Powerful solar storm to hit earth soon

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British scientists warned that a mighty eruption of superhot plasma blasted out of the sun could hit the earth as early as Tuesday.(Photo source:NASA)

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British scientists warned that a mighty eruption of superhot plasma blasted out of the sun could hit the earth as early as Tuesday.(Photo source:NASA)

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British scientists warned that a mighty eruption of superhot plasma blasted out of the sun could hit the earth as early as Tuesday.(Photo source:NASA)

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British scientists warned that a mighty eruption of superhot plasma blasted out of the sun could hit the earth as early as Tuesday.(Photo source:NASA)

[sunny]

British scientists warned that a mighty eruption of superhot plasma blasted out of the sun could hit the earth as early as Tuesday.(Photo source:NASA)

[sunny]

British scientists warned that a mighty eruption of superhot plasma blasted out of the sun could hit the earth as early as Tuesday.(Photo source:NASA)

[sunny]

British scientists warned that a mighty eruption of superhot plasma blasted out of the sun could hit the earth as early as Tuesday.(Photo source:NASA)

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ว่าไปแล้ว เรื่องนี้เป็นเรื่องที่นักวิทยาศาสตร์ชั้นนำทั่วโลกรู้ดีว่าอะไรจะเกิดขึ้น

โดยเฉพาะสิ่งที่จะต้องเกิดขึ้นกับประเทศมหาอำนาจอย่างอเมริกา และประเทศแถบยุโรป

และนี่จึงเป็นสาเหตุหลักที่สำคัญที่สุด ที่ทำให้อเมริกา และประเทศแถบยุโรปต้องเข้ามาประเทศไทยให้ได้

ง่ายที่สุดก็คือมาหาสาวไทยแต่งงาน โดยเฉพาะแถบอีสาน เพราะเข้าใจว่าแต่งงานกับคนต่างชาติแล้วมีเงิน มีฐานะดีขึ้น

แต่หารู้ไม่ว่า ผลประโยชน์เพียงหยิบมือที่พวกเขาเหล่านั้นกระเสือกกระสนดิ้นรนให้ได้มา

ต้องแลกมากับการสูญเสียของประเทศชาติ อีกทั้งยังเป็นการทำให้คนต่างชาติมาดูถูกชนชาติไทของเรา

ทั้งนี้เนื่องจากประเทศไทย เป็นประเทศในแถบเอเชียตะวันออกเฉียงใต้ ที่ยินยอมให้ต่างชาติถือและยึดครองผืนแผ่นดินเป็นของตนเองได้(เกิดขึ้นสมัยนายชวนเป็นนายกฯ---ประชาธิปัตย์)

หากว่ากันในทางยุทธศาสตร์แล้ว เราถือว่าได้เปรียบโดยสิ้นเชิง

เพียงแต่นักยุทธศาสตร์ของไทยเรา ไร้ชั้นเชิงและไหวพริบ จนกลายเป็นเครื่องมือให้ถูกหลอกใช้

เพราะความเห็นแก่ได้ และเห็นแก่ตัว

อีกทั้งคนเหล่านี้ยังมีอัตตาในตัวตนสูง ประมาณว่า "ใครจะรู้ดีไปกว่ากูเป็นไม่มีและไม่ได้"

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คนไททั้งหลาย จงรับรู้และตรองดูให้ดีกับสิ่งที่จะเกิดขึ้น

ในเมื่อเรารู้ เราจะเลือกที่จะนั่งรอเฉยๆ หรือเราจะลุกขึ้นสู้หรือกระทำการใดๆ

ซึ่งไม่ว่าผลจะออกมาเป็นอย่างไร แต่เราก็ได้ภูมิใจว่าเราได้ทำหน้าที่แล้ว

และนี่คือบทพิสูจน์คุณค่าของตัวเรา ว่าสมควรแล้วหรือไม่

กับการได้เกิดมาเป็นมนุษย์ เป็นชาวพุทธ และเป็นคนชนชาติไท

อยู่ที่ว่า "คุณกล้าที่จะพิสูจน์หรือไม่"

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Solar storm hitting earth causes spectacular aurora across Northern Hemisphere
Aurora captured in Wisconsin, the United States (Photo Source: sci.sina.com)

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Solar storm hitting earth causes spectacular aurora across Northern Hemisphere
Aurora captured in Oslo, Norway (Photo Source: sci.sina.com)

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Solar storm hitting earth causes spectacular aurora across Northern Hemisphere
Aurora captured in Saskatoon,Canada (Photo Source: sci.sina.com)

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Solar storm hitting earth causes spectacular aurora across Northern Hemisphere
Aurora captured in Canada (Photo Source: sci.sina.com)

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Solar storm hitting earth causes spectacular aurora across Northern Hemisphere
Aurora captured in Michigan, the United States (Photo Source: sci.sina.com)

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Solar storm hitting earth causes spectacular aurora across Northern Hemisphere
Aurora captured in Michigan, the United States ( (Photo Source: sci.sina.com)

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Solar storm hitting earth causes spectacular aurora across Northern Hemisphere
Aurora captured in Michigan, the United States ( (Photo Source: sci.sina.com)

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Space station astronauts tackle urgent spacewalking repairs, go after broken cooling system

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - A pair of space station astronauts ventured out on an urgent spacewalk Saturday to restore a crucial cooling system — one of the most challenging repairs ever attempted at the orbiting lab.

As the sun rose over NASA's spaceport, astronauts Douglas Wheelock and Tracy Caldwell Dyson exited the International Space Station. Their mission was to replace a broken ammonia coolant pump, a job considered so difficult that two spacewalks are required. Saturday was part one.

Wheelock quickly made his way to the broken pump as the space station circled 220 miles (354 kilometres) above the planet.

"Do I get extra credit?" Caldwell Dyson asked as she gathered tools.

Mission Control said she would and joked that she even might earn an extra brownie afterward.

Wheelock said all the connections looked good on the pump, and he saw no signs it had been hit by micrometeorites or other debris.

The ammonia pump shut down last weekend and knocked out half of the space station's cooling system. The pump is supposed to push ammonia coolant through the lines on the right side of the complex and prevent equipment from overheating. To cope with the failure, the six-person crew had to turn off all unnecessary equipment and halt science experiments.

The cooling line on the left side — unaffected by the trouble — has had to manage everything.

Engineers worked nonstop over the past week to come up with the emergency repair plan. In addition, astronauts in Houston rehearsed every step of the spacewalk while submerged in NASA's huge training pool.

There was a risk the fully pressurized ammonia lines could leak; the spacewalkers would have to get the toxic substance off their suits before going back inside. In addition, the lines were stiff because of all the pressure, making the repair job especially difficult.

NASA originally targeted Thursday for the spacewalk, the same day that Wheelock and Caldwell Dyson were supposed to go out and do some advance work for a November shuttle visit. But flight controllers needed two extra days to refine all the procedures.

Although space station managers knew an ammonia pump would fail one day, they did not expect it to happen so soon in the 12-year life of the complex. The pump was launched in 2002, but did not start operating fully until 2006.

The space station is equipped with four spare pumps; the one that will replace the broken unit went up in 2006.

Each pump is a boxy 5.5 feet (1.7 metres) by 4 feet (1.2 metres) by 3 feet (about a meter) and has a mass of 780 pounds (354 kilograms). Several cooling lines will have to be connected to the new pump, at least some of which will be done on the second spacewalk planned for Wednesday.

NASA said the breakdown is serious but has not endangered the crew, and the one functional cooling loop has kept the space station stable. Additional breakdowns could leave the station in a precarious situation, however, and that's why managers wanted to get the broken line working again as soon as possible.

Saturday's spacewalk was the first by Americans, without a shuttle present, since 2008.

The crew includes three Americans and three Russians. Caldwell Dyson has been on board since April, and Wheelock since June.

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Online:

NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html

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International Space Station to host most accurate atomic clock

NEW YORK: The International Space Station is to soon host the most accurate clock ever sent into space, which could help reveal changes in nature's fundamental constants.

According to the 'New Scientist', the atomic clock will allow for better synchronisation of clocks on Earth and probe exotic physics too.

In fact, the experiment, called Atomic Clock Ensemble in Space will be built by EADS Astrium and is scheduled to fly to the space station in 2014, the European Space Agency (ESA) has announced.

It will keep track of time by measuring the frequency of microwaves absorbed by cooled caesium atoms.

On Earth, the accuracy of caesium clocks is limited by gravity. The atoms are cooled by using lasers to slow them down, then tossed upwards into a cavity where measurements are made to determine the precise frequency of microwave radiation that they absorb and emit.

In microgravity, the atoms linger in the cavity, allowing for longer and more accurate measurements, said John Prestage of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.

ACES should be at least 100 times as accurate as the clocks on GPS satellites, he said.

Using the space-station clock as a common point of reference, ground-based atomic clocks could be more accurately compared with one another.

What's more, variations between atomic clocks could reveal if a physical constant called alpha - which governs the electromagnetic force - is not constant after all, say scientists.

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Flight Engineer Doug Wheelock is attached to Canadarm2 as he removes the failed 780-pound ammonia pump module

Third Repair Spacewalk Set For Monday

After completing several days of analysis and refining procedures, International Space Station managers and mission operations personnel met Sunday and gave final approval for a third spacewalk Monday by Expedition 24 Flight Engineers Doug Wheelock and Tracy Caldwell Dyson to install a spare ammonia pump in the station's starboard truss as well as approval to restart and activate half of the station's cooling system that became inoperable two weeks ago due to a failure of the pump in the station's starboard truss.

The spacewalk Monday, which will be the third in the series of excursions to bring the station's cooling system back to full capability, is scheduled to begin at 5:55 a.m. Central time.

NASA Television coverage will begin at 5 a.m. CDT. It will be the 150th spacewalk in support of space station assembly and maintenance dating back to 1998, the sixth spacewalk of Wheelock's career and the third for Caldwell Dyson.

To prepare for the spacewalk, Wheelock and Caldwell Dyson will spend the night Sunday in the Quest airlock, beginning their "campout" to start purging nitrogen from their bloodstreams in advance of exiting Quest Monday morning for the planned 6 .5 hour excursion.

The goal of the spacewalk Monday will be to install the spare Pump Module into the S1 truss on the station, replacing the pump that failed July 31 causing one of two loops to shut down that provides cooling for the station's electronics. The failed pump was removed from the truss during the second spacewalk by Wheelock and Caldwell Dyson last Wednesday.

The spare to be installed Monday was delivered to the station in July 2006 on the STS-121 space shuttle mission of Discovery and was mounted to a spare parts platform adjacent to the Quest airlock from where Monday's spacewalk will be staged.

Wheelock and Caldwell Dyson will maneuver the spare pump from the external spare parts platform to the S1 truss, then will mechanically attach it by driving a set of four bolts before mating five electrical connectors.

At that point, if all goes as planned, flight controllers at Mission Control, Houston should see the replacement pump come to life by verifying electrical continuity and a brief spin up of the pump's driveshaft.

With the new pump checked out, Wheelock and Caldwell Dyson will then turn their attention to demating two fluid lines that are attached to a jumper box designed to temporarily maintain the proper pressure in the ammonia reservoir that feeds coolant to the pump itself.

Nitrogen will be vented from the replacement pump after the first fluid line is connected to the spare, followed by the connection of three other fluid lines to permit the replacement pump to finally be filled with ammonia from a coolant reservoir, called the Ammonia Tank Assembly.

Plans call for the revived Loop A of the station's cooling system to be temporarily powered off on Tuesday and the spare pump to be shut down for about an hour to allow flight controllers to reconfigure systems that have been cooled by Loop B since July 31.

The replacement pump and Loop A will then be powered back on to slowly bring up the cooling for power converter units, computer command routing systems, the Japanese Kibo Module, the European Columbus module and payload racks. Loop A should be fully operational once again by Thursday.

If time permits, Wheelock and Caldwell Dyson will close out the spacewalk by attaching a cable extension from Quest to an existing power cable on the Unity module that is required to avoid interference when the Permanent Multipurpose Module is mated to the earth-facing side of Unity on the STS-133 mission of the shuttle Discovery in November.

It was one of the tasks on the original spacewalk Wheelock and Caldwell Dyson were to have conducted before the Pump Module failure two weeks ago.

The failed pump will, for the time being, remain grappled to a payload attachment bracket on the starboard truss. No decision has been made as to whether a fourth spacewalk will be conducted by Wheelock and Caldwell Dyson to move it back to the external spare platform or defer that activity to a future spacewalk by a different crew.