Murmansk: It's Always Colder in Murmansk

MURMANSK — Whenever you feel the urge to complain about the injustice of the climate where you live, you can always comfort yourself with the fact that it's probably colder in Murmansk, where snow can linger into May and reappear in September.

But the chilly temperatures and remote conditions come with their own rewards. Pristine wilderness, a long ski season and a prime location for viewing the northern lights are all points of pride for Murmansk residents.

Despite the cold, this Arctic seaport amazingly remains ice-free all year long due to the warming effects of the North Atlantic Current, making it an important trade port on the eastern part of the Kola Peninsula. Shipping and fishing are the largest industries in the city, which trades extensively with neighboring Norway and Finland.

Founded in 1916, Murmansk was officially the last city created under the Russian empire. It was originally a railroad settlement on the Murman railway, built during World War I to stretch from Petrozavodsk to the potential naval base on the coast of the Barents Sea.

From the beginning, the city seemed destined to play a critical role in 20th-century Russian history. During World War II, Murmansk was a crucial trade link between Russia and the other Allied powers, and thus a battleground for German control of the Arctic.

Under Operation Silver Fox, German forces attempted to seize Murmansk by launching a two-pronged offensive, attacking from Norwegian and Finnish territories to the west of the city and cutting off railway lines further south.

Although more than 90 percent of the city was destroyed, the Soviet Army held its ground. On May 6, 1985, the 40th anniversary of the Allied victory in Europe, Murmansk was designated a "Hero City" for the sacrifice made during World War II.

To this day, the city's role in World War II remains an important part of Murmansk's identity. "From the time we're children, we're raised around World War II monuments and grow up hearing stories. It's as if it happened last month," said Yulia Chernichuk, a local journalist with Murmansk Business News.

Like many of Russia's midsized cities, Murmansk suffers from post-Soviet depopulation. Since the early 1990s, Murmansk's population has declined steadily, decreasing from a city of almost half a million to one with just over 300,000 residents.

But Murmansk retains an important role in Russia's economy. It is the fourth-largest Russian port by turnover and the biggest shipping point for the export of Russian coal.

Its location near some of the world's greatest energy resource reserves also promises to give the city an increasingly prominent role to play in the near future.

Oil extraction in the Russian Arctic has proven technically difficult and has yet to be successfully achieved on a large scale. The first Arctic offshore drilling platform, the Prirazlomnaya platform, was tugged from Murmansk to its permanent location on the Pechora Sea in August 2011. The platform failed to meet its most recent production deadline — March 2012.

The bigger question, however, is what will become of the Shtokman oil field, located about 600 kilometers northeast of Murmansk. Experts estimate that it may contain as many as 200 billion barrels of oil, making it among the largest oil fields in the world.

More than one-fifth of the world's undiscovered oil and natural gas is believed to lie above the Arctic Circle. A development consortium for Shtokman was founded in 2008, headed by Gazprom. The first gas from the field is expected to go to market in 2016, coinciding with the city's 100th-year anniversary.

Voyager 1 Reaches Edge of the Solar System

The Nasa space probe was launched in 1977 and passed by Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune before veering north.

It is now 10.8 billion miles from the sun travelling at a speed of 38,000 mph.

The solar wind, a stream of charged particles spewing from the sun, has slowed to a speed of zero and is moving sideways rather than outwards, marking the end of the solar system.

Nasa said the 722kg probe would take another four years to fully exit the solar system and enter interstellar space, the area between the influence of the sun and the next star system. The space agency described it as a “major milestone” in space exploration.

Its scientists first noticed changes in the solar wind around Voyager 1 in June but needed months of readings to confirm it.

The results were presented at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.

Rob Decker, a senior scientist at Johns Hopkins University, said: “When I realised that we were getting solid zeros I was amazed. Here is Voyager, a spacecraft that has been a work horse for 33 years, showing us something completely new again.”

The nuclear-powered craft is so far away that information from its instruments takes 16 hours to get back to Earth.

It was launched with a twin, Voyager 2, which is proceeding at a slower speed and is 8.8 billion miles from the Sun.

Though the primary purpose of the Voyager is to collect data, it does have an onboard message if any aliens should come across it. The Voyager Golden Record has "115 images and a variety of natural sounds, such as those made by surf, wind and thunder, birds, whales, and other animals... musical selections from different cultures and eras, and spoken greetings from Earth-people in fifty-five languages."

DARKC3LL - HATE ANTHEM (official video)

50 Shades of Grey' Movie Attracts Controversial Writer & His AMAZING Casting Ideas

Either someone behind Bret Easton Ellis's Twitter account is playing a diabolical joke on us all, or there really IS something fairly mind-blowing in the works right now involving Ellis and Fifty Shades of Grey.

You know Bret Easton Ellis, right? He's the genius/overexposed hack (depending on your point of view) who wrote Less Than Zero andAmerican Psycho, among other novels and short stories. American Psycho was made into a controversial film starring Christian Bale as perverted yuppie Patrick Bateman, and it was originally rated NC-17 before the producers cut 18 seconds of porny footage.

Christian Grey of Fifty Shades may not have spent his free time murdering prostitutes, but his character has often been compared to Patrick Bateman ... which is ONE of the reasons it's so fascinating that Ellis has officially -- and very publicly -- thrown his hat in the ring to write the movie adaptation.

Ellis started posting about his interest in Fifty Shades a couple days ago, and his tweets have gotten progressively juicier as he not only contemplates the idea of writing the film version, but also ponders director choices and casting:

He said Alexander Skarsgård is a "no-brainer" for the movie (claiming that he's seen Skarsgård naked at the gym and thus believes the casting is perfect), and also said he "would love it if we lived in a world where Lena Dunham could be Ana" because he thinks she's hot.

Ellis also mulled over the idea of Scarlett Johansson or Kristen Stewart as Ana, and Aaron Johnson or Alex Pettyfer as Christian, before settling on Ryan Gosling as the perfect choice.

Assuming this whole thing isn't an epic prank, the idea of Bret Easton Ellis handling the film adaptation is freaking BRILLIANT. While the tide has definitely turned recently to bashing the book's writing style, the story in the right hands has the potential to appease even the harshest Fifty Shades critics. Ellis isn't exactly known for creating empowered, compelling female characters, but you can't deny his edginess and style. With him writing, and Cronenberg (!) directing, Fifty Shades could actually be an amazingly dark, twisted bit of effed-up genius.

I've suspected all along that whoever does the movie version will turn it into a fluffy piece of cinematic garbage (anyone remember what they did with Exit to Eden?), but now I'm sort of crossing my fingers for Ellis to win the gig. You never know, maybe with a boundary-pushing writer/director team on board, Ryan Gosling might actually consider the role. SMUT NIRVANA!

Darkness by Lord Byron

Darkness by Lord Byron

I had a dream, which was not all a dream.

The bright sun was extinguished, and the stars

Did wander darkling in the eternal space,

Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth

Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;

Morn came and went—and came, and brought no day,

And men forgot their passions in the dread

Of this their desolation; and all hearts

Were chilled into a selfish prayer for light;

And they did live by watchfires—and the thrones,

The palaces of crowned kings—the huts,

The habitations of all things which dwell,

Were burnt for beacons; cities were consumed,

And men were gathered round their blazing homes

To look once more into each other's face;

Happy were those which dwelt within the eye

Of the volcanoes, and their mountain-torch;

A fearful hope was all the world contained;

Forests were set on fire—but hour by hour

They fell and faded—and the crackling trunks

Extinguished with a crash—and all was black.

The brows of men by the despairing light

Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits

The flashes fell upon them: some lay down

And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest

Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smiled;

And others hurried to and fro, and fed

Their funeral piles with fuel, and looked up

With mad disquietude on the dull sky,

The pall of a past world; and then again

With curses cast them down upon the dust,

And gnashed their teeth and howled; the wild birds shrieked,

And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,

And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes

Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawled

And twined themselves among the multitude,

Hissing, but stingless—they were slain for food;

And War, which for a moment was no more,

Did glut himself again;—a meal was bought

With blood, and each sate sullenly apart

Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left;

All earth was but one thought—and that was death,

Immediate and inglorious; and the pang

Of famine fed upon all entrails—men

Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh;

The meagre by the meagre were devoured,

Even dogs assailed their masters, all save one,

And he was faithful to a corse, and kept

The birds and beasts and famished men at bay,

Till hunger clung them, or the drooping dead

Lured their lank jaws; himself sought out no food,

But with a piteous and perpetual moan,

And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand

Which answered not with a caress—he died.

The crowd was famished by degrees; but two

Of an enormous city did survive,

And they were enemies: they met beside

The dying embers of an altar-place

Where had been heaped a mass of holy things

For an unholy usage: they raked up,

And shivering scraped with their cold skeleton hands

The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath

Blew for a little life, and made a flame

Which was a mockery; then they lifted up

Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld

Each other's aspects—saw, and shrieked, and died— 

Even of their mutual hideousness they died,

Unknowing who he was upon whose brow

Famine had written Fiend. The world was void,

The populous and the powerful was a lump,

Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless— 

A lump of death—a chaos of hard clay.

The rivers, lakes, and ocean all stood still,

And nothing stirred within their silent depths;

Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,

And their masts fell down piecemeal; as they dropped

They slept on the abyss without a surge— 

The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,

The Moon, their mistress, had expired before;

The winds were withered in the stagnant air,

And the clouds perished! Darkness had no need

Of aid from them—She was the Universe!

Written near a Port on a Dark Evening by Charlotte Smith

Huge vapors brood above the clifted shore, 

Night on the ocean settles dark and mute, 

Save where is heard the repercussive roar 

Of drowsy billows on the rugged foot 

Of rocks remote; or still more distant tone 

Of seamen in the anchored bark that tell 

The watch relieved; or one deep voice alone 

Singing the hour, and bidding "Strike the bell!" 

All is black shadow but the lucid line 

Marked by the light surf on the level sand, 

Or where afar the ship-lights faintly shine 

Like wandering fairy fires, that oft on land 

Misled the pilgrim--such the dubious ray 

That wavering reason lends in life's long darkling way.

Secluded Homes...

Lonely house on one of the isles of Vestmannaeyjar.

Shot through plane window.

Elliðaey, Vestmannaeyjar, Iceland

As you drive for the first time over the Passo Pian delle Fugazze in Italy, between Vivenza and Rovereto, you are due for something of a surprise. The Leno valley of the Trento province is home to the Hermitage of San Colombano. You would expect a hermitage to be somewhat off the beaten track, but this takes isolation to a new height – literally.


One hundred and twenty meters up a cliff face, seemingly carved into the side of the deep valley, the Hermitage is in clear view. Yet it also sends a clear message that it was built for a specific reason – to move its inhabitants far from the madding crown below. The house was built almost seven hundred years ago, in 1319. (Link)

And a sad little owl... 

Baltic Sea UFO Hunters Look To Identify Mystery Object

A mysterious cylindrical object is sitting 300 feet at the bottom of the Baltic Sea between Sweden and Finland, and nobody knows what it is -- yet.

Deep sea divers using remote-controlled cameras are heading to the site on Friday. They'll try to determine the exact identity of the object, which side-scan sonar first revealed in June 2011.

"My guess is that they won't find anything. They may just find a large roundish rock,"well-known skeptic Benjamin Radford, deputy editor of Skeptical Inquirer magazine, told The Huffington Post.

"Side-scan sonar is not a photograph and it can create false echoes, so it's not crystal clear what exactly it is that you're recording," Radford said. "The object that we're talking about is basically flush with the ocean floor, and side-scan sonar is much less reliable for things like that."

In what's been compared to an episode of "The X-Files," Peter Lindberg, captain of the Ocean Explorer, and his co-researcher Dennis Asberg made global headlines last year when they presented sonar images of a nearly 200-foot-wide circular anomaly -- looking very much like the fictitious Millennium Falcon spacecraft from the "Star Wars" movies.

"We don't know whether it is a natural phenomenon or an object," Lindberg told Fox News.

The researchers will spend between six and 10 days at the site, using sonar to create 3D images of the bottom of the specified part of the Baltic Sea.

Explanations for the odd anomaly include a meteor, a naturally-occurring gas well and the possible remains of a 19th-century Russian warship.

Of course, let's not forget about all of those hopeful souls who would love this to turn out to be a crash-submerged spacecraft from another world.

"If this were a UFO, that would indeed be a strange thing," Asberg told Fox News. "I'm just not sure, but we'll see soon."

Radford, who is also the author of "Scientific Paranormal Investigation: How To Solve Unexplained Mysteries," said he thinks the mystery will only continue if the divers don't find anything.

"Because then they'll say, 'Whoa, hold on here. We have this image that was taken in 2011. How come they're going back there and not finding it there?'" Radford said. "And there will be conspiracies about that."

(THEMIS) Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms mission

On a clear night over the far northern areas of the world, you may witness a hauntingly beautiful light display in the sky that can disrupt your satellite TV and leave you in the dark. 

The eerie glow of the northern lights seems exquisite and quite harmless. Most times, it is harmless. The display, resembling a slow-moving ribbon silently undulating in the sky, is called the aurora. It is also visible in far southern regions around the South Pole.







Images above: These are photos of the aurora before and during a substorm. The left image is the typical appearance of the aurora before a substorm. During a substorm, the single auroral ribbon may split into several ribbons (middle image) or even break into clusters that race north and south (right image). Credit: Jan Curtis 





Occasionally, however, the aurora becomes much more dynamic. The single auroral ribbon may split into several ribbons or even break into clusters that race north and south. This dynamic light show in the polar skies is associated with what scientists call a magnetospheric substorm. Substorms are very closely related to full-blown space storms that can disable spacecraft, radio communication, GPS navigation, and power systems while supplying killer electrons to the radiation belts surrounding Earth. The purpose of NASA’s Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms (THEMIS) mission is to understand the physical instability (trigger mechanism) for magnetospheric substorms. 

A clash of forces we can’t see with the human eye causes the beauty and destruction of space storms, though the aurora provides a dramatic symptom. Earth's molten iron core generates an invisible magnetic field that surrounds our planet. This magnetic field and the electrically charged matter under its control compose the Earth’s magnetosphere. 

The sun constantly blows an invisible stream of electrically charged gas, called the solar wind, into space. The solar wind flows at very high speed past the Earth and its magnetosphere. In order to visualize what happens when the solar wind buffets the Earth’s magnetosphere, imagine a windsock in a gale force wind. The Earth's magnetosphere captures and stores small fractions of the colliding solar wind energy and particles on magnetic field lines that stretch like rubber bands. 

During substorms, the solar wind overloads the magnetosphere with too much energy and the stretched magnetic field lines snap back like an enormous slingshot, energizing and flinging electrically charged particles towards Earth. Electrons, the particles that carry electric currents in everything from TVs to cell phones, stream down invisible lines of magnetic force into the upper atmosphere over the polar regions. This stream of electrons hits atoms and molecules in the upper atmosphere, energizing them and causing them to glow with the light we know as the aurora. 

The same electrons sometimes charge spacecraft surfaces, resulting in unexpected and unwanted electrical discharges. And those electrons that enter the radiation belts can ultimately find their energies boosted to levels millions of times more energetic than the photons that comprise the light we can see. Electrons with these energies can damage sensitive electronics on spacecraft and rip through molecules in living cells, potentially causing cancer in unshielded astronauts. Rapidly varying magnetic fields associated with magnetospheric substorms also induce electric currents in power lines that can cause blackouts by overloading equipment or causing short circuits. 

Although the consequences of substorms are well-known, it is not clear exactly what finally snaps in the overloaded magnetosphere to trigger a substorm. 

Understanding what happens during substorms is important. "The worst space storms, the ones that knock-out spacecraft and endanger astronauts, could be just a series of substorms, one after the other," said David Sibeck of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., project scientist for the THEMIS mission. "Substorms could be the building block of severe space storms." 

Just like meteorologists who study tornadoes to understand the most severe thunderstorms, space physicists study substorms for insight into the most severe space storms. “Substorm processes are fundamental to our understanding of space weather and how it affects satellites and humans in the magnetosphere,” said Vassilis Angelopoulos, THEMIS principal investigator at the University of California's Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory, in Berkeley, Calif. Scientists propose two possible triggers for substorms, but until now, there has been no way to distinguish between the two models. 

Discerning between the two proposed substorm trigger mechanisms is difficult because the magnetosphere is so large. Over Earth's night (solar wind down-stream) side, the solar wind stretches the magnetosphere far past the moon's orbit, to form the geomagnetic tail. Substorms start from a small region in space inside the geomagnetic tail, but within minutes cover a vast region of the magnetosphere. However, the two proposed trigger mechanisms predict substorm onset in distinctly different locations within the geomagnetic tail, so the key to solving this mystery lies in identifying the substorm point of origin. 

Previous single-spacecraft studies of the Earth’s magnetosphere have been unable to pinpoint where and when substorms begin, leading to extensive scientific debate on the topic. However, NASA's THEMIS mission will solve this mystery with coordinated measurements from a fleet of five identical satellites, strategically placed in key positions in the magnetosphere, in order to isolate the point of substorm origin. The mission, named for Themis, the blindfolded Greek Goddess of Order and Justice, will resolve this debate like a fair, impartial judge. 

THEMIS is scheduled for launch in February. When the five probes align over the North American continent, scientists will collect coordinated measurements down-stream of Earth, along the sun-Earth line, allowing the first comprehensive look at the onset of substorms and how they trigger auroral eruptions. Over the mission's two-year lifetime, the probes should be able to observe some 30 substorms. 

Down-stream alignments have been carefully planned to occur over North America once every four days. For about 15 hours surrounding the alignments, 20 ground stations in Canada and Alaska with automated all-sky cameras will document the aurora from Earth. The combined spacecraft and ground observations will give scientists the first comprehensive look at the phenomena from Earth's upper atmosphere to far into space, enabling researchers to pinpoint where and when substorm initiation begins. 

Skeletons treated for vampirism found in Bulgaria

SOFIA, BULGARIA –  Bulgarian archaeologists say they have unearthed centuries-old skeletons pinned down through their chests with iron rods -- a practice believed to stop the dead from becoming vampires.

'These two skeletons stabbed with rods illustrate a practice common up until the first decade of the 20th century.'

- National history museum chief Bozhidar Dimitrov

According to Bozhidar Dimitrov, head of the National History Museum in the Bulgarian capital, Sofia, two skeletons from the Middle Ages were found in such a state last weekend near the Black Sea town of Sozopol.

He said Tuesday that corpses were regularly treated in such a way before being buried in some parts of Bulgaria, even until the beginning of the last century.

Widespread superstition led to iron rods being hammered through the chest bones and hearts of those who did evil during their lifetimes for fear they would return after death to feast on the blood of the living.

According to Dimitrov, over 100 corpses stabbed to prevent them from becoming vampires have been discovered across Bulgaria over the years. 

"I do not know why an ordinary discovery like that [has] became so popular. Perhaps because of the mysteriousness of the word "vampire," he said.