Sunspot AR 1515 Blasts X-1 Class Flare on July 6

Active Region 1515 (AR 1515) with an expanse of 100,000 kilometers, produced dozen M-Class solar flares in little over week (slideshow).   On July 6th, as anticipated, a X-1 class flare erupted from Sun (video).  Most recent flare, is luckily, not expected to hit Earth.  Huffington Post reports flares triggered moderate radio blackouts.  Thanks goes to Universe Today for the link.

Retro Sci-Fi Weekend: 'Invaders From Mars'

A film gem, "Invaders From Mars," is a 1953 sci-fi flick, where young boy David MacLean, played by Jimmy Hunt, is the star and hero! David, already a keen astronomer, is awakened one night by a flying saucer, viewed outside his bedroom window as it descends just over a hill in nearby sandpits. The young boy alerts his scientist father, George (Leif Erickson) and mother, Mary (Hillary Brooke). David convinces dad to investigate only to have him not return. Mary reports her husband missing, police arrive to investigate only to fall prey to Martain invaders, who capture earthlings by collapsing the sand right out from under their feet by a device that apparently also emits strange musical tones. George and two policemen finally return - greatly changed - each exhibiting a cold, suspicious demeanor. More townspeople fall prey to the implants, later discovered in their necks after victims are terminated. David seeks help and slowly convinces Dr Pat Blake (Helena Carter) something is terribly wrong! Dr Blake enlists aid of Dr Stuart Kelson (Arthur Franz), an astronomer, who witnesses by telescope another victim falling through the sandpits. Kelston speculates Martians are concerned about earthling rocket tech (picture, right). " Dr. Kelston contacts the army and convinces them to immediately investigate: an important government rocket research plant is located nearby. In short order the Pentagon marshals its forces and sends troops and tanks under the command of Colonel Fielding (Morris Ankrum). An alien sabotage plot at the plant is soon uncovered, leading back to the sandpit, and the army surrounds the saucer landing site, " according to Wikipedia.

While the army searches, Dr Blake and David are sucked underground into Martian tunnels taken to area of Martian ship, where mind-control procedures are performed by mute underlings of a leader, whose identification is given as "mankind developed to its ultimate intelligence." Wikipedia entry provides leader's description as "... the Martian Mastermind: it has a giant green head with a humanoid face atop a small, green partial torso with several green arm-tentacles, and is encased in a transparent sphere." Dr Blake and David are rescued without suffering implantation by Colonel Fielding and troops, who set a detonator onboard ship for six minutes.

The movie takes a surreal swerve with sequence where David runs from sandpits and saucer as army continues to bombard site as Martian saucer emerges from underground. The viewer never sees Martin ship departing or an explosion and David is never seen actually reaching home. The next sequence has David waking up in his bed again with same events, a saucer descending over hill and strange musical tones to end movie. Is it a dream or premonition?

Movie is interesting for coverage of topics such as mind control, nuclear powered ships and nostalgic clips of steam train engines still in operation and rotary dial telephones. You better enjoy as even older sci-fi movies are rapidly disappearing from the net. Ticket prices are free for a short time only!

#DataDump: God Particle, Predictive Programming and more

CERN Physicists Claim Evidence of Higgs-Boson*

Video: What is a Higgs Boson? -
Physicist Michio Kaku Responds*
Theorist Peter Higgs lives to see his boson*
Video: Alan Alda's '#Flame Challenge' Illuminates Importance of Communicating #Science*
Life Imitating Art: Robot Avatar Body Controlled By Thought*
Video: Proof That 'Predictive Programming' Works*
DNSChanger Could Leave Thousands Stranded When Domains Go Dark on Monday*
Government Demands Growing for Twitter User Data*
L.A. Cops Embrace Crime-Predicting Algorithm*
Video: Dan Bull "Death of ACTA"*

Fifties Retro Sci-Fi For Fourth of July Holiday

It's July 4th and too hot to watch fireworks outside! You can still remain cool and watch the fireworks of "When Worlds Collide," a 1951 science fiction film starring Richard Derr and Barbara Rush. You join the stars on a ninety minute adventure as new star Bellus is discovered, but found to be on a collision course with Earth. It's determined a slight chance remains to avoid destruction by building a spaceship to hop to planet Zyra in orbit around Bellus. The plot even includes a senescent millionaire, Sydney Stanton, played by John Hoyt, who funds project and attempts to pull all the strings. Drama peaks when Dr. Cole Hendron, played by Larry Keating, prevents Stanton along with himself from boarding. Stanton attempts to walk in a desperate and vain effort to board as the ship blasts off. When Worlds Collide filmed in technicolor, a favorite of the present writer for its saturated colors. Please enjoy by dropping below the fold, as always, admission is free!

Texas Researchers Hack DHS Drone by Invitation at White Sands

A $1,000 worth of available electronics can enable anyone with the savvy to GPS spoof a Department of Homeland Security drone and take over command.  While no one suggests trying it, all the present writer can say is: "F-ing Cool!" Erik Seawright writes post at Z6Mag, "Drone Hacked With Spoofing on Approval of DHS by University of Texas Researchers," who were invited to White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, to see, if they could succeed in hacking a drone? "The DHS drone was successfully hacked by UT researchers using a spoofing method they detailed in an article titled, 'Straight Talk on Anti-Spoofing,' ... Using the techniques warned about in the article, the UT researchers were successful in taking over control of the Department of Homeland Security drone and proving the possibility of drone hacking," writes Seawright. The success of the UT researchers underscores clear vulnerability, it also tends to corroborate Iranian account last December of exploiting GPS link to capture a CIA drone. It's been reported previously, the GPS vulnerability to attack has been known for nearly a decade!

'Black Boxes' to Monitor All UK Internet and Phone Data

from channel4.com: As part of the Home Office's communications data bill, internet service providers (ISPs) and mobile phone companies will be obliged to collect communications records and keep them for a year.

The government has insisted that the actual content of messages won't be stored, but until now it has not been clear how communications companies will be able to separate content from "header data", such as the sender and recipient of a message, and the date it was sent.

It has now emerged that the Home Office has held meetings with the UK's largest ISPs and mobile network operators, and has given them information about the hardware which companies will have to use to monitor traffic flowing through their systems.

When an individual uses a webmail service such as Gmail, for example, the entire webpage is encrypted before it is sent. This makes it impossible for ISPs to distinguish the content of the message. Under the Home Office proposals, once the Gmail is sent, the ISPs would have to route the data via a government-approved "black box" which will decrypt the message, separate the content from the "header data", and pass the latter back to the ISP for storage. Dominic Raab, a Conservative MP who has criticised the bill, said: "The use of data mining and black boxes to monitor everyone's phone, email and web-based communications is a sobering thought that would give Britain the most intrusive surveillance regime in the west. But, many technical experts are raising equally serious doubts about its feasibility and vulnerability to hacking and other abuse."

A representative of the ISPs Association said: "We understand that government wants to move with the times, and we want to work with them on that. But this is a massive project. We'd rather they told us what they want to achieve, then sit down with us to work out how. Our other main concern with this is speed. If you're having to route all traffic through one box, it's going to cut down on connection speeds. The hardware can only look at a certain amount of traffic per second - if lots of streams from the BBC iPlayer are going through it, for example, how is it going to handle the traffic?"

A Home Office spokesman said - "We have not issued any hardware or software specifications. The communications data bill is designed to allow the police to maintain their capability to catch criminals and protect the public as technology changes and people use more modern communications. Under this programme the emphasis is to work with industry to determine the best way to achieve this. The legislation is currently being scrutinised by parliament. Once it has been passed will we work with companies on how to best collect and store communications data, but not the content."

'Leap Second Bug' Causes Glitches for Major Websites, Airlines

from datacenterknowledge.com: Computer problems with the Amadeus airline reservation system caused long lines and traveler delays at airports across Australia this weekend, as the outage wreaked havoc with the check-in systems used by Qantas and Virgin Australia. The outage appears to be related to the "Leap Second Bug” in which the addition of a single second to the world’s atomic clocks caused problems with IT systems.

More than 400 Qantas flights around Australia were delayed by at least two hours as staff switched to manual check-ins. The outage at Amadeus, one of the world’s major reservation systems, lasted about an hour but had a longer impact on air travelers and airline staff.


Media reports say Qantas has blamed the leap second bug for the issues at Amadeus. A leap second is a one-second adjustment that is occasionally applied to Universal Time (UTC) to account for variations in the earth’s rotation speed. The Qantas problems were the most visible business impact of the problems the adjustment created or IT systems.

The leap second bug is a time-handling problem that is a distant relative of the Y2K date issue. The leap second bug bug caused problems for a number of popular web sites, including LinkedIn, Reddit, Mozilla and The Pirate Bay.

Amadeus says it handles more than 3 million airline bookings a day through its huge data center in Erding, Germany, where more than 5,000 servers process 1 billion transactions a day across its many travel businesses (see video overview and infographic for more). In a media statement, Amadeus said it is investigating the cause of the systems crash and will “take any appropriate steps to avoid this reoccurring.” The outage was the second this year for Amadeus’ reservations systems, following an incident in January.