Scientists Predict Big Solar Cycle [NASA]

NASA predicts that the Sun will also reverse its own magnetic poles during 2011++ as result of reaching the end of current 11-year sunspot cycle. Some believe this will amplify the effects of retarding magnetic field on earth, as harmful charged particles blasted away from the sun would more easily penetrate the earth's atmosphere.

Right: An erupting solar prominence photographed by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO).

Dec. 21, 2006: Evidence is mounting: the next solar cycle is going to be a big one.
see captionSolar cycle 24, due to peak in 2010 or 2011 "looks like its going to be one of the most intense cycles since record-keeping began almost 400 years ago," says solar physicist David Hathaway of the Marshall Space Flight Center. He and colleague Robert Wilson presented this conclusion last week at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/21dec_cycle24.htm

Solar Storm Warning

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/10mar_stormwarning.htm

Hindu temple, Muslim priests
[Faith-full: Mohammad Abdullah (right) and Ghulam Hassan, caretakers of the Mamalaka Temple, outside the temple. Photo by the writer]

Naveen S Garewal
Tribune News Service

(Mamal) Pahalgam, May 4
This is a place where politicians need to come and take a few lessons in secularism. After militancy forced Hindus to migrate from the Kashmir valley in the 1990s, Muslims have been acting as “priests” and “caretakers” of the ancient Mamalaka Temple on the outskirts of Pahalgam.
Not only has this 900-year-old Shiva temple with a two-foot “shivaling” been preserved in its original form, Mohammad Abdullah and Ghulam Hassan have ensured that all these years the temple did not go without “parshad” or “aarti” even for a single day. Besides the regular rituals, a daily prayer is held here in which the Muslim priests pray for the return of the Hindus, who had migrated.
Built on the right bank of the Lidder river by Raja Jai Suria (1128-1155 AD), the 8 sq ft temple was a popular destination for everyone on a pilgrimage to the Amarnath cave shrine. Till 1990, the temple, a property of the Jammu and Kashmir State Archaeology, Archives and Museum Department and a protected monument, had Pandit Radha Krishan, who hailed from Ganeshpora, responsible for its maintenance.
But with militancy rising in the 1990s, Pandit Radha Krishan was made to leave along with other Hindus of the area, abandoning the temple. Initially, Abdul Bhatt, who was close to Pandit Radha Krishan, looked after the temple for many years. Bhatt was transferred from the area about five years ago and ever since Mohammad Abdullah and Ghulam Hassan, both employees of the government, were entrusted the task of maintaining the building and its surrounding. However, not satisfied by merely keeping the temple clean, the two have ensured that the temple remains fully functional despite threats from the militants. The temple continues to be preserved in its original form in its eight-by-eight premises. It houses the entire family of Lord Shiva comprising Ganesha, Mata Parvati and Hanuman carved in stone. Besides, the temple has a natural spring that fills the holy pond.
According to Abdullah, during the last two-three years, the number of Hindu devotees to the temple has increased slightly. These include some visiting Hindu families that left the area as well as tourists, who know about the place.
Talking to The Tribune, he said, “We have guarded this place for the Hindus. It is their “amanat”. But now the situation has improved. We want that a Hindu priest should take over this holy place. Being Muslims, we tried to do whatever best we could to keep the temple functional, but it should ideally be run by a Hindu priest”.
Further Abdullah and Hassan say their daily prayer includes a special mention to the Hindus when they say, “Lord, the heaven on earth is here in the valley. Please facilitate the return of our Hindu brothers from the hell outside”.

TRIBUNE WEBSITE LINK BELOW.... [published on this blog as was on tribune website]
http://www.tribuneindia.com/2009/20090505/main8.htm


*We* are not of any religion....we consider us human beings first.... n' we respect all religions/civilizations....
....no religion teaches us wrong.... all are based on peace n' humanity.... its some crap headed people who make use of religions for their own benefits.... n' dumb people follow them.... so....
....WAKE UP HUMANS....

Nemesis: Does the Sun Have a 'Companion'



[Artist's conception of Nemesis as a red dwarf seen from a nearby debris field with the Sun visible in the center.]

Nemesis is a hypothetical red dwarf star or brown dwarf, orbiting the Sun at a distance of about 50,000 to 100,000 AU, somewhat beyond the Oort cloud. This star was originally postulated to exist as part of a hypothesis to explain a perceived cycle of mass extinctions in the geological record.

Claimed periodicity of mass extinctions

In 1984 paleontologists David Raup and Jack Sepkoski published a paper claiming that they had identified a statistical periodicity in extinction rates over the last 250 million years using various forms of time series analysis.[1] They focused on the extinction intensity of fossil families of marine vertebrates, invertebrates, and protozoans, identifying 12 extinction events over the time period in question. The average time interval between extinction events was determined as 26 million years. At the time, two of the identified extinction events (Cretaceous-Tertiary and Late Eocene) could be shown to coincide with large impact events. Although Raup and Sepkoski could not identify the cause of their supposed periodicity, they suggested that there might be a non-terrestrial connection. The challenge to propose a mechanism was quickly addressed by several teams of astronomers.

Development of the Nemesis hypotheses

Two teams of astronomers, Whitmire and Jackson, and Davis, Hut, and Muller, independently published similar hypotheses to explain Raup and Sepkoski's extinction periodicity in the same issue of the journal Nature.[2][3] This hypothesis proposes that the sun may have an as yet undetected companion star in a highly elliptical orbit that periodically disturbs comets in the Oort cloud, causing a large increase in the number of comets visiting the inner solar system with a consequential increase in impact events on Earth. This became known as the Nemesis (or, more colorfully, Death Star) hypothesis.

If it does exist, the exact nature of Nemesis is uncertain. Richard A. Muller suggests that the most likely object is a red dwarf with magnitude between 7 and 12,[4] while Daniel P. Whitmire and Albert A. Jackson argue for a brown dwarf. If a red dwarf, it would undoubtedly already exist in star catalogs, but its true nature would only be detectable by measuring its parallax; due to orbiting the Sun it would have a very low proper motion and would escape detection by proper motion surveys that have found stars like the 9th magnitude Barnard's star.

The last major extinction event was about 5 million years ago, so Muller posits that Nemesis is likely 1-1.5 light years away at present, and even has ideas of what area of the sky it might be in (supported by Yarris, 1987), near Hydra, based on a hypothetical orbit derived from original apogees of a number of atypical long-period comets that describe an orbital arc meeting the specifications of Muller's hypothesis.


*From Wikipedia