Twitter Users React To Massive Quake, Tsunami In Japan

A powerful 8.9 magnitude earthquake struck the coast of Japan on Friday, causing widespread power outages, fires and a severe tsunami that was reported to be up to 10 meters high in places. It was the seventh most powerful earthquake in recorded history.

The reaction on Twitter, quickly becoming the go-to service in emergencies, was immediate and intense. Less than an hour after the quake, with the country’s phone system knocked out, the number of tweets coming from Tokyo were topping 1,200 per minute, according to Tweet-o-Meter.

In the U.S., West Coast Twitter users learned of the quake late Thursday night and were quickly sharing reports, prayers and video streams. Many favored the live Al-Jazeera feed; others offered a live feed from a Japanese station on Ustream. Meanwhile, hundreds of tweets criticized CNN’s anchor for laughing on air while reporting the tragedy.

On a more practical note, Twitter users shared the tsunami’s estimated times of arrival on U.S. shores before an official government tsunami warning went into effect. The wave was expected to hit Hawaii first, at roughly 3 a.m. local time.

Google’s official feed posted a link to the Japanese version of its People Finder, for loved ones who have been separated.

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by Chris Taylor  for Mashable

Two Suns? Twin Stars Could Be Visible From Earth By 2012

Earth could be getting a second sun, at least temporarily.

Dr. Brad Carter, Senior Lecturer of Physics at the University of Southern Queensland, outlined the scenario to news.com.au. Betelgeuse, one of the night sky's brightest stars, is losing mass, indicating it is collapsing. It could run out of fuel and go super-nova at any time.


When that happens, for at least a few weeks, we'd see a second sun, Carter says. There may also be no night during that timeframe.


The Star Wars-esque scenario could happen by 2012, Carter says... or it could take longer. The explosion could also cause a neutron star or result in the formation of a black hole 1300 light years from Earth, reports news.com.au.


But doomsday sayers should be careful about speculation on this one. If the star does go super-nova, Earth will be showered with harmless particles, according to Carter. "They will flood through the Earth and bizarrely enough, even though the supernova we see visually will light up the night sky, 99 per cent of the energy in the supernova is released in these particles that will come through our bodies and through the Earth with absolutely no harm whatsoever," he told news.com.au.


In fact, a neutrino shower could be beneficial to Earth. According to Carter this "star stuff" makes up the universe. "It literally makes things like gold, silver - all the heavy elements - even things like uranium....a star like Betelgeuse is instantly forming for us all sorts of heavy elements and atoms that our own Earth and our own bodies have from long past supernovi," said Carter.


UPDATE: To clarify, the news.com.au article does not say a neutrino shower could be beneficial to Earth, but implies a supernova could be beneficial, stating, "Far from being a sign of the apocalypse, according to Dr Carter the supernova will provide Earth with elements necessary for survival and continuity." 
 
UPDATE II: In a follow-up piece on news.com.au, Dr. Carter stressed that there is no way of knowing when the star may go supernova. U.S. astronomer Phil Plait added, "Betelgeuse might go up tonight, or it might not be for 100,000 years. We're just not sure."


Click below to see the 2 suns appeared on November 07, 2008
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rg6j3hn_0os 

 

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By The Huffington Post 

Most Shocking Stories in 2010

Plenty of events and impressive stories happen each year. The year 2010 has passed, but the amazing and shocking stories in the year are still in the mind of people worldwide. A Polish man found a bullet in his head after five years being shot, a 17-year-old boy in the United States was shot due to wearing saggy pants, a woman also in the United States was named as the fattest woman in the world, a man from Oregon region of the United States wearing a "ghillie" camouflage broke into a museum, and so on are considered as the most shocking stories last year.

A 36-year-old man named Gregory Liascos living nearby Portland in Oregon, US was charged with burglary and criminal mischief when he was found wearing a "ghillie" camouflage and attempting to break into the Rice Northwest Museum of Rocks and Minerals.

Authorities said that the man had no criminal history

It was reported that a 17-year-old boy named Cameron Tucker in Tennessee, U.S was shot due to wearing saggy pants. The man named Kenneth Bonds was arrested by Tennessee’s police and jailed on a $25,000 bond

It is difficult to believe that the little baby Ryleigh Shepherd is the images of her 11-year-old twin sisters Megan and Bethany when they were babies.

The three cute girls were born on the same day. While the embryos of twins Megan and Bethany were implanted in their mother in 1998, Ryleigh’s was frozen for more than 11 years.

A dog named Soli in Rockville, Maryland was in the doghouse after he swallowed a diamond worth more than $20,000, causing panic for the owners of a jewelry shop outside Washington DC

A 35-year-old Polish man living in Germany didn’t know that there is a bullet in his head because he was shot when he was drunk. The bullet was discovered when he went to the doctor five years after the accident.

Terri Smith from Ohio in Unites States is considered as the fattest woman in the world. The 49-year-old woman weighs 700 pounds. She is trapped in her bedroom, unable to move, stand or roll over by herself.

A 15-month-old baby girl had been playing with her 4-year-old sister in the 7th-floor Paris apartment when she suddenly fell out the window.

It was so lucky that the baby bounced off of a café awning below directly into the arms of her father and seemed to have no serious injuries.

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By Mary Rose for EzineMark

Bank of America Blocks WikiLeaks Payments ..

Financial giant Bank of America has added its name to the list of institutions dropping support for WikiLeaks, announcing that it has stopped handling any payments to or from the whistle-blowing website.

Said the bank in a statement to the Charlotte Observer, “This decision is based upon our reasonable belief that WikiLeaks may be engaged in activities that are, among other things, inconsistent with our internal policies for processing payments.”

As the huge American financial institution confidently declared Saturday that it was standing against the website headed by controversial figure Julian Assange, his WikiLeaks organization fired back a Twitter post urging consumers to stop doing business with Bank of America. “We ask that all people who love freedom close out their accounts at Bank of America,” pleaded the WikiLeaks tweet.

Bank of America’s action is certain to tempt hackers who’ve named themselves “Operation Payback.” These supporters of WikiLeaks have been launching denial of service (DOS) attacks against institutions trying to thwart WikiLeaks for most of this month.

However, Rich Mogul, an analyst with the security firm Securosis, told Yahoo Finance, “Bank of America, I can guarantee you, is one of the top targets in the world.” He added that the bank is likely to have strong defenses, but couldn’t guarantee Bank of America could fend off any attack.

Even though the bank has lots of experience dealing with DOS attacks, today’s statement could result in a new wave of attempts at a security breach. Could this be a “bring it on” moment for the BoA?

Google Drops A Nuclear Bomb On Microsoft. And It’s Made of Chrome.

Wow. So you know all those whispers about a Google desktop operating system that never seem to go away? You thought they might with the launch of Android, Google’s mobile OS. But they persisted. And for good reason, because it’s real.

In the second half of 2010, Google plans to launch the Google Chrome OS, an operating system designed from the ground up to run the Chrome web browser on netbooks. “It’s our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be,” Google writes tonight on its blog.

But let’s be clear on what this really is. This is Google dropping the mother of bombs on its chief rival, Microsoft. It even says as much in the first paragraph of its post, “However, the operating systems that browsers run on were designed in an era where there was no web.” Yeah, who do you think they mean by that?

And it’s a genius play. So many people are buying netbooks right now, but are running Windows XP on them. Windows XP is 8 years old. It was built to run on Pentium IIIs and Pentium 4s. Google Chrome OS is built to run on both x86 architecture chips and ARM chips, like the ones increasingly found in netbooks. It is also working with multiple OEMs to get the new OS up and running next year.

Obviously, this Chrome OS will be lightweight and fast just like the browser itself. But also just like the browser, it will be open-sourced. Think Microsoft will be open-sourcing Windows anytime soon?

As Google writes, “We have a lot of work to do, and we’re definitely going to need a lot of help from the open source community to accomplish this vision.” They might as well set up enlistment booths on college campuses for their war against Microsoft.