Fireworks or something else? Everyone has their own take on it.
Dead Blackbirds Fall Again In Arkansas Town
File photo of blackbirds.
BEEBE, Ark. — Authorities in a central Arkansas town say about 100 blackbirds died on New Year’s Eve after being spooked by fireworks, far less than the thousands that perished there a year ago.
Beebe police Lt. Brian Duke said Sunday that officials asked local residents who were celebrating the year’s end to stop setting off fireworks after blackbirds again started flying into objects and each other.
The state Game and Fish Commission says someone appears to have targeted a blackbird roost this year and that there was evidence of fireworks at the roost.
Large numbers of migrating blackbirds roost in the community northeast of Little Rock. Last year, fireworks were blamed after thousands of birds were rousted from their roosts and flew into homes, cars, telephone poles and each other.
In this article we will see what various researchers in this field, which has been given the name of Cymatics, have concluded.
– Is there a connection between sound, vibrations and physical reality?
– Do sound and vibrations have the potential to create?
What is a Cymatic water-sound-motion?
Water in a round cup, that is oscillating up and down with a certain frequency, will react on this impulse with waves on her surface. The water oscillates up and down in the middle, like when a stone is thrown in a pool. Like there a ringwave will grow out, and is been followed by other circular waves, all with the same centre, so concentric.
Ernst Chladni
In 1787, the jurist, musician and physicist Ernst Chladni published Entdeckungen über die Theorie des Klangesor ( Discoveries Concerning the Theory of Sound). In this and other pioneering works, Chladni, who was born in 1756, the same year as Mozart, and died in 1829, the same year as Beethoven, laid the foundations for that discipline within physics that came to be called acoustics, the science of sound. Among Chladni´s successes was finding a way to make visible what sound waves generate. With the help of a violin bow which he drew perpendicularly across the edge of flat plates covered with sand, he produced those patterns and shapes which today go by the term Chladni figures. What was the significance of this discovery? Chladni demonstrated once and for all that sound actually does affect physical matter and that it has the quality of creating geometric patterns.
Chladni figures.
What we are seeing in this illustration is primarily two things: areas that are and are not vibrating. When a flat plate of an elastic material is vibrated, the plate oscillates not only as a whole but also as parts. The boundaries between these vibrating parts, which are specific for every particular case, are called node lines and do not vibrate. The other parts are oscillating constantly. If sand is then put on this vibrating plate, the sand (black in the illustration) collects on the non-vibrating node lines. The oscillating parts or areas thus become empty. According to Jenny, the converse is true for liquids; that is to say, water lies on the vibrating parts and not on the node lines.
Lissajous Figures
In 1815 the American mathematician Nathaniel Bowditch began studying the patterns created by the intersection of two sine curves whose axes are perpendicular to each other, sometimes called Bowditch curves but more often Lissajous figures (see left and below images).
This after the French mathematician Jules-Antoine Lissajous, who, independently of Bowditch, investigated them in 1857-58. Both concluded that the condition for these designs to arise was that the frequencies, or oscillations per second, of both curves stood in simple whole-number ratios to each other, such as 1:1, 1:2, 1:3, and so on. In fact, one can produce Lissajous figures even if the frequencies are not in perfect whole-number ratios to each other. If the difference is insignificant, the phenomenon that arises is that the designs keep changing their appearance. They move. What creates the variations in the shapes of these designs is the phase differential, or the angle between the two curves. In other words, the way in which their rhythms or periods coincide. If, on the other hand, the curves have different frequencies and are out of phase with each other, intricate web-like designs arise. These Lissajous figures are all visual examples of waves that meet each other at right angles.
Lissajous figures. The result of two sine curves meeting at right angles. Illustration: Typoform, Jenny W. Bryant, Swedish National Encyclopedia
As I pondered the connection between these figures and other areas of knowledge, I came to think about the concept that exists in many societies and their mythologies around the world, which describes the world as a web.
For example, many of the Mesoamerican people regarded the various parts of the universe as products of spinning and weaving: “Conception and birth were/…/ compared with the acts of spinning and weaving; all the Aztec and Mayan creation and fertility goddesses were described as great weavers.”(1) A number of waves crossing each other at right angles look like a woven pattern, and it is precisely that they meet at 90-degree angles that gives rise to Lissajous figures.
Hans Jenny
In 1967, the late Hans Jenny, a Swiss doctor, artist, and researcher, published the bilingual book Kymatik -Wellen und Schwingungen mit ihrer Struktur und Dynamik/ Cymatics – The Structure and Dynamics of Waves and Vibrations. In this book Jenny, like Chladni two hundred years earlier, showed what happens when one takes various materials like sand, spores, iron filings, water, and viscous substances, and places them on vibrating metal plates and membranes. What then appears are shapes and motion- patterns which vary from the nearly perfectly ordered and stationary to those that are turbulently developing, organic, and constantly in motion.
Jenny made use of crystal oscillators and an invention of his own by the name of the tonoscope to set these plates and membranes vibrating. This was a major step forward. The advantage with crystal oscillators is that one can determine exactly which frequency and amplitude/volume one wants. It was now possible to research and follow a continuous train of events in which one had the possibility of changing the frequency or the amplitude or both.
The tonoscope was constructed to make the human voice visible without any electronic apparatus as an intermediate link. This yielded the amazing possibility of being able to see the physical image of the vowel, tone or song a human being produced directly. (se below) Not only could you hear a melody – you could see it, too!
Jenny called this new area of research cymatics, which comes from the Greek kyma, wave. Cymatics could be translated as: the study of how vibrations, in the broad sense, generate and influence patterns, shapes and moving processes.
The Creative Vibration
What did Hans Jenny find in his investigations?
In the first place, Jenny produced both the Chladni figures and Lissajous figures in his experiments. He discovered also that if he vibrated a plate at a specific frequency and amplitude – vibration – the shapes and motion patterns characteristic of that vibration appeared in the material on the plate. If he changed the frequency or amplitude, the development and pattern were changed as well. He found that if he increased the frequency, the complexity of the patterns increased, the number of elements became greater. If on the other hand he increased the amplitude, the motions became all the more rapid and turbulent and could even create small eruptions, where the actual material was thrown up in the air.
The development of a pattern in sand (step by step).
Swinging water drops (by Hans Jenny)
Sand patterns as a function of the size of the plate
The shapes, figures and patterns of motion that appeared proved to be primarily a function of frequency, amplitude, and the inherent characteristics of the various materials. He also discovered that under certain conditions he could make the shapes change continuously, despite his having altered neither frequency nor amplitude!
The vowel A in sand
When Jenny experimented with fluids of various kinds he produced wave motions, spirals, and wave-like patterns in continuous circulation. In his research with plant spores, he found an enormous variety and complexity, but even so, there was a unity in the shapes and dynamic developments that arose. With the help of iron filings, mercury, viscous liquids, plastic-like substances and gases, he investigated the three-dimensional aspects of the effect of vibration.
In his research with the tonoscope, Jenny noticed that when the vowels of the ancient languages of Hebrew and Sanskrit were pronounced, the sand took the shape of the written symbols for these vowels, while our modern languages, on the other hand, did not generate the same result! How is this possible? Did the ancient Hebrews and Indians know this? Is there something to the concept of “sacred language,” which both of these are sometimes called? What qualities do these “sacred languages,” among which Tibetan, Egyptian and Chinese are often numbered, possess? Do they have the power to influence and transform physical reality, to create things through their inherent power, or, to take a concrete example, through the recitation or singing of sacred texts, to heal a person who has gone “out of tune”?
to read the rest of the article, for sources, etc., go to: http://blog.world-mysteries.com/science/cymatics/
Arctic air to blast the Central and Eastern United States by mid-month
Published on January 7, 2012 2:15 pm PT
– By TWS Senior Meteorologist
– Edited by Staff Editor
TheWeatherSpace.com) – Numerous forecast models are latching onto a pattern that would bring arctic air down into the Central and Eastern United States by next week.
When credit is due, it is given. This was not forecast by me or anyone else in this long of range and Piers Corbyn of WeatherAction.com put the forecast out in Fall for mid-January to have the arctic air blast.
What is interesting is he seems to predict these longer range patterns based on the solar activity.
– Chile / Lascar (11:47 UTC)
As mentioned already yesterday Lascar volcano in the Atacama desert in Chile is waking up gradually. Sernageomin has detected a lot of earthquakes. Click here for their detailed report published on January 5 (Spanish). A new one is expected soon.
On the webcam this morning, we see sulfur rich fumeroles at the left side of the volcano. Lascar is known to be spectacular if erupting and sending ashes kilometers high in the sky !
Image captures from the Sernageomin webcam near Lascar Volcano Chile
Professor Stephen Hawking has predicted that humans will colonise Mars – but not for at least a century.
The physicist, who has decoded some of the greatest mysteries of the universe, said it is ‘essential’ for man to spread across the galaxy in case Earth is destroyed.
He suggested that it was ‘almost certain’ that a disaster ‘such as nuclear war or global warming’ would obliterate the planet within a thousand years.
Confident: Professor Stephen Hawking has said that we will one day colonise Mars – and beyond
‘It is essential that we colonise space,’ he stressed.
‘I believe that we will eventually establish self-sustaining colonies on Mars and other bodies in the solar system, but not within the next 100 years.’
The Red Planet is considered to be the solar system’s most hospitable alternative to Earth. Although space agencies have made preparations for a manned mission to Mars, such an expedition is thought to be decades away.
A typical estimate of the length of a round trip is 450 days.
Adding that humanity’s extinction was ‘possible but not inevitable’, Professor Hawking said: ‘I am optimistic that progress in science and technology will eventually enable humans to spread beyond the solar system and into the far reaches of the universe.’
Professor Hawking also gave his views on the recent CERN claims that neutrinos can travel faster than the speed of light, saying that he didn’t believe the results of its experiments.
The possibility of multiple universes is something he does believe in, however, telling one listener: ‘Our best bet for a theory of everything is M-theory.
‘One prediction of M-theory is that there are many different universes, with different values for the physical constants.’
Answering questions from listeners of BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on the eve of his 70th birthday, Professor Hawking claimed that finding intelligent life elsewhere in the universe would be ‘the biggest scientific discovery ever’.
However, he warned that it would be ‘very risky to attempt to communicate with an alien civilisation’, adding: ‘If aliens decided to visit us, then the outcome might be similar to when Europeans arrived in the Americas. That did not turn out well for the Native Americans.’
Red alert: Hawking believes that we will one day colonise our cosmic neighbour. Pictured is the Disney film Mission To Mars
You’d be forgiven for thinking that Professor Hawking spends most of his waking hours thinking about these cosmic subjects.
But when he was asked by New Scientist recently what preoccupied him he replied: ‘Women. They are a complete mystery.’
He even hinted at regrets in his personal life after being asked about his biggest mistake.
He said that thinking information was destroyed black holes was his biggest blunder – ‘or at least my biggest blunder in science.’
Professor Hawking, who was diagnosed with motor neurone disease at 21, conducted the interview as he communicates – using a voice machine that picks up the twitching of his cheek.
His conversation with the magazine came ahead of an international conference held in his honour that started yesterday at Cambridge University, where he used to be the Lucasian professor of mathematics.
It will conclude on Sunday with talks from some of the world’s most prominent physicists, including Lord Rees, the Astronomer Royal, Saul Perlmutter, who won the Nobel prize for physics in 2011, and Kip Thorne from the California Institute of Technology.
Professor Hawking, who has made cameos in The Simpsons and Star Trek, was not expected to live for many years after being diagnosed, but has has a stellar career.
Brilliant brain: The 69-year-old, pictured at his wedding to ex-wife Elaine, said a mistake about black holes was his biggest blunder ‘at least in science’
Colleagues have this week expressed their admiration for the talented cosmologist, who has contributed to theories of gravity and showed that black holes emit radiation and slowly disappear.
Professor Hawking married Jane Wilde in 1965, and she cared for him until 1991 when the couple separated, reportedly because of the pressures of fame and his increasing disability.
They had three children: Robert, Lucy – now a popular author, and Timothy.
The scientist then married his nurse, Elaine Mason (who was previously married to David Mason, the designer of the first version of Hawking’s talking computer), in 1995.
In October 2006, Hawking filed for divorce from his second wife.
In 2004, the scientist showed how a black hole’s information leaks back into our universe through an event horizon – a recantation of an earlier theory that lost him a bet made with fellow theorist John Preskill.
Professor Hawking also showed in the interview that he has not lost his passion for science, or his dreams of exciting future discoveries.
He said that if he was a young physicist starting out today, he would have a new idea that would open up an entirely new field.
Pumapunku, also called “Puma Pumku” or “Puma Puncu”, is part of a large temple complex or monument group that is part of the TiwanakuSite near Tiwanaku, Bolivia. In Aymara, its name means, “The Door of the Cougar”. The processes and technologies involved in the creation of these temples are still not fully understood by modern scholars. Our current ideas of the Tiwanaku culture hold that they had no writing system and also that the invention of the wheel was most likely unknown to them. The architectural achievements seen at Pumapunku are striking in light of the presumed level of technological capability available during its construction. Due to the monumental proportions of the stones, the method by which they were transported to Pumapunku has been a topic of interest since the temple’s discovery.
Puma Punku, truly startles the imagination. It seems to be the remains of a great wharf (for Lake Titicaca long ago lapped upon the shores of Tiahuanaco) and a massive, four-part, now collapsed building. One of the construction blocks from which the pier was fashioned weighs an estimated 440 tons (equal to nearly 600 full-size cars) and several other blocks laying about are between 100 and 150 tons.
Puma Punku ruins, Tiahuanaco, Bolivia
(courtesy of www.sacredsites.com and Martin Gray)
The quarry for these giant blocks was on the western shore of Titicaca, some ten miles away. There is no known technology in all the ancient world that could have transported stones of such massive weight and size. The Andean people of 500 AD, with their simple reed boats, could certainly not have moved them. Even today, with all the modern advances in engineering and mathematics, we could not fashion such a structure.
Just out of the aerial picture (below) to the bottom left is the site of the Puma Punku. This is another ‘temple area’ with many finely cut stones some weighing over 100 tonnes. Its position to the south of the Akapana may have been important because it gave a good view to a sacred mountain far to the east.
Of course there is no certainty that this was the reason as the ancient builders left no written records.
All the legends have been handed down through the generations.
Puma Punku ruins, Tiahuanaco, Bolivia
(courtesy of www.sacredsites.com and Martin Gray)
How were these monstrous stones moved and what was their purpose?
Posnansky suggested an answer, based upon his studies of the astronomical alignments of Tiahuanaco, but that answer is considered so controversial, even impossible, that it has been ignored and censured by the scientific community for fifty years.
Carved stone block at Puma Punku. This precision-made 6 mm wide
groove contains equidistant, drilled holes. It seems impossible that this
cuts were made with use of stone or copper tools.
The so-called Gate of the Sun seen at the back side.
Made of one piece of hard rock. Possibly it was a part of a large wall.
By the courtesy of www.inkatour.com, nr. 3696
Puma Punku doesn’t look impressive: a hill as remains of an old pyramid and a large number of megalithic block of stone on the ground, evidently smashed by a devastating earthquake. However, closer inspection shows that these stone blocks have been fabricated with a very advanced technology. Even more surprising is the technical design of these blocks shown in the drawing below. All blocks fit together like interlocking building blocks.
Source: Jean-Pierre Protzen & Stella E.Nair, “On Reconstructing Tiwanaku Architecture”, Jpurnal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 59, Nr.3, 2000, pp. 358-371
A wall of the Akapana, the pyramid of Tiahuanacu, shows similar modular design.
Blocks that are piled one on top of the other but the underside of the upper stone is cut at an angle. The top of the standing stone is cut at the same angle, as shown on the figure below.
Source: Jean-Pierre Protzen & Stella E.Nair, “On Reconstructing Tiwanaku Architecture”, Jpurnal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 59, Nr.3, 2000, pp. 358-371
This stone technology plainly contradicts what official archaeology suggests about the general state of development of the ancient peoples of South-America.
Source:
“Die Ruinenstätte von Tiahuanaco im Hochlande des alten Peru”
(The Ruins of Tiahuanaco in the Highlands of Ancient Peru)
1892 book about Tiahanaco written by two German
discoverers and engineers Alphons Stübel and Max Uhle
The architectural achievements seen at Pumapunku are striking in light of the presumed level of technological capability available during its construction. Due to the monumental proportions of the stones, the method by which they were transported to Pumapunku has been a topic of interest since the temple’s discovery. The largest of these stone blocks is 7.81 meters long, 5.17 meters wide, averages 1.07 meters thick, and is estimated to weigh about 131 metric tons. The second largest stone block found within the Pumapunka is 7.90 meters long, 2.50 meters wide, and averages 1.86 meters thick. Its weight has been estimated to be 85.21 metric tons. Both of these stone blocks are part of the Plataforma Lítica and composed of red sandstone. Based upon detailed petrographic and chemical analyses of samples from both individual stones and known quarry sites, archaeologists concluded that these and other red sandstone blocks were transported up a steep incline from a quarry near Lake Titicaca roughly 10 km away. Smaller andesite blocks that were used for stone facing and carvings came from quarries within the Copacabana Peninsula about 90 km away from and across Lake Titicaca from the Pumapunka and the rest of the Tiwanaku Site.
to read more, go to: http://www.world-mysteries.com/mpl_PumaPunku.htm
We are living in unprecedented times of accelerated change—change that is evident all around us and which we experience in every arena of our lives, from the political, economic and financial, to the social and religious.
More and more people are asking fundamental questions regarding their basic human rights and overall wellbeing, and beginning to question the influence that external “powers” have over our lives.
No longer content with dismissive answers from those in positions of “power,” people are beginning to recognize that they have the freedom to choose. The balance between “power” and empowerment is beginning to shift.
Humanity stands on an imminent threshold which is about to take it into a New Paradigm. We are witnessing the early stages of the birth of a New World.
As this New World emerges—as prophesied long ago by many advanced indigenous cultures, and portended by rare astronomical alignments currently taking place in our Galaxy, including the completion of a 26,000-year Galactic Cycle—everything is set to change.
We are now bearing witness to the collapse of political, economic, social and financial systems, as people respond to the call of the New World, the call of our time, and the call of their soul.
These courageous people are reaching out for a better quality of life, for equality, for their basic survival needs to be met, and for an overall sense of wellbeing, all of which are our fundamental birthright.
People are reclaiming their individual power; and if they can use this wisely, this will help to empower millions of fellow humans across the globe. We are bearing witness to a re-evolution, on a global scale.
The energy of change is sweeping the globe. People are “waking up” to the reality of their lives and to the current state of the world.
Under the spotlight of radical questioning and these sweeping changes is religion, or in a broader sense, spirituality. Are religion and spirituality one and the same?
At the center of all religion lies a spiritual heart. However, this spiritual heart, like the human heart, lies buried under thousands of years of conditioning and distortion, which has dominated and hidden the pure heart of religion.
The heart of religion and the human heart are not dissimilar in their historical fate. For the most part, both have remained buried under eons of fear-based constructs, which have manifested a distorted and unrecognizable caricature of religion, and of the human being.
It is said that all rivers lead to the same ocean and that, in a similar way, all religions lead to the same fundamental message and meaning: Love.
It is what lies at the heart of all religion and at the heart of any spiritual practice or philosophy which has developed a complex doctrine, a fundamentalist and inaccurate set of scriptures and texts, and a dysfunctional set of rules and code of conduct.
Contemporary Spirituality is a current spirituality that speaks directly to us now in the times we live in. It is a Way which brings our spiritual focus into the Now.
Religion is an ancient system that was birthed in an unrecognizable (to our modern mind) and vastly different time in our ancient human history. Its rise to prominence took place when our conscious evolution was in its formative stages.
The heart of religion was adapted beyond all original meaning by those who held power, in order to control, manipulate and dominate the human being of 2,000 and more years ago.
Our conscious evolution has come a long way since then. We are no longer in the infancy stages of our conscious evolutionary development.
Therefore, it is entirely out of context to be following antiquated religious doctrine created by, and for, our less consciously evolved predecessors.
Contemporary Spirituality consists of a Way, which is uncorrupted, uncomplicated, and non-fundamental. It is an expression of spirituality and religion in its purest form. It represents the true heart of all religion, which was hidden by power hungry rulers long ago.
The heart of Contemporary Spirituality is open and available for all to see. It is a heart that is exquisite in its simplicity, transparency, beauty, and purity.
Contemporary Spirituality invites ALL, no matter what race, denomination or creed, to be inspired and seek to aspire and embody its proposals. It is a Way which is an infinitely pure and true expression of what lay at the heart of religion and certain spiritual paths.
Contemporary Spirituality invites us toward Self-mastery, in which we learn to master our bodies, senses, emotions, thoughts, and lives. It encourages us to cultivate self-discipline, self-love, self-awareness, self-knowing, and self-realization.
Contemporary Spirituality leads us along a clear path, devoid of rules, judgments, expectations, dogma, or fundamentalist belief systems. It guides us towards enlightenment.
Contemporary Spirituality requires no intellectual predisposition, as it is a language of the heart. It invites us to explore, practice and master the Seven Cornerstones of Contemporary Spirituality (see below).
The joy of Contemporary Spirituality is in its simplicity. It is a stripped back to the core spiritual Way forward for humanity.
It gently encourages and guides us to let go of dualistic and separatist religious indoctrination, and instead, embrace the concept of equality, unity, and unifying as one global family, with one “religion,” one spiritual practice, at the heart of humanity—that of Love.
This is something that we are now ready to embrace as contemporary, consciously evolving human beings.
The Light Shadow
Contemporary Spirituality embraces the human shadow, recognizing that when we explore ourselves with consciousness and awareness, and are therefore engaged in our own evolutionary process, the shadow is not dark, but indeed Light.
Contemporary Spirituality discounts the existence of a fundamentally dark nature within the human being, and instead acknowledges that there exists, within each of us, a primal wound, a separation from Source (God, Divinity, our Divine Nature).
However, this is not a wound we must bear as part of being human. We experience it only because we have been steeped in dualism, brought about by the misinterpretation or obscuration of what lay at the heart of religious and spiritual philosophies throughout human history.
The Light Shadow is referred to as such because by becoming aware of and healing the human shadow, its existence has brought us further enlightenment.
When compassion and empathy are offered as balms with which the human shadow can be healed and transformed, this results in its integration, and the conscious evolution of the human being.
For thousands of years we have lived under dictatorships, flawed regimes and a misinterpretation of the fundamental meaning of all religions, which is Love.
We have lived in duality, at a personal and collective level. We have been separated from the heart of religion and spirituality, and therefore our own hearts.
The primal wound of humanity, separation from Source, is one which can be healed. The way to healing all perceived sense of separation (for we have never truly been separate, only perceived ourselves to be so) is to become Love and only Love.
To live, breathe, sleep and live Love in every moment. To be a Master of the Heart. To reclaim and embody our natural state of being—which is Love.
This is what lies at the heart of Contemporary Spirituality: a new Way forward for a new human and a new world.
Seven Cornerstones of Contemporary Spirituality
The following is a list of the Seven Cornerstones of Contemporary Spirituality. Each is a teaching in itself, and all tend to be explored, practiced and embodied at the same time.
Each supports the transformation of the Light Shadow into a vast and beautiful Light which can surround and radiate from us.
The Seven Cornerstones are as follows: Unconditional Love, Empathy, Compassion, Forgiveness, Conscious Communication, Unconditional Positive Regard, and Compassionate Action.
When all seven of these foundational qualities of Contemporary Spirituality are mastered and lived realities, every day, we have attained Self-mastery.
This is when our true essence is fully awakened. This is when the heart has become fully transparent. When all humans embody this Way, as a lived reality, we will live in a transcendent world.
[Nicolya Christi is Founder of WorldShift Movement, Co-founder of WorldShift International, and Co-initiator of WorldShift 2012. Nicolya’s focus is on human evolution, inner peace, and world peace. She is author of 2012: A Clarion Call—Your Soul’s Purpose in Conscious Evolution. Visit her website at www.nicolyachristi.com.]
We all want our homes to smell fresh for winter company. But store-bought air fresheners can cost a fortune and often contain less-than-friendly chemicals. For a sweet scent that’s easy on the planet (and your wallet), check out these five all-natural air freshers that you can make yourself.
Combine dried flowers with seasonal ingredients like fruit, pinecones and fresh spices for a warming scent. Photo: Flickr/goaliej54
1. Seasonal potpourri
Price: Less than $5
Homemade potpourri is a cheap and easy way to make your home smell inviting. For green brownie points and an extra-sweet scent, use ingredients you already have on hand and spice it up with some local and seasonal flare.
If you receive floral bouquets as host or hostess gifts this winter, save the dried flowers for potpourri. And don’t forget your own backyard! If you live in a warm climate, pluck some flowers from the garden, or pick up a few pinecones if you call a cooler state home.
Combine your foliage with fresh spices like cloves, cinnamon and nutmeg from the farmer’s market, and add some local fruits for a seasonal scent. Orange and grapefruit peels will make perfect additions for those in warm climates. If you live in a cool-weather state, set aside some cranberries while preparing your holiday dinner.
Make sure all the ingredients have dried completely, and combine them in the container of your choice to freshen any room of the house. As the scent wears off, toss in a few drops of your favorite essential oil to get the most out of your potpourri, and don’t forget to compost the leftovers!
Now You See It, Now You Didn’t: Researchers Cloak a Moment in Time
A laser beam passes through a “split-time lens” – a specially designed waveguide that bumps up the wavelength for a while then suddenly bumps it down. The signal then passes through a filter that slows down the higher-wavelength part of the signal, creating a gap in which the cloaked event takes place. A second filter works in the opposite way from the first, letting the lower wavelength catch up, and a final split-time lens brings the beam back to the original wavelength, leaving no trace of what happened during the gap. (Credit: Gaeta lab)
ScienceDaily (Jan. 6, 2012) — Think Harry Potter movie magic: Cornell researchers have demonstrated a “temporal cloak” — albeit on a very small scale — in the transport of information by a beam of light.
The trick is to create a gap in the beam of light, have the hidden event occur as the gap goes by and then stitch the beam back together. Alexander Gaeta, Cornell professor of applied and engineering physics, and colleagues report their work entitled “Demonstration of temporal cloaking,” in the journal Nature (Jan. 5, 2012.)
The researchers created what they call a time lens, which can manipulate and focus signals in time, analogous to the way a glass lens focuses light in space. They use a technique called four-wave mixing, in which two beams of light, a “signal” and a “pump,” are sent together through an optical fiber. The two beams interact and change the wavelength of the signal. To begin creating a time gap, the researchers first bump the wavelength of the signal up, then by flipping the wavelength of the pump beam, bump it down.
The beam then passes through another, very long, stretch of optical fiber. Light passing through a transparent material is slowed down just a bit, and how much it is slowed varies with the wavelength. So the lower wavelength pulls ahead of the higher, leaving a gap, like the hare pulling ahead of the tortoise. During the gap the experimenters introduced a brief flash of light at a still higher wavelength that would cause a glitch in the beam coming out the other end.
Then the split beam passes through more optical fiber with a different composition, engineered to slow lower wavelengths more than higher. The higher wavelength signal now catches up with the lower, closing the gap. The hare is plodding through mud, but the tortoise is good at that and catches up. Finally, another four-wave mixer brings both parts back to the original wavelength, and the beam emerges with no trace that there ever was a gap, and no evidence of the intruding signal.
None of this will let you steal the crown jewels without anyone noticing. The gap created in the experiment was 15 picoseconds long, and might be increased up to 10 nanoseconds, Gaeta said. But the technique could have applications in fiber-optic data transmission and data processing, he added. For example, it might allow inserting an emergency signal without interrupting the main data stream, or multitasking operations in a photonic computer, where light beams on a chip replace wires.
The experiment was inspired by a theoretical proposal for a space-time cloak or “history editor” published by Martin McCall, professor of physics at Imperial College in London, in the Journal of Optics in November 2010. “But his method required an optical response from a material that does not exist. Now we’ve done it in one spatial dimension. Extending it to two [that is, hiding a moment in an entire scene] is not out of the realm of possibility. All advances have to start from somewhere,” Gaeta says.
Funding for the research: The Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) and by the Cornell Center for Nanoscale Systems, which is supported by the National Science Foundation and the New York State Division of Science, Technology and Innovation (NYSTAR).
– USA / seismic maps : Probabilistic seismic-hazard maps were prepared for the conterminous United States portraying peak horizontal acceleration and horizontal spectral response acceleration for 0.2- and 1.0-second periods with probabilities of exceedance of 10 percent in 50 years and 2 percent in 50 years.
In 1967, the late Hans Jenny, a Swiss doctor, artist, and researcher, published the bilingual book Kymatik -Wellen und Schwingungen mit ihrer Struktur und Dynamik/ Cymatics – The Structure and Dynamics of Waves and Vibrations. In this book Jenny, like Chladni two hundred years earlier, showed what happens when one takes various materials like sand, spores, iron filings, water, and viscous substances, and places them on vibrating metal plates and membranes. What then appears are shapes and motion- patterns which vary from the nearly perfectly ordered and stationary to those that are turbulently developing, organic, and constantly in motion.
The development of a pattern in sand (step by step).
Image captures from the Sernageomin webcam near Lascar Volcano Chile
Confident: Professor Stephen Hawking has said that we will one day colonise Mars – and beyond
Red alert: Hawking believes that we will one day colonise our cosmic neighbour. Pictured is the Disney film Mission To Mars
Brilliant brain: The 69-year-old, pictured at his wedding to ex-wife Elaine, said a mistake about black holes was his biggest blunder ‘at least in science’
“Canyon Tree” 2012 © Sol Luckman
Combine dried flowers with seasonal ingredients like fruit, pinecones and fresh spices for a warming scent. Photo: Flickr/
