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Magnetic Storm

Documentary - you have to sit through a few adds first.

Amplify’d from topdocumentaryfilms.com

Magnetic StormLike the plot of a sci-fi B movie, something weird is happening deep underground where the constant spin of Earth’s liquid metallic core generates an invisible magnetic force field that shields our planet from harmful radiation in space. Gradually, the field is growing weaker. Could we be heading for a demagnetized doomsday that will leave us defenseless against the lethal effects of solar wind and cosmic rays? “Magnetic Storm” looks into our potentially unsettling magnetic future.

At the present rate, Earth’s magnetic field could be gone within a few centuries, exposing the planet to the relentless blast of charged particles from space with unpredictable consequences for the atmosphere and life. Other possibilities: the field could stop weakening and begin to strengthen, or it could weaken to the point that it suddenly flips polarity—that is, compasses begin to point to the South Magnetic Pole.

See more at topdocumentaryfilms.com
 

Bombing the Moon Gives A New Meaning to Lunatics

So how much does a metaphor weigh? A lot more than NASA thinks. The first man on the moon wasn’t an American or a Russian, it was The Man in the Moon we all saw when we were kids, and somebody older showed him to us. That’s the first man on the moon, her permanent resident, and now he’s got a NASA rocket at his backside…

They used to call the mentally ill lunatics. But now I wonder who the real lunatics are. And if there is water on the moon, what are we going to do with it? Grow moon-corn for ethanol until we kill the Earth?

Such a great article it touched something, it really touched something more beautiful than finding water on the moon.

Amplify’d from www.wbur.org

Landing a man on the moon to do it before the Russians was crazy enough.

The value was purely symbolic, and as far as symbolism goes, the moon has it all over nationalism. The moon has been a symbol since humanity began. She is Luna, who gave us the name for the months of the year, the faithful and lonely companion of Earth who lives in our oldest poems and crosses the sky of our dreams. She pulls up the tides and the blood in the bodies of women. She is the archetype who is always on the verge of stereotype, but never gets there because no matter how many bad songs and broken hearts she uses up, she is still just as powerful when you look up and see her in the sky growing full and sickle-thin. She works her poetic charms in English, Russian, German and every other language, the supreme metaphor.

Who does the moon belong to anyway? Can we just blow a hole in it without asking all the billions of people on Earth who look up at the sky every night and wonder at her beauty and talk to it?

Read more at www.wbur.org
 

Glowing Space Bubble

Amplify’d from www.wired.com
bubblenebula

Called the Bubble Nebula, this eerie, translucent sphere is created by fierce winds from a superhot star 40 times the size of our sun. Moving at nearly 4.5 million miles per hour, stellar winds whip the cloud of gas around the star into a near-perfect bubble, which stands out from the rest of the more stationary gas in this emission nebula.

Located 7,100 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cassiopeia, the bubble is about 6 light-years in diameter and glows pink because of the red, hot gas that surrounds it. The first clear picture of the Bubble Nebula was taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope in 1997, and this new image was captured in July by the South Common Observatory in Britain.

Read more at www.wired.com