Written by Viktor Katuna
Whenever you see a headline like this, you know it will go along the lines of “did you know that petroleum stands for rock oil?” Yes you did, goes the reply of an overwhelming majority of readers.
For this reason, the list below is one which holds the reader in high esteem, as a dear colleague on the road to broaden our knowledge of the oil industry. So here we go…
Written by Pat Brennan
A new study has, for the first time, cut a clear path through a nettlesome problem: accurately measuring a powerful effect on global sea level that lingers from the last ice age.
Just how quickly Earth’s deep, rocky mantle is rebounding from the heavy burden of ancient ice sheets and oceans remains somewhat uncertain. But this rebound effect, known as glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA), is critical to properly understanding the causes of sea level change.
Written by Fergus Walsh
Doing lots of exercise in older age can prevent the immune system from declining and protect people against infections, scientists say.
They followed 125 long-distance cyclists, some now in their 80s, and found they had the immune systems of 20-year-olds. Prof Norman Lazarus, 82, of King’s College London, who took part in and co-authored the research, said: “If exercise was a pill, everyone would be taking it.
Written by Jon Rappoport
Breaking: In Australia, an effort to label all alternative (traditional, complementary) medicine products as “based on pseudoscience” has failed.
Traditional remedies (much older than mainstream medicines) are defended as appropriate, and can include health claims.
The Crazz Files, a major defender of health freedom in Australia, reports: “In a major win, the Federal Government has ignored the Australian Greens and anti-complementary medicine activists like Doctor Ken Harvey…and passed a reform package that protects traditional medicine.”
Written by Nathan Schwadron, Ph.D., Physicist, Univ. of New Hampshire
March 8, 2018 Durham, New Hampshire – In mid-February 2018, solar activity was as low as 2007 levels, which was one year before that solar minimum began. That’s why solar physicists now project that the Solar Cycle 24 minimum leading up to Solar Cycle 25 will begin a year from now in the spring of 2019.
Some solar physicists have even placed bets about whether low energy Solar Cycle 24 will keep extending into Solar Cycles 25 to 26 ending up in a Maunder Minimum of 1645 to 1715, when our Sun was blank without sunspots most of the time and coincided with a Little Ice Age.
Written by Richard Chirgwin
If you read the New Zealand Herald, you’re (a) probably a Kiwi, and (b) building a bunker because you expect a Chinese space station to drop on your head.
Or you could be a Newsweek reader, in which case you’re digging bunkers because it’s going to drop on your head, not some Kiwi’s. If you’re in Western Australia, you’re probably hoping to issue China’s space agency with a littering fine (that’s happened before).
Written by Katyanna Quach
A team of researchers carried out a series of experiments to study how complex hydrocarbons, an important class of molecules needed to create the building blocks for life, formed in space.
Hydrocarbons (“fossil fuel”), compounds made up of differing amounts of carbon and hydrogen, are common on Earth but also outside it. Some hydrocarbons, such as benzene or naphthalene, have been detected in meteorites floating around the solar system, leading scientists to wonder how they might have formed.
Written by David Grossman
Written by Elizabeth Howell
Credit: Sarah Stewart/UC Davis based on NASA rendering
Earth’s moon formed inside a cloud of molten rock, and may have done so before our planet itself formed, a new theory suggests.
Scientists call such a cloud a synestia, a doughnut-shaped ring of debris full of molten rock that forms in the aftermath of a protoplanet collision. In this case, it would have been a massive collision early in our solar system’s history. According to the new theory, the moon formed within a few dozen years after the crash, as the synestia shrank and cooled. The Earth subsequently emerged about 1,000 years after the moon.
Written by Robert F Kennedy Jr
Bill Gates is fond of using his bully pulpit to talk about “miracles” and “magic.” Gates has featured one or both words in nearly all of his annual wrap-up letters for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2014, 2016 and 2017), most often in reference to the Gates Foundation’s outsized financial and ideological support for global vaccine programs. As Gates says, “In the same way that during my Microsoft career I talked about the magic of software, I now spend my time talking about the magic of vaccines.”
Written by Dr Susan J Crockford
Here’s a polar bear habitat update for early March: some folks are wringing their hands over the relative extent of ice this season but ice maps show that as far as polar bear habitat is concerned, conditions are not materially different this year from what they were in 2006 or 2017.
Written by Raymond HV Gallucci, PhD, PE
Literature on the galactic rotational anomaly seems to be divided between whether this implies spiral arm stability, necessitating constant angular rotation speed, or something else, namely constant tangential rotational speed (as rotation curves are often shown).
The latter, as shown here, would “unwind” the spiral arms over time, so mainstream physics postuiates “density waves” as an explanation for galactic spiral arm stability. This paper hypothesizes that, if exhibiting constant tangential rotational speed so as to imply spiral arm unwinding (unless one accepts the density wave theory), possibly an optical illusion is at play.
Written by Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD
JUST two generations back, in the 1960s, mainstream Australian society shunned both unmarried pregnant women and also homosexuals. They were loathed, and it would have been considered reasonable for the local police to turn-a-blind eye should misfortune befall members of either group – should they be killed.
Written by Pierre R Gosselin
Tropical storms have plagued humans since the start. Today we will shed some light on the activity pattern of the Pacific region.
Toomey et al. 2016 examined tropical storm activity in the South Pacific for the past 3000 years. Conclusion: During the period from 2600 to 1500 years B.P., storms were at their worst.
Written by Dr Klaus L E Kaiser
Canada exports a variety of goods to the world market. A good chunk of that is semi-processed materials like metal ores, zinc ingots, coils of rolled steel, sheets of aluminum, lumber and plywood, crude oil and “syncrude” (a liquefied form of bitumen), natural gas, agricultural livestock and its products, grains, legumes, fruits and vegetables, processed products from the seafood industry, and so forth.
Written by Anthony Bright-Paul
There is a lot of mystique connected to science, indeed mystery. And scientists themselves foster this mystery as it gives them a sort of invulnerability and unaccountability. When I was at school I was interested in literature and poetry and in science not at all.
