NASA telescope snaps most detailed photos of the Sun ever taken

By Tecca | Today in Tech 

We've always been warned never to look directly at the sun, but on July 11 a team of scientists fromNASA did exactly that. They were using a specialized telescope called the High Resolution Coronal Imager (Hi-C for short) and the resulting photos are nothing short of spectacular.

The Hi-C telescope was launched onboard a 58-foot-tall rocket which carried it along a sub-orbital trajectory for only 10 minutes. For five of those minutes, a camera mounted inside the telescope snapped 165 pictures of an area on the Sun that scientists had picked out nearly a month prior. Once it was done, the Hi-C returned to Earth and was recovered at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.

NASA scientists pointed the 10-foot-long Hi-C at an area of the Sun expected to have intense magnetic activity due to the presence of a sunspot. They weren't disappointed, and you can see the swirling solar corona in better-than-ever detail in the video above. The photos were made possible by using some of the highest-quality mirrors ever produced by NASA. The agency says the Hi-C was able to capture details on the Sun as small as 137 miles wide, which is pretty impressive when you consider the star is more than 100 times the size of the Earth.

This article was written by Randy Nelson and originally appeared on Tecca

Warm weather brings out red cockroaches in Naples

AFP

The city of Naples in southern Italy is battling an infestation of large red cockroaches brought on by the unseasonally warm weather and unhygienic conditions, health officials said on Tuesday.

Pest control personnel are spraying sewers with poison around the clock to try and hold off an invasion by the roaches, which can be up to seven centimetres long and thrive in heat, humidity and organic decomposition.

The infestation has reignited a debate about problems with waste disposal in Naples, a mafia-linked sector that has been beset by chronic problems.

Local health agency director Maurizio Scoppa said the hot weather and garbage being left out overnight for early morning pick-up were major factors.

"The problem of managing the sewers and the garbage is one of the causes of this phenomenon," Scoppa told AFP, pointing out that city authorities did not have enough staff to be able to carry out sewer inspections.

Some health experts have warned of a heightened risk of typhoid and hepatitis A but a spokeswoman for city hall dismissed the possibility.

"There is no health risk. There is no emergency situation, this is just a phenomenon that affects only some areas," Maria Bonacci said.

"Other experts reject any danger to the health of inhabitants," she said.

Bonacci said talk of an "invasion" of cockroaches was exaggerated but agreed that their number this summer was significantly higher than previous years.

She blamed the previous city administration for "not cleaning the sewers."

Red cockroaches of the same type as the ones in Naples -- also known in Italian as "cockroach of the ships" -- are common in tropical climates around the world and are spread to port cities by global shipping.

Pakistan shuns physicist linked to 'God particle' because of religious beliefs

By Sebastian Abbot, The Associated Press | The Canadian Press 

ISLAMABAD - The pioneering work of Abdus Salam, Pakistan's only Nobel laureate, helped lead to the apparent discovery of the subatomic "God particle" last week. But the late physicist is no hero at home, where his name has been stricken from school textbooks.

Praise within Pakistan for Salam, who also guided the early stages of the country's nuclear program, faded decades ago as Muslim fundamentalists gained power. He belonged to the Ahmadi sect, which has been persecuted by the government and targeted by Taliban militants who view its members as heretics.

Their plight — along with that of Pakistan's other religious minorities, such as Shiite Muslims, Christians and Hindus — has deepened in recent years as hardline interpretations of Islam have gained ground and militants have stepped up attacks against groups they oppose. Most Pakistanis are Sunni Muslims.

Salam, a child prodigy born in 1926 in what was to become Pakistan after the partition of British-controlled India, won more than a dozen international prizes and honours. In 1979, he was co-winner of the Nobel Prize for his work on the so-called Standard Model of particle physics, which theorizes how fundamental forces govern the overall dynamics of the universe. He died in 1996.

Salam and Steven Weinberg, with whom he shared the Nobel Prize, independently predicted the existence of a subatomic particle now called the Higgs boson, named after a British physicist who theorized that it endowed other particles with mass, said Pervez Hoodbhoy, a Pakistani physicist who once worked with Salam. It is also known as the "God particle" because its existence is vitally important toward understanding the early evolution of the universe.

Physicists in Switzerland stoked worldwide excitement Wednesday when they announced they have all but proven the particle's existence. This was done using the world's largest atom smasher at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, near Geneva.

"This would be a great vindication of Salam's work and the Standard Model as a whole," said Khurshid Hasanain, chairman of the physics department at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad.

In the 1960s and early 1970s, Salam wielded significant influence in Pakistan as the chief scientific adviser to the president, helping to set up the country's space agency and institute for nuclear science and technology. Salam also assisted in the early stages of Pakistan's effort to build a nuclear bomb, which it eventually tested in 1998.

Salam's life, along with the fate of the three million other Ahmadis in Pakistan, drastically changed in 1974 when parliament amended the constitution to declare that members of the sect were not considered Muslims under Pakistani law.

Ahmadis believe their spiritual leader, Hadhrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, who died in 1908, was the Promised Messiah _ a position rejected by the government in response to a mass movement led by Pakistan's major Islamic parties. Most Muslims consider Muhammad the last prophet and those who subsequently declared themselves prophets as heretics.

All Pakistani passport applicants must sign a section saying the Ahmadi faith's founder was an "impostor" and his followers are "non-Muslims." Ahmadis are prevented by law in Pakistan from "posing as Muslims," declaring their faith publicly, calling their places of worship mosques or performing the Muslim call to prayer. They can be punished with prison and even death.

Salam resigned from his government post in protest following the 1974 constitutional amendment and eventually moved to Europe to pursue his work. In Italy, he created a centre for theoretical physics to help physicists from the developing world.

Although Pakistan's then-president, general Zia ul-Haq, presented Salam with Pakistan's highest civilian honour after he won the Nobel Prize, the general response in the country was muted. The physicist was celebrated more enthusiastically by other countries, including India.

Despite his achievements, Salam's name appears in few textbooks and is rarely mentioned by Pakistani leaders or the media. By contrast, fellow Pakistani physicist A.Q. Khan, who played a key role in developing the country's nuclear bomb and later confessed to spreading nuclear technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya, is considered a national hero.

Officials at Quaid-i-Azam University had to cancel plans for Salam to lecture about his Nobel-winning theory when Islamist student activists threatened to break the physicist's legs, said his colleague Hoodbhoy.

"The way he has been treated is such a tragedy," said Hoodbhoy. "He went from someone who was revered in Pakistan, a national celebrity, to someone who could not set foot in Pakistan. If he came, he would be insulted and could be hurt or even killed."

The president who honoured Salam would later go on to intensify persecution of Ahmadis, for whom life in Pakistan has grown even more precarious. Taliban militants attacked two mosques packed with Ahmadis in Lahore in 2010, killing at least 80 people.

"Many Ahmadis have received letters from fundamentalists since the 2010 attacks threatening to target them again, and the government isn't doing anything," said Qamar Suleiman, a spokesman for the Ahmadi community.

For Salam, not even death saved him from being targeted.

Hoodbhoy said his body was returned to Pakistan in 1996 after he died in Oxford, England, and was buried under a gravestone that read "First Muslim Nobel Laureate." A local magistrate ordered that the word "Muslim" be erased.

JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia (Reuters) - A Saudi man was killed and his wife and two children were injured when their car crashed off a bridge while being pursued by religious police in the conservative Islamic kingdom, a spokesman for the religious police said on Monday. In Saudi Arabia, a monarchy that follows a strict version of Sunni Islam, the religious police patrol the streets to enforce gender segregation and ensure the public behave in accordance with their strict Islamic teachings. Formally known as the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (CPVPV), religious police officers arrest those who do not comply with their rules. In March the commission's head banned car pursuits which had led to several fatal accidents. Family members told Saudi Arabia's al-Watan newspaper that the chase began when a CPVPV officer confronted Abdulrahman Ahmed al-Ghamdi, 35, and his family while he was returning home from an amusement park in the southern province of al-Baha. They said the loud volume of Ghamdi's car radio prompted the confrontation. The car sped off, police in pursuit, and crashed over a bridge, killing Ghamdi. His nine year-old son is in a coma and his wife had her arm amputated as a result of the accident, al-Watan reported. His younger daughter, 4, was in stable condition in hospital. Nasser al-Zahrani, a spokesman for the CPVPV in al-Baha confirmed the report. "There is a committee set up and an investigation ongoing to look into the incident," he said. Sheikh Abdulatif Al al-Sheikh, the head the CPVPV, was quoted in the local al-Watan newspaper commenting on the incident. "I have expressed my sadness and regret to the (al-Baha governor) and we hope that he will forward the case to the appropriate department for investigation." The religious police have been trying to soften their image after gaining the reputation of being aggressive following several fatal accidents, prompting criticism at home and abroad. The decision to ban car chases was not widely accepted by all members of the religious police. In January King Abdullah replaced the head of the religious police, Sheikh Abdulaziz al-Humain, with Al al-Sheikh, who swiftly banned the activities of "volunteers" who take it on themselves to chase or detain presumed sharia violators. (Reporting by Asma Alsharif; editing by Sami Aboudi and Ralph Boulton)

CBC

If you are one of the thousands of people whose computer was infected with the DNSChanger virus between 2007 and 2011 and you haven't yet bothered to remove it, chances are you're reading this at work or on a mobile device because your internet access has been cut off today.

Several temporary DNS servers that have been keeping virus-infected machines connected to the internet were shut down Monday as part of the winding down of the FBI operation Ghost Click.

Ghost Click was an international investigation that led to the arrest of a group of Estonian cybercriminals operating under the company name Rove Digital.

Between 2007 and 2011, the group successfully rerouted about 650,000 computers around the world through a system of false DNS servers, manipulating web searches and directing infected machines to fraudulent websites that promoted fake products, allowing the perpetrators to earn money off the sale of the products and advertising on the sites.

One example cited by the FBI was a website selling fraudulent Apple software to which users would be directed when clicking on the link for the official website for iTunes.

The investigation ended in November 2011, but the FBI contracted the non-profit Internet Systems Consortium to replace the rogue DNS servers with clean ones and keep them operating temporarily so that the infected computers connected to them would not lose internet access.

Those users who removed the virus from their computers had their normal internet connections restored, but those who didn't continued to be rerouted through the temporary servers instead of through their internet provider's servers — until today, July 9, when those servers were disconnected.

In Canada, about 7,000 machines were still infected with the virus as of June 2012, according to the FBI.

Unfortunately, those who lost their internet connection today have little choice but to take their machines to a computer expert and have the malware removed, since they will no longer be able to directly access the online services designed to detect or remove the virus.

Alternatively, you can go to an uninfected machine and try downloading some of the free DNSChanger virus scan and removal software compiled by the DNSChanger Working Group at www.dcwg.org/fix/ onto removable media, like a USB flash drive, and use that device to disinfect your computer.

A more extreme course of action would be to back up important data and wipe the hard drive clean and reformat it — or have this done by a computer technician.

Those who choose this route should keep in mind that if they don't back up files to a separate drive, they'll lose them, because reformatting cleans out all the files on a drive. The operating system and applications will also need to be reinstalled after reformatting.

If you are having trouble accessing the internet today and are reading this on another device, you can check whether your computer has been infected with DNSChanger by identifying your DNS settings and comparing them against the list of known rogue IP addresses listed on the FBI or Public Safety Canada websites.

According to those sites, if your IP address falls within one of the following groups, your computer is infected with the virus:

85.255.112.0 through 85.255.127.25

67.210.0.0 through 67.210.15.255

93.188.160.0 through 93.188.167.255

77.67.83.0 through 77.67.83.255

213.109.64.0 through 213.109.79.255

64.28.176.0 through 64.28.191.255

To find your DNS settings, Public Safety Canada recommends the following steps.

For Windows users:

Go to Start menu.

Select Run...

Type: cmd.exe [press ENTER].

Type in the black command window: ipconfig /all [press ENTER].

Search for the line that says "DNS Servers." Often, two or three IP addresses are listed.

Compare against list of rogue IP addresses.

For Apple users:

Go to System Preferences.

Select Network.

Select the connection used for internet access (typically, AirPort or ethernet).

Select Advanced.

Select the DNS tab.

Compare against list of rogue IP addresses.

Heat, wind, fire, wind, drought, floods: US summer is 'what global warming looks like'

By Seth Borenstein, The Associated Press | The Canadian Press 

WASHINGTON - Is it just freakish weather or something more? Climate scientists suggest that if you want a glimpse of some of the worst of global warming, take a look at U.S. weather in recent weeks.

Horrendous wildfires. Oppressive heat waves. Devastating droughts. Flooding from giant deluges. And a powerful freak wind storm called a derecho.

These are the kinds of extremes climate scientists have predicted will come with climate change, although it's far too early to say that is the cause. Nor will they say global warming is the reason 3,215 daily high temperature records were set in the month of June.

Scientifically linking individual weather events to climate change takes intensive study, complicated mathematics, computer models and lots of time. Sometimes it isn't caused by global warming. Weather is always variable; freak things happen.

And this weather has been local. Europe, Asia and Africa aren't having similar disasters now, although they've had their own extreme events in recent years.

But since at least 1988, climate scientists have warned that climate change would bring, in general, increased heat waves, more droughts, more sudden downpours, more widespread wildfires and worsening storms. In the United States, those extremes are happening here and now.

So far this year, more than 2.1 million acres (850,000 hectares) have burned in wildfires, more than 113 million people in the U.S. were in areas under extreme heat advisories last Friday, two-thirds of the country is experiencing drought, and earlier in June, deluges flooded Minnesota and Florida.

"This is what global warming looks like at the regional or personal level," said Jonathan Overpeck, professor of geosciences and atmospheric sciences at the University of Arizona. "The extra heat increases the odds of worse heat waves, droughts, storms and wildfire. This is certainly what I and many other climate scientists have been warning about."

Kevin Trenberth, head of climate analysis at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in fire-charred Colorado, said these are the very record-breaking conditions he has said would happen, but many people wouldn't listen. So it's "I told you so" time, he said.

As recently as March, a special report on extreme events and disasters by the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned of "unprecedented extreme weather and climate events." Its lead author, Chris Field of the Carnegie Institution and Stanford University, said Monday, "It's really dramatic how many of the patterns that we've talked about as the expression of the extremes are hitting the U.S. right now."

"What we're seeing really is a window into what global warming really looks like," said Princeton University geosciences and international affairs professor Michael Oppenheimer. "It looks like heat. It looks like fires. It looks like this kind of environmental disasters."

Oppenheimer said that on Thursday. That was before the East Coast was hit with triple-digit Fahrenheit temperatures (temperatures above 38 degress Celsius) and before a derecho — an unusually strong, long-lived and large straight-line wind storm — blew through Chicago to Washington. The storm and its aftermath killed more than 20 people and left millions without electricity. Experts say it had energy readings five times that of normal thunderstorms.

Fueled by the record high heat, this was one of the most powerful of this type of storm in the region in recent history, said research meteorologist Harold Brooks of the National Severe Storm Laboratory in Norman, Oklahoma. Scientists expect "non-tornadic wind events" like this one and other thunderstorms to increase with climate change because of the heat and instability, he said.

Such patterns haven't happened only in the past week or two. The spring and winter in the U.S. were the warmest on record and among the least snowy, setting the stage for the weather extremes to come, scientists say.

Since Jan. 1, the United States has set more than 40,000 hot temperature records, but fewer than 6,000 cold temperature records, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Through most of last century, the U.S. used to set cold and hot records evenly, but in the first decade of this century America set two hot records for every cold one, said Jerry Meehl, a climate extreme expert at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. This year the ratio is about 7 hot to 1 cold. Some computer models say that ratio will hit 20-to-1 by midcentury, Meehl said.

"In the future you would expect larger, longer more intense heat waves and we've seen that in the last few summers," NOAA Climate Monitoring chief Derek Arndt said.

The 100-degree (40-degree Celsius) heat, drought, early snowpack melt and beetles waking from hibernation early to strip trees all combined to set the stage for the current unusual spread of wildfires in the West, said University of Montana ecosystems professor Steven Running, an expert on wildfires.

While at least 15 climate scientists told The Associated Press that this long hot U.S. summer is consistent with what is to be expected in global warming, history is full of such extremes, said John Christy at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. He's a global warming skeptic who says, "The guilty party in my view is Mother Nature."

But the vast majority of mainstream climate scientists, such as Meehl, disagree: "This is what global warming is like, and we'll see more of this as we go into the future."

___

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report on extreme weather:

http://ipcc-wg2.gov/SREX/

U.S. weather records set:

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/extremes/records/

Sun Fires Off Fourth of July Solar Flares

By Tariq Malik | SPACE.com

The sun is unleashing some powerful solar flares today (July 4) in an impressive celestial fireworks display just in time for the U.S. Independence Day holiday.

The latest solar flare erupted at 5:47 a.m. EDT (0947 GMT) and hit its peak strength eight minutes later. The flare fired off from the active sunspot AR1515 and registered as a class M5.3 solar storm on the scale used by astronomers to measure space weather, according to the Space Weather Prediction Group operated by NOAA.

Class M solar flares are powerful, but still medium-strength, sun storms that can supercharge northern lights displays on Earth. The weakest of the sun's strong solar flares are C-class storms.

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft currently watching the sun also captured another solar flare this morning that reached M2 on the sun storm scale.

"As the United States is observing Independence Day, active region 1515 unleashed another M2-class solar flare," SDO scientists wrote in an announcement posted to the mission's Facebook and YouTube sites. The flare peaked at 12:37 a.m. EDT (0437 GMT), they added.

Sunspot AR1515 is a huge active region on the sun that reportedly covers an area 62,137 miles long (100,000 kilometers). It has been responsible for a series of strong solar flares in recent days and may not be finished with the Fourth of July yet.

"The chance of an X-flare today is increasing as sunspot AR1515 develops a 'beta-gamma-delta' magnetic field that harbors energy for the most powerful explosions," announced Spaceweather.com, a space weather tracking website run by astronomer Tony Phillips. "The sunspot itself is huge, stretching more than 100,000 km (8 Earth-diameters) from end to end."

X-class solar flares are the strongest flares the sun can unleash. When aimed directly at Earth, X-class solar flares can endanger satellites and unshielded astronauts in space, interfere with GPS signals and communications, as well damage power system infrastructure on the ground.  

Phillips and Spaceweather.com said that today, Earth will be in the crosshairs of any major flares.

"If any X-flares do occur today, they will certainly be Earth-directed," they explained. "The sunspot is directly facing our planet."

The sun is currently in the midst of an active phase of its 11-year solar weather cycle. The current cycle, known as Solar Cycle 24, is expected to peak in 2013.

Editor's note: If you snap a photo of sunspot AR1515 or any amazing northern lights photos this week and you'd like to share them for a possible story or image gallery, please send images and comments to managing editor Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com.

Earth Is Farthest From the Sun This Week

By Tariq Malik | SPACE.com – 4 hours ago

With a heat wave roasting parts of the United States this week, it may seem strange that our planet is now actually at its farthest point from the sun this year. Strange, but true.

According to the U.S. Naval Observatory, the Earth will reach a point in its orbit called "aphelion" at 12 a.m. EDT (0400 GMT) on Thursday (July 5). The Earth's aphelion is the spot where it is the farthest from the sun that it can get in a single year — about 94.5 million miles (152 million kilometers).

To put that in perspective, the Earth is typically about 93 million miles (150 million km) from the sun. But because our planet's orbit is not a perfect circle (it's actually an ellipse) it has a farthest point and closest point to the sun. Earth's closest approach to the sun is called perihelion and occurs in early January.

At aphelion, Earth is exactly 3,104,641 miles (4,996,435 km) — or 3.28 percent — farther from our star than at its closest approach. Those few million miles mean that Earth will receive about 7 percent less radiant heat at its farthest point from the sun than at its closest point, researchers say. [50 Amazing Earth Facts]

If you're in a heat-wave state in the United States, you may be wondering how it can be so hot if Earth is farther from the sun than it usually is. It's a good question.

But our current warm weather isn't directly tied to Earth's relative distance from the sun; rather, the 23.5-degree tilt of Earth's axis is playing a major role. This tilt means that the sun is above the horizon for different lengths of time during different seasons. It's this tilt that determines if the sun's rays strike your spot on Earth directly or at a low angle.

At the latitude of New York City, the sun's direct rays on the June 21 summer solstice mean the city receives three times as much heat as it does during the winter solstice in late December. The reverse is true for the Southern Hemisphere, where it is currently winter.

The dates for aphelion and perihelion can vary by a few days. Perihelion typically occurs between Jan. 1 and 5, and aphelion ranges between July 2 and 5. While this year's aphelion occurs on July 5, last year it was on July 4, just in time for the Fourth of July celebrations marking the Independence Day holiday in the United States.

So tonight, after catching your local fireworks display to celebrate the Fourth of July, take a moment to mark another annual event on Earth: aphelion. We'll only get closer to the sun from here.

Rise in sea level can't be stopped, scientists say

By Nina Chestney | Reuters – Mon, Jul 2, 2012

LONDON (Reuters) - Rising sea levels cannot be stopped over the next several hundred years, even if deep emissions cuts lower global average temperatures, but they can be slowed down, climate scientists said in a study on Sunday.

A lot of climate research shows that rising greenhouse gas emissions are responsible for increasing global average surface temperatures by about 0.17 degrees Celsius a decade from 1980-2010 and for a sea level rise of about 2.3mm a year from 2005-2010 as ice caps and glaciers melt.

Rising sea levels threaten about a tenth of the world's population who live in low-lying areas and islands which are at risk of flooding, including the Caribbean, Maldives and Asia-Pacific island groups.

More than 180 countries are negotiating a new global climate pact which will come into force by 2020 and force all nations to cut emissions to limit warming to below 2 degrees Celsius this century - a level scientists say is the minimum required to avert catastrophic effects.

But even if the most ambitious emissions cuts are made, it might not be enough to stop sea levels rising due to the thermal expansion of sea water, said scientists at the United States' National Centre for Atmospheric Research, U.S. research organisation Climate Central and Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research in Melbourne.

"Even with aggressive mitigation measures that limit global warming to less than 2 degrees above pre-industrial values by 2100, and with decreases of global temperature in the 22nd and 23rd centuries ... sea level continues to rise after 2100," they said in the journal Nature Climate Change.

This is because as warmer temperatures penetrate deep into the sea, the water warms and expands as the heat mixes through different ocean regions.

Even if global average temperatures fall and the surface layer of the sea cools, heat would still be mixed down into the deeper layers of the ocean, causing continued rises in sea levels.

If global average temperatures continue to rise, the melting of ice sheets and glaciers would only add to the problem.

The scientists calculated that if the deepest emissions cuts were made and global temperatures cooled to 0.83 degrees in 2100 - forecast based on the 1986-2005 average - and 0.55 degrees by 2300, the sea level rise due to thermal expansion would continue to increase - from 14.2cm in 2100 to 24.2cm in 2300.

If the weakest emissions cuts were made, temperatures could rise to 3.91 degrees Celsius in 2100 and the sea level rise could increase to 32.3cm, increasing to 139.4cm by 2300.

"Though sea-level rise cannot be stopped for at least the next several hundred years, with aggressive mitigation it can be slowed down, and this would buy time for adaptation measures to be adopted," the scientists added.

The study is available at www.nature.com/nclimate

(Reporting by Nina Chestney; Editing by Pravin Char)

Guinness says Philippine croc world's largest

AFP 

A saltwater crocodile weighing more than a tonne and suspected of killing two people in the Philippines has been declared the largest such reptile in captivity by the Guinness Book of World Records.

The 6.17-metre (20.24-foot) male, nicknamed "Lolong", was captured in the Agusan marsh on the southern island of Mindanao last September after a two-year search following the killing of a girl and the disappearance of a fisherman.

"The largest crocodile in captivity is Lolong, a saltwater crocodile (Crocodylus porosus), who measured 6.17 m," Guinness said on its website.

"Lolong's weight was also measured at a nearby truck weigh-bridge and verified as approximately 1,075 kg (2,370 lbs)."

Welinda Asis Elorde, media affairs coordinator for the town of Bunawan, which has custody of the new record-holder, said Monday the local government had received an official certification from Guinness.

"He's doing well. I think he has already adapted to his new environment," Elorde told AFP by telephone.

At first, Lolong was fed the equivalent of 10 percent of his body weight in beef, pork and poultry every month, but an expert put him on a diet of eight to 10 kilograms a week to get him to be more active, she added.

The expert also recommended that the meat be given with skin and feathers attached, to help digestion.

"I was there (at the crocodile park where Lolong is kept) yesterday and he remains a big tourist attraction. Hundreds of people visit him in a day," Elorde added.

The Guinness record was previously held by Cassius, a 5.48-metre Australian saltwater crocodile weighing close to a tonne.

Cassius has been kept at a crocodile park at an island off Queensland since his capture in the Northern Territory in 1984.

Solar Flare's Red Glare: Sun Unleashes Early Fourth of July Fireworks

By Tariq Malik | SPACE.com 

The sun erupted with a powerful solar flare Monday (July 2) in an early solar fireworks display just in time for the Fourth of July. A wave of plasma from the flare could reach Earth by the U.S. Independence Day holiday on Wednesday, July 4.

The sun storm came from a large sunspot called AR1515 that is now rotating across the Earth-facing side of the sun. It unleashed an intense solar flare at 6:43 a.m. EDT (1043 GMT) today in what is expected to be one of several strong solar storms in the days ahead, space weather officials said.

Several space telescopes are monitoring the sun around the clock, with NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft capturing video of today's solar flare.

The flare registered as a class M5.6 solar storm on the scale used by astronomers to measure the sun's weather. The sun's strongest storms come in three primary classes. The weakest storms are C-class flares, which have little effects that can be felt on Earth. M-class flares are moderate solar storms that can supercharge the Earth's northern lights displays.

The strongest solar storms are X-class events. When aimed at Earth, the most powerful X-class solar flares can endanger spacecraft and astronauts in orbit, interfere with satellite signals, as well as damage power lines and other infrastructure on the ground.

According to Spaceweather.com, a night sky observing and space weather tracking website run by astronomer Tony Phillips, the solar flare unleashed a wave of charged plasma called a coronal mass ejection (CME), but the particles were not aimed squarely at Earth.

"The eruption also hurled a CME into space, but not directly toward Earth. The south-traveling cloud could deliver a glancing blow to our planet's magnetosphere on July 4th or 5th," Spaceweather.com wrote.

US spacecraft detects sign of ocean below the surface of Saturn's largest moon, Titan

By Alicia Chang, The Associated Press | The Canadian Press – Thu, 28 Jun, 2012

LOS ANGELES, Calif. - Scientists reported Thursday on the strongest sign yet that Saturn's giant moon may have a salty ocean beneath its chilly surface.

If confirmed, it would catapult Titan into an elite class of solar system moons harbouring water, an essential ingredient for life.

Titan boasts methane-filled seas at the poles and a possible lake near the equator. And it's long been speculated that Titan contains a hidden liquid layer, based on mathematical modeling and electric field measurements made by the Huygens spacecraft that landed on the surface in 2005.

The latest evidence is still indirect, but outside scientists said it's probably the best that can be obtained short of sending a spacecraft to drill into the surface — a costly endeavour that won't happen anytime soon.

The research looks convincing, said Gabriel Tobie of France's University of Nantes.

"If the analysis is correct, this is a very important finding," Tobie said in an email.

The finding by an international team of researchers was released online Thursday by the journal Science. The scientists pored over data from the orbiting Cassini spacecraft, which flew by Titan half a dozen times between 2006 and last year and took gravity measurements for a glimpse of its interior.

They found Titan got squeezed and stretched depending on its orbit around Saturn, suggesting the presence of a buried ocean. If Titan were solid rock and ice, such deformations would not occur.

"Titan is quite squishy," noted Jonathan Lunine of Cornell University, who was part of the research team.

Scientists did not delve into the characteristics of the ocean, but previous estimates suggested it could be 30 miles to 62 miles (48 kilometres to 99 kilometres) deep and contain traces of ammonia. Titan is one of the few worlds in the solar system with a significant atmosphere, and the presence of an underground ocean could help explain how Titan replenishes methane in its hazy atmosphere.

Having an internal body of water would also make Titan an attractive place to study whether it would be capable of supporting microbial life. Other moons on the shortlist: Jupiter's Europa, where an underground ocean is thought to exist, and another Saturn moon, Enceladus, where jets have been seen spewing from the surface.

"Any environment that has liquid water needs to be investigated carefully," said planetary scientist Jean-Luc Margot of the University of California, Los Angeles, who had no role in the research.

Ancient Text Confirms Mayan Calendar End Date

By Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior Writer | LiveScience.com – Thu, 28 Jun, 2012

A newly discovered Mayan text reveals the "end date" for the Mayan calendar, becoming only the second known document to do so. But unlike some modern people, ancient Maya did not expect the world to end on that date, researchers said.

"This text talks about ancient political history rather than prophecy," Marcello Canuto, the director of Tulane University Middle America Research Institute, said in a statement. "This new evidence suggests that the 13 bak'tun date was an important calendrical event that would have been celebrated by the ancient Maya; however, they make no apocalyptic prophecies whatsoever regarding the date."

The Mayan Long Count calendar is divided into bak'tuns, or 144,000-day cycles that begin at the Maya creation date. The winter solstice of 2012 (Dec. 21) is the last day of the 13th bak'tun, marking what the Maya people would have seen as a full cycle of creation.

New Age believers and doomsday types have attributed great meaning to the Dec. 21, 2012 date, with some predicting an apocalypse and others some sort of profound global spiritual event. But only one archaeological reference to the 2012 date had ever been found, as an inscription on a monument dating back to around A.D. 669 in Tortuguero, Mexico. [End of the World? Top Doomsday Fears]

Now, researchers exploring the Mayan ruins of La Corona in Guatemala have unearthed a second reference. On a stairway block carved with hieroglyphs, archaeologists found a commemoration of a visit by Yuknoom Yich'aak K'ahk' of Calakmul, the most powerful Mayan ruler in his day. The king, also known as Jaguar Paw, suffered a terrible defeat in battle by the Kingdom of Tikal in 695.

Historians have long assumed that Jaguar Paw died or was captured in this battle. But the carvings proved them wrong. In fact, the king visited La Corona in A.D. 696, probably trying to shore up loyalty among his subjects in the wake of his defeat four years earlier. 

As part of this publicity tour, the king was calling himself the "13 k'atun lord," the carvings reveal. K'atuns are another unit of the Maya calendar, corresponding to 7,200 days or nearly 20 years. Jaguar Paw had presided over the ending of the 13th of these k'atuns in A.D. 692.

That's where the 2012 calendar end date comes in. In an effort to tie himself and his reign to the future, the king linked his reign with another 13th cycle — the 13th bak'tun of Dec. 21, 2012.

"What this text shows us is that in times of crisis, the ancient Maya used their calendar to promote continuity and stability rather than predict apocalypse," Canuto said.

La Corona was the site of much looting and has only been explored by modern archaeologists for about 15 years. Canuto and his dig co-director Tomas Barrientos Q. of the Universidad del Valle de Guatemala announced the discovery of the new calendar text Thursday (June 28) at the National Palace in Guatemala.

The researchers first uncovered the carved stone steps in 2010 near a building heavily damaged by looters. The robbers had missed this set of 12 steps, however, providing a rare example of stones still in their original places. The researchers found another 10 stones from the staircase that had been moved but then discarded by looters. In total, these 22 stones boast 264 hieroglyphs tracing the political history of La Corona, making them the longest known ancient Maya text in Guatemala.

Scientists develop spray-on battery

By Chris Wickham | Reuters – Thu, 28 Jun, 2012

LONDON (Reuters) - Scientists in the United States have developed a paint that can store and deliver electrical power just like a battery.

Traditional lithium-ion batteries power most portable electronics. They are already pretty compact but limited to rectangular or cylindrical blocks.

Researchers at Rice University in Houston, Texas, have come up with a technique to break down each element of the traditional battery and incorporate it into a liquid that can be spray-painted in layers on virtually any surface.

"This means traditional packaging for batteries has given way to a much more flexible approach that allows all kinds of new design and integration possibilities for storage devices," said Pulickel Ajayan, who leads the team on the project.

The rechargeable battery is made from spray-painted layers, with each representing the components of a traditional battery: two current collectors, a cathode, an anode and a polymer separator in the middle.

The paint layers were airbrushed onto ceramics, glass and stainless steel, and on diverse shapes such as the curved surface of a ceramic mug, to test how well they bond.

One limitation of the technology is in the use of difficult-to-handle liquid electrolytes and the need for a dry and oxygen-free environment when making the new device.

The researchers are looking for components that would allow construction in the open air for a more efficient production process and greater commercial viability.

Neelam Singh, who worked on the project, believes the technology could be integrated with solar cells to give any surface a stand-alone energy capture and storage capability.

The researchers tested the device using nine bathroom tiles coated with the paint and connected to each other. When they were charged, the batteries powered a set of light-emitting diodes for six hours, providing a steady 2.4 volts.

The results of the study were published on Thursday in the journal Nature Scientific Reports.

(Editing by Louise Ireland)