Japan marked the 65th anniversary of the atomic bombing of the United States on Hiroshima

Hiroshima Japan marked the 65th anniversary of the atomic bombing of the United States on Hiroshima, on Friday, with the United States was represented at the ceremony for the first time.Peace bell was rung at 8:15 pm local time, when atomic bombs were dropped by B-29 war plane Enola Gay on August 6, 1945, and tens of thousands of survivors are now elderly, children and the authorities do under one minute silence hot summer sun, as quoted from Reuters.

“Clearly, the urgency of the elimination of nuclear weapons will penetrate our global conscience,” Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba said in a speech which was followed by the release of white pigeons.Hiroshima bomb, nicknamed “Little Boy”, which issued a mixture of very fast air waves caused by aircraft, heat rays and radiation, killing thousands of people instantly.

In late 1945, the death toll has risen to around 140,000 people from roughly 350 000 residents of the city. Thousands more people died due to illness and injuries later.Three days after the Hiroshima attack, on August 9, 1945, the U.S. dropped a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki in southern Japan. Japan’s surrender six days later, ending the military aggression that has brought the country into World War II.

U.S., involved in disputes with Japan because of the relocation of a U.S. air base on the island of Okinawa in southern Japan, sent a representative to the ceremony for the first time, reflecting the encouragement of President Barack Obama on cleansing the world of nuclear weapons.”We want the nuclear disarmament and if the U.S. take the lead, other countries might follow his steps,” says Tomiko Matsumoto, people who survived the atomic bomb who is now 78 years old.

“First I hate them (United States), but the hatred (against USA) was gone. Now I want to see a peaceful world.”Obama, who received the Nobel peace prize last year in part because his vision of a nuclear free world, has signed a strategic arms treaty with Russia, April, involving former enemies in the Cold War was to reduce nuclear  with about 30 percent. “We see the new leadership of a very powerful country,” said UN Secretary General Ban Ki-mon at the ceremony. “We must maintain momentum.”

Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan said that Japan, the only country ever to suffer nuclear attack, will lead other countries to realize a world without nuclear weapons.Japan have adopted their own prohibitions against the possession, production and letting nuclear weapons into the country, as part of post-war constitution which loves peace. Democrats in power, the military alert to the possibility of an increase in its giant neighbor China, has planned a review of its defense at the end of this year.(AFP)

Monster Waves on the Sun are Real

Sometimes you really can believe your eyes. That’s what NASA’s STEREO (Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory) spacecraft are telling researchers about a controversial phenomenon on the sun known as the “solar tsunami.Years ago, when solar physicists first witnessed a towering wave of hot plasma racing along the sun’s surface, they doubted their senses. The scale of the thing was staggering. It rose up higher than Earth itself and rippled out from a central point in a circular pattern millions of kilometers in circumference. Skeptical observers suggested it might be a shadow of some kind—a trick of the eye—but surely not a real wave.

“Now we know,” says Joe Gurman of the Solar Physics Lab at the Goddard Space Flight Center. “Solar tsunamis are real.”The twin STEREO spacecraft confirmed their reality in February 2009 when sunspot 11012 unexpectedly erupted. The blast hurled a billion-ton cloud of gas (a “CME”) into space and sent a tsunami racing along the sun’s surface. STEREO recorded the wave from two positions separated by 90^o, giving researchers an unprecedented view of the even

Above: A solar tsunami seen by the STEREO spacecraft from orthogonal points of view. The gray part of the animation has been contrast-enhanced by subtracting successive pairs of images,

“It was definitely a wave,” says Spiros Patsourakos of George Mason University, lead author of a paper reporting the finding in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. “Not a wave of water,” he adds, “but a giant wave of hot plasma and magnetism.”

The technical name is “fast-mode magnetohydrodynamical wave”—or “MHD wave” for short. The one STEREO saw reared up about 100,000 km high, and raced outward at 250 km/s (560,000 mph) packing as much energy as 2400 megatons of TNT (10²⁹ ergs).

Solar tsunamis were discovered back in 1997 by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO). In May of that year, a CME came blasting up from an active region on the sun’s surface, and SOHO recorded a tsunami rippling away from the blast site.

“We wondered,” recalls Gurman, “is that a wave—or just a shadow of the CME overhead?”SOHO’s single point of view was not enough to answer the question—neither for that first wave nor for many similar events recorded by SOHO in years that followed.The question remained open until after the launch of STEREO in 2006. At the time of the February 2009 eruption, STEREO-B was directly over the blast site while STEREO-A was stationed at right angles —”perfect geometry for cracking the mystery,” says co-author Angelos Vourlidas of the Naval Research Lab in Washington DC.

The physical reality of the waves has been further confirmed by movies of the waves crashing into things. “We’ve seen the waves reflected by coronal holes (magnetic holes in the sun’s atmosphere),” says Vourlidas. “And there is a wonderful movie of a solar prominence oscillating after it gets hit by a wave. We call it the ‘dancing prominence.'”

Solar tsunamis pose no direct threat to Earth. Nevertheless, they are important to study. “We can use them to diagnose conditions on the sun,” notes Gurman. “By watching how the waves propagate and bounce off things, we can gather information about the sun’s lower atmosphere available in no other way.””Tsunami waves can also improve our forecasting of space weather,” adds Vourlidas, “Like a bull-eye, they ‘mark the spot’ where an eruption takes place. Pinpointing the blast site can help us anticipate when a CME or radiation storm will reach Earth.”

license application for new US uranium mill

The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) received the radioactive materials license application and environmental report from Energy Fuels on 18 November. The application will undergo a comprehensive technical review process including technical evaluations, a review of the environmental report and two public hearings. Public comments will also be accepted throughout the review process, which Colorado law stipulates must take no more than 14 months. Energy Fuels has previously mentioned the possibility of starting construction of the mill by the second quarter of 2011.

Steve Tarlton, radiation program manager for CDPHE, said the review would consider short- and long-term impacts of the proposed mill, including radiological and non-radiological impacts to water, air and wildlife, as well as economic, social and transportation-related impacts. “Our job is to ensure that the licence, if approved, will protect public health and the environment,” he said.Energy Fuels plans to build the Pinon Ridge mill near Naturita on land that it bought in 2007. The 500 tonnes per day mill would be the first new uranium mill to be built in the USA in over a quarter of a century. Energy Fuels president and CEO George Glassier said he was confident that the “thorough and accurate” license application would meet all CDPHE’s regulations. “In progressing to this final stage of approvals, Energy Fuels is clearly moving forward on its plan to construct the first new uranium mill in the US in more than 25 years,” he said.

Energy Fuels Resources Corp is part of Toronto-based Energy Fuels Inc, which has a portfolio of uranium and vanadium properties in Colorado, Utah, Arizona, Wyoming, Idaho and New Mexico, as well as Canadian exploration properties in Saskatchewan’s Athabasca Basin. The company has been working to refurbish and reopen some of its formerly producing mines, including former uranium-vanadium mines in the Urania mineral belt in western Colorado. Energy Fuels has near-term uranium projects at Whirlwind and Tenderfoot Mesa in Colorado and also at nearby Energy Queen in Utah. Although permitted to restart, the company placed the Whirlwind project on standby in late 2008 as part of a “capital preservation strategy”, although the company said at the time it would be maintained in a state of readiness to ramp up to full production at 30 days’ notice.

Powertech queries groundwater rules

Meanwhile, another would-be Colorado uranium producer has queried the legality of proposed state rules on groundwater protection. According to press reports, Power-tech USA says that proposed rules on groundwater quality and reclamation forming part of legislation on  leach mining are currently too broad. A specific issue of concern is the proposed requirement for a “baseline” for water quality, defined before mining began, which would become the standard for future reclamation, with no scope to revise the requirements at a later date.The Colorado Division of Reclamation, Mining and Safety is due to hold a public meeting on the rules in early December.

Rosetta Probe Makes Final Earth Flyby

This spectacular image of our home planet was captured by Europe’s Rosetta probe as it made its third and final flyby of Earth, before heading towards a comet. The outline of Antarctica is visible under the clouds in the illuminated crescent. Pack ice in front of the coastline caused the very bright spots on the image.

It was taken by the-board camera OSIRIS yesterday, from a distance of 393,000miles. The picture combines three images taken with orange, green and blue filters and has a resolution of 7.5miles/pixel.

Rosetta made its closest approach to Earth at 7.45am (GMT) today at an altitude of 1,540miles – which is inside the orbits of geostationary telecoms satellites. However, European Space Agency (ESA) scientists said Rosetta would be extremely difficult to spot from the ground and only large telescope could pick up the faint fast-moving object.

The fly-by will give Rosetta the gravitational boost it needs to speed towards Jupiter, via the asteroid Lutetia in July 2010. The probe will hibernate for the coldest part of its epic journey from mid 2011 to spring 2014.

If all goes well it will respond to a ‘wake-up call’ and chase down the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in May 2014. The successful swingby was confirmed at 8.05am (GMT) when mission controllers re-established contact with Rosetta via ESA’s station in Spain.

The comet chaser has now flown 2,800million miles of its 4,400million mile journey, passing Earth three times and Mars once. Some of Rosetta’s instruments have been on since early November, performing imaging and atmospheric observations of Earth, as well as looking for water on the Moon.

The 10ft by 6.5ft craft is packed with scientific instruments to study the ball of ice, rock and dust. Rosetta will firstly orbit the 2.5mile comet and make a detailed map of its surface. It will then release a washing-machine-sized lander called Philae, which will anchor onto the comet as it sweeps into the inner Solar System.

As the speeding comet heads towards the Sun, the radiation will cause the ices on the comet to turn straight from a solid into a gas. Material will be ejected at supersonic speeds in the form of a tail. The Rosetta orbiter and Philae lander will record the process and send data back to Earth.

The ambitious mission will have taken 10 years once completed. Rosetta is named after the Rosetta Stone, a stone tablet discovered in 1799 by Napoleon’s forces as they invaded Egypt. Just as the Rosetta Stone enabled the hieroglyphs to be deciphered, scientists hope that the Rosetta mission will provide some clues to help them understand more about our Solar System.(daily mail )