Scientists at CalTech claim to have found proof that there is a ninth planet in the solar system, using computer modeling and historical astronomy data.

The new planet has a mass about 10 times that of Earth and has a very eccentric path around our Sun, making one complete orbit every 10,000 or 20,000 years and travelling 200 times further from the Sun than our orbit. The planet hasn’t been seen, but can be determined to exist based on its effect on objects in the Kuiper Belt that encircles our solar system.

“This would be a real ninth planet,” said Mike Brown, the Richard and Barbara Rosenberg Professor of Planetary Astronomy at the California Institute of Technology. “There have only been two true planets discovered since ancient times, and this would be a third. It’s a pretty substantial chunk of our solar system that’s still out there to be found, which is pretty exciting.”

We may be a step closer to realising the dream of using nuclear fusion to create limitless supplies of energy. An international team claims to have created a technique where they can ‘see’ where energy is delivered during fusion. 

Seeing the energy flow could allow scientists to test different ways to improve a fusion reactor’s design, they claim. 

The team, led by the University of California, San Diego and General Atomics, used the technique a nuclear fusion profession known as ‘fast ignition’.  Fast ignition involves two main stages to start nuclear fusion. 

First, hundreds of lasers compress the fusion fuel – typically a mix of deuterium and tritium – which are contained in a spherical plastic fuel capsule. Then, a high-intensity laser delivers energy to rapidly heat and ignite the compressed fuel.

Scientists consider fast ignition a promising approach toward controlled nuclear fusion because it requires less energy than other designs.

But in order for fast ignition to work as it should, researchers need to overcome a big hurdle; how to direct energy from the high-intensity laser into the densest region of the fuel.

The world is going green – literally, in all kinds of places that were desert-like before. 

Have you ever been in an airplane crossing the semi-arid foot hills of the Rocky Mountains and looking down at the ground? You’ll have seen large green, circular patches between the miles of dry brown land. Those patches are irrigated fields sprouting vegetables and fruits of various kinds. They are providing the ample food for the supermarket near you – and the world at large.

What Plants Need to Grow

Plants need just a few things to grow, water, nutrients, and sunshine. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is just one of those vital nutrients. However that CO2 has become more readily available, thanks to mankind’s combustion of fossil fuels.

Just a couple of hundred years ago, with atmospheric CO2 down to 0.02- 0.03{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117}, the globe’s plants were nearly starved of that vital CO2 nutrient. Its natural sources, volcanoes and fumaroles, just could not keep up supplying enough CO2 to the atmosphere to even maintain a steady state between production and consumption. You might say the consumption side took over – somewhat reminiscent of today’s economics.

New study shows that the trace gas CO2 found in the atmosphere cannot be shown to cause anything other than small changes in Earth’s surface temperature. 

Independent climate researcher Jef Reynen has submitted a detailed study for open peer review at the independent science body, Principia Scientific International (PSI). Titled ‘CO2 Has Hardly Any Effect on Surface Temperate’, the study is presented for full open peer review. Reynen, who has a strong mathematics background and relies extensively on numerical analysis, has also helpfully provided herein a layperson’s guide to his paper, paraphrased below.

According to the paper’s findings climate changes are due to other physical phenomena – not carbon dioxide – and such changes have always taken place and will continue to do so despite the recent claims at the UN’s Paris climate summit (COP21) to ‘limit’ global warming to two degrees.

‘CO2 Has Hardly Any Effect on Surface Temperature‘ tells us, “Besides CO2 is not a poisonous gas, on the contrary, it has beneficiary properties for mankind because it is a fertilizer: if the concentration would become less than half of the present 400 ppm (0.04{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117}) the vegetation on the planet would disappear, and consequently animals and human beings. In nursery greenhouses the concentration of CO2 is augmented in order to ameliorate the production of plants.”

In an unprecedented crackdown on academic misconduct, as many as 179 university professors from some 110 universities in South Korea were indicted on Monday after an extensive criminal investigation into a huge copyright scam.

The professors have been charged with republishing existing textbooks written by others under their own names by modifying the covers with the alleged connivance of the publishing companies.

According to the Prosecutors’ Office which conducted an extensive criminal investigation, this is the first time university professors have faced criminal charges for copyright violations using ‘cover-swapping’ tricks. It is also the first time so many professors have been indicted in a single investigation.

Since 1978, satellites have been measuring the Earth’s temperature and have given us a snapshot of 2015‘s overall temperature: it’s not a record breaker. Not even close. In fact, 2015 didn’t even come close to breaking any all-time records, the Daily Caller reported yesterday. Culling data from weather satellites that have been orbiting the Earth since 1978, climate scientists at the University of Alabama/Huntsville (UAH) reported that 2015 has only been the third-warmest year since satellite tracking began.

The supporters of the UN’s “climate agenda” are completely ignorant when it comes to building and maintaining stable, affordable electrical grids.  They, for example, are attempting to persuade (and if persuasion fails force) developed countries to transition away from powering their economies with hydrocarbon energy under the delusion that hydrocarbon energy can simply be replaced by what they call “green energy” without any diminution of the modern way of life that developed countries now enjoy.

Here is one such example from the Ceres Coalition:

“In order to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, the world’s leading [political] scientists say we must: [1] Make ‘substantial emissions reductions over the next few decades and near zero emissions of CO₂ and other long-lived GHGs by the end of the century’ [and 2] Phase out fossil fuels and move to 100{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} clean energy [solar panels and windmills].”

The complicated subject of climate change and geo-engineering (intentional human control of weather and environment) warrants our careful consideration. As with much science that has become politicized it requires a keen eye to weed out the hype from the facts. 

To help fellow scientists and lay readers alike Principia Scientific International has much pleasure in presenting Marian Calcroft’s ‘PSI’s Big Picture Guide to Climate Science & Geo-engineering.’

This 29-page PDF explains how the sun is by far the dominant force controlling our planet’s temperature and climate. The atmosphere actually acts as a refrigerator mechanism and regulates the cooling of the planet by convection and radiation into the top of the atmosphere.

The idea that the Globe is warming has been repeated so often and by so many eminent scientists of both sides – I mean both by Warmists and Skeptics – that surely it must true. But the fact is that nothing could be farther from the truth. Believe me, any Tom Dick or Harry with reasonable intelligence can prove this to himself – or herself, if I must be politically correct.

There is no such entity as a Global Temperature. Wait a moment! A few days ago I was assured by email by none other than Professor John Christy that there is an average Global Temperature. Who am I to disagree? And remember he is a renowned Skeptic at the University of Alabama for Space Studies. Sure there is an average temperature, though God alone knows how he or any of the others work it out. But I did not deny some sort of average. What I have said and I repeat – There is no such entity as a Global Temperature. That is entirely different to an average.

Any fool can understand that. As the Sun goes down the temperature falls, even in the Sahara. Where has all that midday heat disappeared? As my central heating switches off the temperature in my living room and throughout my house falls. Should my central heating fail, as it has done every now and then to the consternation of my wife and myself, I am bereft – I feel extremely miserable if I am cold. I may jump about and get on my exercise machine in order to keep warm; I may put on a thick pullover or even crawl into bed, but what must be my inexorable conclusion? The conclusion is that everything everywhere is cooling by itself. 

A vast, previously unrecognised canyon system could be hidden under the Antarctic ice sheet. 

Hints of its presence are seen in the shape of the white continent’s surface, in a largely unexplored region called Princess Elizabeth Land.

If confirmed by a proper geophysical survey – now under way – the winding canyon network would be over 1,000km long and in places as much as 1km deep.

These dimensions would make it bigger than the famous Grand Canyon in the US.

“We know from other areas of Antarctica that the shape of the ice surface is obviously dependent on the shape of the landscape underneath – because the ice is flowing over that landscape,” explained Dr Stewart Jamieson, from Durham University, UK.

“When we look in Princess Elizabeth Land with satellite data, there seem to be some linear features in the surface ice that to us look very reminiscent of a canyon.

“We have traced these faint lineations from the centre of Princess Elizabeth Land all the way to the coast, off to the north. It’s a pretty substantial system,” he told BBC News.

Picture a volcano. Now imagine that its main vent extends in a line. Now imagine that this line is so long that it runs for more than 40,000 miles through the dark recesses of all the world’s oceans, girding the globe like the seams of a baseball. 

Welcome to one of the planet’s most obscure but important features, known rather prosaically as the midocean ridges. Though long enough to circle the moon more than six times, they receive little notice because they lie hidden in pitch darkness. Oceanographers stumbled on their volcanic nature in 1973. Ever since, costly expeditions have slowly explored the undersea world, which typically lies more than a mile down.

The results can make the visions of Jules Verne seem rather tame.

The ridges feature long rift valleys and, down their middles, giant fields of gushing hot springs that shed tons of minerals into icy seawater, slowly building eerie mounds and towers that can be rich in metals like gold and silver. One knobby tower in the Pacific Ocean, nicknamed Godzilla, grew 15 stories high. Thickets of snakelike tubeworms and other bizarre creatures often blanket the hot features, as do hungry prowlers such as spider crabs.

The riot of life coexists with springs hot enough to melt lead or the plastic windows of mini submarines. With extreme care, humans and robots have measured temperatures as high as 780 degrees.

To date, the studies have been episodic. Ridge expeditions venture out fitfully, their schedules determined by fickle weather and budgets, not to mention the vagaries of crew and gear availability.

Now, scientists have inaugurated a major new effort.

The European Space Organisation envisages a grand project: a village on the Moon, by 2030. Supported by robots that mine and process minerals for the ISS (Intl. Space Station) kind of derivative to be placed there, including 3D-printers for the manufacture of tools, etc. 

The whole thing is thought to be a stepping stone to the planet Mars.

What appears to be missing from the project is an appreciation and understanding of the facts; the Moon is no more of a hospitable place than Mars. In fact, both are rather inhospitable.

Ever dialed a wrong number? I bet you did, just as I have on some occasions. What makes the internet swirl though is the fact that Tim Peake, presently residing in the International Space Station (ISS) high above the earth’s surface did so recently. Why should it be such an “un-earthly” event? Sooner or later, it happens to the best of us! 

As his excuse, Peake claims to have had a faulty phone book, due to incorrect “rounding” of the numbers in a spreadsheet of such.

With an obstinate atmosphere failing to warm as predicted, another peril was needed to sustain the junk-science industry and keep lazy reporters supplied with bogus scoops. No problem! Conscript a Disney character, garnish with misrepresentations and there you have it: ocean acidification.

How scary is “ocean acidification”?  Very scary. The previously scary “global warming” stopped 19 years ago, but do stay scared because all that CO2 since 1997 has instead been “acidifying” the oceans. Please imagine baby oysters dissolving in the equivalent of battery acid, and hermit crabs raising a nervous feeler to discover that their protective shells have disappeared. Curse you, horrible human-caused CO2 emissions!

WASHINGTON – Think you’ve got enough to worry about with collapsing economy, terrorism, wars and rumors of wars? Think again.

Have you been paying attention to what appears to be an increase in volcanic activity across the planet?

There’s a 5 percent to 10 percent chance in the next 80 years, scientists say, one of these eruptions will kill millions of people and poison the atmosphere beyond the imagination of anything man’s activity could do in 1,000 years.

And no one is yet making any plans to deal with the calamitous possibilities.

In the ongoing debate about whether humans are dangerously affecting the climate, facts can often be lost in the holler of propaganda. To help readers gain better traction on the facts beneath the hype Tony Bright-Paul herein offers us a very simple Climate Quiz for 2016, which is good for Warmists and Sceptics alike, and better still for those who are confused about the whole issue.

All the questions are questions of fact – there are no opinions. Some questions may need reference to Google for an answer, and some of the answers can be quite surprising to those who already know a fair bit about this subject. Best for 2016!