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For over thousands of years man has been trying to predict his future. He has always failed-and his failures are buried in the dust of history. Legendary fortune tellers, prophets, oracles, medicine men, astrologers, numerologists, mystics, charlatans, and seers, all claimed possession of supernatural and occult powers that enabled them to see into the future. Wars were fought, kingdoms fell, and civilizations were altered as a result of their pronouncements and predictions.
We are not without their counterparts today. They invade our homes through the media of television, radio, internet, smartphones, and the press, claiming hidden and mysterious powers that enable them to solve murders, foretell earthquakes, and blueprint our days in advance. They play on latent superstitions within all of us, piously predicting the next political assassination, the next airline tragedy, the next Hollywood divorce.
But, working quietly behind the scenes, thousands of scientists in fields as unrelated as history, botany, anthropology, mammalogy, terrestrial magnetism, sociology, and economics, to name only a few, are accumulating facts and figures that promise to make this age-old dream of foretelling the future at least a partia !!
OUR MISSION: FIND UNIVERSAL CYCLES AND THE MYSTERIOUS FORCES THAT TRIGGER EVENTS ON FINANCIAL MARKETS
( Knowledge is wonderful; Science is amazing. But wisdom is power )
We are not without their counterparts today. They invade our homes through the media of television, radio, internet, smartphones, and the press, claiming hidden and mysterious powers that enable them to solve murders, foretell earthquakes, and blueprint our days in advance. They play on latent superstitions within all of us, piously predicting the next political assassination, the next airline tragedy, the next Hollywood divorce.
But, working quietly behind the scenes, thousands of scientists in fields as unrelated as history, botany, anthropology, mammalogy, terrestrial magnetism, sociology, and economics, to name only a few, are accumulating facts and figures that promise to make this age-old dream of foretelling the future at least a partia !!
OUR MISSION: FIND UNIVERSAL CYCLES AND THE MYSTERIOUS FORCES THAT TRIGGER EVENTS ON FINANCIAL MARKETS
( Knowledge is wonderful; Science is amazing. But wisdom is power )
Sebastiaan de Boorder
Strange charged particles streaming from the core of our Milky Way galaxy may be a long-sought signal of dark matter - the elusive element thought to make up much of the universe, a new study reports.
Researchers using the European Space Agency's Planck satellite have characterized in great detail the charged particles that form a mysterious haze at the center of our galaxy. They suspect this hazy cloud is not generated by the normal matter that makes up everything we can see and measure
The Mayans called it the "5th Element" also described as "Ether". The definition of 'ether' described in various dictionaries such as Webster and Cambridge say: "It is a theoretical substance which occupy all space, postulated to account for the propagation of electromagnetic radiation through the universe." Mayan prophecy speaks of 'celestial events' as mentioned in the Mayan Sacred Books of 'Chilam Balam' and 'Popol Vuh' to occur at the end of the 4th world and beginning of the 5th world. We are in that time right now.
"The charged particles cannot be explained by the structural mechanisms in the galaxy, and it cannot be charged particles from supernova explosions," says Pavel Naselsky, of the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. Naselsky added; "We believe that this could be proof of dark matter - otherwise, we have discovered an absolutely new (and unknown) mechanism of acceleration of particles in the galactic center."
The first evidence of the galactic haze was spotted by NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe in 2004, and researchers have been attempting to explain it ever since. Anisotropy means having different physical properties in different directions, usually in more than a single axis.
In the new study, researchers used Planck and WMAP data to look at the spectrum of particles in microwave wavelengths. They determined that it is most likely synchrotron emission, which is produced by electrons and positrons streaking at incredible speeds through magnetic fields at the center of the galaxy.
Dark matter is thought to be scattered throughout much of the universe, and is likely to be very dense at the centers of galaxies.
This is what I authored back on June 21, 2011
"Over the last three years and up until this date, we have witnessed monumental leaps of the scientific world's new understanding of the inter-galactic play between Earth, the Sun, and the Milky Way itself.
New information is coming in so fast, scientific scholars are seriously concerned over the re-designing, re-thinking, of established charts, graphs, formulas, templates, hypothesis, and most everything that resides in scientific journals and books.
In short: something is changing - and changing fast.
What is at the center of this "something"? Is it a core blanket of thought, understanding; a new discovery of a central "something" that changes all known paradigms? The answer is yes.
It is this "something" that our ancient ancestors have been trying to tell us for centuries. In several descriptions of this "something" coming from sources such as the Maya, Hopi, Jesus, Anasazi, Sumerians, Buddha, Dogon, Ra, and this list goes on.
It is sometimes referred to as 'holy spirit', 'creator', 'sun god', 'soul' - in more modern times it is referred to as Chi, Ki, Prana, Gaia. It is a source that connects all living things. Mayan prophecy refers to it as the "new element." They have given this "something" a name - they call it "Ether."
Specific to the Mayan Calendar - a transition to a new state-of-being (awareness) has already begun. The date of December 21st 2012 does not have the function of a light switch. There will be no difference on Dec. 20th or Dec. 22nd. This calendar date has always been meant to serve as simply a post-on-the-road telling us we have just about come to the peak of an old cycle and the beginning of a new one.
What is the "something" that drives cycles? Answer: Charged Particles"
By Mitch Battros - Earth Changes Media
Researchers using the European Space Agency's Planck satellite have characterized in great detail the charged particles that form a mysterious haze at the center of our galaxy. They suspect this hazy cloud is not generated by the normal matter that makes up everything we can see and measure
The Mayans called it the "5th Element" also described as "Ether". The definition of 'ether' described in various dictionaries such as Webster and Cambridge say: "It is a theoretical substance which occupy all space, postulated to account for the propagation of electromagnetic radiation through the universe." Mayan prophecy speaks of 'celestial events' as mentioned in the Mayan Sacred Books of 'Chilam Balam' and 'Popol Vuh' to occur at the end of the 4th world and beginning of the 5th world. We are in that time right now.
"The charged particles cannot be explained by the structural mechanisms in the galaxy, and it cannot be charged particles from supernova explosions," says Pavel Naselsky, of the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. Naselsky added; "We believe that this could be proof of dark matter - otherwise, we have discovered an absolutely new (and unknown) mechanism of acceleration of particles in the galactic center."
The first evidence of the galactic haze was spotted by NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe in 2004, and researchers have been attempting to explain it ever since. Anisotropy means having different physical properties in different directions, usually in more than a single axis.
In the new study, researchers used Planck and WMAP data to look at the spectrum of particles in microwave wavelengths. They determined that it is most likely synchrotron emission, which is produced by electrons and positrons streaking at incredible speeds through magnetic fields at the center of the galaxy.
Dark matter is thought to be scattered throughout much of the universe, and is likely to be very dense at the centers of galaxies.
This is what I authored back on June 21, 2011
"Over the last three years and up until this date, we have witnessed monumental leaps of the scientific world's new understanding of the inter-galactic play between Earth, the Sun, and the Milky Way itself.
New information is coming in so fast, scientific scholars are seriously concerned over the re-designing, re-thinking, of established charts, graphs, formulas, templates, hypothesis, and most everything that resides in scientific journals and books.
In short: something is changing - and changing fast.
What is at the center of this "something"? Is it a core blanket of thought, understanding; a new discovery of a central "something" that changes all known paradigms? The answer is yes.
It is this "something" that our ancient ancestors have been trying to tell us for centuries. In several descriptions of this "something" coming from sources such as the Maya, Hopi, Jesus, Anasazi, Sumerians, Buddha, Dogon, Ra, and this list goes on.
It is sometimes referred to as 'holy spirit', 'creator', 'sun god', 'soul' - in more modern times it is referred to as Chi, Ki, Prana, Gaia. It is a source that connects all living things. Mayan prophecy refers to it as the "new element." They have given this "something" a name - they call it "Ether."
Specific to the Mayan Calendar - a transition to a new state-of-being (awareness) has already begun. The date of December 21st 2012 does not have the function of a light switch. There will be no difference on Dec. 20th or Dec. 22nd. This calendar date has always been meant to serve as simply a post-on-the-road telling us we have just about come to the peak of an old cycle and the beginning of a new one.
What is the "something" that drives cycles? Answer: Charged Particles"
By Mitch Battros - Earth Changes Media
Sebastiaan de Boorder
Do we live in the Matrix?
Researchers say they have found a way to find out Any simulation of the universe must have limits, and finding these would prove we live in an artificial reality, physicists claim.
By : DAMIEN GAYLE
If the Matrix left you with the niggling fear that we might indeed be living in a computer generated universe staged by a malevolent artificial intelligence using the human race as an energy farm, help is at hand.
A team of physicists have come up with a test which they say could prove whether or not the universe as we know it is a virtual reality simulation - a kind of theoretical red pill, as it were.
Silas Beane of the University of Bonn, Germany, and his colleagues contend that a simulation of the universe, no matter how complex, would still have constraints which would reveal it
All we have to do to identify what these constraints would be is to build our own simulation of the universe, which is close to what many researchers are trying to do on an incredibly miniscule scale.
Computer simulations have been run to recreate quantum chromodynamics - the theory that describes the nuclear forced that binds quarks and gluons into protons and neutrons, which then bind to form atomic nuclei.
It is believed that simulating physics on this fundamental level is equivalent, more or less, to simulating the workings of the universe itself
Researchers say they have found a way to find out Any simulation of the universe must have limits, and finding these would prove we live in an artificial reality, physicists claim.
By : DAMIEN GAYLE
If the Matrix left you with the niggling fear that we might indeed be living in a computer generated universe staged by a malevolent artificial intelligence using the human race as an energy farm, help is at hand.
A team of physicists have come up with a test which they say could prove whether or not the universe as we know it is a virtual reality simulation - a kind of theoretical red pill, as it were.
Silas Beane of the University of Bonn, Germany, and his colleagues contend that a simulation of the universe, no matter how complex, would still have constraints which would reveal it
All we have to do to identify what these constraints would be is to build our own simulation of the universe, which is close to what many researchers are trying to do on an incredibly miniscule scale.
Computer simulations have been run to recreate quantum chromodynamics - the theory that describes the nuclear forced that binds quarks and gluons into protons and neutrons, which then bind to form atomic nuclei.
It is believed that simulating physics on this fundamental level is equivalent, more or less, to simulating the workings of the universe itself
Sebastiaan de Boorder
Even operating on this vanishingly small scale, the maths is pretty difficult so, despite using the world's most powerful supercomputers, physicists as yet have only managed to simulate regions of space on the femto-scale.
To put that in context, a femtometre is 10^-15 metres - that's a quadrillionth of a metre or 0.000000000001mm.
However, the main problem with all such simulations is that the law of physics have to be superimposed onto a discrete three-dimensional lattice which advances in time. And that's where the test comes in.
Professor Beane and his colleagues say this lattice spacing imposes a limit on the energy that particles can have, because nothing can exist that is smaller than the lattice itself.
This means that if the universe as we know it is actually a computer simulation, there ought to be a cut off in the spectrum of high energy particles. And it just happens that there is exactly this kind of cut off in the energy of cosmic rays, a limit known as the Greisen–Zatsepin–Kuzmin (GZK) cut off.
As the Physics arXiv blog explains, this cut off is well-studied and happend because high energy particles interacting with the cosmic microwave background lose energy as they travel across long distances.
The researchers calculate that the lattice spacing forces additional features on the spectrum, most strikingly that the cosmic rays would prefer to travel along the axes of the lattice. This means they wouldn't observed equally in all directions.
That would the acid test that the researchers are searching for - an indication that all is not at it seems with the universe. Excitingly, it's also a measurement we could do now with our current levels of technology.
That said, the finding is not without its caveats. One problem Professor Beane identifies is that the simulated universe could be constructed in an entirely different way to how they have envisaged it.
Moreover, the effect is only measurable if the lattice cutoff is the same as the GZK cutoff, any smaller than that and the observations will draw a blank.
Professor Beane and his colleagues' findings are reported in Cornell University's arXiv journal.
To put that in context, a femtometre is 10^-15 metres - that's a quadrillionth of a metre or 0.000000000001mm.
However, the main problem with all such simulations is that the law of physics have to be superimposed onto a discrete three-dimensional lattice which advances in time. And that's where the test comes in.
Professor Beane and his colleagues say this lattice spacing imposes a limit on the energy that particles can have, because nothing can exist that is smaller than the lattice itself.
This means that if the universe as we know it is actually a computer simulation, there ought to be a cut off in the spectrum of high energy particles. And it just happens that there is exactly this kind of cut off in the energy of cosmic rays, a limit known as the Greisen–Zatsepin–Kuzmin (GZK) cut off.
As the Physics arXiv blog explains, this cut off is well-studied and happend because high energy particles interacting with the cosmic microwave background lose energy as they travel across long distances.
The researchers calculate that the lattice spacing forces additional features on the spectrum, most strikingly that the cosmic rays would prefer to travel along the axes of the lattice. This means they wouldn't observed equally in all directions.
That would the acid test that the researchers are searching for - an indication that all is not at it seems with the universe. Excitingly, it's also a measurement we could do now with our current levels of technology.
That said, the finding is not without its caveats. One problem Professor Beane identifies is that the simulated universe could be constructed in an entirely different way to how they have envisaged it.
Moreover, the effect is only measurable if the lattice cutoff is the same as the GZK cutoff, any smaller than that and the observations will draw a blank.
Professor Beane and his colleagues' findings are reported in Cornell University's arXiv journal.
Sebastiaan de Boorder
Doomsayers disappointed by 2012's non-apocalypse will get a sop in 2013 in the form of a rare supercomet. Once widely seen as a portent of doom, comets are seldom as spectacular as the new arrival, known as C/2012 S1 (ISON), may be. At its peak it may outshine the moon, even by day.
First spotted in September, ISON is rushing towards the sun from the outer solar system. Its closest approach to the sun will be in November, when Timothy Spahr of the Minor Planet Center at Harvard University expects it to put on as good a show as Hale-Bopp did in 1997.
This will be its first trip to the inner solar system, so ISON could contain volatile gases that other comets, making their umpteenth lap around the sun, have lost. That will give us a pristine glimpse of the material in the outer solar system 4.6 billion years ago, when ISON formed.
First spotted in September, ISON is rushing towards the sun from the outer solar system. Its closest approach to the sun will be in November, when Timothy Spahr of the Minor Planet Center at Harvard University expects it to put on as good a show as Hale-Bopp did in 1997.
This will be its first trip to the inner solar system, so ISON could contain volatile gases that other comets, making their umpteenth lap around the sun, have lost. That will give us a pristine glimpse of the material in the outer solar system 4.6 billion years ago, when ISON formed.
Sebastiaan de Boorder
Star Wars: What would hyperspace travel really look like?
Physics students shed new light on Millennium Falcon’s hyperdrive system – using Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity
Physics students shed new light on Millennium Falcon’s hyperdrive system – using Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity
Sebastiaan de Boorder
The sight of the Millennium Falcon making the “jump to lightspeed” is one of the most iconic images from the Star Wars trilogy.
But University of Leicester students have calculated that – in reality – Han, Luke and Leia would not see the light from stars stretching past the ship as we are shown in the movies.
The group of fourth year MPhys students published the findings in this year’s University of Leicester’s Journal of Physics Special Topics.
The journal is published every year, and features original short papers written by students in the final year of their four-year Master of Physics degree.
The students are encouraged to be imaginative with their topics, and the aim is for them to learn about aspects of publishing and peer review.
In the films, spacecraft are equipped with hyperdrives which allow them to approach the speed of light.
As the hyperdrive is engaged, every star in the sky is seen to stretch before the characters’ eyes as the ship speeds through the galaxy.
The four students - Riley Connors, Katie Dexter, Joshua Argyle, and Cameron Scoular – have shown that this would not be the case.
They have shown that the crew would actually see a central disc of bright light.
There would be no sign of stars because of the Doppler effect - the same effect which causes the siren of an ambulance to become higher in pitch as it comes towards you.
Doppler blue shift is a phenomenon caused by a source of electromagnetic radiation – including visible light - moving towards an observer.
The effect means that the wavelength of electromagnetic radiation will be shortened.
From the Millennium Falcon crew’s point of view, the wavelength of the light from stars will decrease and ‘shift’ out of the visible spectrum into the X-ray range.
They would simply see a central disc of bright light as Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation is shifted into the visible spectrum.
Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation is radiation left behind from the Big Bang, and is spread across the universe fairly uniformly.
The group found after further investigation that the intense X-rays from stars would push the ship back, causing it to slow down. The pressure felt by the ship would be comparable to that felt at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.
Their calculations also show that Han would need to store extra amounts of energy on his ship to overcome this pressure in order to continue on his journeys.
Riley Connors, 21, from Milton Keynes, said: “If the Millennium Falcon existed and really could travel that fast, sunglasses would certainly be advisable. On top of this, the ship would need something to protect the crew from harmful X-ray radiation.”
Joshua Argyle, 22, from Leicester, added: “The resultant effects we worked out were based on Einstein’s theory of Special Relativity, so while we may not be used to them in our daily lives, Han Solo and his crew should certainly understand its implications.”
Katie Dexter, 21, from Kettering, concluded: “Perhaps Disney should take the physical implications of such high speed travel into account in their forthcoming films.”
Course leader Dr Mervyn Roy, a lecturer at the University’s Department of Physics and Astronomy, said: “A lot of the papers published in the Journal are on subjects that are amusing, topical, or a bit off-the-wall. Our fourth years are nothing if not creative! But, to be a research physicist - in industry or academia - you need to show some imagination, to think outside the box, and this is certainly something that the module allows our students to practice.
“Most of our masters students hope to go on to careers in research where a lot of their time will be taken up with scientific publishing - writing and submitting papers, and writing and responding to referee reports.
“This is another area where the module really helps. Because Physics Special Topics is run exactly like a professional journal, the students get the chance to develop all the skills they will need when dealing with high profile journals later on in life.”
Credit: University of Leicester
But University of Leicester students have calculated that – in reality – Han, Luke and Leia would not see the light from stars stretching past the ship as we are shown in the movies.
The group of fourth year MPhys students published the findings in this year’s University of Leicester’s Journal of Physics Special Topics.
The journal is published every year, and features original short papers written by students in the final year of their four-year Master of Physics degree.
The students are encouraged to be imaginative with their topics, and the aim is for them to learn about aspects of publishing and peer review.
In the films, spacecraft are equipped with hyperdrives which allow them to approach the speed of light.
As the hyperdrive is engaged, every star in the sky is seen to stretch before the characters’ eyes as the ship speeds through the galaxy.
The four students - Riley Connors, Katie Dexter, Joshua Argyle, and Cameron Scoular – have shown that this would not be the case.
They have shown that the crew would actually see a central disc of bright light.
There would be no sign of stars because of the Doppler effect - the same effect which causes the siren of an ambulance to become higher in pitch as it comes towards you.
Doppler blue shift is a phenomenon caused by a source of electromagnetic radiation – including visible light - moving towards an observer.
The effect means that the wavelength of electromagnetic radiation will be shortened.
From the Millennium Falcon crew’s point of view, the wavelength of the light from stars will decrease and ‘shift’ out of the visible spectrum into the X-ray range.
They would simply see a central disc of bright light as Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation is shifted into the visible spectrum.
Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation is radiation left behind from the Big Bang, and is spread across the universe fairly uniformly.
The group found after further investigation that the intense X-rays from stars would push the ship back, causing it to slow down. The pressure felt by the ship would be comparable to that felt at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.
Their calculations also show that Han would need to store extra amounts of energy on his ship to overcome this pressure in order to continue on his journeys.
Riley Connors, 21, from Milton Keynes, said: “If the Millennium Falcon existed and really could travel that fast, sunglasses would certainly be advisable. On top of this, the ship would need something to protect the crew from harmful X-ray radiation.”
Joshua Argyle, 22, from Leicester, added: “The resultant effects we worked out were based on Einstein’s theory of Special Relativity, so while we may not be used to them in our daily lives, Han Solo and his crew should certainly understand its implications.”
Katie Dexter, 21, from Kettering, concluded: “Perhaps Disney should take the physical implications of such high speed travel into account in their forthcoming films.”
Course leader Dr Mervyn Roy, a lecturer at the University’s Department of Physics and Astronomy, said: “A lot of the papers published in the Journal are on subjects that are amusing, topical, or a bit off-the-wall. Our fourth years are nothing if not creative! But, to be a research physicist - in industry or academia - you need to show some imagination, to think outside the box, and this is certainly something that the module allows our students to practice.
“Most of our masters students hope to go on to careers in research where a lot of their time will be taken up with scientific publishing - writing and submitting papers, and writing and responding to referee reports.
“This is another area where the module really helps. Because Physics Special Topics is run exactly like a professional journal, the students get the chance to develop all the skills they will need when dealing with high profile journals later on in life.”
Credit: University of Leicester
· 1
Sebastiaan de Boorder
What's going on around Andromeda?
Curious structure puzzles scientists. Scientists have found 13 dwarf galaxies orbiting the Andromeda galaxy in what appears to be a fairly narrow ring. That makes no sense according to current models of galaxy formation.
Curious structure puzzles scientists. Scientists have found 13 dwarf galaxies orbiting the Andromeda galaxy in what appears to be a fairly narrow ring. That makes no sense according to current models of galaxy formation.
Sebastiaan de Boorder
Thirteen dwarf galaxies are playing a cosmic-scale game of Ring Around Andromeda, forming an enormous structure astronomers have never seen before and are hard-pressed to explain with current theories of how galaxies form and evolve.
According to current theories, the small galaxies, which contain as many as a few tens of billions of stars each, should be randomly arranged around the Andromeda galaxy.
Instead, they orbit Andromeda within a plane more than 1 million light-years across and about 30,000 light-years thick. For comparison, the latest estimates of Andromeda's girth put its diameter at more than 220,000 light-years.
The ring, if it can be called that, represents "the largest organized structure in what we call the local group of galaxies," says Michael Rich, a research astronomer at the University of California at Los Angeles and a member of the team reporting the results in the Jan. 3 issue of the journal Nature. The local group consists of more than 54 galaxies, including dwarfs, about 10 million light-years across.
Such rings don't appear when astrophysicists run their models of galaxy evolution, or when they model the local group's formation, he says. In addition, Andromeda and the Milky Way, the two most massive galaxies in the group, appear to be headed for a collision in about 4.5 billion years. The two galaxies are but 2.5 million light-years away and closing.
"Given all of this, we don't have a clear explanation for why this structure exists," Dr. Rich says.
Coming up with an explanation will be challenging. Andromeda was the only galaxy close enough to make the observation possible. But researchers would like to find more of these extended rings.
Larger numbers would provide increasingly rigorous real-world tests of any explanations scientists devise, notes Chris Stoughton, an astronomer at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill., who was not a member of the team that discovered the ring.
In particular, he says, an understanding of these structures could help researchers unravel the mysteries of dark matter – a form of matter that provides the cocoons in which galaxies form and grow, as well as the scaffolding along which galaxies are distributed in the cosmos.
Dark matter earned its "dark" label because it emits no light or any other form of directly detectable radiation. Its presence is inferred by its gravitational effect on the matter astronomers can see.
**The team discovering the rings – led by Rodrigo Ibata of the Strasbourg Astronomical Observatory in France and Geraint Lewis at the University of Sydney in Australia – identified 27 dwarf galaxies in all orbiting Andromeda, also called M31. Thirteen of the dwarf galaxies shared a common orbital plane around Andromeda, and one was offset from the plane of M31's spiral arms by a significant degree.
Other teams had seen hints of the structure in the past, but this new work appears to build the most convincing case.
"They found a beautiful structure ... and did a very nice job of data analysis," Dr. Stoughton says.
Based on the distance from M31, the dwarfs orbit once every 5.5 billion years, the team estimates. Moreover, the stars in the dwarf galaxies are old, suggesting that if the dwarfs formed where they are, "the structure is ancient."
Dr. Ibata's team has offered up two broad explanations for the presence of Andromeda's ring of dwarfs.
One posits that M31's gravity attracted a group of dwarf galaxies in a single event, and perhaps the team just caught a lucky viewing angle as the dwarfs filed filament-like into the gravitational grasp of their new mistress.
The other is that they formed in place during the merger of two ancient gas-rich galaxies – a process that can form coherent streamers of stars in lesser mergers. Or perhaps during M31's birth, smaller halos of gas-bearing dark matter were captured by the more massive halo in which M31 formed.
Each explanation has problems, however, the researchers say.
With galactic 13 dwarfs on the same quest, the research appears to have put Ibata and his team their own unexpected journey.
**The discovery is a result of the Pan-Andromeda Archaeological Survey, an international effort at galactic exploration – focusing on M31. The team made its optical observations with the 4 meter Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope on the summit of Mauna Kea in Hawaii. Studies of the dwarfs' motions required a sensitive spectrometer bolted to the back of one of two 10-meter telescopes at the Keck Observatory, which shares the same summit.
Source: Pete Spotts
According to current theories, the small galaxies, which contain as many as a few tens of billions of stars each, should be randomly arranged around the Andromeda galaxy.
Instead, they orbit Andromeda within a plane more than 1 million light-years across and about 30,000 light-years thick. For comparison, the latest estimates of Andromeda's girth put its diameter at more than 220,000 light-years.
The ring, if it can be called that, represents "the largest organized structure in what we call the local group of galaxies," says Michael Rich, a research astronomer at the University of California at Los Angeles and a member of the team reporting the results in the Jan. 3 issue of the journal Nature. The local group consists of more than 54 galaxies, including dwarfs, about 10 million light-years across.
Such rings don't appear when astrophysicists run their models of galaxy evolution, or when they model the local group's formation, he says. In addition, Andromeda and the Milky Way, the two most massive galaxies in the group, appear to be headed for a collision in about 4.5 billion years. The two galaxies are but 2.5 million light-years away and closing.
"Given all of this, we don't have a clear explanation for why this structure exists," Dr. Rich says.
Coming up with an explanation will be challenging. Andromeda was the only galaxy close enough to make the observation possible. But researchers would like to find more of these extended rings.
Larger numbers would provide increasingly rigorous real-world tests of any explanations scientists devise, notes Chris Stoughton, an astronomer at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill., who was not a member of the team that discovered the ring.
In particular, he says, an understanding of these structures could help researchers unravel the mysteries of dark matter – a form of matter that provides the cocoons in which galaxies form and grow, as well as the scaffolding along which galaxies are distributed in the cosmos.
Dark matter earned its "dark" label because it emits no light or any other form of directly detectable radiation. Its presence is inferred by its gravitational effect on the matter astronomers can see.
**The team discovering the rings – led by Rodrigo Ibata of the Strasbourg Astronomical Observatory in France and Geraint Lewis at the University of Sydney in Australia – identified 27 dwarf galaxies in all orbiting Andromeda, also called M31. Thirteen of the dwarf galaxies shared a common orbital plane around Andromeda, and one was offset from the plane of M31's spiral arms by a significant degree.
Other teams had seen hints of the structure in the past, but this new work appears to build the most convincing case.
"They found a beautiful structure ... and did a very nice job of data analysis," Dr. Stoughton says.
Based on the distance from M31, the dwarfs orbit once every 5.5 billion years, the team estimates. Moreover, the stars in the dwarf galaxies are old, suggesting that if the dwarfs formed where they are, "the structure is ancient."
Dr. Ibata's team has offered up two broad explanations for the presence of Andromeda's ring of dwarfs.
One posits that M31's gravity attracted a group of dwarf galaxies in a single event, and perhaps the team just caught a lucky viewing angle as the dwarfs filed filament-like into the gravitational grasp of their new mistress.
The other is that they formed in place during the merger of two ancient gas-rich galaxies – a process that can form coherent streamers of stars in lesser mergers. Or perhaps during M31's birth, smaller halos of gas-bearing dark matter were captured by the more massive halo in which M31 formed.
Each explanation has problems, however, the researchers say.
With galactic 13 dwarfs on the same quest, the research appears to have put Ibata and his team their own unexpected journey.
**The discovery is a result of the Pan-Andromeda Archaeological Survey, an international effort at galactic exploration – focusing on M31. The team made its optical observations with the 4 meter Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope on the summit of Mauna Kea in Hawaii. Studies of the dwarfs' motions required a sensitive spectrometer bolted to the back of one of two 10-meter telescopes at the Keck Observatory, which shares the same summit.
Source: Pete Spotts
Sebastiaan de Boorder
Strange, newly discovered structures in Venus' atmosphere are redrawing scientists' perceptions of the planet's magnetic environment.
The European Space Agency's Venus Express spacecraft spotted these enormous magnetic entities — called flux ropes — stretching for hundreds of miles in the planet's upper atmosphere, above the poles.
Flux ropes have been seen before around other planets, including Earth. They transport superheated plasma gas from one side of the "rope" to the other. But on Venus, scientists don't know why these phenomena form in the atmosphere, according to a paper published Dec. 26 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. How long they exist, and how they dissipate, are also mysteries.
Twisting magnetic lines
Magnetic flux ropes come together from twisted magnetic field lines. They have been spotted in magnetic fields all over the solar system.
On Earth, flux ropes form near the face of the planet opposite the sun. The stream of charged particles known as the solar wind flows around the planet and creates a "magnetotail" of charged particleson the other side.
Periodic solar outbursts known as coronal mass ejections arise from a type of flux rope. The delicate structures sit on top of the sun and transport matter and superheated gas from one part of the sun to another. Researchers believe that when the flux ropes become unstable, that's when the sun erupts.
Venus stands apart from most other planets in the solar system, however, because it has no magnetic field. Zhang said the ionosphere (or upper atmosphere) of Venus acts as an obstacle to the solar wind.
When Venus' atmosphere has a higher pressure than the incoming solar wind field, the ionosphere is considered "unmagnetized," meaning that it's free of all but the smallest magnetic field structures.
The ionosphere of Venus stays unmagnetized most of the time, until the solar wind reaches a higher pressure than the surrounding atmosphere and magnetizes it. In these conditions, relatively small flux ropes can form due to the higher speed of the solar wind rolling over the slower ionosphere, researchers said.
"The ionosphere is filled with these very small — kilometers across — flux ropes," Christopher Russell told SPACE.com. Russell is a space physicist at UCLA and a co-investigator on Zhang's study.
"That might seem large to somebody walking down the street, but in terms of the size of the ionosphere, they are small," said Russell, who was also the principal investigator of NASA's Venus Pioneer missionthat first spotted these structures.
Scientists have known about these small flux ropes for a generation, since Pioneer orbited Venus in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
But the giant flux ropes were completely unknown until Venus Express — which was in a different orbit than Pioneer — spotted them with its magnetometer in 2008 and 2009. And they likely are created by a very different process, Russell said.
The European Space Agency's Venus Express spacecraft spotted these enormous magnetic entities — called flux ropes — stretching for hundreds of miles in the planet's upper atmosphere, above the poles.
Flux ropes have been seen before around other planets, including Earth. They transport superheated plasma gas from one side of the "rope" to the other. But on Venus, scientists don't know why these phenomena form in the atmosphere, according to a paper published Dec. 26 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. How long they exist, and how they dissipate, are also mysteries.
Twisting magnetic lines
Magnetic flux ropes come together from twisted magnetic field lines. They have been spotted in magnetic fields all over the solar system.
On Earth, flux ropes form near the face of the planet opposite the sun. The stream of charged particles known as the solar wind flows around the planet and creates a "magnetotail" of charged particleson the other side.
Periodic solar outbursts known as coronal mass ejections arise from a type of flux rope. The delicate structures sit on top of the sun and transport matter and superheated gas from one part of the sun to another. Researchers believe that when the flux ropes become unstable, that's when the sun erupts.
Venus stands apart from most other planets in the solar system, however, because it has no magnetic field. Zhang said the ionosphere (or upper atmosphere) of Venus acts as an obstacle to the solar wind.
When Venus' atmosphere has a higher pressure than the incoming solar wind field, the ionosphere is considered "unmagnetized," meaning that it's free of all but the smallest magnetic field structures.
The ionosphere of Venus stays unmagnetized most of the time, until the solar wind reaches a higher pressure than the surrounding atmosphere and magnetizes it. In these conditions, relatively small flux ropes can form due to the higher speed of the solar wind rolling over the slower ionosphere, researchers said.
"The ionosphere is filled with these very small — kilometers across — flux ropes," Christopher Russell told SPACE.com. Russell is a space physicist at UCLA and a co-investigator on Zhang's study.
"That might seem large to somebody walking down the street, but in terms of the size of the ionosphere, they are small," said Russell, who was also the principal investigator of NASA's Venus Pioneer missionthat first spotted these structures.
Scientists have known about these small flux ropes for a generation, since Pioneer orbited Venus in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
But the giant flux ropes were completely unknown until Venus Express — which was in a different orbit than Pioneer — spotted them with its magnetometer in 2008 and 2009. And they likely are created by a very different process, Russell said.
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Sebastiaan de Boorder
Mother Nature put on a spectacular display off the coast of Onslow yesterday, where a menacing-looking storm was captured on camera by a tug boat worker.
Jurien Bay man Brett Martin and his colleagues were working west of False Island when the thunderstorm, which had gathered dust and sand as it developed, passed over Onslow and out to the Indian Ocean.
Mr Martin said the storm built up in a matter of minutes.
“We were steaming along in the boat just before sunset and the storm was casually building in the distance, then it got faster and faster and it went from glass to about 40 knots in two minutes,” he said.
“It was like a big dust storm under a thunderhead, there was a lot of lightning but not a lot of rain.”
Bureau of Meteorology duty forecaster Austen Watkins said the stunning view was created as wind and rain caused the storm to dump the sand and dust it had ingested while passing Onslow.
He said gusts of up to 102km/h were recorded from the thunderstorm at about 7.30pm on Wednesday, and such storms were normal for the region at this time of year.
The storm was unrelated to the looming Tropical Cyclone Narelle, he said.
Source: RHIANNA KING, The West Australian
Jurien Bay man Brett Martin and his colleagues were working west of False Island when the thunderstorm, which had gathered dust and sand as it developed, passed over Onslow and out to the Indian Ocean.
Mr Martin said the storm built up in a matter of minutes.
“We were steaming along in the boat just before sunset and the storm was casually building in the distance, then it got faster and faster and it went from glass to about 40 knots in two minutes,” he said.
“It was like a big dust storm under a thunderhead, there was a lot of lightning but not a lot of rain.”
Bureau of Meteorology duty forecaster Austen Watkins said the stunning view was created as wind and rain caused the storm to dump the sand and dust it had ingested while passing Onslow.
He said gusts of up to 102km/h were recorded from the thunderstorm at about 7.30pm on Wednesday, and such storms were normal for the region at this time of year.
The storm was unrelated to the looming Tropical Cyclone Narelle, he said.
Source: RHIANNA KING, The West Australian
Sebastiaan de Boorder
Kepler telescope: Earth-sized planets 'number 17bn'
Astronomers say that one in six stars hosts an Earth-sized planet in a close orbit - suggesting a total of 17 billion such planets in our galaxy.
The result comes from an analysis of planet candidates gathered by Nasa's Kepler space observatory.
The Kepler scientists also announced 461 new planet candidates, bringing the satellites' total haul to 2,740.
Their findings were announced at the 221st meeting of the American Astronomical Society in California.
Transit
Since its launch into orbit in 2009, Kepler has stared at a fixed part of the sky, peering at more than 150,000 stars in its field of view.
It detects the minute dip in light coming from a star if a planet passes in front of it, in what is called a transit.
But it is a tricky measurement to make, with the total light changing just tiny fractions of a percent, and not every dip in light is due to a planet.
So Francois Fressin of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics - who discovered the first Earth-sized planets set about trying to find out not only which Kepler candidates might not be planets, but also which planets might not have been visible to Kepler.
Stares fixedly at a patch corresponding to 1/400th of the sky
Looks at more than 150,000 stars
Has so far found 2,740 candidate planets
Among them are 461 Earth-sized planets, at least 10 of which are in the "habitable zone" where liquid water can exist
Kepler candidate list
William Borucki talks about Kepler
"We have to correct for two things - first [the Kepler candidate list] is incomplete," he told BBC News.
"We only see the planets that are transiting their host stars, stars that happen to have a planet that is well-aligned for us to see it, and [for each of those] there are dozens that do not.
"The second major correction is in the list of candidates - there are some that are not true planets transiting their host star; they are other astrophysical configurations."
These might include, for example, binary stars, where one star orbits another, blocking some of the light as the stars transit each other.
"We simulated all the possible configurations we could think of - and we found out that they could only account for 9.5% of Kepler planets, and all the rest are bona fide planets," Dr Fressin explained.
The results suggest that 17% of stars host a planet up to 1.25 times the size of the Earth, in close orbits lasting just 85 days or fewer - much like the planet Mercury.
That means our Milky Way galaxy hosts at least 17 billion Earth-sized planets.
In the zone
Even as Dr Fressin reported an analysis of the most recent Kepler catalogue, it was increased substantially by results reported by Christopher Burke of the Seti Institute.
Dr Burke announced 461 new candidate planets, a substantial fraction of which were Earth-sized or not much larger - planets that have until now been particularly difficult to detect.
"What's particularly interesting is four new planets - less than twice the size of Earth - that are potentially in the habitable zone, the location around a star where it could potentially have liquid water to sustain life," Dr Burke told BBC News.
One of the four, dubbed KOI 172.02, is a mere 1.5 times the size of the Earth and around a star like our own Sun - perhaps as near as the current data allow to finding an "Earth 2.0".
"It's very exciting because we're really starting to pick up the sensitivity to these things in the habitable zone - we're just really getting to the frontier of potentially life-bearing planets."
William Borucki, the driving force behind and principal investigator on the Kepler mission, said he was "delighted" by the fresh batch of results.
"The most important thing is the statistics - not to find one Earth but to find 100 Earths. That's what we'll be seeing as the years go on with the Kepler mission, because it was designed to find many Earths."
Source: Jason Palmer
Science and technology reporter, BBC News, Long Beach, California
Astronomers say that one in six stars hosts an Earth-sized planet in a close orbit - suggesting a total of 17 billion such planets in our galaxy.
The result comes from an analysis of planet candidates gathered by Nasa's Kepler space observatory.
The Kepler scientists also announced 461 new planet candidates, bringing the satellites' total haul to 2,740.
Their findings were announced at the 221st meeting of the American Astronomical Society in California.
Transit
Since its launch into orbit in 2009, Kepler has stared at a fixed part of the sky, peering at more than 150,000 stars in its field of view.
It detects the minute dip in light coming from a star if a planet passes in front of it, in what is called a transit.
But it is a tricky measurement to make, with the total light changing just tiny fractions of a percent, and not every dip in light is due to a planet.
So Francois Fressin of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics - who discovered the first Earth-sized planets set about trying to find out not only which Kepler candidates might not be planets, but also which planets might not have been visible to Kepler.
Stares fixedly at a patch corresponding to 1/400th of the sky
Looks at more than 150,000 stars
Has so far found 2,740 candidate planets
Among them are 461 Earth-sized planets, at least 10 of which are in the "habitable zone" where liquid water can exist
Kepler candidate list
William Borucki talks about Kepler
"We have to correct for two things - first [the Kepler candidate list] is incomplete," he told BBC News.
"We only see the planets that are transiting their host stars, stars that happen to have a planet that is well-aligned for us to see it, and [for each of those] there are dozens that do not.
"The second major correction is in the list of candidates - there are some that are not true planets transiting their host star; they are other astrophysical configurations."
These might include, for example, binary stars, where one star orbits another, blocking some of the light as the stars transit each other.
"We simulated all the possible configurations we could think of - and we found out that they could only account for 9.5% of Kepler planets, and all the rest are bona fide planets," Dr Fressin explained.
The results suggest that 17% of stars host a planet up to 1.25 times the size of the Earth, in close orbits lasting just 85 days or fewer - much like the planet Mercury.
That means our Milky Way galaxy hosts at least 17 billion Earth-sized planets.
In the zone
Even as Dr Fressin reported an analysis of the most recent Kepler catalogue, it was increased substantially by results reported by Christopher Burke of the Seti Institute.
Dr Burke announced 461 new candidate planets, a substantial fraction of which were Earth-sized or not much larger - planets that have until now been particularly difficult to detect.
"What's particularly interesting is four new planets - less than twice the size of Earth - that are potentially in the habitable zone, the location around a star where it could potentially have liquid water to sustain life," Dr Burke told BBC News.
One of the four, dubbed KOI 172.02, is a mere 1.5 times the size of the Earth and around a star like our own Sun - perhaps as near as the current data allow to finding an "Earth 2.0".
"It's very exciting because we're really starting to pick up the sensitivity to these things in the habitable zone - we're just really getting to the frontier of potentially life-bearing planets."
William Borucki, the driving force behind and principal investigator on the Kepler mission, said he was "delighted" by the fresh batch of results.
"The most important thing is the statistics - not to find one Earth but to find 100 Earths. That's what we'll be seeing as the years go on with the Kepler mission, because it was designed to find many Earths."
Source: Jason Palmer
Science and technology reporter, BBC News, Long Beach, California
Sebastiaan de Boorder
It may sound less likely than hell freezing over, but physicists have created an atomic gas with a sub-absolute-zero temperature for the first time. Their technique opens the door to generating negative-Kelvin materials and new quantum devices, and it could even help to solve a cosmological mystery.
Lord Kelvin defined the absolute temperature scale in the mid-1800s in such a way that nothing could be colder than absolute zero. Physicists later realized that the absolute temperature of a gas is related to the average energy of its particles. Absolute zero corresponds to the theoretical state in which particles have no energy at all, and higher temperatures correspond to higher average energies.
However, by the 1950s, physicists working with more exotic systems began to realise that this isn't always true: Technically, you read off the temperature of a system from a graph that plots the probabilities of its particles being found with certain energies. Normally, most particles have average or near-average energies, with only a few particles zipping around at higher energies. In theory, if the situation is reversed, with more particles having higher, rather than lower, energies, the plot would flip over and the sign of the temperature would change from a positive to a negative absolute temperature, explains Ulrich Schneider, a physicist at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, Germany.
Schneider and his colleagues reached such sub-absolute-zero temperatures with an ultracold quantum gas made up of potassium atoms. Using lasers and magnetic fields, they kept the individual atoms in a lattice arrangement. At positive temperatures, the atoms repel, making the configuration stable. The team then quickly adjusted the magnetic fields, causing the atoms to attract rather than repel each other. “This suddenly shifts the atoms from their most stable, lowest-energy state to the highest possible energy state, before they can react,” says Schneider. “It’s like walking through a valley, then instantly finding yourself on the mountain peak.”
At positive temperatures, such a reversal would be unstable and the atoms would collapse inwards. But the team also adjusted the trapping laser field to make it more energetically favourable for the atoms to stick in their positions. This result, described today in Science, marks the gas’s transition from just above absolute zero to a few billionths of a Kelvin below absolute zero.
Wolfgang Ketterle, a physicist and Nobel laureate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, who has previously demonstrated negative absolute temperatures in a magnetic system, calls the latest work an “experimental tour de force”. Exotic high-energy states that are hard to generate in the laboratory at positive temperatures become stable at negative absolute temperatures — “as though you can stand a pyramid on its head and not worry about it toppling over,” he notes — and so such techniques can allow these states to be studied in detail. “This may be a way to create new forms of matter in the laboratory,” Ketterle adds.
If built, such systems would behave in strange ways, says Achim Rosch, a theoretical physicist at the University of Cologne in Germany, who proposed the technique used by Schneider and his team. For instance, Rosch and his colleagues have calculated that whereas clouds of atoms would normally be pulled downwards by gravity, if part of the cloud is at a negative absolute temperature, some atoms will move upwards, apparently defying gravity.
Another peculiarity of the sub-absolute-zero gas is that it mimics 'dark energy', the mysterious force that pushes the Universe to expand at an ever-faster rate against the inward pull of gravity. Schneider notes that the attractive atoms in the gas produced by the team also want to collapse inwards, but do not because the negative absolute temperature stabilises them. “It’s interesting that this weird feature pops up in the Universe and also in the lab,” he says. “This may be something that cosmologists should look at more closely.”
Source: Nature doi:10.1038/nature.2013.12146
Lord Kelvin defined the absolute temperature scale in the mid-1800s in such a way that nothing could be colder than absolute zero. Physicists later realized that the absolute temperature of a gas is related to the average energy of its particles. Absolute zero corresponds to the theoretical state in which particles have no energy at all, and higher temperatures correspond to higher average energies.
However, by the 1950s, physicists working with more exotic systems began to realise that this isn't always true: Technically, you read off the temperature of a system from a graph that plots the probabilities of its particles being found with certain energies. Normally, most particles have average or near-average energies, with only a few particles zipping around at higher energies. In theory, if the situation is reversed, with more particles having higher, rather than lower, energies, the plot would flip over and the sign of the temperature would change from a positive to a negative absolute temperature, explains Ulrich Schneider, a physicist at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, Germany.
Schneider and his colleagues reached such sub-absolute-zero temperatures with an ultracold quantum gas made up of potassium atoms. Using lasers and magnetic fields, they kept the individual atoms in a lattice arrangement. At positive temperatures, the atoms repel, making the configuration stable. The team then quickly adjusted the magnetic fields, causing the atoms to attract rather than repel each other. “This suddenly shifts the atoms from their most stable, lowest-energy state to the highest possible energy state, before they can react,” says Schneider. “It’s like walking through a valley, then instantly finding yourself on the mountain peak.”
At positive temperatures, such a reversal would be unstable and the atoms would collapse inwards. But the team also adjusted the trapping laser field to make it more energetically favourable for the atoms to stick in their positions. This result, described today in Science, marks the gas’s transition from just above absolute zero to a few billionths of a Kelvin below absolute zero.
Wolfgang Ketterle, a physicist and Nobel laureate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, who has previously demonstrated negative absolute temperatures in a magnetic system, calls the latest work an “experimental tour de force”. Exotic high-energy states that are hard to generate in the laboratory at positive temperatures become stable at negative absolute temperatures — “as though you can stand a pyramid on its head and not worry about it toppling over,” he notes — and so such techniques can allow these states to be studied in detail. “This may be a way to create new forms of matter in the laboratory,” Ketterle adds.
If built, such systems would behave in strange ways, says Achim Rosch, a theoretical physicist at the University of Cologne in Germany, who proposed the technique used by Schneider and his team. For instance, Rosch and his colleagues have calculated that whereas clouds of atoms would normally be pulled downwards by gravity, if part of the cloud is at a negative absolute temperature, some atoms will move upwards, apparently defying gravity.
Another peculiarity of the sub-absolute-zero gas is that it mimics 'dark energy', the mysterious force that pushes the Universe to expand at an ever-faster rate against the inward pull of gravity. Schneider notes that the attractive atoms in the gas produced by the team also want to collapse inwards, but do not because the negative absolute temperature stabilises them. “It’s interesting that this weird feature pops up in the Universe and also in the lab,” he says. “This may be something that cosmologists should look at more closely.”
Source: Nature doi:10.1038/nature.2013.12146
Sebastiaan de Boorder
Roughly every 2 weeks the whole world experiences a new moon, and roughly two weeks later we all observe a full moon, in an ongoing cycle. The phase of the moon is important for one reason: nocturnal illumination. How much light there is at night time affects plants (photoperiodism - flowering) and animals (around the full moon, day animals can hunt or perform other activities, and be hunted by other day animals (subject to cloud cover)). Artificial lighting has barged its way into this cycle in the last century, but modern humans have acted on and reacted to the moon's illumination patterns for over 200,000 years. So even if its light matters less to us now, our reactions to its phases are ‘hard wired’ by evolution, and critically the whole global population experiences the same illumination extremes at the same time.There is extensive psychological and biological literature demonstrating that the lunar cycle can heavily influence our moods. A full moon increases our tendency to feel depressed and pessimistic, and there is a higher rate of suicide around full moons. This may reflect the fear and tension surrounding increased nocturnal predator action, historically, or psychological issues from sleep deprivation in night light. So investors may feel more inclined to stay out of the stock market at or near that time, or to sell out of positions: emotions trumping objectivity. A correlation between stock market returns and lunar phases is indeed found by Dichev, Yuan and Hickey in three separate studies.
Sebastiaan de Boorder
Did you know.. When human consciousness becomes coherent and synchronized, the behavior of random systems may change. Quantum event based random number generators (RNGs) produce completely unpredictable sequences of zeroes and ones. But when a great event synchronizes the feelings of millions of people, RNGs become subtly structured. The probability is less than one in a billion that the effect is due to chance. The evidence suggests an emerging noosphere, or the unifying field of consciousness described by sages in all cultures.
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