"We are going to make mini Big Bangs."

"Deep underground on the Franco-Swiss border, someone will throw a switch next year to start one of the most ambitious experiments in history, probing the secrets of the universe and possibly finding new dimensions.


"The Large Hadron Collider -- a 27km-long circular particle accelerator at the CERN experimental facility near Geneva -- will smash protons into one another at unimaginable speeds trying to replicate in miniature the events of the Big Bang.

"'These beams will have the kinetic energy of an aircraft carrier slammed into the size of a zero on a 20p piece,' Brian Cox of Manchester University told the annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science...

"'It is an incredibly exciting machine. It will be turned on next year and run for at least a decade and probably 20 years and the first results -- if the machine behaves itself -- should start coming out within a year,' he added.

"If the theories are correct, the machine will create tiny black holes that evaporate and possibly even find particles that offer evidence that the three dimensions known to mankind are just a fraction of those that exist.

"'That would be an even bigger headline than the black holes. It could be that there is a whole new universe a millimetre away from our heads but at right-angles to the three dimensions that are here,' Dr Cox said. 'That would be a real paradigm shift -- our relegation to a little sheet in a multi-dimensional universe.'

"Dr Cox dismissed worries that by adventuring into the unknown and creating tiny black holes, the machine could even destroy the planet.

"'The probability is at the level of 10 to the minus 40,' he said."

Try to keep that in mind when you look at a couple of photos of what are relatively small sections of this machine: Compact Muon Solenoid, Large Hadron Collider beauty Experiment

And then check out these snapshots by CERN staff.


See also:

The God Particle and the Grid

"The cost: $3 billion and change. The goal: to find one lousy subatomic particle. Specifically, the Higgs boson, the most elusive speck of matter in the universe.

"Often called the God particle, it's supposed to be the key to explaining why matter has mass. Physicists believe that Higgs particles generate a kind of soupy ether through which other particles move, picking up drag that translates into mass on the macroscopic scale. The Higgs is the cornerstone of 21st-century physics; it simply has to be there, otherwise the standard model of the universe collapses."

Streetlamp sunflower

Above my head in Ohio

Vericolor sunshineand other aspectsof our central star

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which can also be seen on the Fractalism page

Summer's last show,the one-act version

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Summer's last show

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Pseudo-psychedeliafrom the rail linesof Western Oregon

These short videos were made in August with my little Fuji digicam and a kaleidoscope that I bought in Lakewood, WA (one for me and one for a six-year-old I know). I was sitting on Amtrak's Coast Starlight, bound for the Bay Area.

The particular rail line we were on is owned by Union Pacific. When its trains need to get through, Amtrak trains have to stop and wait for them to pass [which is why some people call this train the Coast Starlate].

Anyhow, the freight train's passage and the varied shapes and colors of the boxcars created the patterns you'll see.







For somewhat sharper video, download and view: Oregon City sparkles 2, Oregon City sparkles3, Salem sparkles, and Salem sparkles 2.

Re-emergenceof the 1000 Handsof Limitless Compassion

It was January when they last appeared in this space,
after the initial manifestation last December.

"Members of the Chinese Disabled Persons' Art Performing Troupe perform their best known work, 'Bodhisattva with 1,000 hands,' to celebrate the opening of the Aichi Expo in Nagoya, Japan."

Coltrane's 80th

John William Coltrane was born on September 23, 1926. He is regarded as one of the most innovative and intense jazz musicians of the past century. He died on July 17, 1967.

I wrote about my personal connection with Coltrane's music three years ago, on what would have been his 77th birthday. I won't repeat all of that now. I will simply say that the elevation or evolution of my consciousness progressed as I collected and absorbed the music of the classic Coltrane quartet on through to what was dubbed the avant-garde (or "anti-jazz" by some).

[See "The Coltrane sound on video" for performance footage.]

I see that there have been any number of celebratory concerts or broadcasts to commemorate what would have been Coltrane's 80th birthday, most notable among them being a performance by his wife Alice and son Ravi at the University of Michigan. I also just found out that a statue of Coltrane was recently put on display in his native North Carolina.

Nat Hentoff, in the liner notes for the album Expression, wrote: "This was a man who had discovered what he was on Earth to do. And because he had so clear and urgent a sense of the reason for his being, he was able to focus all his energies on that reason, by contrast with the scattered use most of the rest of us make of our capacities."

In Coltrane's own words, from the liner notes for Meditations: "There is never any end. There are always new sounds to imagine, new feelings to get at. And always, there is the need to keep purifying these feelings ad sounds so that we can really see what we've discovered in its pure state. So that we can see more and more clearly what we are. In that way, we can give those who listen to the essence the best of what we are. But to do that, at each stage, we have to keep on cleaning the mirror."

The Coltrane sound on video

A follow-up to the post
about what would have been
John Coltrane's 80th birthday.

"Recently discovered video of Stan Getz and John Coltrane playing together in Europe in the early 60s. It was the Miles Davis quintet on the bill, but Miles was sick and Trane led the group as a quartet."


Coltrane w/ Wynton Kelly Trio
(low sound; from same performance as the link above?)


"I Want to Talk about You," Stockholm 1962


"Impressions," featuring Eric Dolphy

More Coltane videos here.



"Every Time We Say Goodbye," featuring Eric Dolphy


"Naima," 1965


"Blue Waltz," 1965

Even more Coltrane videos here.

A starscape beyond words,but now with a littlecontextual information

When I posted this on the 13th, I couldn't recall where I'd found the image. A few minutes ago, I came across the source.

"The latest photo from the Hubble Space Telescope, presented at the 2006 General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union, shows a star forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud. This sharp image of the star-forming association LH 95 reveals a large number of low-mass infant stars coexisting with young massive stars."

Eclipse stylistics:a fine photofrom Flickr

I've seen more coverage of Friday's annular eclipse on Flickr than the newswire. This image was the best because the Sun's overexposure enables one to see a crepuscular shadow cast by the Moon. Unlike most other eclipse photos, this one conveys the three-dimensional aspect of this phenomenon: these are objects in space, ya dig?!

GOTO the original Flickr page
GOTO the SpaceWeather eclipse gallery

Please me allow to repeat myselfabout Ramadan and the crescent Moon.

As mentioned in the previous post:

September 24th or 25th, depending on your location on Earth, will see the beginning of Ramadan. While the dates and prayer timings for Ramadan are already set on the calendar, it's considered important to observe the first thin crescent Moon at the beginning and the end of the holy month.




And as it happens...

The crescent Moon and Mercury will be (barely) visible in the sunset glare on Sept. 24 in the West.

"Shortly after sunset on Sunday the 24th, you may be able to catch the ever-elusive Mercury in an unusual lineup with Spica and a thin crescent Moon. But it won't be easy — you'll need binoculars, an unobstructed western horizon, and very clear air. And the farther south you are, the better. Mercury will be just two degrees above the horizon at 40° north, the latitude of New York, and nearly twice that in Los Angeles, at 34°. The event should be relatively easy to see in the Southern Hemisphere, where the three objects will be lined up vertically above the setting Sun."

Eclipse stylistics:pre-equinoctial annularity

And yes, equinoctial is a word.











In other New Moon news:

September 24th or 25th, depending on your location on Earth, will see the beginning of Ramadan. While the dates and prayer timings for Ramadan are already set on the calendar, it's considered important to observe the first thin crescent Moon at the beginning and the end of the holy month.

[See Crescent Moon Photos for more evidence on that point.]

The crescent Moon and Mercury will be (barely) visible in the sunset glare on Sept. 24 in the West.

"Shortly after sunset on Sunday the 24th, you may be able to catch the ever-elusive Mercury in an unusual lineup with Spica and a thin crescent Moon. But it won't be easy — you'll need binoculars, an unobstructed western horizon, and very clear air. And the farther south you are, the better. Mercury will be just two degrees above the horizon at 40° north, the latitude of New York, and nearly twice that in Los Angeles, at 34°. The event should be relatively easy to see in the Southern Hemisphere, where the three objects will be lined up vertically above the setting Sun."

Shooting (by) the Moon

"The Space Shuttle Atlantis leaves a streak of light as it [apparently but not actually] passes near the Moon on Sept. 20, 2006, above Tyler, Texas. In this six-second time exposure, the shuttle was moving from right to left."

Meanwhile, in orbit...

"This view of the International Space Station, backdropped against a blue and white Earth, on Saturday, Sept. 17, 2006."

A video link for Friday's annular eclipse

The Sun-Earth-Moon System team at the University of North Dakota is in place to observe and broadcast the eclipse that will take place above Suriname and French Guiana. The SEMS webcast will begin at 4:20 a.m. CDT.

This an annular eclipse, so those in the right place on land or at sea will observe the Sun cast a ring of light from behind the Moon for several minutes. The greatest magnitude of the eclipse occurs at 11:40 UT. That'd be 7:40 a.m. EDT, 4:40 a.m. PDT, and 8:40 p.m. in Korea... when I'll be teaching an adult English class.

Maybe I'll put the laptop by the window and see if I can get a wireless signal from the Family Mart down the street...

A new ring and the old homesteadphotographed by Saturn spacecraft

"The orbiting Cassini spacecraft caught sight of the ring and other rare features when the Sun passed directly behind Saturn in what is known as an occultation, providing bright backlight to the rings...

"The new ring can be barely seen outside the brighter main rings of Saturn and inside the G and E rings. It coincides with the orbits of Saturn's moons Janus and Epimetheus, and NASA researchers said that meteoroid impacts on those moons may have kicked off particles that coalesced into the ring.

"Saturn has at least 47 known moons and at least seven rings. The joint U.S.-European Space Agency Cassini mission, launched in 1997, is spending four years examining Saturn...

"Cassini also caught a color picture of Earth, which appears to be a pale blue orb, nearly 1.5 billion kilometers or 930 million miles away.

"'Nothing has greater power to alter our perspective of ourselves and our place in the cosmos than these images of Earth we collect from faraway places like Saturn," said Carolyn Porco, Cassini imaging team leader at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

Scouting out the pathof ascension at Giza

In regard to the previous pyramid post, I was asked: "Did you get to the top at all? Do they even allow people to climb then?"

Short answers: I didn't attempt to climb the pyramids when I was in Giza last year. And it's not allowed. Hasn't been for at least a decade.



Notice the tiny people in this photo.

Longer answers: To stand next to the Giza pyramids and see what would be in store for ya -- furniture- and room-sized stone blocks that have been weathered by millenia of sand and wind and occasional rain -- I have to tell you that I thought, "Hell, no. That'd be dangerous as $%^&." And I have a fair amount of free-climbing experience. Age (and wisps of wisdom), being coupled up with My Lady Friend, and being a little more cautious with, you know, my life, can be cited as factors in my reaction.

But... that doesn't mean that I wouldn't reconsider if I knew there was an established approach. And apparently, such an approach exists along the southwestern corner of the Great Pyramid. I have to stress, however, that to choose to climb the pyramids is to run a real risk of death or serious injury (not to mention possible arrest, detention and "how much ya got on you?" fines if you're caught).

The payoff, of course, would be a view like this...

...which reminds me of sharing the air and meeting the eyes of a red-tailed hawk atop Camel Head Mountain in Sedona.


Man... Sedona, Sedona, Sedona. You'd think I'd just been there, instead of having last visited in 1999.

It's all sunshine and sand on the outside.But inside the Great Pyramid, evennon-claustrophobes might nut up.

Continuing the [eclipse] trip down memory lane
that I began on Sunday...

In the process of backing up and editing files, I've wanted to make sure that I used the correct names for my pyramid pics. I went to check this out with the search engines, and I found an exceptional cross-section of the Great Pyramid.

I looked at this diagram's depiction of the Grand Gallery and I recalled my experience of walking up that dim, steep staircase after the Sun-and-Moon show above the pyramids had ended. The mnemonic neurons took hold again, and now I have these images to share:



The third photo directly above shows what the light level was like inside the Grand Gallery... and I cannot say enough about how precisely engineered the vaulted (or I suppose "corbelled") walls were. Dragging stone blocks up mud ramps, my a*&.

Anyway, as the black-and-white diagram above indicates (more or less), you almost have to go down on hands and knees to enter the coffin chamber in the middle of the pyramid... because the only way in is a less-than-meter-high passage that runs for about 10 or 12 feet.

I certainly wouldn't want to discourage anyone from going inside the pyramids. I mean, they're the Giza pyramids. But knowing what's in store inside, perhaps some might prefer the attractions on the outside. Just don't try to climb them (in the daylight).



Meanwhile, in Bosnia...

Those aren't sunspots.

Those are the shuttle and the space station in orbit, captured as they passed in front of the Sun. An actual sunspot is toward the upper right.

Saturn occults the Sun,and other sights

More of the same from the previous post. The further back I go in the raw-image archive, the better it gets. Though I need to point out that several of these were taken before the solar occultation on Sept. 15.

But really, does it matter?

Will new rings be seen when the Sun backlights Saturn?

Updated Sept. 21: The answer is yes.

"After more than two years orbiting Saturn, the Cassini spacecraft [reached] one of its ultimate vantage points [on Sept. 15].

"The event is a solar occultation -- when the Sun passes directly behind the planet as Cassini looks on. And this was not just any solar occultation: it was a very long one. [Cassini has already sent several images from this event. They began to arrive on Sunday. --Ed.]

"The Cassini spacecraft was right where scientists studying the rings wanted it: far enough from Saturn to be able to image it all and, more importantly, with the Sun blocked by the planet for 12 hours -- long enough to properly map the elusive, microscopic particles moving within the extended ring system.

"Thanks to the slow occultation, images taken during this carefully designed orbit may also uncover new ring structures and, at the very least, capture truly spectacular views of the D, F, G and E rings."

Images like these, for example:









That isn't all.

Cassini is scheduled to make a flyby less than 1000km (~600 miles) above Saturn's moon Titan on Saturday. The last such maneuver on Sept. 7 provided evidence of methane or ethane lakes on Titan's surface. A stinky yet intriguing prospect.

There's a follow-up to this post:
"Saturn occults the Sun, and other sights"

And speaking of eclipses...

...there will be another such event on Friday.

"On Friday, 2006 September 22, an annular eclipse of the Sun will be visible from within a narrow corridor which traverses half the Earth. The path of the Moon's antumbral shadow begins in northern South America and crosses the South Atlantic with no further landfall. A partial eclipse will be seen from a much larger region including South America, the eastern Caribbean, western Africa, and Antarctica.

Memories of the conjunctionsbetween the Sun and the Moon

A Stumbler by the name of RobinEdgar posted about the religious and mythic meaning of the eclipse... and that got my neurons firing about the various eclipse episodes in my life.

Being caught in the shadow of the 8.11.99 eclipse in France altered and amplified my life and aspirations. I wasn't able to make it to the eclipse in Africa six months ago, but there will always be next year (or, the next 18 months ).




Aside from the '99 event mentioned above (which was blocked by clouds at the last minute), I have been fortunate to observe: an annular eclipse on the Ohio State campus in 1994; the partial lunar eclipse that preceded the total solar in 1999; a total lunar eclipse in January 2000; the Christmas eclipse in 2000; the barest, spine-tingling glimpse of the partial solar eclipse in 2002; the total lunar eclipse during the Harmonic Concordance on 11.8.2003; the 10.28.2004 total lunar eclipse from the side of a road in Qatar; and, most recently, the 10.3.2005 annular solar eclipse while standing at the base of the Great Pyramid at Giza... to say nothing of many other alignments and apparitions.


For a little more, follow the links:

Eclipse stylistics in full effect!

Getting reacquaintedwith the Creator

While I was in America last month, I gathered up some old discs and a whole lot of negatives and slides from the past eight years. Among the files was a large version of a Photoshopped fractal image that I called Creator.

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A smaller version has been on the Fractalism page for years. There's a print-ready file available as well.

And as an added bonus:

I found a larger, color version of one of the lightning pics from the previous post. I'd forgotten that those two were already included in the Western Lands archive.

High-powered photo-op on I-40

I was on my way back to Sedona from Los Angeles one evening eight years ago, and I was speeding just ahead of a strong storm front. I became too tired to continue driving after I passed Williams, AZ, so I pulled off and curled up in the back of the little Dodge Shadow. The lightning came alive, and I snapped several shots like these from the backseat.

I usually end this story by saying that the next morning, I drove into Sedona and saw this sight. But I just realized that that was another night, after a much gentler rain (during which time I was already in Sedona, parked at the base Camel Head Mountain).

Color/Commentary

"The Americas are to the rest of the world a literal Garden of Eden, in the sense that the vast majority of truly hallucinogenic plants originate from there or were discovered and used there. This is somewhat of an irony for human culture, and [it has led] to a paradoxical situation in which the most powerful spiritual agents in nature have become accursed by an inexperienced, alien culture of conquest, only to become nearly lost to civilization as true endowments of nature for the betterment of humankind."

Back to Seattle:22/7 post 722

Note the timestamp:
completely unintended

Meanwhile, in Bosnia...

"An Egyptologist who investigated two hills in central Bosnia believed by some to be ancient pyramids on Wednesday recommended that archaeological digs be carried out there.

"After investigating the two hills for a week, Dr. Mohammed Ibrahim Ali, a professor of Egyptology in Cairo, said nobody should be jumping to conclusions, but having in mind everything he had seen in Visoko, his recommendations would be that 'it is worth digging here'...

"Semir Osmanagic, who has been investigating Latin American pyramids for 15 years, organized excavations on the Visocica and Pljesivica hills, about 20 miles northwest of Sarajevo, in April.

"His team -- made up mostly of volunteers -- found that the 2,120-foot Visocica hill has 45-degree slopes pointing toward the cardinal points and a flat top. Under layers of dirt, workers discovered a paved entrance plateau, entrances to tunnels and large stone blocks."

From a story that I somehow
didn't post in April:

"Osmanagic believes the structure itself is a colossal 220 meters (722 feet) high, or a third taller than Egypt's Great Pyramid of Giza."

Not-quite-a-Planet Xnow dwarf planet Eris

"Since its discovery last year, Eris, which had been known as 2003 UB313, ignited a debate about what constitutes a planet.

"Astronomers were split over how to classify the object because there was no universal definition. Some argued it should be welcomed as the 10th planet since it was larger than Pluto, but others felt Pluto was not a full-fledged planet.

"After much bickering, astronomers last month voted to shrink the solar system to eight planets, downgrading Pluto to a 'dwarf planet,' a category that also includes Eris and the asteroid Ceres...

"Eris, which measures about 70 miles wider than Pluto, is the farthest known object in the solar system at 9 billion miles away from the Sun. It is also the third brightest object located in the Kuiper belt, a disc of icy debris beyond the orbit of Neptune."

Infrared Orion

"Few cosmic vistas excite the imagination like the Orion Nebula, an immense stellar nursery some 1,500 light-years away. Also known as M42, the nebula is visible to the unaided eye, but this stunning infrared view from the Spitzer Space Telescope penetrates the turbulent cosmic gas and dust clouds to explore the region in unprecedented detail."

Meanwhile, near Saturnon September 11th...

"W00017718.jpg [et al.] were taken on September 11, 2006, and received on Earth on September 11, 2006. The camera was pointing toward SATURN-RINGS at approximately 1 million kilometers away..."




Check out the moon
in the upper left corner
of the last image.

Iapetus, the Moqui Marble Moon

Original date of post: 22 March 2005

I saw this photo of Saturn's moon Iapetus,
and Moqui balls were the first thing I thought of.


I'm not the only one who's made this observation: "The distinctive ridge around Saturn’s moon Iapetus bears an eerie similarity to equatorial ridges around concretions on Earth."

"Moqui balls are found mostly in the Navajo sandstone formation in the state of Utah. They can no longer be collected there because it is now part of the Grand Staircase/Escalante National Monument. These mostly smooth, elliptical, or round balls of compacted sandstone are encased in a 'shell' of iron compounds."

And they have iridescent surfaces --
at least, the pair I had possessed that quality.

"These ironstone concretions, known as moqui marbles or moki balls, were used by Native American tribes in the West as power stones and for shamanic journeys. They are still used today for psychic journeys.

"Moqui marbles assist in various psychic work such as shamanic and psychic journeys and astral travel. They strengthen psychic power. They lessen unwanted psychic influences, especially during shamanic or psychic journeying. Moqui marbles are associated with the third eye (brow) chakra."



Perhaps some readers will see these and be reminded of the so-called "blueberries" that have been dug up on Mars:

"In a study published in the June 17 issue of Nature, University of Utah researchers suggest both the Martian and Utah rocks – known as hematite concretions – formed underground when minerals precipitated from flowing groundwater.

"Moqui stones are found in southern Utah in Zion and Capitol Reef national parks, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Snow Canyon State Park and the Moab area. Their diameters range from one-25th of an inch to 8 inches or more. They are known to New Agers as 'moqui marbles.' Some are the size of small blueberries like those on Mars.

[The scientists] believe the Utah concretions formed perhaps 25 million years ago, when minerals precipitated from groundwater flowing through much older Navajo sandstone, the spectacular red rock in southern Utah.

"'Given the similarities between the marbles in Utah and on Mars, additional scientific scrutiny of the Utah concretions and how they form will probably shed further light on the similar phenomenon on Mars,' University of Washington scientist David Catling wrote in a Nature commentary accompanying the University of Utah study.

"The concretions may bear on the search for evidence of past life on Mars because bacteria on Earth can make concretions form more quickly. Chan and colleagues plan to analyze whether there is evidence of past microbial activity in Utah concretions."

Sidestreet sunflowers

Surreal scenics

Neither is mine, mind you.

Botanical time-lapsefrom around the block[the final finale]

I thought I'd take one more, since I was away from the neighborhood for three weeks. Now we can see the growth and decline over the course of three months.

Dayton to Dallasduring a sunrise flight

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Also:
Sunrise flight 1
Sunrise flight 2

Tex to NewMex: an aerial survey

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New Mexico to Nevada:another aerial survey

This post continues the in-flight photo sessions above Dayton, Dallas and San Francisco last week. I've also posted some of the high-desert highlights while I was going in the opposite direction.


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The Great Basin to The Bay:the final aerial survey

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Earlier in-flight imagery:
New Mexico to Nevada
Texas to New Mexico
and
Some not-so-little fluffy clouds

Desert suburbia

"This photo series provides a portrait of the process of development that is quickly overtaking the desert peripheries of Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, Denver, and Los Angeles... These photographs document the interactions and contrasts between this manmade environment and natural elements of the desert ecology that it resists and attempts to control."

From Polar Inertia, via Huff Daddy

Minaret Moon

"A full moon shines behind the minarets
of a building in Shanghai, Sept. 8, 2006."

An in-flight eclipse

By Pete Lawrence, Selsek, UK: "I took this photo of the [Sept. 7/8, 2006] lunar eclipse just after being asked a question by my son: 'Dad, why do you take so many pictures?'

"He now knows the answer!"

The Moon's not in Pisces,but it is at perigee(and it'll soon be eclipsed).

Note that this was written around 23:00 in Korea, just a few hours before the eclipse -- which will only be a shadow-grazing affair. The photo above, taken an hour ago, bears some Photoshop effects.

Tonight's Full Moon in Aquarius is also a Moon at perigee, the closest distance to Earth during the year. The Moon is about 50,000km closer than usual right now, and it looks, oh, I'm just guessing, 10 percent larger.

This Moon at perigee is also going to be partially (and I mean partially) eclipsed. The Earth's umbral shadow will glide along the upper arc of the Moon for more than an hour, with the maximum obscuration taking place at 18:52 UT Sept. 7 (2:52 p.m. EDT; 3:52 a.m., Sept. 8, Korean Standard).


All I'm going to do is put my crystals in the moonlight so that they can be cleared and recharged, and then it's off to bed (next stop: the astral plane).

A solitary shotfrom the Starlight

The Coast Starlight, that is.

Download the double 11

It's Trager-rific!

When I was in Ohio last month, I visited a friend (and new mommy) who has trained as a Trager practitioner. What's "Trager?" Well, let me provide you her summary:

"This bodywork developed by Dr. Milton Trager is based on the idea that the body does not know how to feel pain unless the mind tells it to. With the lightest touch possible, [along with] rocking, elongating and shimmering, the body remembers what it feels like to be relaxed, more at ease and elongated. The practitioner then reinforces with verbal cues, empowering the mind to provide 'recall,' allowing for more depth, freedom and expression in the body, and less stress in the mind."


An image that came up for "Trager."
It's by Philip, not Milton,
but you get the point.

Astrophysicists to IAU:"Pluto ain't goin' out like that."

"In the past week, a small but growing group of scientists made their first formal attack against the International Astronomical Union's August 24th resolution that left the solar system with eight planets and downgraded Pluto to a new class of objects known as 'dwarf planets.'

"On Thursday two heavy hitters in the planetary-science community — Mark Sykes, director of the Planetary Science Institute, and S. Alan Stern, an executive director of the Southwest Research Institute and leader of the Pluto-bound New Horizons mission — unveiled a petition formally disputing the new definition. The petition, signed by more than 300 of the world's leading space scientists, states, 'We, as planetary scientists and astronomers, do not agree with the IAU's definition of a planet, nor will we use it.'

"The signatories call for a 'better definition' of a planet and ask that the method to determine that definition includes more input from the global astronomical community. According to the petitioners, only about 4% of the IAU's nearly 10,000 members were present in Prague to vote on the resolution. In a prepared statement Sykes wrote, 'A more open process, involving a broader cross section of the community engaged in planetary studies of our own solar system and others, should be undertaken.'"

See also: "New Horizons Continuing on to Pluto, Planet or Not"

Sunset en route to Seoul

Tokyo-Narita Airport, Satellite Terminal No. 1,
Gate 23, 'round 6 p.m., Saturday, Sept. 2nd


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Rain City sights

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