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Scientists reveal first image ever made of a black hole

4/10/2019

Scientists on Wednesday revealed the first image ever made of a black hole, depicting its hot, shadowy edges where light bends around itself in a cosmic funhouse effect.
Assembling data gathered by eight radio telescopes around the world, astronomers created the picture showing the violent neighborhood around a supermassive black hole, the light-sucking monsters of the universe theorized by Einstein more than a century ago and confirmed by observations for decades.
It looked like a flaming orange, yellow and black ring.
“We have seen what we thought was unseeable. We have seen and taken a picture of a black hole. Here it is,” said Sheperd Doeleman of Harvard.

Officials release video from gender reveal party that ignited a 47,000-acre wildfire

11/27/2018

Oh boy. A video released by the US Forest Service shows the moment when a gender reveal party in Arizona went horribly wrong, sparking a wildfire that burned nearly 47,000 acres and caused more than $8 million in damage.

Shot on April 23, 2017, the clip shows a makeshift target with the words "Boy" and "Girl" written on it, placed in the middle of the desert near Green Valley, Arizona, south of Tucson.
Seconds later we hear a gunshot, and the target explodes, revealing a blue cloud and immediately igniting the surrounding brush. Someone shouts, "Start packing up!"

The flames spread to the nearby Coronado National Forest, where they became the Sawmill Fire and burned 46,991 acres owned by the state of Arizona, federal agencies and private landowners. Firefighters from at least 20 agencies fought the fire for about a week,

The man who shot the target, off-duty US Border Patrol agent Dennis Dickey, pleaded guilty in September of this year to a misdemeanor violation of US Forest Service regulations and was sentenced to five years' probation. He also was ordered to pay $8,188,069 in restitution, starting with an initial payment of $100,000 and monthly payments thereafter.
The expectant dad, 37, had packed the target with a highly explosive substance called Tannerite and shot it with a high-powered rifle, according to the US Attorney's Office. The target was supposed to burst pink or blue to reveal to attendees whether Dickey and his wife were expecting a boy or a girl.

According to KGUN, Dickey immediately reported the fire to law enforcement, cooperated with the investigation and admitted that he started the blaze. He also repeatedly told the judge that the fire was "a complete accident."
CNN has reached out to Sean Chapman, Dickey's attorney, but has not heard back.As part of his plea agreement Dickey will make a public service announcement with the Forest Service about the cause of the wildfire.
According to KGUN, the Dickeys haven't said if the child was a boy or a girl. But the blue puffs as the target exploded might be a clue.

Bulldozer Gone Wild: Police car squished during chase

9/22/2017

In video that appears like a scene from Transformers, a bulldozer backs over a police squad car on a Kankakee street-and then leads a cordon of cops on a low-speed chase.

The never-before-seen police dash cam videos, from various angles and numerous patrol cars, was obtained Monday by the ABC7 I-Team after a Freedom of Information Act filing.

Police say 18-year old Austin White of Bourbonnais had stolen the bulldozer from a Bradley construction site at 3 a.m. on August 24 and began driving it around streets in nearby Kankakee. Clearly seen on one video the bulldozer backs over a squad car when an officer tries to stop him. That officer can be seen running from the squad just as the car is being crushed by the bulldozer, that weighed about 20 tons.

An off-duty officer first reported seeing the bulldozer spinning around a Kankakee intersection and numerous on-duty units then responded.

After backing onto the squad car, other police vehicles followed the dozer along 12 city blocks. Video obtained by the I-Team shows officers on foot running next to the bulldozer and at times jumping onto the back in an effort to curb the heavy construction equipment.

NASA'S 'IMPOSSIBLE' EM DRIVE WORKS: GERMAN RESEARCHER CONFIRMS AND IT CAN TAKE US TO THE MOON IN JUST 4 HOURS

9/8/2017

Over the past whole year, there's been a lot of excitement about the electromagnetic propulsion drive, also known as EM Drive - a logically impossible engine that's challenged almost everyone's prospects by continuing to stand up to experimental study. The EM drive is so thrilling because it yields enormous amounts of propulsion that could hypothetically blast us to Mars in only 70 days, without the need for dense and costly rocket fuel. Instead, it's actually propelled forward by microwaves bouncing back and forth inside a sealed off chamber, and this is what makes the EM drive so powerful, and at the same time so debatable.

WHAT’S AN EMDRIVE?First proposed nearly 20 years ago by British scientist Roger Shawyer, this incarnation of the EmDrive has been developed and tested by engineers at NASA’s Advanced Propulsion Physics Research Laboratory, informally known as Eagleworks.
Put simply, the Eagleworks EmDrive generates thrust by bouncing around electromagnetic energy (in this case, microwave photons) in a closed, cone-shaped chamber. As those photons collide with the chamber’s walls, they somehow propel the device forward, despite the fact that nothing is released from the chamber. By contrast, ion drives now in use on some NASA spacecraft create thrust by ionizing a propellant, often xenon gas, and shooting out beams of charged atoms.

What this means, if the EmDrive withstands further scrutiny, is that future vehicles could hurtle through space without needing to carry literal tons of propellant. In space travel, staying light is crucial for fast and cost-effective trips over long distances.

WHY DOES THIS ENGINE BREAK THE LAWS OF PHYSICS?Way back in 1687, Sir Isaac Newton published three laws of motion that formed the foundation for classical mechanics. Over the intervening three centuries, those laws have been tested and verified over and over again. (Also see “Isaac Newton’s Lost Alchemy Recipe Rediscovered.”)
The trouble is, the EmDrive violates Newton’s third law, which states that for every action, there is an equal and opposing reaction. This principle explains, for instance, why a canoe glides forward when someone paddles. The force applied as the paddle moves through the water propels the canoe in the opposite direction. It’s also why jet engines generate thrust: As the engine expels hot gases backward, the plane moves forward.

Weirdly, the EmDrive doesn’t expel anything at all, and that doesn’t make sense in light of Newton’s third law or another tenet of classical mechanics, the conservation of momentum. If the EmDrive moves forward without expelling anything out the back, then there’s no opposing force to explain the thrust. It’s a bit like arguing that a person inside a car could propel it forward by repeatedly hitting the steering wheel, or that the crew of a spaceship could fly the craft to their destination simply by pushing on the walls.

HAS ANYONE TRIED TO TEST IT BEFORE? In 2014, the Eagleworks group made waves when it announced the results of early tests suggesting the EM engine actually worked. Since then, the group has tested the EmDrive in increasingly more stringent conditions, including the latest experiments.

Other groups have also developed and tested various incarnations of the EmDrive. In addition to experiments conducted by U.S., European, and Chinese academics, there’s a community of DIY EmDrivers who are busy making and testing their own impossible physics engines. But no one has been able to say conclusively that such a drive has worked as described. (Let’s be real: Physicists don’t like seemingly miraculous inventions.)

SO WHAT’S DIFFERENT NOW?Now, the NASA team behind the EmDrive has published the results of their experiments in a peer-reviewed journal. While peer review doesn’t guarantee that a finding or observation is valid, it does indicate that at least a few independent scientists looked over the experimental setup, results, and interpretation and found it all to be reasonable.
In this paper, the team describes how they tested the EmDrive in a near vacuum, similar to what it would encounter in space. Scientists placed the engine on a device called a torsion pendulum, fired it up, and determined how much thrust it generated based on how much it moved. Turns out, the EmDrive is capable of producing 1.2 millinewtons per kilowatt of energy, according to the authors’ estimates.

That’s not a lot of thrust compared to more traditional engines, but it’s far from insignificant considering the completely fuel-free setup. And to put that in perspective, light sails and other related technologies—which are propelled by the push of photons—only generate a fraction of that thrust, between 3.33 and 6.67 micronewtons per kilowatt.
Before now, one of the major criticisms about the EmDrive is that it warmed up while activated, which some scientists suggested could heat the surrounding air and generate thrust. Testing the device in a vacuum resolved some of that criticism, though there are still loads of caveats that need addressing.

OK. HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE?First things first: It’s still unclear that the EmDrive truly generates thrust, a claim that will require further verification. But people are already tossing around ideas for how the drive might work.
The Eagleworks team that tested the EmDrive thinks the microwave photons push against “quantum vacuum virtual plasma,” or a roiling sea of particles that flit in and out of existence at the quantum level. The trouble is, there’s no evidence that quantum vacuum virtual plasma is even a real thing, says Caltech physicist Sean Carroll. Quantum vacuums exist, he says, but they don’t generate a plasma that’s available for pushing against.

In their paper, the Eagleworks team invokes an idea called pilot-wave theory to describe how the quantum vacuum could be used to generate thrust, while noting that such interpretations are “not the dominant view of physics today.”

Mike McCulloch, a physicist at the University of Plymouth, argues that the EmDrive is evidence of a new theory of inertia that involves something called Unruh radiation, a sort of heat experienced by accelerating objects. In his telling, since the wide and narrow ends of the EmDrive’s cone permit different wavelengths of Unruh radiation, the inertia of the photons inside the cavity must change as they bounce back and forth—which must produce thrust in order to conserve momentum.
But McCulloch’s model assumes that Unruh radiation is real—it hasn’t been experimentally confirmed—and also suggests that the speed of light varies within the EmDrive’s cavity, which violates Einstein’s theory of special relativity, according to Rochester Institute of Technology physicist Brian Koberlein.
It’s also possible that some of the energy generated as a body accelerates is being stored within the body itself, to put it very, very simply—there are also gravitational interactions and transient inertial mass fluctuations involved. This could explain how the craft moves through space without violating the conservation of momentum, says physicist Jim Woodward, who proposed what’s called the Mach effect theory in 1990. This is definitely a step in the right direction for future space travel, especially at the required hyper speeds.

Watch The Ground Just, Uh, Disappear During This Nuclear Test

10/10/2016

This is what happens when an underground nuclear explosion basically makes the Earth hollow.

tags: nathan finneman , nuke, underground, explosion, amazing

ISIS Fighters Reportedly Savaged By American Military Working Dog

5/24/2016

An American military dog is being hailed a hero after charging ISIS militants during a recent firefight in northern Iraq.
There are a million ways to be killed or wounded on the modern battlefield: bullets, bombs, drone strikes, a tomahawk-wielding SEAL Team 6 operator. But dogs? For jihadists squaring off with Western forces in the Middle East, the threat is real, and a group of ISIS militants learned that lesson the hard way when they recently ambushed a group of elite British commandos with the Special Air Service in Iraq. And they (or their corpses) have the bite wounds to prove it.

The incident purportedly took place in northern Iraq, not far from the ISIS stronghold of Mosul, and near the village where an American Navy SEAL was killed in battle on May 3. According to the British paper, Daily Star Sunday, a small team of SAS commandos were en route back to their base when one of their four vehicles was struck by a roadside bomb. The troops were immediately encircled by about 50 ISIS militants, who were armed with a pair of machine gun-mounted Toyotas.

Taking fire from three directions, the commandos dismounted their vehicles and scrambled for cover. A fierce firefight ensued, and the Brits feared they were being overrun. We’re assuming the jihadists were not expecting what happened next. As the battle raged, a U.S. soldier, who was attached to the SAS team, decided to give the enemy a taste of American might — or, shall we say, American bite — in the form of a pissed off German shepherd.

German shepherds — sometimes referred to as “Alsatians” in European countries — are often favored by U.S. military units because they’re intelligent, loyal, and extremely aggressive when need be. This one was no different. As soon as the American unleashed the K-9, the ISIS militants tried to shoot it. They missed. The dog leaped at one of the fighters, ripping into his face and neck, before mangling the arms and legs of another. Both militants turned and fled, screaming.

“[The dog] could sense the tension and had an overpowering urge to protects its handler and the other troops,” a source told Daily Star. “A snarling [German shepherd] running at you is very frightening and probably not something the jihadis had encountered. The dog did its job and returned to its handler with its tail wagging.”

The SAS commandos and their American ally had apparently just completed a 10-day training course with Kurdish peshmerga soldiers when the ambush occurred. The battle, which, according to Daily Star Sunday, took place last month, concluded how most skirmishes between Western forces and ISIS militants do these days: with U.S. fighter jets swooping in to bomb the terrorists to smithereens. No British or American casualties were reported, human or canine.

Awesome! Leopard 2 Tank vs Anti-Tank Ditch :Nathan Finneman

4/12/2016

This footage shows the two methods a 55-ton Leopard- 2 Tank can use to passing an anti-tank ditch 11,4 ft (3.5 meters) wide and 4,9 ft (1.5 meters) deep.

It can go very slow, sink in with the back of the tank and then use its immense engine power to push the far side of the ditch up and away. The alternative and you will not be surprised to learn that this is our favorite, is to go full speed and almost fly over it like it’s not even there. The Leopard 2 is propelled by the MTU MB 873 diesel engine, which provides 1,500 PS (1,103 kW) of engine output. The MTU MB 873 diesel engine is a four-stroke, 47.6 liter, 12-cylinder multi-fuel, exhaust turbo-charged, liquid-cooled engine, which has an estimated fuel consumption rate of around 300 liters per 100 km on roads and 500 liters per 100 km cross-country.The propulsion pack is capable of driving the tank to a top road speed of 68 km/h (limited to 50 km/h during peacetime by law), and top reverse is 31 km/h. The power pack can be changed in the field in 35 minutes.

The Leopard 2 can drive through water 13 ft deep using a snorkel or 3 ft 11 in without any preparation. It can climb vertical obstacles over 3 ft (one meter) high.

tags: nathan finneman finneman colorado breedofspeed breed of speed tank military army amazing off road ditch cool

Nathan Finneman : Navy flyer describes spotting island castaways

4/12/2016

Nathan Finneman : The U.S. Navy officer in charge of a flight crew that located three castaways on a remote Pacific island said Monday he has never seen or heard of another rescue quite like it. The stranded men, who were reported missing last Tuesday after a wave overtook their skiff, were found on a tiny Micronesian island on Thursday, officials said. The three had spelled out the word "help" with palm fronds after they swam to the deserted island when their boat capsized. "I've never seen anything like that, nor am I aware of anyone in our community seeing anything like that," U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander John Harkins said during a telephone interview.

Harkins' crew was searching an area given to them by the U.S. Coast Guard when Petty Officer 3rd Class Garrette Odor noticed a strong return on his infrared camera. Harkins said the heat came from a signal fire the stranded men had built, but had already gone out.

The Navy crew began to fly around the island when Petty officer 2nd Class Justin Burns saw the word "help" scrolled out on the beach. About 15 seconds later, three men came running out of the jungle waving their orange life vests over their heads, Harkins said.

After spotting the men, Harkins' crew made several low passes in front of them and eventually dropped a smoke signal to let them know they had been found. "Initially they weren't so sure that we had seen them," Harkins said. "We made an effort to alleviate their concerns."

The flight crew first rocked the aircraft's wings, then made several low approaches before eventually dropping the smoke marker in the water in front of the men. "Eventually they actually started relaxing," Harkins said. "We have a photo of all three of them laying down, some on top of the 'help' sign."

"Finding them on the island was not necessarily what we expected to happen," Harkins said of the mission. "We all stood up and gave each other high-fives." The men's families reported them missing Tuesday after they failed to show up at the Micronesian island of Weno, where they were traveling from their home island, Pulap.

The U.S. Coast Guard notified the Navy, and Harkins' crew began their search after a stop in Guam early Thursday. "Fortunately for them, they were all wearing life jackets and were able to swim to the deserted island," U.S. Coast Guard spokeswoman Melissa McKenzie said.

A local boat picked the men up and took them to back to their home island, which was only about 5 miles away from where they were found, Harkins said. The Coast Guard said it didn't have information on the men's condition, but officials told the Washington Post they were not injured.

The Navy crew followed the local boat back to their island, then made a final low pass and rocked their wings "to say goodbye," Harkins said. Two bulk carriers searched a combined 17 hours for the men as part of AMVER, a U.S. Coast Guard voluntary search and rescue program. With AMVER, rescue coordinators can identify participating ships in the area of distress and ask them to help.

In the last two weeks, 15 people have been rescued in the Pacific with the help of 10 AMVER vessels and six aircrews, the U.S. Coast Guard said.

tags : nathan finneman breed of speed breedofspeed navy rescue water island

Nathan Finneman : SpaceX successfully lands its rocket on a floating drone ship for the first time

4/8/2016

SpaceX has finally landed its Falcon 9 rocket on a drone ship at sea, after launching the vehicle into space this afternoon. It's the first time the company has been able to pull off an ocean landing, after four previous attempts ended in failure. Today's success is a crucial milestone for SpaceX, as it shows the company can land its rockets both on solid ground and ocean.

This is the second time SpaceX has successfully landed one of its rockets post-launch; the first time was in December, when the company's Falcon 9 rocket touched down at a ground-based landing site in Cape Canaveral, Florida, after putting a satellite into space. Now that SpaceX has demonstrated it can do both types of landings, the company can potentially recover and reuse even more rockets in the future. And that could mean much greater cost savings for SpaceX.

Mastering the ocean landing is going to be important, since that’s the type of landing SpaceX will probably conduct more often. At a recent NASA press conference, Hans Koenigsmann, vice president of mission assurance for SpaceX, said the next two to three flights will involve drone ship landings. Ultimately, the company expects to land one-third of its rockets on land, and the rest at sea.

Why does SpaceX keep focusing on these ocean landings? A drone ship floating on the ocean is a harder target to hit than a large expanse of ground, since it is smaller and floating on moving water. Plus, all of SpaceX's ocean landing attempts have resulted in the rocket exploding. Still, landing at sea can be less tricky than ground landings, and the main reason has to do with fuel. To return back to Earth, the Falcon 9 has to use the fuel leftover from takeoff to reignite its engines in a series of burns. These burns help to adjust the rocket's speed and reorient the vehicle into the right position for entering Earth's atmosphere and then landing.

Different types of landing techniques require different amounts of fuel, though, and that revolves around how the Falcon 9 launches. The rocket doesn't travel straight upward into space but follows a parabolic arc up and away from the launch pad. Because of this, the rocket has to go through a lot to conduct a ground landing. The vehicle has to slow down in the direction it's heading, completely turn around, and then retread the vertical and horizontal distance it's covered to get back to the landing site. That requires a lot of extra fuel.

DIFFERENT TYPES OF LANDING TECHNIQUES REQUIRE DIFFERENT AMOUNTS OF FUEL

Ocean landings aren't as complicated as that. SpaceX's drone ship can position itself in an ideal place to "catch" the vehicle on its more natural path back to Earth. That decreases the distance the rocket needs to travel, as well as the amount of fuel needed to maneuver the Falcon 9 for landing.

For SpaceX missions that use up lots of fuel, performing a ground landing may not even be possible. Rockets that launch heavy payloads or go to a high orbit need extra speed during the initial ascent, and extra speed needs more fuel. Those Falcon 9s that have to reach extra high velocities don't have as much fuel leftover for the landing. That’s when the drone ship is the best — if not only — option for recovery.

The whole point of landing these rockets is to help save SpaceX money on launch costs. Right now, most rockets are destroyed or lost after they launch into space, meaning entirely new rockets must be built for each mission. SpaceX hopes to recover as many rockets as possible to cut down on cost of creating new vehicles. The Falcon 9 costs $60 million to make and only $200,000 to fuel. If a recovered rocket doesn't need too much updating and refurbishment between launches, reusability could eliminate a good chunk of that manufacturing cost. SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell expects reusable rockets to bring down launch costs by about 30 percent, according to Space News. That would make the company's vehicles an even cheaper option for clients than it already is.

tags : space x nathan finneman space landing ocean rocket landing amazing breed of speed breedofspeed

Nathan Finneman : Great white shark bites inflatable boat as worried crew hopes for the best

4/7/2016

Video showing a great white shark repeatedly biting an inflatable boat before its wide-eyed crew is being widely shared this week, along with sensational headlines such as this:

“Let go of the boat, Jaws! Terrifying moment great white shark sunk its teeth into a rubber dinghy in the middle of the sea.”

Probably not the best place for a rubber raft, wouldn't you say?

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