Researchers have claimed a breakthrough in understanding how cosmic rays from supernovas react with the sun to form clouds, which impact the climate on Earth.

The findings have been described as the “missing link” to help resolve a decades long controversy that has big implications for climate science.

Chance Favors The Prepared Mind (Louis Pasteur)  What is a prepared mind?  John O’Sullivan, editor of PSI, recently posted, unknown to me, an essay I had written in 2013. (https://principia-scientific.com/education-and-science-science-and-education/)  This essay was from a blog-site I had begun at that time. (http://semivision.blogspot.com/)

The continental rock underlying the east coast of North America is pretty boring, tectonically speaking. The last dramatic geological goings-on there happened around 200 million years ago, and most change since then has been from glacial, wind and water erosion.

The world’s first nuclear fusion plant has now reached 50 percent completion, the project’s director-general announced on December 6, 2017.

When it is operational, the experimental fusion plant, called the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), will circulate plasma in its core that is 10 times hotter than the sun, surrounded by magnets as cold as interstellar space.

I recently came across a site that compared commonly used metals in terms of the energy required to produce them. This raises interesting questions. Shall we criticize auto and motorcycle manufacturers for using more aluminum in their vehicles and less steel?

The energy cost to win a kilogram of aluminum from its aluminum oxide (bauxite) ore is roughly 10 times greater than what is consumed in transforming iron into steel. Or shall we praise them because the lighter weight of the resulting vehicles requires less fuel to accelerate them in stop-and-go driving?

Growing number of scientists are predicting global cooling: Russia’s Pulkovo Observatory: ‘We could be in for a cooling period that lasts 200-250 years’

Danish Solar Scientist Svensmark declares ‘global warming has stopped and a cooling is beginning…enjoy global warming while it lasts’

A whopping two hundred and fifty-two million years ago, Earth was crawling with bizarre animals, including dinosaur cousins resembling Komodo dragons and bulky early mammal-relatives, millions of years before dinosaurs even existed.

New research shows us that the Permian equator was both a literal and figurative hotspot: it was, for the most part, a scorching hot desert, on top of having a concentration of unique animals. Here, you could find ancient crocodile-sized amphibians right next to newly evolved dinosaur and croc relatives. Many of these species were wiped out after an extinction which changed life on the planet forever.

Recent stories in the national media are magnifying fears of a catastrophic eruption of the Yellowstone volcanic area, but scientists remain uncertain about the likelihood of such an event.

To better understand the region’s subsurface geology, University of Illinois geologists have rewound and played back a portion of its geologic history, finding that Yellowstone volcanism is more far more complex and dynamic than previously thought.

Image copyright: GETTY IMAGES

Researchers in the UK have developed a method of improving the long range accuracy of summer weather in the UK and Europe. The scientists found a connection between sea surface temperatures in the North Atlantic in March and April and the subsequent summer’s rain or shine.

A new analysis of the oldest known fossil microorganisms provides strong evidence to support an increasingly widespread understanding that life in the universe is common.

Before getting to the subject of climate models and why they aren’t reliable as forecasting tools, there are two small points worth bringing up:

In assessing the global-scale trends in near-surface (0-20 m) ocean temperatures between 1900 and 2010, Gouretski et al. (2012) determined that the world’s oceans warmed by about 1.1°C between 1900 and 1945 (~0.24°C per decade), but then only warmed by an additional net 0.3°C between 1945 and 2010 (~0.046°C per decade), including a cooling trend between 1945 and 1975.

Experts at the heart of US government climate research have asked that their science be excused from the rigorous testing against the null hypothesis. We look at what the null hypothesis means and why government climate research, by abandoning the test of the null hypothesis, in turn, abandons science.

It’s a well-known fact that even the smallest amount of aluminum, if found in a person’s brain tissue, can become a huge problem. There have also been many studies that look into how having high-levels of aluminum in brain tissue is correlated with neurological conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease.

The first teacher of any note only asked questions.  Socrates was this teacher.  I have read that he said he did this because he did not know and was merely trying to find out what his students knew.  Contrary to how Socrates taught is the common conception that a teacher should tell the students what they should know instead of helping them discover what they might already know (reason) without being told.

Lighting has always been a source of awe and mystery for us lowly mortals. In ancient times, people associated it with Gods like Zeus and Thor, the fathers of the Greek and Norse pantheons. With the birth of modern science and meteorology, lighting is no longer considered the province of the divine. However, this does not mean that the sense of mystery it carries has diminished one bit.