malpractice.?
Continue Reading
This last year had more than its fair share of those moments, but we?ve narrowed it down to a short list of 10. Here are POLITICO?s choices for the worst political strategic decisions of 2011:
Obama pivots to deficits
Battered by the midterm Republican wave election, President Barack Obama went to Congress in January with a proposition: let?s get serious about debt reduction.
?Now that the worst of the recession is over,? Obama said in his 2011 State of the Union address, ?we have to confront the fact that our government spends more than it takes in.?
The trouble was, most Americans were still more alarmed by 9 percent-plus unemployment than they were by the ballooning size of the national debt. That didn?t stop the president from spending months emphasizing deficit reduction, avoiding any new economic stimulus that might require additional spending and chasing a grand bargain on the national debt.
During all that time, the subject Obama didn?t own was jobs ? the most important issue of the 2010 campaign, and likely the 2012 race as well.
The worst setback for Obama came in early August, when months? worth of talks with House Speaker John Boehner over the national debt ceiling ended in a paltry and conciliatory final agreement, and a lot of wasted time for a president with little to spare.
Republicans vote on the Ryan budget
It was the most famous piece of legislation proposed in 2011 ? a sweeping plan, trumpeted by Republican leaders, to restructure taxes, spending and entitlement programs and bring the federal budget under control.
The backlash against the plan was powerful and immediate. House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan?s proposal passed the House. The Senate stopped it cold, but not before a powerful backlash against the Ryan plan?s proposed changes to Medicare handed a GOP-leaning New York congressional seat to the Democrats.
The Ryan plan will be back next year, just in time for Democrats to accuse vulnerable Republican lawmakers of trying to ?end Medicare.? As one congressional aide predicted to POLITICO in April: ?You have a couple dozen members who are going to pay a pretty serious price for this vote if they end up in a tough race ? It?s not just cuts to Medicare. It?s ?Republicans are ending Medicare as we know it.? That?s not demagoguery. That is the case.?
Defenders of the Ryan plan say that it helped the GOP corner the market on fiscal conservatism and point out that the website Politifact called the Democrats? Medicare argument the ?lie of the year.? None of that changes the fact that marginal Republican members are heading into 2012 with the Ryan budget on their voting records, and without a law to show for it.
Tim Pawlenty bets it all on Ames
As the Republican primary race has cycled through a list of would-be challengers to Mitt Romney, one question keeps popping up: what if Tim Pawlenty hadn?t dropped out in August?
We wouldn?t have to imagine if the former Minnesota governor hadn?t decided to stake his entire White House bid on a summer straw poll in Ames, Iowa ? a costly, activist-dominated event with no actual delegates at stake. When Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul relegated Pawlenty to a distant third, he pulled the plug on his campaign.
Pawlenty advisers now reflect with some frustration that if they had treated the Ames contest for what it is ? a circus-like state party fundraiser ? their guy might still have had a shot at the big time. At an October event unveiling his official portrait in state Capitol, Pawlenty said that he, too, regretted the decision to put all his chips on Iowa.
Lila was born on February 14, 1915 in Grafton, ND to Ingvald and Julia Mohagen. She passed away December 23 at home in Albuquerque. She is survived by her husband, Donald R. Weldon; daughter, Nancy M. Powers of Port Angeles, WA; and sons, Allan W. Ness of St. Clair, MI; Douglas N. Weldon of Longwood, FL; Rick A. Weldon and wife, Jenness; and Robert G. Weldon and wife, Robin, of Tucson, AZ. Grandchildren include Bradley Ness and wife, Jennifer; Theresa Abbondanza and husband, Tony, of Edgewood, NM; Garrett DeLaBarre and wife, Amy, of Port Angeles, WA; Eric DeLaBarre and wife, Julie, of Santa Monica, CA; Jennifer Weldon of Hoboken, NJ; Cara Weldon of Longwood, FL; Whitney Weldon and Leslie Weldon of Tucson, AZ; Andrea Archar and husband, Ben, of Chandler, AZ; six great-grandchildren; nieces, Pat Olson and husband, Randy of Grafton, ND; Stacey Standley and husband, Brad, of Albany TWP, ME: Jamey Peden and husband, Chuck, of Boston, MA. She was preceded in death by her parents, Ingvald and Julia Mohagen and sisters Evelyn Johnson of Mesa, AZ and Eileen Nygard of Grafton, ND. She was a member of the Hoffmantown Church in Albuquerque. At her request, there will be no services. Interment will be at the French Mausoleum at Sunset Park at 10:00 a.m. on Tuesday, December 27. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to Animal Humane Association of New Mexico, 615 Virginia Street SE, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87108 or a charity of your choice. The family wishes to thank the Presbyterian Hospital Hospice staff for all their kindness and support.
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For more than 50 years, NORAD ? the North American Aerospace Defense Command ? has used its high-tech missile-tracking systems to track Santa's progress during his annual Christmas Eve flight around the world.
For a 24-hour period, about 1,200 military volunteers take shifts manning the command center at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado; they monitor radar screens and field calls from excited 7-year-olds who ask for updates on Santa's location. They also update Kris Kringle's progress on the Google Earth map on the NORAD Tracks Santa website, as well as the Facebook page and the Twitter feed.
For the first time this year, people can even keep constant tabs on Santa's sleigh by downloading the NORAD Tracks Santa iPhone and Android apps. In other words, the program is a big deal, and it get bigger every Christmas.
But how do they do it? How does NORAD "track" Santa? [Is There a Santa Claus?]
When asked whether the volunteers plan the jolly old elf's route ahead of time, U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander Bill Lewis, a Santa tracker, was having none of that.
"We don't plan it, he does," Lewis said. "We just monitor his travels with our ground-based radar, satellites, fighter aircraft, and, of course, the Santa Cams ? he passes over certain cities, and based on the track we're projecting, we've got cameras set up."
The NORAD team monitors a radar system called the North Warning System, which consists of 47 installations strung across the northern border of North America, for indications that Santa Claus has left the North Pole.
"Rudolph's nose puts off quite the heat signature," Lewis told Life's Little Mysteries.
The Christmas program isn't so out of the ordinary for the men and women of NORAD: "365 days a year we track possible threats to the homeland. So tracking Santa as an airborne object fits into our mission set," he said.
Through his experience as a Santa Tracker, Lewis was able to offer a bit of insight into an age-old question: How Santa manages to make it all the way around the world, sort through all the gifts for the good boys and girls and get home before dawn. "Santa has this way of transcending time. We've estimated that he travels at the speed of starlight," Lewis said. [Can Tech Help Santa Deliver the Goods? 5 Tech Upgrades for Claus ]
That's 671 million miles (1 billion kilometers) per hour, which means Santa can travel more than 16 billion miles (26 billion km) in the 24 hours allotted for his journey. A trip round the world is only 25,000 miles (40,000 kilometers), so at his estimated flight speed, Santa could technically circumnavigate Earth 650,000 times if he wanted.
He doesn't, of course ? instead, he takes it slow and downs a mindblowing number of cookies and glasses of milk along the way.
This story was provided by Life's Little Mysteries, a sister site to LiveScience. Follow Natalie Wolchover on Twitter @nattyover. Follow Life's Little Mysteries on Twitter @llmysteries, then join us on Facebook.
In the icy parking lot of the Wal-Mart in Williston, N.D., the next wave of economic refugees is washing in, counting down the hours until they can turn their back on a past they?d like to forget.
On one chilly day in December, there?s the family from North Carolina, which has crammed mom, dad, teenage son and two dogs into an old Winnebago, driving some 3,000 kilometres in hopes of finding work. And there is Eric Larsson, who has come more than 1,000 kilometres from eastern Idaho in a truck loaded with tools, looking for a job after his position vanished ? along with his house ? three years ago. He?s pulling a trailer he just bought so he can have a place to sleep.
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?I pretty much spent $10,000 on a wing and a prayer to get here,? he says.
These people, and thousands of others whose stories bear a striking similarity, have come to join the frenzy ? by plane, by ratty truck, by train. Williston, with a population of around 20,000, was a quiet North Dakota town, surrounded by oil fields that had been in decline for decades. Now, it is the heart of the Bakken, a new oil play that has abruptly woken one of the sleepiest states in the Union, transforming North Dakota into an energy heavyweight.
It has also made Williston, whose surrounding county now has the lowest unemployment rate in the entire country, a new destination for America?s jobless, homeless and would-be rich.
There is the Louisiana driller, who brought an entire crew with him after discovering he could boost his pay by $15 an hour by heading north. There is the family who came with an infant and a tent, until someone took pity on them ahead of a major snowstorm. There is the man who sought refuge inside a clothing rack at Wal-Mart, having no other place to stay.
There is Scotty Lail, who watched the bank seize his truck, his fifth-wheel RV trailer and his house after he and 3,500 others were laid off from a Freightliner manufacturing plant. He came to Williston to rebuild, starting with a credit rating that, he hopes, will soon be sufficiently repaired to let him back into home ownership.
?You gotta go to where the money is at,? he says.
Even the jet set is seeking a Bakken salvation. Wealthy hedge fund managers and private investors have left New York for Williston in Learjets, drawn by hopes of sinking millions into land that can be developed for a return that seems more certain than anything the financial markets might provide.
Williston is an undeniable boomtown, a modern-day Dawson City or San Francisco ? the gold-rush analogies are inevitable. But in many ways, the best comparison lies just over a thousand kilometres north. Williston is America?s Fort McMurray ? down to many of the incredible details.
In Williston, like Fort Mac a few years ago, fast-food joints post lunch-time hourly rates that are double the minimum wage. McDonald?s offers hiring bonuses. Its drive-through ? recently widened into two lanes ? is so busy, the line of trucks often spills out onto the street. A local gym has lineups 10 deep for its men?s showers, as the employed homeless turn wherever they can.
Temporary accommodations have sprung up like weeds. Permits have been issued for 9,400 spots in ?man-camps,? the local term for mobile-home-style worker camps that have been growing so fast the county issued a six-month moratorium this fall on any additions. Existing hotels are jammed. Two hotels opened this spring. Six new ones are under construction, and oil service companies are booking entire floors before they are even built.
Drive an hour in any direction from Williston, and the bare hills are being cleared to accommodate new hotels, new camps and, often, mini RV camps in the backyard of farm residences. At a going rate of $500 to $1,000 a month just to park and plug in a camper, there?s good money to be made for a landowner that doesn?t mind a dozen new neighbours.
In an extreme housing crisis, prices have ballooned. Single-family family homes that sold for $40,000 five years ago now go for $150,000. Some single-bedroom apartments that were going for $500 a month now fetch $2,000. One commercial property worth $50,000 not long ago now leases for $110,000 ? a year.
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Twitter / CBS Los Angeles: The #Chicago #Bulls have b ...The have beat the 88-87 in the first game of the season at the Staples Center. More at .Il y a environ 2 heuresvia web
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Amazon's recent root-destroying Kindle Fire update 6.2.1 not only removed existing roots but disabled the easiest means of re-rooting—SuperOneClick. But what if you want to keep your root more than update? Gizmodo's Chris Beidelman has devised this ingenious and simple workaround: More »
First ever direct measurement of the Earth's rotationPublic release date: 22-Dec-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Klaus Becker becker@zv.tum.de Technische Universitaet Muenchen
Pinpointing the orientation of the Earth's axis using the world's most stable ring laser
This press release is available in German.
The Earth wobbles. Like a spinning top touched in mid-spin, its rotational axis fluctuates in relation to space. This is partly caused by gravitation from the sun and the moon. At the same time, the Earth's rotational axis constantly changes relative to the Earth's surface. On the one hand, this is caused by variation in atmospheric pressure, ocean loading and wind. These elements combine in an effect known as the Chandler wobble to create polar motion. Named after the scientist who discovered it, this phenomenon has a period of around 435 days. On the other hand, an event known as the "annual wobble" causes the rotational axis to move over a period of a year. This is due to the Earth's elliptical orbit around the sun. These two effects cause the Earth's axis to migrate irregularly along a circular path with a radius of up to six meters.
Capturing these movements is crucial to create a reliable coordinate system that can feed navigation systems or project trajectory paths in space travel. "Locating a point to the exact centimeter for global positioning is an extremely dynamic process after all, at our latitude, we are moving at around 350 meters to the east per second," explains Prof. Karl Ulrich Schreiber who directed the project in TUM's Research Section Satellite Geodesy. The orientation of the Earth's axis relative to space and its rotational velocity are currently established in a complicated process that involves 30 radio telescopes around the globe. Every Monday and Thursday, eight to twelve of these telescopes alternately measure the direction between Earth and specific quasars. Scientists assume that these galaxy nuclei never change their position and can therefore be used as reference points. The geodetic observatory Wettzell, which is run by TUM and Germany's Federal Agency for Cartography (BKG), is also part of this process.
In the mid-1990s, scientists of TUM and BKG joined forces with researchers at New Zealand's University of Canterbury to develop a simpler method that would be capable of continuously tracking the Chandler wobble and annual wobble. "We also wanted to develop an alternative that would enable us to eliminate any systematic errors," continues Schreiber. "After all, there was always a possibility that the reference points in space were not actually stationary." The scientists had the idea of building a ring laser similar to ones used in aircraft guidance systems only millions of times more exact. "At the time, we were almost laughed off. Hardly anyone thought that our project was feasible," says Schreiber.
Yet at the end of the 1990s, work on the world's most stable ring laser got underway at the Wettzell observatory. The installation comprises two counter-rotating laser beams that travel around a square path with mirrors in the corners, which form a closed beam path (hence the name ring laser). When the assembly rotates, the co-rotating light has farther to travel than the counter-rotating light. The beams adjust their wavelengths, causing the optical frequency to change. The scientists can use this difference to calculate the rotational velocity the instrumentation experiences. In Wettzell, it is the Earth that rotates, not the ring laser. To ensure that only the Earth's rotation influences the laser beams, the four-by-four-meter assembly is anchored in a solid concrete pillar, which extends six meters down into the solid rock of the Earth's crust.
The Earth's rotation affects light in different ways, depending on the laser's location. "If we were at one of the poles, the Earth and the laser's rotational axes would be in complete synch and their rotational velocity would map 1:1," details Schreiber. "At the equator, however, the light beam wouldn't even notice that the Earth is turning." The scientists therefore have to factor in the position of the Wettzell laser at the 49th degree of latitude. Any change in the Earth's rotational axis is reflected in the indicators for rotational velocity. The light's behavior therefore reveals shifts in the Earth's axis.
"The principle is simple," adds Schreiber. "The biggest challenge was ensuring that the laser remains stable enough for us to measure the weak geophysical signal without interference especially over a period of several months." In other words, the scientists had to eliminate any changes in frequency that do not come from the Earth's rotation. These include environmental factors such as atmospheric pressure and temperature. They relied predominantly on a ceramic glass plate and a pressurized cabin to achieve this. The researchers mounted the ring laser on a nine-ton Zerodur base plate, also using Zerodur for the supporting beams. They chose Zerodur as it is extremely resistant to changes in temperature. The installation is housed in a pressurized cabin, which registers changes in atmospheric pressure and temperature (12 degrees) and automatically compensates for these. The scientists sunk the lab five meters below ground level to keep these kinds of ambient influences to a minimum. It is insulated from above with layers of Styrodur and clay, and topped by a four-meter high mound of Earth. Scientists have to pass through a twenty-meter tunnel with five cold storage doors and a lock to get to the laser.
Under these conditions, the researchers have succeeded in corroborating the Chandler and annual wobble measurements based on the data captured by radio telescopes. They now aim to make the apparatus more accurate, enabling them to determine changes in the Earth's rotational axis over a single day. The scientists also plan to make the ring laser capable of continuous operation so that it can run for a period of years without any deviations. "In simple terms," concludes Schreiber, "in future, we want to be able to just pop down into the basement and find out how fast the Earth is accurately turning right now."
###
Publication:
Schreiber, K. U.; Klgel, T.; Wells, J.-P. R.; Hurst, R. B.; Gebauer, A.: How to detect the Chandler and the annual wobble of the Earth with a large ring laser gyroscope; Physical Review Letters, Vol. 107, Nr. 17, EID 173904, American Physical Society, ISSN 0031-9007, DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.107.173904, 2011
Exceptional Research Spotlight recognized by the American Physical Society:
Prof. Karl Ulrich Schreiber
Technical University Munich / Federal Agency for Cartography
Research Section Satellite Geodesy
Phone: 49-9941-603-113
E-Mail: schreiber@fs.wettzell.de
Further information:
http://www.fs.wettzell.de/
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
First ever direct measurement of the Earth's rotationPublic release date: 22-Dec-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Klaus Becker becker@zv.tum.de Technische Universitaet Muenchen
Pinpointing the orientation of the Earth's axis using the world's most stable ring laser
This press release is available in German.
The Earth wobbles. Like a spinning top touched in mid-spin, its rotational axis fluctuates in relation to space. This is partly caused by gravitation from the sun and the moon. At the same time, the Earth's rotational axis constantly changes relative to the Earth's surface. On the one hand, this is caused by variation in atmospheric pressure, ocean loading and wind. These elements combine in an effect known as the Chandler wobble to create polar motion. Named after the scientist who discovered it, this phenomenon has a period of around 435 days. On the other hand, an event known as the "annual wobble" causes the rotational axis to move over a period of a year. This is due to the Earth's elliptical orbit around the sun. These two effects cause the Earth's axis to migrate irregularly along a circular path with a radius of up to six meters.
Capturing these movements is crucial to create a reliable coordinate system that can feed navigation systems or project trajectory paths in space travel. "Locating a point to the exact centimeter for global positioning is an extremely dynamic process after all, at our latitude, we are moving at around 350 meters to the east per second," explains Prof. Karl Ulrich Schreiber who directed the project in TUM's Research Section Satellite Geodesy. The orientation of the Earth's axis relative to space and its rotational velocity are currently established in a complicated process that involves 30 radio telescopes around the globe. Every Monday and Thursday, eight to twelve of these telescopes alternately measure the direction between Earth and specific quasars. Scientists assume that these galaxy nuclei never change their position and can therefore be used as reference points. The geodetic observatory Wettzell, which is run by TUM and Germany's Federal Agency for Cartography (BKG), is also part of this process.
In the mid-1990s, scientists of TUM and BKG joined forces with researchers at New Zealand's University of Canterbury to develop a simpler method that would be capable of continuously tracking the Chandler wobble and annual wobble. "We also wanted to develop an alternative that would enable us to eliminate any systematic errors," continues Schreiber. "After all, there was always a possibility that the reference points in space were not actually stationary." The scientists had the idea of building a ring laser similar to ones used in aircraft guidance systems only millions of times more exact. "At the time, we were almost laughed off. Hardly anyone thought that our project was feasible," says Schreiber.
Yet at the end of the 1990s, work on the world's most stable ring laser got underway at the Wettzell observatory. The installation comprises two counter-rotating laser beams that travel around a square path with mirrors in the corners, which form a closed beam path (hence the name ring laser). When the assembly rotates, the co-rotating light has farther to travel than the counter-rotating light. The beams adjust their wavelengths, causing the optical frequency to change. The scientists can use this difference to calculate the rotational velocity the instrumentation experiences. In Wettzell, it is the Earth that rotates, not the ring laser. To ensure that only the Earth's rotation influences the laser beams, the four-by-four-meter assembly is anchored in a solid concrete pillar, which extends six meters down into the solid rock of the Earth's crust.
The Earth's rotation affects light in different ways, depending on the laser's location. "If we were at one of the poles, the Earth and the laser's rotational axes would be in complete synch and their rotational velocity would map 1:1," details Schreiber. "At the equator, however, the light beam wouldn't even notice that the Earth is turning." The scientists therefore have to factor in the position of the Wettzell laser at the 49th degree of latitude. Any change in the Earth's rotational axis is reflected in the indicators for rotational velocity. The light's behavior therefore reveals shifts in the Earth's axis.
"The principle is simple," adds Schreiber. "The biggest challenge was ensuring that the laser remains stable enough for us to measure the weak geophysical signal without interference especially over a period of several months." In other words, the scientists had to eliminate any changes in frequency that do not come from the Earth's rotation. These include environmental factors such as atmospheric pressure and temperature. They relied predominantly on a ceramic glass plate and a pressurized cabin to achieve this. The researchers mounted the ring laser on a nine-ton Zerodur base plate, also using Zerodur for the supporting beams. They chose Zerodur as it is extremely resistant to changes in temperature. The installation is housed in a pressurized cabin, which registers changes in atmospheric pressure and temperature (12 degrees) and automatically compensates for these. The scientists sunk the lab five meters below ground level to keep these kinds of ambient influences to a minimum. It is insulated from above with layers of Styrodur and clay, and topped by a four-meter high mound of Earth. Scientists have to pass through a twenty-meter tunnel with five cold storage doors and a lock to get to the laser.
Under these conditions, the researchers have succeeded in corroborating the Chandler and annual wobble measurements based on the data captured by radio telescopes. They now aim to make the apparatus more accurate, enabling them to determine changes in the Earth's rotational axis over a single day. The scientists also plan to make the ring laser capable of continuous operation so that it can run for a period of years without any deviations. "In simple terms," concludes Schreiber, "in future, we want to be able to just pop down into the basement and find out how fast the Earth is accurately turning right now."
###
Publication:
Schreiber, K. U.; Klgel, T.; Wells, J.-P. R.; Hurst, R. B.; Gebauer, A.: How to detect the Chandler and the annual wobble of the Earth with a large ring laser gyroscope; Physical Review Letters, Vol. 107, Nr. 17, EID 173904, American Physical Society, ISSN 0031-9007, DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.107.173904, 2011
Exceptional Research Spotlight recognized by the American Physical Society:
Prof. Karl Ulrich Schreiber
Technical University Munich / Federal Agency for Cartography
Research Section Satellite Geodesy
Phone: 49-9941-603-113
E-Mail: schreiber@fs.wettzell.de
Further information:
http://www.fs.wettzell.de/
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Scientists say they've found two planets that survived being swallowed by a red-giant star. Earth won't be so fortunate when our sun becomes a red giant in 5 billion years, but the find shows what can happen to solar systems after such dramatic events.
Forget this season's final episode of "Survivor." The ultimate survivors appear to be two small planet-candidates engulfed for a billion years inside the searing envelope of a red-giant star. And they emerged to tell the tale.
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The planets are a glimpse at what can happen to a solar system when a star begins its death throes, becoming bloated and red as it consumes the last of the hydrogen fuel in its core. The same fate awaits our sun in about 5 billion years.
The two planet-candidates announced Tuesday are among the tiniest yet revealed by data from NASA's planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft. And they hold the potential to shed light not only on how planets could survive such a torching, but also how they might affect the evolution of red-giant stars themselves.
"On many levels, it's very cool," says Elizabeth Green, a researcher with the University of Arizona's Steward Observatory and a member of the team reporting its observations in the Dec. 22 issue of the journal Nature.
A red giant originates as a star roughly like our sun ? between 0.5 and 8 times the sun?s mass. As the star exhausts its hydrogen fuel, its core collapses. The heat of that event causes remaining hydrogen in the outer shell to begin fusion, and the star?s outer layer, or photosphere, expands.
By the time the red-giant phase of our sun ends, the Earth, Venus, and Mercury are likely to be vaporized. But scientists have examples of other objects ? planets and brown-dwarf stars ? that survived being enveloped by red-giant stars they orbited.
None of them, however, is like the ones reported Tuesday. All the previous examples were bigger objects that orbited farther from their parent stars to begin with. For that reason, they didn't spiral as deeply into their stars? photospheres. When these stars? red-giant phase ended ? and the stars shrank back to become helium-burning so-called subdwarf B stars ? the planets survived.
By contrast, the objects reported Tuesday appear to have traveled far deeper into the red-giant's photosphere and survived only as tiny remnants.
Indeed, the planet-candidates orbit so close to their subdwarf B star, named KIC 05807616, that their years are 5.8 hours and 8.2 hours long, respectively. With one side constantly facing the star, the planets? sun-side faces would roast at between 14,000 and 16,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
So how did the planet-candidates survive such a blistering? The team suggests that the objects may represent the rocky cores of stripped-down gas-giant planets that once orbited farther away.
It's a common platitude in the gaming industry: it's the killer titles that make or break a video game system. One case in point is Nintendo whose 3DS sales in Japan, one of the biggest video game markets in the world, are expected to cross the four million mark two months earlier than expected. Just two weeks ago, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata said this will happen "in February next year", but Japanese business daily The Nikkei is now reporting that cumulative domestic sales of the 3DS will reach four million before year-end. The newspaper is referring to stats from Tokyo-based market research company Enterbrain, which says Nintendo managed to sell a weekly record of 390,000 systems between December 12-18 (and 380,000 units between December 5 and 11).
IndyCar officials don't believe the construction of the fence at Las Vegas Motor Speedway played a role in the death of two-time Indianapolis 500 winner Dan Wheldon.
Instead, the larger factor was the wide grooves at the speedway that gave drivers a "limitless racing surface."
The investigation into Wheldon's fatal accident determined his head hit a post in the fencing, creating a "non-survivable" injury. Las Vegas is owned by Speedway Motor Sports Inc., and the organization constructs its fences with the posts inside the wiring.
IndyCar president Brian Barnhart says there is no indication Wheldon would have survived had the post been on the outside of the mesh wiring.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.
Dan Wheldon was killed when his head hit a post in the fencing at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, contact that created a "non-survivable injury" to the two-time Indianapolis 500 winner.
IndyCar officials released their findings Thursday of the Oct. 16 accident in the season finale. Wheldon was killed in an early 15-car accident when his car launched into the catchfence.
The report finds several factors contributed to what became a "perfect storm," and no one reason could be singled out as the sole cause of the accident. IndyCar found it is "impossible to determine with certainty that the result would have been any different if one or more of the factors did not exist."
The race had a season-high 34 cars and was held on a high-banked oval, and IndyCar CEO Randy Bernard says the size of the field and the banking itself were not solely responsible for the accident.
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It's a common platitude in the gaming industry: it's the killer titles that make or break a video game system. One case in point is 
