Almost Pesach
Passover is upon us.
Pondering Pesach, I realized that it is with the preparation that the connection must be made.
The Sages teach that we are being injected with Direct Light, which resonates with the Original Light within us all. And it is really an injection. Binah and Malchut - above and below.
Life and creation and re creation.
I love the Passover celebration. A total deluge of memories always precedes Pesach for me. The days of the huge family gatherings, tables set up from end to end in my Grandmother's house. It is one of my most cherished childhood memories. That doesn't exist in the now.
But the connection that one makes still does. It is the energy of the memory that makes it so cherished.
Pesach is exciting for me. I love it.
I even love eating matzoh for 8 days.
News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4895358.stm
Enceladus is in the news again. Just in time for Pesach. You're supposed to have a stranger at the Passover Seder. I wonder if an Enceladusian will wander into mine.
Saturn's moon 'best bet for life'
By Richard Black Environment Correspondent, BBC News website
Saturn's tiny moon Enceladus may be the best place to look for life elsewhere in the Solar
System.
That is the view of a senior scientist working on the Cassini spacecraft, which has been studying Saturn and its moons for nearly two years.
Dr Bob Brown told a major conference in Vienna, Austria, Enceladus contains simple organic molecules, water and heat, the ingredients for life.
He raised the possibility of future missions to probe inside the moon.
Other research presented at the European Geosciences Union (EGU) annual meeting suggests that Enceladus may have a core of molten rock reaching temperatures of 1,400K (above 1,100C).
Jets and rings
In July 2005 Cassini completed a spectacularly close flyby of Enceladus, passing just 173km above its surface.
From this flyby came confirmation that the moon has an atmosphere, and strong evidence that the gases which make up the atmosphere are coming from cracks in the surface, nick-named "tiger stripes", near the south pole.
It appears that the gases are being forced through the surface, as they emerge in jets which shoot upwards for hundreds of kilometres before dispersing, eventually forming Saturn's E-ring.
Most of the gas is water vapour, suggesting strongly that liquid water lies under the moon's icy surface.
From his base at the University of Arizona, Tucson, Bob Brown leads the scientific team for Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer (Vims) which analysed the chemical composition of Enceladus's atmosphere and mapped the distribution of various gases.
"We very clearly saw water; there's water everywhere on Enceladus, it's 99.9% water, ice in general at the surface, and we've known that for years, so it wasn't a big surprise," he told the BBC News website.
"But when we started looking at our spectra we saw absorption bands from a compound that had to have carbon and hydrogen bonded together.
Enceladus in a very real sense becomes a stronger candidate for life than [Jupiter's moon] Europa .
Bob Brown, University of Arizona, Tucson"And when we mapped the location, it was right in these 'tiger stripes' - right where the jets are coming out, and right where it's hot - and it's pretty hard to imagine it's getting there from anywhere but inside."
The organic molecules appear to be quite simple, he said, probably largely methane.
The jets also contain nitrogen; and putting all this together means, said Dr Brown, that Enceladus contains all the ingredients necessary for the development of life, or of precursors to it.
"What you need to put microbes together of the kind that we're familiar with is carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen, and water to act as an intermediary for metabolism," he said.
"You've got a rock core that's hot as hell; you've got all the conditions that we think gave rise to the first self-replicating molecules and eventually to life on this planet.
"So Enceladus in a very real sense becomes a stronger candidate for life than [Jupiter's moon] Europa, for instance."
Click here to see how activity may be generated on Enceladus
One of the puzzling facets of Enceladus is how and why it is hot enough that it can generate liquid water and spew vapour into space.
Most of its surface has a temperature of about 80 Kelvin (minus 193C). But in the "tiger stripes" it soars to 140 Kelvin (minus 123C), and the interior must be considerably hotter.
Computer models have been produced which try to explain just how hot the interior needs to be, and examine the processes which could produce and maintain the temperatures observed today.
Dr Dennis Matson from Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) took EGU delegates through a model which envisages energy coming from two sources, radioactive decay and tidal heating, where differences in the gravitational forces exerted by a nearby body (in this case the giant planet Saturn) cause churning inside the moon, producing heat through friction.
"Down here [in the centre] we have molten magma," he said. "In this model, in the present day, it's entering a cooling phase which may go on for another billion years or so; but at depth you still have high temperatures."
Temperatures at the centre could reach 1,400 Kelvin, he said.
But there are still puzzles. Radioactive decay would have produced the vast majority of its heat shortly after the solar system's formation; somehow, Enceladus has retained some of that energy.
"We think there's a thermostatic mechanism going on in the magma," observed Dr Matson.
If the magma were to cool, he said, it would become more viscous, increasing friction from tidal churning and so producing more heat. But if temperatures veered higher, the magma would flow more easily, and tidal heat production would reduce accordingly.
Exceptional world
Along with all the other Cassini mission findings, the research presented here emphasises what an unexpected treasure trove of scientific novelty researchers have discovered on Enceladus.
Its tiger stripes amount to a "water volcano", the only one seen in the solar system other than on Earth.
Among our neighbours, it is the only known geophysically active world other than Jupiter's moon Io.
But as always with space missions, one set of answers leads to another set of questions.
The way to answer some is a further flyby in about two years' time, shortly before the end of Cassini's scheduled mission, which could take the $3.2bn craft just 25km above the tiger stripes and through their jets.
"There's a little bit of a danger, because observations suggest that the particles get larger as you get in closer," said Dr Brown.
"If they're only 20 or 30 microns [in diameter] they won't hurt the spacecraft; but if they're a millimetre or two, and hit the spacecraft in the wrong place, we're dead."
If there is enough fuel left on board Cassini and enough money in the coffers of its masters, the US, European and Italian space agencies (Nasa, Esa and Asi), the mission may gain an extension to its scheduled life, which could yield further flybys of the tiny moon.
But investigations aimed at looking for self-replicating molecules or even primitive forms of life would have to wait for a further mission.
For Europa, landers have been proposed which would burrow down through the top layer of ice into liquid water below, perhaps using heat from radioactive decay to penetrate the surface.
The same approach could potentially work on Enceladus; but Bob Brown believes there may be another, simpler way in.
"You could target the cracks; they clearly give you a way to get down inside, into the reservoir," he said.
"Now whether we can make something smart enough to do that robotically I don't know. But if there are bugs, they don't have to be in the ocean; they could live inside the vents, they just have to be somewhere where it's hot enough and they have enough energy to conduct metabolism.
"My guess is that if stuff has evolved in this ocean, it's figured out a way to work itself up into these vents; and maybe it's not completely crazy to think some of this stuff is sitting there near the surface."
.....
Life on Enceladus. Told ya.
.....
Nuclear news.
Iran attack debate raises nuclear prospect
By Paul Reynolds World Affairs correspondent, BBC News website
The US has the military capability to attack Iran's nuclear facilities
The debate over whether the US might attack Iran's nuclear installations has taken a step forward with the publication of an article which suggests that the US has considered using a nuclear "bunker buster" in such an operation.
The article, in The New Yorker magazine, is by veteran military analyst Seymour Hersh.
It is a follow-up to one he wrote in January 2005 in which he suggested that an air attack on Iran was possible. What is new is that he raises the prospect that such an attack might be nuclear in nature.
However, the problems of using a nuclear weapon would be so huge that few people are taking this seriously. The British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said the idea was "completely nuts".
Hersh himself downplayed the prospect. In an interview with the BBC, he said the Pentagon had told the Bush administration initially that a nuclear attack was the only way of guaranteeing success:
"Nobody was advocating it, they were just saying a 100% guarantee. Where it becomes interesting, the joint chiefs, in one of its subsequent papers, wanted to withdraw that option because of course it's madness, a nuclear weapon in the Middle East to an Arab [sic] Muslim country, my God. And the White House won't withdraw.
"That's the issue, that the White House, some people there still wanted to have this option. That's what's causing the trauma, not that they're going to do it, but the White House won't take it off the table."
Two issues
One should separate the two issues here. The first is a possible attack on Iran. The second is the nature of that attack.
An attack at some stage is possible and the White House has not ruled anything out. It never does, in fact. For the moment, though, diplomacy is the chosen route in the effort to get Iran to give up its nuclear programme. This explains why western diplomats talk about an attack not being "on the agenda." It is not at present; but the phrase does not rule it out for the future.
Nuclear option problems
But a nuclear attack is improbable.
There are three main reasons of military and diplomatic importance for this.
The first is that even a nuclear "bunker-buster" would produce large amounts of radiation. This could cause thousands of casualties among civilian populations.
The Federation of American Scientists says that "the bombs would penetrate at most only a few metres into rock, causing no reduction in blast, fire, or fallout damage on the surface. The largest would have blown out a crater almost a thousand feet across and thrown a cloud of radioactive fallout tens of thousands of feet into the air where it would be blown hundreds of miles downwind."
The second is that the political implications are so huge of the US attacking, with nuclear weapons, a country (and in the Muslim world) which is not armed with similar weapons and which says it has no intention of making.
The third reason is that, doctrinally, the US is moving away from developing new nuclear bunker busters. It does have one already, the B61-11, but it cannot penetrate very deeply and last year Congress withdrew, at the administration's request, funding for further research.
Legality issue
There is also the question of legality to be considered.
Any attack would be hard to justify. Jack Straw told reporters recently: "I don't happen to believe that military action has a role to play in any event. We could not justify it under Article 51 of the UN charter which permits self-defence."
In the absence of Security Council approval, the US might argue that its interests in the Gulf were at stake and that its ally Israel was at risk.
Conventional bombs
Instead of nuclear bombs, conventional weapons would be used, but of a massive type. They would try to do a similar job, but without the same physical and political fallout. One called "Big Blu" is currently under development.
Hersh also said, in both articles, that the US had infiltrated agents into Iran to pick targets and make contacts with dissident groups.
Iran insists its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes
One reading of the White House attitude is that it wants to scare Iran into making concessions and wants in any case to foment political unrest. This it hopes might eventually produce policy change by producing regime change. Hersh says that Washington regards President Ahmadinejad as a "potential Adolf Hitler."
US threats
What nobody doubts is that the US is determined to stop Iran from become nuclear-armed.
Iran says it will not build a bomb but wants the technology only to make fuel for civil nuclear power. It is allowed to make its own fuel under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
However, the dilemma might be more difficult than that because Iran might not became "nuclear-armed". It might simply become nuclear-capable.
The technology in question can be used for both civilian and military purposes.
Consequences
If attacked, Iran might simply leave the NPT, as it has the right to do, and go ahead with nuclear development anyway. That could set the scene for further attacks over a long period of time.
Iran might also retaliate, against US interests in Iraq and the Gulf, and might use the militant group Hezbollah in southern Lebanon to attack Israel. The region could be in uproar.
On this side of the Atlantic, Dan Plesch, Research Associate at the London School of Oriental and African Studies, is proclaiming the same message.
He gave a speech analysing the options recently and told the BBC News website: "The United States has the capability to come out of the clear blue sky and destroy the Iranian military infrastructure."
He went on: "You can say we are being hysterical and are a band of doom-mongers. But I fear the US has lost confidence in the UN or the EU to solve this. And it could do it militarily.
All this does not mean it will happen. It does mean it is being debated.
.....
Almost Pesach
.....
Pondering Pesach, I realized that it is with the preparation that the connection must be made.
The Sages teach that we are being injected with Direct Light, which resonates with the Original Light within us all. And it is really an injection. Binah and Malchut - above and below.
Life and creation and re creation.
I love the Passover celebration. A total deluge of memories always precedes Pesach for me. The days of the huge family gatherings, tables set up from end to end in my Grandmother's house. It is one of my most cherished childhood memories. That doesn't exist in the now.
But the connection that one makes still does. It is the energy of the memory that makes it so cherished.
Pesach is exciting for me. I love it.
I even love eating matzoh for 8 days.
News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4895358.stm
Enceladus is in the news again. Just in time for Pesach. You're supposed to have a stranger at the Passover Seder. I wonder if an Enceladusian will wander into mine.
Saturn's moon 'best bet for life'
By Richard Black Environment Correspondent, BBC News website
Saturn's tiny moon Enceladus may be the best place to look for life elsewhere in the Solar
System.
That is the view of a senior scientist working on the Cassini spacecraft, which has been studying Saturn and its moons for nearly two years.
Dr Bob Brown told a major conference in Vienna, Austria, Enceladus contains simple organic molecules, water and heat, the ingredients for life.
He raised the possibility of future missions to probe inside the moon.
Other research presented at the European Geosciences Union (EGU) annual meeting suggests that Enceladus may have a core of molten rock reaching temperatures of 1,400K (above 1,100C).
Jets and rings
In July 2005 Cassini completed a spectacularly close flyby of Enceladus, passing just 173km above its surface.
From this flyby came confirmation that the moon has an atmosphere, and strong evidence that the gases which make up the atmosphere are coming from cracks in the surface, nick-named "tiger stripes", near the south pole.
It appears that the gases are being forced through the surface, as they emerge in jets which shoot upwards for hundreds of kilometres before dispersing, eventually forming Saturn's E-ring.
Most of the gas is water vapour, suggesting strongly that liquid water lies under the moon's icy surface.
From his base at the University of Arizona, Tucson, Bob Brown leads the scientific team for Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer (Vims) which analysed the chemical composition of Enceladus's atmosphere and mapped the distribution of various gases.
"We very clearly saw water; there's water everywhere on Enceladus, it's 99.9% water, ice in general at the surface, and we've known that for years, so it wasn't a big surprise," he told the BBC News website.
"But when we started looking at our spectra we saw absorption bands from a compound that had to have carbon and hydrogen bonded together.
Enceladus in a very real sense becomes a stronger candidate for life than [Jupiter's moon] Europa .
Bob Brown, University of Arizona, Tucson"And when we mapped the location, it was right in these 'tiger stripes' - right where the jets are coming out, and right where it's hot - and it's pretty hard to imagine it's getting there from anywhere but inside."
The organic molecules appear to be quite simple, he said, probably largely methane.
The jets also contain nitrogen; and putting all this together means, said Dr Brown, that Enceladus contains all the ingredients necessary for the development of life, or of precursors to it.
"What you need to put microbes together of the kind that we're familiar with is carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen, and water to act as an intermediary for metabolism," he said.
"You've got a rock core that's hot as hell; you've got all the conditions that we think gave rise to the first self-replicating molecules and eventually to life on this planet.
"So Enceladus in a very real sense becomes a stronger candidate for life than [Jupiter's moon] Europa, for instance."
Click here to see how activity may be generated on Enceladus
One of the puzzling facets of Enceladus is how and why it is hot enough that it can generate liquid water and spew vapour into space.
Most of its surface has a temperature of about 80 Kelvin (minus 193C). But in the "tiger stripes" it soars to 140 Kelvin (minus 123C), and the interior must be considerably hotter.
Computer models have been produced which try to explain just how hot the interior needs to be, and examine the processes which could produce and maintain the temperatures observed today.
Dr Dennis Matson from Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) took EGU delegates through a model which envisages energy coming from two sources, radioactive decay and tidal heating, where differences in the gravitational forces exerted by a nearby body (in this case the giant planet Saturn) cause churning inside the moon, producing heat through friction.
"Down here [in the centre] we have molten magma," he said. "In this model, in the present day, it's entering a cooling phase which may go on for another billion years or so; but at depth you still have high temperatures."
Temperatures at the centre could reach 1,400 Kelvin, he said.
But there are still puzzles. Radioactive decay would have produced the vast majority of its heat shortly after the solar system's formation; somehow, Enceladus has retained some of that energy.
"We think there's a thermostatic mechanism going on in the magma," observed Dr Matson.
If the magma were to cool, he said, it would become more viscous, increasing friction from tidal churning and so producing more heat. But if temperatures veered higher, the magma would flow more easily, and tidal heat production would reduce accordingly.
Exceptional world
Along with all the other Cassini mission findings, the research presented here emphasises what an unexpected treasure trove of scientific novelty researchers have discovered on Enceladus.
Its tiger stripes amount to a "water volcano", the only one seen in the solar system other than on Earth.
Among our neighbours, it is the only known geophysically active world other than Jupiter's moon Io.
But as always with space missions, one set of answers leads to another set of questions.
The way to answer some is a further flyby in about two years' time, shortly before the end of Cassini's scheduled mission, which could take the $3.2bn craft just 25km above the tiger stripes and through their jets.
"There's a little bit of a danger, because observations suggest that the particles get larger as you get in closer," said Dr Brown.
"If they're only 20 or 30 microns [in diameter] they won't hurt the spacecraft; but if they're a millimetre or two, and hit the spacecraft in the wrong place, we're dead."
If there is enough fuel left on board Cassini and enough money in the coffers of its masters, the US, European and Italian space agencies (Nasa, Esa and Asi), the mission may gain an extension to its scheduled life, which could yield further flybys of the tiny moon.
But investigations aimed at looking for self-replicating molecules or even primitive forms of life would have to wait for a further mission.
For Europa, landers have been proposed which would burrow down through the top layer of ice into liquid water below, perhaps using heat from radioactive decay to penetrate the surface.
The same approach could potentially work on Enceladus; but Bob Brown believes there may be another, simpler way in.
"You could target the cracks; they clearly give you a way to get down inside, into the reservoir," he said.
"Now whether we can make something smart enough to do that robotically I don't know. But if there are bugs, they don't have to be in the ocean; they could live inside the vents, they just have to be somewhere where it's hot enough and they have enough energy to conduct metabolism.
"My guess is that if stuff has evolved in this ocean, it's figured out a way to work itself up into these vents; and maybe it's not completely crazy to think some of this stuff is sitting there near the surface."
.....
Life on Enceladus. Told ya.
.....
Nuclear news.
Iran attack debate raises nuclear prospect
By Paul Reynolds World Affairs correspondent, BBC News website
The US has the military capability to attack Iran's nuclear facilities
The debate over whether the US might attack Iran's nuclear installations has taken a step forward with the publication of an article which suggests that the US has considered using a nuclear "bunker buster" in such an operation.
The article, in The New Yorker magazine, is by veteran military analyst Seymour Hersh.
It is a follow-up to one he wrote in January 2005 in which he suggested that an air attack on Iran was possible. What is new is that he raises the prospect that such an attack might be nuclear in nature.
However, the problems of using a nuclear weapon would be so huge that few people are taking this seriously. The British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said the idea was "completely nuts".
Hersh himself downplayed the prospect. In an interview with the BBC, he said the Pentagon had told the Bush administration initially that a nuclear attack was the only way of guaranteeing success:
"Nobody was advocating it, they were just saying a 100% guarantee. Where it becomes interesting, the joint chiefs, in one of its subsequent papers, wanted to withdraw that option because of course it's madness, a nuclear weapon in the Middle East to an Arab [sic] Muslim country, my God. And the White House won't withdraw.
"That's the issue, that the White House, some people there still wanted to have this option. That's what's causing the trauma, not that they're going to do it, but the White House won't take it off the table."
Two issues
One should separate the two issues here. The first is a possible attack on Iran. The second is the nature of that attack.
An attack at some stage is possible and the White House has not ruled anything out. It never does, in fact. For the moment, though, diplomacy is the chosen route in the effort to get Iran to give up its nuclear programme. This explains why western diplomats talk about an attack not being "on the agenda." It is not at present; but the phrase does not rule it out for the future.
Nuclear option problems
But a nuclear attack is improbable.
There are three main reasons of military and diplomatic importance for this.
The first is that even a nuclear "bunker-buster" would produce large amounts of radiation. This could cause thousands of casualties among civilian populations.
The Federation of American Scientists says that "the bombs would penetrate at most only a few metres into rock, causing no reduction in blast, fire, or fallout damage on the surface. The largest would have blown out a crater almost a thousand feet across and thrown a cloud of radioactive fallout tens of thousands of feet into the air where it would be blown hundreds of miles downwind."
The second is that the political implications are so huge of the US attacking, with nuclear weapons, a country (and in the Muslim world) which is not armed with similar weapons and which says it has no intention of making.
The third reason is that, doctrinally, the US is moving away from developing new nuclear bunker busters. It does have one already, the B61-11, but it cannot penetrate very deeply and last year Congress withdrew, at the administration's request, funding for further research.
Legality issue
There is also the question of legality to be considered.
Any attack would be hard to justify. Jack Straw told reporters recently: "I don't happen to believe that military action has a role to play in any event. We could not justify it under Article 51 of the UN charter which permits self-defence."
In the absence of Security Council approval, the US might argue that its interests in the Gulf were at stake and that its ally Israel was at risk.
Conventional bombs
Instead of nuclear bombs, conventional weapons would be used, but of a massive type. They would try to do a similar job, but without the same physical and political fallout. One called "Big Blu" is currently under development.
Hersh also said, in both articles, that the US had infiltrated agents into Iran to pick targets and make contacts with dissident groups.
Iran insists its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes
One reading of the White House attitude is that it wants to scare Iran into making concessions and wants in any case to foment political unrest. This it hopes might eventually produce policy change by producing regime change. Hersh says that Washington regards President Ahmadinejad as a "potential Adolf Hitler."
US threats
What nobody doubts is that the US is determined to stop Iran from become nuclear-armed.
Iran says it will not build a bomb but wants the technology only to make fuel for civil nuclear power. It is allowed to make its own fuel under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
However, the dilemma might be more difficult than that because Iran might not became "nuclear-armed". It might simply become nuclear-capable.
The technology in question can be used for both civilian and military purposes.
Consequences
If attacked, Iran might simply leave the NPT, as it has the right to do, and go ahead with nuclear development anyway. That could set the scene for further attacks over a long period of time.
Iran might also retaliate, against US interests in Iraq and the Gulf, and might use the militant group Hezbollah in southern Lebanon to attack Israel. The region could be in uproar.
On this side of the Atlantic, Dan Plesch, Research Associate at the London School of Oriental and African Studies, is proclaiming the same message.
He gave a speech analysing the options recently and told the BBC News website: "The United States has the capability to come out of the clear blue sky and destroy the Iranian military infrastructure."
He went on: "You can say we are being hysterical and are a band of doom-mongers. But I fear the US has lost confidence in the UN or the EU to solve this. And it could do it militarily.
All this does not mean it will happen. It does mean it is being debated.
.....
Almost Pesach
.....
posted by VickeB | 11:02 AM
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