Hurricane Bertha is officially the first hurricane of the 2008 season.  It has now whirlled through the central Atlantic with winds blowing at 195 kilometers (120 miles) per hour.  Fortunately, it did not hit any land. 

An Image of “Big Bertha”

Bertha is a category three storm and is currently located 1,085 kilometers east-northeast of the Northern Leeward Islands.  It is moving to the northwest at 17 kilometers per hour according to the National Hurricane Center.

Projections estimate that it may hit Bermuda, but there is also a good chance that it will turn away from the island as a gradual weakening of the storm is expected to begin soon.

I wish to change things up again.  I guess the current post topics are getting stale.  If you would help me gather some data, please vote ror your favorite blog post of the day topic in the poll on the side.  When I feel the data is conclusive enough I will make my changes.  Until then, everything will continue as normal.

Not really…

NASA’s spacecraft Voyager 1 and 2 have brought scientists new information about the shape of the solar system.  It is not essentially round as previously thought, but rather dented on one side like an obese boomerang.  

High School Textbooks’ Illustrations of the Solar System are WRONG!

Voyager 1 travelled “north” and Voyager 2 travelled “south.”  They then reached the heliosheath, the “end of the solar system,” where solar winds are slowed to a trickle, at different distances from the sun, proving that the solar system is not circular. 

Voyager 2 hit the southern edge of the solar system nearly 1 billion miles closer to the sun than Voyager 1 did to the north.   Just to let you know the size of the solar system, Voyager 2 hit the edge at 7.8 billion miles from the sun.  This completely contradicts scientists’ previous conceptions about the shape of the solar system.  It is not symmetrical, but rather lopsided, like “a hand pushing,” according to Leonard Burlaga, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

The push results from the magnetic field that lies between star systems in the Milky Way.  The magnetic field hits the solar system at a different angle on the south than on the north, probably as a result of interstellar turbulence from star explosions.

Both spacecraft still have several more years before they completely exit the solar system and continue deeper into the space between stars, so hopefully more information decoding the mysteries of the cosmos can be delivered.

Happy birthday to His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, born July 6, 1935.

For more info, go to: http://www.dalailama.com/

Some endangered species may face an extinction risk that is up to a hundred times greater than previously thought, according to a new study.   Past studies overlooked random differences between individuals in certain species and populations, thus underestimating their extinction risk.  There are more than 16,000 species worldwide threatened with extinction, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.  One in four mammals, one in eight birds and one in three amphibians are on the endangered species list.

The Very Rare Amur Leopard

In the new study released Nature, the current models used draw up such lists typically look only at two risk factors.  One is the individual deaths within a small population.  When a species’ numbers dwindle beyond a certain point, even the loss of a handful of individuals can have devastating long-term consequences because of the increased risk of genetic diseases, infertility, and incompatibility between individuals, concentrating the risk of these and other problems.  The second common factor is the environmental conditions that can influence birth and death rates, such as deforestation or fluctuations in temperature or rainfall, both of which are influenced by global warming.

The study argues that factors must be widened in order to give a fuller picture of extinction risk.  Other factors that must be figured into the equation, according to research leader Dr. Melbourne of the University of Colorado, include  male-to-female ratios in a species, and a wider definition of randomness in individual births and deaths. 

The new mathematical tool will be most useful for biologists who want to assess the survival prospects of species.  With these new complex variables, researchers can more precisely determine whether a fragile population can overcome a sudden decline in numbers, such as through habitat loss, or whether it will be wiped out.