A Horror Story..maybe

I was reading about Steven Hawking's suggestion that aliens almost certainly exist but has warned humanity not to try to contact them. This article is dated Apr 2010.

Aliens may not be how we have always imagined them to be (looking like cute ET, for instance) or as friendly as we think they are afterall.

Hawking says that in a universe with 100 billion galaxies, each containing hundreds of millions of stars, it is unlikely that earth is the only place where life has evolved.

"The real challenge is working out what aliens might actually be like."

Hawking says that they could be microbes – basic animals such as worms which have been on Earth for millions of years, but suggests that extraterrestrial life could develop much further.

"We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn't want to meet," Hawking said.

Maybe one alien we meet may be like this one..

Alien predators finish off a large grazer with repeated poison stinger strikes Photo: Discovery Channel

Frankly, we do not have to look beyond our planet to find horrors, we have enough of them here on Earth already. The creepy crawlies we have are enough to scare the wits out of us. Don't believe me? Just imagine a cockroach or a lizard landing on your face.. Ewww!

My male chauvinist friend sent me this for obvious reasons. See if you agree.

UFO over Muar

What a sight! Four days ago on Tuesday, a UFO was spotted over Muar, a coastal town just after Malacca in the southern state of Johore. It kind of reminds me of the "Eye of God" image that was going around some years ago. Take a look at the UFO.

Cool, huh? Image was captured on a handphone.

Muar residents spotted a reddish object near the sun at about noon on Tuesday. Many thought it was an unidentified flying object.

“The object looked static, it didn't move.

“It looked like an orb with a planet inside it,” said Muar marine police chief, Asst Supt Nordin Osman.


Source: The Star..Shutterbugs rush to capture giant halo and ‘UFO’

Transit of Venus - last this century (5 and 6 June)

Come June 5 and 6, most of us on Earth will be able to witness a rare astronomical phenomenon, the transit of Venus.

According to Wikipedia: A transit of Venus across the Sun takes place when the planet Venus passes directly between the Sun and Earth, becoming visible against (and hence obscuring a small portion of) the solar disk. During a transit, Venus can be seen from Earth as a small black disk moving across the face of the Sun. The duration of such transits is usually measured in hours (the transit of 2004 lasted six hours). A transit is similar to a solar eclipse by the Moon. While the diameter of Venus is almost 3 1/2 times that of the Moon, Venus appears smaller, and travels more slowly across the face of the Sun, because it is much farther away from Earth.


This image, from The Star, shows Venus transits across the sun as seen over Hong Kong on June 8, 2004 (Image: Reuters)

Transits of Venus are among the rarest of predictable astronomical phenomena. They occur in a pattern that repeats every 243 years, with pairs of transits eight years apart separated by long gaps of 121.5 years and 105.5 years. The transit of Venus on 5 and 6 June 2012 will be the last Venus transit this century; the prior transit took place on 8 June 2004. The previous pair of transits were in December 1874 and December 1882. After 2012, the next transits of Venus will be in December 2117 and December 2125.


Geometry of Venus Transit (Image: Angkasa)

The entire transit will be visible from the western Pacific Ocean, northwesternmost North America, northeastern Asia, Japan, the Philippines, eastern Australia, New Zealand, and high Arctic locations including northernmost Scandinavia, Iceland and Greenland.[3] In North America, the Caribbean, and northwestern South America, the beginning of the transit will be visible on 5 June until sunset. From sunrise on 6 June, the end of the transit will be visible from South Asia, the Middle East, east Africa and most of Europe. It will not be visible from most of South America or western Africa.


Source: Wikipedia
Where the 2012 transit will be visible
Transit start and end times (in UTC) are available for various international cities and various US cities.


Viewed from Malaysia, the planet will cross the Sun around 6.09am on June 6 (Wednesday), but it can only be seen after sunrise and will end at about 12.50pm.

People in Sabah will be able to see the entire phenomena because the Sun rises before the transit begins.

If you are in the Klang Valley or nearby and would like to have a better view of the Venus transit, drop by at the National Planetarium between 8am to 1pm where the National Space Agency (Angkasa) will be setting up a number of telescopes.

Alternatively, you can watch the transit from 8am to 12.50am via http://www.angkasa.gov.my/planetarium or view the live photos taken from Sandakan through Malaysia Lunar Eclipse Facebook from 6.10am to 12.40am.

If you miss it this round, the next Venus transit is predicted to be on Dec 11, 2117.

Safety precaution: A transit of Venus can be safely observed by taking the same precautions used to observe the partial phases of a solar eclipse. Staring at the Sun without appropriate eye protection can quickly cause serious and often permanent eye damage.

The safest way to watch a transit is to observe an image of the Sun projected onto a screen through a telescope, binoculars, pinhole or reflected pinhole. The event can be viewed without magnification using filters specifically designed for this purpose, such as an astronomical solar filter or eclipse viewing glasses coated with a vacuum-deposited layer of chromium. However, the disk of Venus is tiny compared to the sun and not much will be seen. The once-recommended method of using exposed black-and-white film as a filter is not now considered safe, as small imperfections or gaps in the film may permit harmful UV rays to pass through. Observing the Sun directly without appropriate protection can damage or destroy retinal cells, causing temporary or permanent blindness. (Wikipedia)

Update:
- Venus transit as seen in Kuala Lumpur

A video from NASA

- More images from NASA

Sources:
- The Star.. Last chance to see rare Venus Transit
- Wikipedia

Close encounter of the asteroid kind - Asteroid 2005 YU55

This is Asteroid 2005 YU55, a mid-sized asteroid, that passed by Earth some three/four hours ago (Malaysia time).

According to CNN, an asteroid the size of an aircraft carrier passed within the moon's orbit Tuesday, the closest approach by an object that large in more than 30 years.

Asteroid 2005 YU55 passed within 202,000 miles of Earth -- about four-fifths of the distance to the moon -- at 6:28 p.m. Tuesday, NASA said.

A large asteroid as big as YU55 hitting the Earth could cause global catastrophe such as a tsunami with waves 70 feet high. However, scientists say that there is no need to worry about this one though risk of asteroid collision is real. NASA calls these "potentially hazardous objects". The next few days will provide a gold mine of information for scientists in studying the asteroid. Below is a video-shot of the asteroid path.

Perseid Meteor Shower - Aug 8 to 14

If you do a search on google.com today, you will come across this Google logo. And if you just mouse over the logo, it says Perseid Meteor Shower.

Yes, we are now in the midst of a meteor shower, Perseid's and today, August 12, is actually around the peak of the shower. According to Wikipedia, The shower is visible from mid-July each year, with the greatest activity between August 8 and 14, peaking about August 12. During the peak, the rate of meteors reaches 60 or more per hour. They can be seen all across the sky, but because of the path of Swift-Tuttle's orbit, Perseids are primarily visible in the northern hemisphere.

Happy meteor-gazing..



Latest from The Star: Malaysians will be able to sight up to a total of 100 Perseid meteors per hour streaking across the northern sky in the wee hours of Thursday morning. The meteor shower is expected to be best viewed from 1.30am to 4am on Thursday.

Those who miss tomorrow’s meteor shower may still catch a “lesser version” after midnight Thursday, or early Friday morning.

The meteor shower can be observed with the naked eye.

Differences between women's and men's brains are very real

Interesting article here about the differences between men and women. No, we are not talking about who is superior but merely appreciating the differences.

Start with why women prefer to talk about their feelings, while men prefer to meditate on sex.

"Women have an eight-lane superhighway for processing emotion, while men have a small country road". Men, however, "have O'Hare Airport as a hub for processing thoughts about sex, where women have the airfield nearby that lands small and private planes."

"Connecting through talking activates the pleasure centers in a girl's brain. We're not talking about a small amount of pleasure. This is huge. It's a major dopamine and oxytocin rush, which is the biggest, fattest neurological reward you can get outside of an orgasm."