Chernobyl A Possible Tourist Attraction?!!!

In the quest for constant excellence (ahhhh back from the emergency room....I swallowed my tongue on that one) I have asked Tim Sayell to be my director of tourism. As we all know, Tim is good at ferreting out unusual articles, he should be equally so in this new venue.

In keeping with his new station, Tim informs me that there is indeed still places to go and things to see, even for the most jaded tourist. If you have not finalized your 2011 calendar yet, let us propose a very unusual destination for the very discriminating taste. Break out your has/mat rad suit (formal if you please) because in 2011 the Ukraine board of Tourism is opening reactor number 4 of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant Yes the very same reactor that on April 26, 1986, spewing radiation over a large swath of northern Europe and once had a 30 mile radiation exclusion zone!

Prospective tourists are informed that "There are things to see there if one follows the official route and doesn't stray away from the group,"

Space is limited, make your reservations (and update your will and insurance) as soon as possible. FCFS


All joking aside the Yahoo News article can be found here

Black Holes Produce Enormous Gas Cloud

A giant cloud of superheated gas 6 million light years wide might have been formed by several super-massive black holes. The plasma cloud, might also be the source of mysterious cosmic rays that permeate our universe. The plasma cloud is located about 300 million light years away, and is spread across a vast region of space thought to contain several galaxies with supermassive black holes, or active galactic nuclei (AGN), embedded at their centers. The cloud might be evidence that AGNs convert and transfer their enormous gravitational energy, by a yet-unknown process, into magnetic fields and cosmic rays that spread across the universe. The new finding could also help explain the unwanted and confusing “noise” scientists observe in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). The CMB is a ubiquitous radiation in the universe that is said to be a remnant of the Big Bang.

Space shield to block radiation

British scientists are planning to see whether a Star Trek-style deflector shield could be built to protect astronauts from radiation. They argue that magnetic shields could be deployed around spacecraft and on the surfaces of planets to deflect harmful energetic particles. Scientists hope to mimic the magnetic field which protects the Earth. There are a variety of risks facing future space explorers, not least of which is the cancer-causing radiation from cosmic rays and solar flares that astronauts will encounter when they venture beyond the Earth's protective magnetic envelope, or magnetosphere. To create the deflector shield around a spacecraft or on the surface of a planet or moon, scientists need to generate a magnetic field and then fill it with ionised gas called plasma. The plasma would held in place by a stable magnetic field (without the magnetic field, the plasma would simply drift away). This shield could be deployed around a spacecraft or around astronauts on the surface of a planetary body such as the Moon. As energetic particles interact with the plasma, energy is sapped away from them and they slow down.

submitted by Shaun A. Saunders