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The Koyal Group InfoMag News: First standardized way to measure stars

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The Koyal Group InfoMag News: First standardized way to measure stars

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The same way we need values to measure everything from temperature to time, astronomers have now developed anew stellar scale as a "ruler" to help them classify and compare data on star discoveries.

Previously, as with the longitude problem 300 years earlier for fixing locations on earth, there was no unified system of reference for calibrating the heavens.

The astronomers selected 34 initial 'benchmark' stars to represent the different kinds of stellar populations in our galaxy, such as hot stars, cold stars, red giants and dwarfs, as well as stars that cover the different chemical patterns - or "metallicity" in their spectrum, as this is the "cosmic clock" which allows astronomers to read a star's age.

This detailed range of information on the 34 stars form the first value set for measuring the millions of stars that the Gaia satellite, an unmanned space observatory of the European Space Agency, aims to catalogue.

Many of the benchmark stars can be seen with the human eye, and have been studied for most of human  history — dating to the very first astronomical records from ancient Babylon.

"We took stars which had been measured a lot so the parameters are very well-known, but needed to be brought to the same scale for the new benchmark - essentially, using the stars we know most about to help measure the stars we know nothing about," said Paula Jofre from Institute of Astronomy at Britain's University of Cambridge.

"This is the first attempt to cover a wide range of stellar classifications, and do everything from the beginning - methodically and homogenously," Jofre added.

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The Koyal Group InfoMag News: First standardized way to measure stars

The same way we need values to measure everything from temperature to time, astronomers have now developed a new stellar scale as a "ruler" to help them classify and compare data on star discoveries.

Previously, as with the longitude problem 300 years earlier for fixing locations on earth, there was no unified system of reference for calibrating the heavens.

The astronomers selected 34 initial 'benchmark' stars to represent the different kinds of stellar populations in our galaxy, such as hot stars, cold stars, red giants and dwarfs, as well as stars that cover the different chemical patterns - or "metallicity" in their spectrum, as this is the "cosmic clock" which allows astronomers to read a star's age.

This detailed range of information on the 34 stars form the first value set for measuring the millions of stars that the Gaia satellite, an unmanned space observatory of the European Space Agency, aims to catalogue.

Many of the benchmark stars can be seen with the human eye, and have been studied for most of human  history — dating to the very first astronomical records from ancient Babylon.

"We took stars which had been measured a lot so the parameters are very well-known, but needed to be brought to the same scale for the new benchmark - essentially, using the stars we know most about to help measure the stars we know nothing about," said Paula Jofre from Institute of Astronomy at Britain's University of Cambridge.

"This is the first attempt to cover a wide range of stellar classifications, and do everything from the beginning - methodically and homogenously," Jofre added.

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The
Koyal Group Journals: Darwin in the Dock

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The
Koyal Group Journals: Darwin in the Dock

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Darwin in the Dock: C.S. Lewis's Limited Acceptance of Common Descent

Common descent is the claim that all organisms currently living have descended from one or a few original ancestors through a process Darwin called "descent with modification." According to this idea, not only humans and apes share an ancestor, but so do humans, clams, and fungi. Common descent is a hallowed dogma among today's evolution proponents, held with quasi-religious fervor.

C.S. Lewis clearly believed that Christians can accept evolution as common descent without doing violence to their faith. This is what Lewis was getting at when he wrote to evolution critic Bernard Acworth, "I believe that Christianity can still be believed, even if evolution is true."18 In Lewis's view, whether God used common descent to create the first human beings was irrelevant to the truth of Christianity. As he wrote to one correspondent late in his life, "I don't mind whether God made man out of earth or whether 'earth' merely means 'previous millennia of ancestral organisms.' If the fossils make it probable that man's physical ancestors 'evolved,' no matter."19

In The Problem of Pain (1940), Lewis even offers a possible evolutionary account of the development of human beings, although he makes clear he is offering speculation, not history: "[I]f it is legitimate to guess," he writes, "I offer the following picture -- a 'myth' in the Socratic sense," which he defines as "a not unlikely tale," or "an account of what may have been the historical fact" (emphasis in the original). Lewis then suggests that "[f]or long centuries God perfected the animal form which was to become the vehicle of humanity and the image of himself... The creature may have existed for ages... before it became man."20 Elsewhere, Lewis seemed smitten by the idea of embryonic recapitulation, the discredited evolutionary idea that human beings replay the history of their evolution from lower animals in their womb. And in a letter to his friend Anglican nun Sister Penelope in 1952, he mentioned his previous speculation that the first human being was descended from "two anthropoids."21

Nevertheless, Lewis did not exactly go out of his way to champion the animal ancestry of humans. When pressed on the subject by evolution critic Bernard Acworth in the 1940s, Lewis backpedaled, replying that his "belief that Men in general have immortal & rational souls does not oblige or qualify me to hold a theory of their pre-human organic history -- if they have one."22 A few years later, Lewis relished the exposure of "Piltdown Man" as a hoax. Originally touted as evidence for the long-sought "missing link" between apes and humans, the Piltdown Man's skull was discovered in the 1950s to be a fake forged from the skull of a modern human, the jawbone of an orangutan, and the teeth of a chimpanzee.23 Lewis wrote to Bernard Acworth that although he didn't think the scandal should be exploited, "I can't help sharing a sort of glee with you about the explosion of poor old Piltdown... one inevitably feels what fun it wd. be if this were only the beginning of a landslide."24 He wrote another correspondent, "The detection of the Piltdown forgery was fun, wasn't it?"25 Interestingly, four years before the definitive exposure of Piltdown as a fraud, Lewis had already published a poem that labeled the fossil the "fake from Piltdown."26> His final Narnian story, meanwhile, completed a few months after the Piltdown scandal hit the headlines, features as the villain an ape who insists he is really a human being -- perhaps Lewis's whimsical commentary on "poor old Piltdown."27

Read more…

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CPI smeller JPC 2G rapporten som en 'cover-up', "svindel"

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CPI smeller JPC 2G rapporten som en 'cover-up', "svindel"

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NEW DELHI: CPI i dag lambasted leder av JPC på 2G svindel, P C Chacko, for å presentere en rapport gir ren chit til statsminister Manmohan Singh og finansminister P Chidambaram, sier begge var "moralsk og lovlig" ansvarlig for de enorme tap forårsaket av kongen.

Terming rapporten parlamentariske komiteens som en "cover-up", anklaget leder Gurudas Dasgupta Singh og Chidambaram av "moralsk og lovlig" ansvarlig for slik svindel i 2G spektrum tildeling finner sted.

"Jeg er ikke kreve Statsministerens resignasjon fordi han allerede vender bombe eksplosjon forårsaket av hans leder (Rahul Gandhi). Han har også å tilfredsstille (US President Barack) Obama. Derfor situasjonen er allerede flyktige for ham, sa Dasgupta da spurte om han ville ha Singh å slutte.

"Rapporten er en cover-up operasjon. En svindel har blitt spilt, fakta er undertrykket og det er forutinntatt for å favorisere dem (PM og Chidambaram). Parlamentet mandat også brytes,» fortalte han en pressekonferanse som KPI veteran A B Bardhan var også tilstede.

Opprettholde som "ikke bare (tidligere Telecom Minister) en Raja er i dock, men JPC selv er i dock," CPI leder sa han ville ta opp spørsmålet med Lok Sabha høyttaler Meira Kumar og forklare hvordan parlamentet mandat var "brutt ved Chacko".

Han sa at verken statsminister, heller finansministeren ble kalt til å avsette før JPC i motsetning til deretter finansministeren Manmohan Singh, vises før den tidligere JPC på aksjemarkedet svindel som involverer Harshad Mehta.

Frigir en 60-siders "parallelle" rapporter i form av en dissens notat, Dasgupta sa "ingen diskusjon var tillatt på det og rapporten ble brakt for adopsjon bare mens rapporten fra Harshad Mehta JPC ble diskutert i dager.

Med støtte fra utsiden allierte BSP og SP og fravær av JD(U) medlemmer klart regjeringen går å har sin måte i JPC på 2G svindel når panelet godkjent utkastet rapporten med en 16-11 stemme i sin favør.