"It's not something worth losing sleep over,"

[TOM4CWB]

Scientists ID mysterious flash in distant galaxy

16/06/2011 7:19:00 PM

Alicia Chang, The Associated Press
LOS ANGELES, Calif. - Astronomers think they have solved the mystery of an extraordinary flash spied in a faraway galaxy, saying it came from a massive black hole that devoured a star after it wandered too close.


The awesome energy released by the feeding frenzy was first detected by NASA's Swift satellite on March 28 and was later confirmed by a fleet of space and ground telescopes.

Some scientists initially thought the bright flash was a gamma-ray burst from a star collapsing, but flaring from such an event typically lasts only a few hours.

Instead of fading, the cosmic outburst continued to burn bright and emit high-energy radiation that could be observed even today.

Two separate teams pored through data and concluded that an unsuspecting star the size of our sun likely got sucked in by the powerful tug of a giant black hole. Until then, the black hole had been relatively inactive. The findings were published online Thursday in the journal Science.

As the black hole gobbled up the star, it streamed a beam of energy straight at Earth that was recorded by telescopes. The stellar feast occurred in the heart of a galaxy 3.8 billion light years from Earth. A light year is about 6 trillion miles.

"This was clearly different than anything we've ever seen before," said one of the team leaders, Joshua Bloom, an astronomer at the University of California, Berkeley who classified the event as extremely rare.

Black holes are swirling, super-dense cores of galaxies that vacuum up nearly everything in sight. How they grow so huge remains a mystery. Scientists think the latest observation could help them better understand how galaxies form.

Could what happened in the distant galaxy occur in our Milky Way? In theory yes, say scientists, but the chances are low.

"It's not something worth losing sleep over," said researcher Andrew Levan of University of Warwick in England, who led the other team.

___

Online:

Science: http://www.sciencemag.org

[hlg]

And this is marketing?? WHY??

[TOM4CWB]

Awareness of our environment...is the first step to understanding where we are going!

Like this interesting story:

What would happen if... this Fort Peck dam broke? What if there were an earthquake???

Fort Peck officials work to stay ahead...


FORT PECK — By Friday, U.S. Army Corp of Engineers officials had upped the flows out of the Fort Peck Reservoir to 60,000 cubic feet per second.

With heavy rains and spring runoff inundating streams and rivers flowing into the Missouri River Basin, the Fort Peck Reservoir pool on Friday sat just six-tenths of a foot below its record elevation of 2,251.6 feet set on July 14, 1975.

For only the fifth time since the dam was completed in 1940, the Corps is releasing water from the massive spillway and in volumes nearly doubling any previous flow.

"With inflows we're having from the rain, we're seeing upstream and snowpack conditions, we need to evacuate water out of the lake so we'll be able to receive that inflow," said Darin McMurry, assistant operations project manager for the dam. "We were set for the high runoff. We were ready for that condition, and then it rained, and it continues to rain."

The 16 gates at the top of the massive spillway are each 25-feet tall and 40-feet wide. As of Friday, all 16 gates were open just over 2 1/2 feet. That equates to 47,000 cubic feet of water per second running out of the spillway. Another 13,000 cfs is running through the dam's generating facility.

Once the water passes through the spillway gates, it runs nearly a mile — dropping about 250 feet along the way — before spectacularly crashing into a spillway channel. From there, the water slows before entering the Missouri River. By the time the water hits the bottom of the spillway, it's flowing at approximately 47 mph, according to corps officials. The force of all that water is equal to about 1 million horsepower, said John Daggett, dam operations manager for the corps.

Daggett said that despite the unprecedented spillway releases and high reservoir pool level, the 71-year-old dam is operating exactly as it was designed.

"We have seen no issues on the dam or spillway. We have upped our presence here, and we are monitoring the dam and spillway very closely," Daggett said.

The safety of the Fort Peck Dam recently was called into question by a columnist for a St. Louis website. Bernard Shanks, who is writing a book on the hazards of Missouri River dams, posted a column June 7 claiming that there is a possibility of failure at the Fort Peck Dam that could lead to a domino-like collapse of all five downstream dams in the Missouri River Mainstem Reservoir System.

"It probably would wreck every bridge, highway, pipeline and power line, and split the heartland of the nation, leaving a gap 1,500-miles wide," Shanks wrote. "Countless sewage treatment plants, toxic waste sites and even Superfund sites would be flushed downstream. The death toll and blow to our economy would be ghastly."

Daggett said 24/7 surveillance of the dam has found no issues or concerns regarding high pools or record releases from the spillway. He said that in the eight times Fort Peck has been in its exclusive flood pool there has never been a problem regarding structural integrity of the dam or the spillway.

Shanks based his doomsday scenario on the fact that Fort Peck Dam is North America's largest hydraulic-fill earthen dam. Such dams are prone to "liquefaction," meaning they can become water-logged and disintegrate if exposed to extreme pressure or seismic activity. For that reason, California replaced most of that state's hydraulic-fill dams.

Daggett said such fears are unwarranted at Fort Peck.

"I'm amazed that a person who is supposedly an expert on the subject would write such an article," Daggett said. "We're not in earthquake zones like dams in California."

Daggett said the nearest seismically active area is near Yellowstone National Park, about 300 miles away. He added that recent earthquake activity in Yellowstone Park didn't even register at the Fort Peck Dam.

"We monitor earthquake activity on the dam, and we didn't even notice them," Daggett said. "Liquefaction is the least of our concerns."

Daggett said wells located throughout the dam are monitored 24 hours a day for signs of any water seepage, which could weaken the dam if left unchecked.

Officials for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers last month began taking steps to prepare for the deluge that has soaked much of Montana over the past several weeks by dumping as much water as possible from massive reservoirs currently at or near capacity.

According to Jody Farhat, chief of water management for the corps' northwestern division, the six major Missouri River dams in Montana, North and South Dakota and Nebraska all will release record flows to make room for the incoming mountain runoff.

"We had a very heavy plains snowpack, and as that melted it used a fair amount of the storage that we had in our reservoirs," Farhat said.

Farhat said the greatest areas of immediate concern are the North Dakota cities of Bismarck and Mandan, and the South Dakota cities of Pierre and Fort Pierre.

"There is going to be significant flooding in those areas," Farhat said.

Farhat said this spring's flood will be the most severe the region has seen since the Missouri River Mainstem Reservoir System was completed in the 1960s.

"We're not going to get to peak releases until mid-June or early July," Farhat said. "This flood event is going to go on from now until early August."

McMurry said corps officials, like most people across the northern Rockies, hope the rain stops falling soon.

"If we didn't have any rain for a good two or three weeks — so we can continue these flows and start to evacuate water and start to drop the level of the lake — that would give us storage capacity in the reservoir, and we could maybe reduce our flows and maintain the river at less flow. That would help the communities and the impacts on the river downstream."

Reach Tribune Capital Bureau Chief John S. Adams at 442-9493, or jadams@greatfallstribune.com. Follow him on Twitter @mt_lowdown.

[TOM4CWB]

AND this story in 2004... about the same dam... to stop water from being released...

Half a decade of drought and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' propensity to pull the plug on Fort Peck Reservoir has left the lake in tough shape -- it's some 40 feet below full pool -- and finally stirred up Montana's congressional delegation.

Late last week, after learning of plans to further drain the reservoir at a rate twice as fast as water is replaced, Sen. Conrad Burns fired off a letter to the Corps calling the drawdown completely unacceptable. "I have stated more than once that in times of severe drought we would be willing to share the pain," he said. "As of today, I see very little sharing going on."

On Wednesday Sen. Max Baucus announced he is introducing legislation to protect water levels. "I've had it," he said. Rep. Denny Rehberg, Montana's sole House member, also intends to introduce a bill to control the lake level at Fort Peck.

The drawdown clearly is a disaster for Fort Peck and its economy. Lower water levels are sure to impact spawning of northern pike and other fish, and boat ramps are lying high and dry while marina docks stand as far as a mile from the water. Business is down proportionately.

The Corps is being pulled from both ends of the river, with the need to provide spawning water downstream and barge traffic on the lower Missouri. But to many, politics seems to be at play as well. Sparsely populated Montana, a Republican sure thing in November's presidential election, appears to be being sacrificed to placate a "battleground" state like Missouri.

Montana's delegation is up in arms. But it remains to be seen what impact that will have.

Copyright 2011 helenair.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Posted in Opinion on Wednesday, April 28, 2004 11:00 pm Updated: 9:20 am.

The point is:

EXPECT the UNEXPECTED.

Preperation for unseen disasters...
can and has saved many farms!