The leaning tower of Pisa and its bells

This is the Assunta bell at the top of the Tower of Pisa. It was cast in 1654 by Giovanni Pietro Orlandi and weights 3,620 kg or 7,981 lbs. It is one of 7 bells at the top of the tower and together they weigh 10,496 kgs or 23,091 lbs. Originally the tower took 177 years to build usually because wars interrupted construction which began in 1173. Donna Berta di Bernardo, a widow and resident of the house of dell'Opera di Santa Maria got the tower construction started in 1172 when she gave sixty coins to purchase some of the stones, which still form part of the base of the tower today.
The tower started leaning soon after construction started because of a poor foundation. Various efforts were made to stop the leaning but it was not until 1970 when an international team decided on a plan to fix the tower. Although the rate of leaning increase was very slow the tower would have eventually fallen over if they had not stopped the increased leaning. It took 20 years but the tower was stabilized at the lean it had in the 1830's. Now it should be stable for at least 200 more years.

Optical illusions are neat.

Here we have 4 optical illusions that seem strange or unbelievable but they are true enough. Try staring at the blue birds on the yellow background. After a bit the birds will move slowly.
Next focus on the black dot in the center of the 2 grey circles. Move your head in and out and the circles will turn.
When you look at the 2 blue tables which is the widest table A or B? And when you look at the 2 leaning towers of Pisa which one is leaning more, the one on the right or the one on the left?

The answer to the last 2 questions may seem strange but they are completely true. The 2 blue tables are the exact same size and the 2 towers are leaning the exact same amount. Try turning your head 90 degrees and they might look the same. If this doesn't work for the blue tables hold a ruler up to the screen and you can see that they are the same. So seeing is not always believing.

Sun bathing (nude) in Greece . . . .

while tens of thousands of acres near Athens burn due to serious forest fires. A Sikorsky S-64 and a Canadian made water bomber try to refill their water tanks from a choppy sea. Greece has been hit with a record number of fires and record damage this year. It is an expensive way to change people minds but more and more people now believe that global warming is a problem and that we had better start doing something to stop it. Unfortunately politicians have to be dragged kicking and screaming into taking the effective action we are still waiting for.

Plastic, plastic everywhere.

The central North Pacific ocean is not crossed by many large ships because it is shorter for them to travel from North America to the Far East on a more northerly route. For this reason the Great Pacific Plastic Patch is only observed by yachts and more recently research vessels. The slow rotation of the Pacific ocean has cause a huge amount of plastic to congregate in an area bigger than Texas.

Recently it has been discovered that this plastic is not just sitting there but it is also giving off toxic chemicals that are harmful to various lifeforms.

So the answer is simple. Don't buy things that are made out of plastic, particularly things that will be eventually thrown away. If an item you want to buy comes wrapped in too much plastic ask the store to remove it before you take it home, or don't buy it. Eventually they will get the message.

Less and less ice. This is a problem for YOU!

Polar bears depend on ice because their main source of food is seals and they need to rest on ice to wait for seals. Although they are strong swimmers there have been reports of polar bears drowning because they could not find any ice to rest on.

Hundreds of millions of people also depend on ice but they don't even know it. All of the people who use water that comes from melting glaciers depend on this melting to irrigate farmland. This include people in North America who use water from rivers that rely on melting ice in the Rocky Mountains. It includes hundreds on millions of people that now rely on water from melting glaciers in the Himalayan mountains. In just 50 short years many people will not have the water they need if current ice melting rates continue because the glaciers will be all gone.

No governments are preparing for this eventuality, in fact the populations and demand for water are increasing. Unless humanity starts doing things differently great tragedies will occur. Too bad that Obama is spending so many trillions to get back to where we were when that was obviously a bad place to be.

'Recent' meteor impact

This is an aerial photograph of the best preserved meteorite crater on earth. This is due to the fact that this meteorite hit the earth in a dry area that we now call Arizona. It struck the earth 50,000 years ago which is very recent geologically. At the time of impact the meteorite created a crater 210 meters deep and 1200 meters across. The meteorite itself was 46 meters across. The impact would have created winds of 1,000 kms per hour and was the same a 40 Hiroshima nuclear bombs so all the plants and animals within 5 kms would have been destroyed.

Many meteorite impacts have shaped the earth and all other objects in space. It is thought that the dinosaurs were effected and eventually went extinct due to a large meteor impact 65 million years ago. Now many meteorites hit the earth every day but most of them burn up in our atmosphere, the same atmosphere were are wrecking with all our pollution.

New 'warm' water

This picture was taken from space on Aug. 9 this year. It is the Antarctic winter now so it is completely dark but this picture was taken using temperatures where white is cold and black is warmer. This type of camera is called a Spectroradiometer.

The other remarkable thing about the picture is that warmer or unfrozen water can be seen around Charcot and Latady islands. This is a new development as previously these islands were completely surrounded by ice and the photographs showed only white. This proves that even the winters in Antarctica are warmer than they used to be.

Ice is also melting faster in every other part of the world. So there is no arguement about global warming the only arguement left is whether humans are causeing this warming. When you realize that humans burn the equiviland of almost 200 million barrels of oil every single day then it seem reasonable to assume that this will affect our atmosphere.

Click on the photo for a larger image.

Cool bridge!!

This is a bridge for boats and it helps to connect the former east Germany to western Germany. It is almost a kilometer long and cost a billion dollars to build. There are many people looking at the bridge in the picture because this was the opening day for the bridge. Canals are often used in Europe because boats are an economical way to move heavy things if the boats do not go too fast.


A question for you. When a very heavy boat goes over this bridge is there more weight on the bridge? If there are several heavy boats on the bridge is there more weight on the bridge?

The Wildebeest river runs dry!!

For the first time in memory the Mara [Wildebeest] river has run dry. For eons this river has been an essential part of the huge Wildebeest and Zebra migrations in Africa. Many of us have seen some of these migrations on TV nature shows.
While parts of the world are getting too much rain other parts are getting too little. About all we seem to agree on is that the weather is changing. If those changes are too fast or too great many animals and even people will be threatened as we all depend on a healthy biosphere.

Terrible times over a tan!

Here we have an American who had to use a drinking fountain for people with a good tan. The other fountain has cooled water and could only be used by people with no tan.

This illustrates how crazy our leaders are from time to time. Their crazy attitudes rub off on many other people and then we have huge problems. Because many people in America had good tans they were treated badly by the people without tans. Even today many people think that people with good tans should be treated badly. Maybe one day people will determine what people are like by what they do, not by how they look!!

Hubble space telescope

This is one of the most remarkable machines ever made. It has taken some of the best astronomy pictures ever for almost 20 years. It was serviced by astronauts in 2009 and should therefore continue to operate until at least 2015. The main mirror, which acts like a camera lens, is 2.4 meters across. This size can collect a lot of light and in space this star light is not distorted as it would be on earth. This telescope has helped scientists to confirm that the universe is accelerating but they don't know what is causing this acceleration. This is the great question to answer.



This is one of the pictures taken by the space telescope. It is called the Crab nebula and it shows what is left of a star that blew up in 1054, 955 years ago. We know it was that exact year because the Chinese noticed the star exploding and recorded this in their records. At tat time it was the brightest star in the sky. There are many more beautiful pictures taken by this telescope and you can see them here - http://hubblesite.org/gallery/album/

First commercially produced electric airplane

This is the Yuneec two person electric airplane that can be bought by the average airplane enthusiast. It is made in China by a British/Chinese company. It is a direct result of developments with electric airplane models. It can fly for 1.5 to 3 hours depending on the batteries selected and can be charged in 3 to 5 hours. Price is expected to be about $100,000.