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- FASCISM IN PLACE OF DEMOCRACY DEPARTMENT -

United States Still Funding Powerful Data Mining Tools

Total Information Awareness projects transferred to other agencies.

The Associated Press reports that the US government is still financing research to create powerful software tools that could mine millions of public and private records for information about terrorists, despite last year's controversy over how easily and how often the software might implicate people who have nothing to do with terrorism.

Although Congress eliminated funding for the original project, known as the Total Information Awareness (TIA) program and run by Iran-Contragate figure retired Adm. John Poindexter, AP reports, lawmakers left undisturbed a separate but similar $64 million research program run by a little-known US government office called Advanced Research and Development Activity (ARDA) that has used some of the same researchers as Mr. Poindexter's program. ARDA, is so secretive it's not listed in the 684-page official compilation of federal departments, agencies and offices, reports Tech Central. ARDA researches and develops computer software and equipment to "intercept and analyze foreign intelligence that is transmitted electronically ??“ and to protect the US methods used to obtain and communicate it."

"The whole congressional action looks like a shell game," said Steve Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists, which tracks work by US intelligence agencies. "There may be enough of a difference for them to claim TIA was terminated while for all practical purposes the identical work is continuing."

Earlier this month, Wired News reported that the US Defense Department's research arm, Darpa canceled its so-called LifeLog project, which was designed to build a database that could track a person's entire existence. The program's supporters said LifeLog would have created a near-perfect digital memory/profile, giving its users computerized assistants with an almost flawless recall of what they had done in the past. But civil libertarians jumped on the project, saying it could turn into the "ultimate tool for profiling potential enemies of the state."

"I've always thought (LifeLog) would be the third program (after TIA and FutureMap) that could raise eyebrows if they didn't make it clear how privacy concerns would be met," said Peter Harsha, director of government affairs for the Computing Research Association. "Darpa's pretty gun-shy now," added Lee Tien, with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has been critical of many agency efforts. "After TIA, they discovered they weren't ready to deal with the firestorm of criticism."

WiredNews also reports, however, that the Pentagon research will likely be funded under some other title. "I can't imagine Darpa 'dropping out' of such a key research area," says David Karger of MIT.

The Daily Yomiuri of Japan outlines all the various database models that the Pentagon and others would like to create in order to target terrorists.

And another controversial database is Matrix, which is short for Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange. AP reports that by combining state records with databases owned by Seisint Inc., a private company, Matrix details the property, boats and Internet domains people own, their address history, utility connections, bankruptcies, liens and business filings, according to an August report by the Georgia state Office of Homeland Security.

The St. Petersburg Times reports that Matrix is being further developed with a $4-million grant from the Justice Department and the promise of another $8-million from the Department of Homeland Security. Matrix is supposed to search behavior patterns to look for indications of criminal behavior.

Matrix is currently being used by states such as Florida and New York, and is funded by the US Department of Homeland Security. But AP reports that privacy advocates at the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) argue that Matrix is a very ominous piece of technology.

"This is a major program with very large ambitions, and it needs to be publicly examined. We shouldn't be forced to read tea leaves," said Barry Steinhardt, who heads the ACLU's technology and liberty program ... "This is the state version of TIA," Steinhardt said, referring to the Pentagon's Terrorism Information Awareness program, which was shelved last year after a public uproar and a Congressional inquiry.

The TIA aimed to spot patterns in a much bigger pool of data than Matrix possesses, reports AP, and people involved in Matrix at Seisint Inc. reject any comparison. They say Matrix is not a surveillance tool, but rather a revved-up search engine.

Meanwhile, United Press International reports that the Department of Homeland Security's privacy commissioner, Nuala O'Conner Kelly, says that employees of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) acted "outside the spirit of the Privacy Act," in 2002 when they facilitated the transfer of 1.5 million passenger records from the budget airline JetBlue to a defense contractor, but did not break the law, according to the official Kelly report published Friday.

Ms. Kelly found that there was "no violation of the Privacy Act because no data was brought into the control of the Transportation Security Administration." She did tell reporters, however, that without the efforts of six TSA employees, the records would not have been transferred. Kelly did not comment if any other agency had violated the Privacy Act.

The controversy started when Torch Concepts approached the Pentagon in October 2001 and offered to try and develop data mining and analysis techniques to detect potential terrorists by sifting large numbers of personal records, according to UPI. In April 2002, with the assistance of the TSA officials, Torch received data on 1.5 million JetBlue passengers.

"There certainly appears to have been a breach of the Privacy Act," said Lara Flint, staff counsel to the Center for Democracy and Technology; a privacy and civil rights pressure group. "There should have been a notice (of creation of a system of records) published."

Information Week reports that the US Senate has also launched an investigation into the role TSA played in compelling JetBlue to provide Torch Concepts with the passenger information.

Kelly's report about the way the TSA handled the personal information of passengers will not help create any more confidence in the Department of Homeland Security's controversial plan to launch its Computer Assisted Passenger Pre-Screening program, known as CAPPS II. CAPPS is designed to help identify air passenger security risks. But a recent report from Congress's General Accounting Office says that CAPPS has a long way to go to meet Congressional mandates that protect privacy and ensure data accuracy. CAPPS failed seven of eight requirements that Congress had mandated before the program can be provided with any more federal money.

A recent survey, the Government Privacy Trust Survey, showed that many Americans don't trust agencies like the Department of Justice, the CIA or Office of the Attorney General with protecting their privacy. But the study's authors said that doesn't mean these agencies are doing anything wrong, but that they need to do a better job of letting people know about the privacy protections that are currently in place.

Source: The Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0223/dailyUpdate.html?s=entt

- LIFE IS UNIVERSAL DEPARTMENT -

NASA: Liquid Water Once on Mars
Mission accomplished: NASA scientists say the Mars rovers have found what they were looking for -- hard evidence that the red planet was once "soaking wet."

"We have concluded the rocks here were once soaked in liquid water," said Steve Squyres of Cornell University. He's the principal investigator for the science instruments on Opportunity and its twin rover, Spirit.

"The second question we've tried to answer: Were these rocks altered by liquid water? We believe definitively, yes," Squyres said.

Squyres and other NASA officials made the announcement at NASA headquarters in Washington, after several days of giving tantalizing hints that something significant had been discovered.

"Three and a half years ago, in July 2000, we were on stage here to talk about sending two rovers to get evidence of past water. NASA and its international partners have turned those dreams to reality," said Ed Weiler, NASA associate administrator for space science.

Scientists used instruments on board the golf cart-sized rovers to study the composition of the rocks and soil on the planet. The rocks' physical appearance, plus the detection of sulfates, make the case for a watery history, and more important, an environment that could have been hospitable to life.

While reporters pushed the scientists to come up with a "when" for the existence of water on Mars, Squyres said it was very difficult to infer an age simply by looking at pictures. He said a physical examination of samples would be the only way to to get close to a time frame.

Squyres did offer a couple of scenarios on what might have happened that led to the current discoveries:

One is that there was a volcanic eruption, possibly many eruptions, and volcanic ash settled out onto the Martian surface. Subsequently, water could have percolated through the ground, altering the ash to the chemical composition it has today.

Another possibility, said Squyres, is that there was a salty sea at the Meridiani Planum location, perhaps with currents, possibly even waves. As the water evaporated, the salt would settle out.

"Both are fundamentally possible," said Squyres. "But we may never know."

Spirit and Opportunity were sent to opposite sides of the planet with the possibility of investigating different types of terrain. Spirit, the first rover to arrive on January 3, landed near the Gusev Crater, which may once have held a lake.

But geologists and other researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, were thrilled when they saw the possibilities surrounding Opportunity, which landed three weeks later. It landed inside a small crater in the Meridiani Planum, one of the flattest places on the planet. And its landing site was within driving distance for the spacecraft to reach an exposed slice of bedrock.

Since its landing January 25, Opportunity has used the same tools as a human field geologist would to determine the chemical contents of the rocks. Using an alpha particle X-ray spectrometer, a device that can identify chemical elements, scientists have identified a high concentration of sulfur in the bedrock.

Another instrument on board, a Moessbauer spectrometer, has detected an iron sulfate mineral known as jarosite. From their knowledge of rocks on earth, scientists say rocks with as much salt as this Mars rock either formed in water, or had a long exposure to water after they were formed. The scientists say these rocks could have formed in an acidic lake or even a hot springs.
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The Mars rover Opportunity examines an area dubbed "El Capitan."? ?
Scientists say the case for a watery past is further strengthened by the pictures taken by the rovers' panoramic cameras and its microscopic imager. One target rock, named "El Capitan," is filled with random pockmarks. Geologists say a texture like that comes from sites where salt crystals have formed in rocks that have sat in salt water.

Scientists say they have gained other clues from the physical appearance of the rocks. They see a pattern called "crossbedding," which is often the result of wind or water moving across the rock's surface.

So what is ahead for the final few weeks of the rovers' operations on Mars?

"We need to take a close look at the outcropping, and broaden our view to get a better understanding of the geology of the region, which is about the size of Oklahoma," said Joy Crisp, project scientist at the Jet Propulsion Lab. She said there are also plans to drive about 740 meters east to a crater that has been nicknamed "Endurance."

And in the longer term?

"It's clear we have to do a sample return, both for the scientific side and in preparation for human landing," said Weiler. He said future Mars missions would also include miniaturizing equipment, and landing equipment that would help prepare for the eventual landings of humans. That might include tests for toxicity in the soil, and to determine if there are any materials that humans might find useful when they do arrive.

The cost of the two rover missions is about $820 million. With solar panels and lithium-ion battery systems aboard, each rover is expected to function and communicate with earth for about 90 Mars days, known as "sols." That's equivalent to 92 earth days.

Source: CNN.com
http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/03/02/mars.findings/?

- MYSTERIES IN THE DESERT DEPARTMENT -

"Phoenix Lights" Shooter Comes Forward

We have a history of unexplained phenomena here in Arizona.

For example, remember the "Phoenix lights" from 1997. The woman who shot videotape of the lights has remained anonymous for the last seven years. But now she's ready to be revealed, because she apparently has more extraordinary information to share.

Her name is Lynne Kitei and she is known as Dr. Lynne to many. She and her husband are prominent physicians in the Valley.

And from their north Phoenix mountainside home, they saw those Phoenix lights.

Not only on March 13, 1997, but for two years before that.

"I'm just doing the best I can with what I have. That's all I can do with this," she said of the now-famous world video of the mysterious lights over Phoenix in 1997.

The shots came from her camera on the balcony outside her bedroom.

The very next day, she gave up the tape, but not her identity, preferring to wait until she knew what the lights in the sky were. She says she has more tape and picture after picture of similar lights in the Phoenix sky on many other occasions.

"It's not just some lights ??¦ Actually the first sighting was in 1995 without any interest or knowledge at all in this subject matter," she said.

In January and February 1995, she took photos of amber-colored orbs in the sky.

In 1997, two months before the main sighting, two formations, and then the familiar "V" shape.

In 2001, a month after Sept. 11, she took a photo with a higher resolution camera showing three definite orbs over Phoenix.

A year later in 2002, three lights appeared once again.

Jim Dilletoso has more than 20 years as a paranormal investigator, using top-level equipment for analysis.

"I analyze a picture by collecting the data -- brightness, reflectivity, the edges," he said. "It's a whole palette of things to look for to compare to the known. If I get a match I know what it is. If I don't, I put it over into the category of unknown."
Naturally, other alleged UFO sightings from all over the world drew Kitie's attention.

"It took a lot of soul searching over the last seven years to feel comfortable enough to come forward with what I have," she said.

And through that soul search, Kitei found the answer.

"Something has been going on for a very long time and we're not hearing about it or it's being denied and it needs to get out there," she said. "We need to get this out in the open."

Kitei is not only going public with her identity, her new book "The Phoenix Lights" hits bookstores next Friday, the seventh anniversary of the big sighting.

Source: azfamily.com
http://www.azfamily.com/news/local/stories/KTVKLNews20040301.43bda2e1.html

- UNLOCKING THE GATES OF TIME DEPARTMENT -

Time Can be Turned Back

Time has been one of the most complicated and less studied scientific issues since ancient times. Eight years ago, American and British scientists who conducted investigations in Antarctica made a sensational discovery. U.S. physicist Mariann McLein told the researchers noticed some spinning gray fog in the sky over the pole on January 27 which they believed to be just ordinary sandstorm. However, the gray fog did not change the form and did not move in the course of time. The researchers decided to investigate the phenomenon and launched a weather balloon with equipment capable to register the wind speed, the temperature and the air moisture. But the weather balloon soared upwards and immediately disappeared.

In a little while, the researchers brought the weather balloon back to the ground with the help of a rope attached to it before. They were extremely surprised to see that a chronometer set in the weather balloon displayed the date of January 27, 1965, the same day 30 years ago. The experiment was repeated several times after the researchers found out the equipment was in good repair. But each time the watch was back it displayed the past time. The phenomenon was called "the time gate" and was reported to the White House.

Today investigation of the unusual phenomenon is underway. It is supposed that the whirl crater above the South Pole is a tunnel allowing to penetrate into other times. What is more, programs on launching people to other times have been started. The CIA and the FBI are fighting for gaining control over the project that may change the course of history. It is not clear when the US federal authorities will approve the experiment.

Famous Russian scientist Nikolay Kozyrev conducted an experiment to prove that moving from the future to the past was possible. He substantiated his views with the hypotheses on instant information spreading through physical characteristics of time. Nikolay Kozyrev even supposed that "time could execute the work and produce energy." An American physics theorist has arrived at a conclusion that time is what existed before existence of the world.

It is known that each of us feels a different course of time under different conditions. Once lightning hit a mountain-climber; later the man told he saw the lightning got into his arm, slowly moved along it, separated the skin from the tissues and carbonized his cells. He felt as if there were quills of thousands hedgehogs under his skin.

Russian investigator of anomalous phenomena, philosopher and author of numerous books Gennady Belimov published his article under the headline "Time Machine: First Speed On" in the newspaper On the Verge of Impossible. He described unique experiments conducted by a group of enthusiasts led by Vadim Chernobrov, the man who began creation of time machines, devices with electromagnetic pumping in 1987. Today the group of enthusiasts can slow down or speed up the course of time using special impact of the magnetic field. The biggest slowing down of time made up 1.5 seconds within an hour of the equipment's operation in labs.

In August 2001, a new model of the time machine meant for a human was set in a remote forest in Russia's Volgograd Region. When the machine even operated on car batteries and had low capacity, it still managed to change the time by three per cent; the change was registered with symmetrical crystal oscillators.

At first, the researchers spent five, ten and twenty minutes in the operating machine; the longest stay lasted for half an hour. Vadim Chernobrov said that the people felt as if they moved to a different world; they felt life here and "there" at the same time as if some space was unfolding. "I cannot define the unusual feelings that we experienced at such moments."

Neither TV nor radio companies reported the astonishing fact; Gennady Belimov says the Russian president was not informed of the experiment. However, he tells that already under Stalin there was a Research Institute of the Parallel World. Results of experiments conducted by Academicians Kurchatov and Ioffe can be now found in the archives. In 1952, head of the Soviet secret police organization Lavrenty Beria initiated a case against researchers participating in the experiments, as a result of which 18 professors were executed by shooting and 59 candidates and doctors of physical sciences were sent to camps. The Institute recommenced its activity under Khruschev. But an experimental stand with eight leading researchers disappeared in 1961, and buildings close to the one where experiments were conducted were ruined. After that, the Communist Party political bureau and the Council of Ministers decided to suspend researchers of the Institute for an uncertain period.

The program was resumed in 1987 when the Institute already functioned on the territory of the Soviet Union. A tragedy occurred on August 30, 1989: an extremely strong explosion sounded at the Institute's branch office on the Anjou islands. The explosion destroyed not only the experimental module of 780 tons but also the archipelago itself that covered the area of 2 square kilometers. According to one of the versions of the tragedy, the module with three experimenters collided with a large object, probably an asteroid, in the parallel world or heading toward the parallel world. Having lost its propulsion system, the module probably remained in the parallel world.

The last record made in the framework of the experiment and kept at the Institute archives says: "We are dying but keep on conducting the experiment. It is very dark here; we see all objects become double, our hands and legs are transparent, we can see veins and bones through the skin. The oxygen supply will be enough for 43 hours, the life support system is seriously damaged. Our best regards to the families and friends!" Then the transmission suddenly stopped.

Source: Pravda
http://english.pravda.ru/science/19/94/379/12190_experiment.html?

- TECHNOLOGY IN CONTROL DEPARTMENT -

Nevada has Keyless Encounters of the Weird Kind 14366/29967_Keyless.jpg eview.tripod.com/cjimages/Keyless.jpg" title="" alt="" style="width: 256px; height: 247px;" hspace="50" vspace="20" align="right">
Was it the storm clouds, sun spots or Area 51?

By late Friday afternoon, some locksmiths, car dealerships and towing companies had been flooded with calls about mysteriously malfunctioning keyless vehicle entry devices.

There were nearly as many theories as there were lockouts. But there were no firm answers as to why the remote devices stopped working.

"Maybe it's those little green men up north," said Nellis Air Force Base spokesman Mike Estrada, whose own keyless entry system failed. "Are there sun spots? I've been trying to figure it out. It happened to me right after lunch."

Estrada resorted to using his key to unlock his car door, but that set off his alarm.

ABC Locksmiths received 30 calls from drivers stumped by the failure of the key systems. Quality Towing received about 25 calls, and two Ford dealerships reported receiving scores of calls about the problem.

But ABC dispatcher Milo Ferguson didn't need to field any calls to know something was amiss.

"My car is one of them," Ferguson said. "It's some kind of electrical disturbance. Either that or a nuclear bomb went off a few miles from here."

Jerry Bussell, Gov. Kenny Guinn's adviser on homeland security, ruled out terrorism and described the phenomenon as a "frequency problem."

"This is an anomaly that we're going to check out," Bussell said.

The Country Ford dealership in Henderson, which had handled more than 100 calls by late Friday afternoon, contacted the national Ford headquarters for an explanation.

Katie Baumann, service operator for the dealership, said the Ford company headquarters informed her that "a lot of static electricity in the air could be messing up the radio waves" the devices use.

Local forecasters said they doubted the widespread failures could be attributed to any strange weather patterns.

"We've heard about it, and we don't think so," said Steve Johnson of the National Weather Service in Las Vegas.

Friday's cloudy weather made Bill O'Donnell doubt the theory of static interference. O'Donnell, a research associate at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Physics Department and an electrical engineer, said that in "damp weather like we're having today, there won't be much of a static charge in the air. The charge just won't build up in these conditions."

Another possible source of the problem: the sun.

"Solar flares can produce and eject large numbers of charge particles, and usually the Earth's magnetic field deflects them before they enter the atmosphere," said chemistry and physics Professor Malcolm Nicol, the director of the High Pressure Science and Engineering Center at UNLV. "But if they are very large, they have been known to destroy the electronics systems in satellites and cause other problems down here."

However, the Big Bear Solar Observatory in Big Bear, Calif., reported low solar activity Friday.

According to the Federal Communications Commission, the low-power radio frequency transmitters inside keyless entry devices are similar to those found in other everyday items such as garage door openers, remote-controlled toys, cordless telephones, building alarm systems and the rapidly spreading wireless fidelity computer networks, which are commonly referred to as "wi-fi."

Paul Oei, an electronics engineer with the Los Angeles office of the FCC, said keyless entry systems operate on unlicensed frequencies. The devices can fail when they are near an antenna emitting high radio frequency energy. But that scenario would affect only vehicles in a limited area, he said.

Oei said he has never investigated a problem similar to Friday's phenomenon, but he recalled hearing about an incident years ago in which garage-door openers stopped working in an area when Air Force One was nearby.

"Who knows what the military could be using at any given time?" he said.

At least some Ford and General Motors keyless entry systems use the same radio spectrum bands that are used in military operations, according to the Web site of the U.S. Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration.

"These bands are heavily used worldwide for critical military air-traffic control and tactical training communications," the site states.

John Pike, director of globalsecurity.org, a defense and intelligence policy organization based near Washington, D.C., said military technology could easily be responsible for Friday's phenomenon. One such operation is jamming, which involves the release of electromagnetic energy to interfere with an enemy's radar detection capability.

Pike noted that particularly in Nevada, the military has a number of unacknowledged programs in jamming and radar and high-powered microwave weapons, any of which might have the potential to bring chaos to certain frequencies.

Estrada said Nellis officials checked into the possibility that military aircraft capable of sending out electronic jamming signals were involved, but they didn't believe that was the case.

"We've got a jammer in the inventory, but I don't think we've got any out here, let alone flying," he said.

Even if electronic warfare aircraft were flying, they operate at much different frequencies than commercial devices, such as garage-door openers and remote keyless entry systems, Estrada explained.

"The military is certainly capable of fibbing about these things," Pike said. "But, for the military to have done it, they would have to have seriously miscalculated the effects of some test."

Friday's phenomenon occurred as Nellis officials were preparing for next week's Red Flag air combat training exercise. The exercise, which involves dozens of fighter jets, bombers and other military aircraft from around the world, begins Monday and runs through March.

Chuck Clark, of the rural Lincoln County community of Rachel, is an Area 51 watchdog and researcher who monitors the government's classified installation near the dry lake bed of Groom Lake, 90 miles north of Las Vegas.

Clark said some of the high-tech equipment that he and other Area 51 buffs believe exists at the installation routinely cause odd occurrences in Rachel similar to what many people in Clark County experienced Friday.

"We get electronic jamming all the time," he said by telephone.

News reports of a similar phenomenon several years ago in Washington state suggested the outages were linked to the arrival of military aircraft carriers to Bremerton.

In March 2001, the keyless entry failures began at the same time the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson returned to Bremerton. Then in April of that year, the outages began one day after the carrier USS Abraham Lincoln arrived at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard.

Source: Las Vegas Review-Journal
http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2004/Feb-21-Sat-2004/news/23271330.html?

- THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING DEPARTMENT -

Tuscan 'Excalibur' Mystery to be Unearthe 14366/29968_swordinstone.jpg w.tripod.com/cjimages/swordinstone.jpg" title="" alt="" style="width: 300px; height: 214px;" hspace="50" vspace="20" align="right">
Archaeological digging might soon unveil the mystery surrounding a sword buried in a Gothic abbey in Tuscany, Italian researchers announced.

Known as the "sword in the stone," the Tuscan "Excalibur" is said to have been plunged into a rock in 1180 by Galgano Guidotti, a medieval knight who renounced war and worldly goods to become a hermit.

Built in Galgano's memory, the evocative Gothic abbey at Montesiepi, near the city of Siena, still preserves the sword in a little chapel. Only the hilt and a few centimeters of the blade protrude from the rock in the shape of a Cross.

"The sword has been considered a fake for many years, but our metal dating research in 2001 has indicated it has medieval origins. The composition of the metal doesn't show the use of modern alloys, and the style is compatible with that one of a 12th century sword," Luigi Garlaschelli, a research scientist at University of Pavia, told Discovery News.

By the summer, Garlaschelli hopes to excavate the area around the stone, in search of the knight's body. Indeed, ground penetrating radar analysis revealed the presence of a 6 1/2-foot by 3-foot room beneath the sword.

"It could well be Galgano's tomb, [sought] for about 800 years," Garlaschelli said.

The figure of Galgano Guidotti, who is said to have be born in 1148 in Chiusdino, near Siena, is shrouded in mystery and legend. Evidence of his historical identity has never been found and no records exist in documents from his time.

Galgano Guidotti was said to have been an arrogant and lustful knight who isolated himself in a cave and became a hermit after seeing a vision of the Archangel Michael.

Legend has it that, Galgano was lured out by his mother who convinced him to meet with his former beautiful fianc?©e; on the way to her house, Galgano was thrown by his horse while passing Montesiepi, a hill near Chiusdino. There, another vision told him to renounce material things. Galgano objected that it would be as difficult as splitting a rock with a sword. To prove his point, he struck a stone with his sword. Instead of breaking, the sword slid like butter into the rock. Galgano once again became a recluse, isolating himself by the sword's side. There he remained until he died in 1181.

Garlaschelli admitted that the excavation would not unveil another mystery over the sword: the one of the Tuscan "Excalibur" predating the legend of King Arthur.

If the sword really dates to 1180, decades before the first literary reference to the "sword in the stone," it would support the theory that the Celtic myth of King Arthur and his sword Excalibur developed in Italy after the death of Galgano.

"Further evidence may lie underneath the rock, but the Arthurian link is almost impossible to prove. It will remain one of the many mysteries that surround St. Galgano. More multidisciplinary studies are needed to understand what the hill of Montesiepi hides. Meanwhile, we are all anxious to see what results this excavation will bring," Maurizio Cali, president of the "Project Galgano" association, told Discovery News.

Source: Discovery News
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20040301/sword.html

- SHADES OF COLD FUSION DEPARTMENT -

Evidence Bubbles Over to Support Tabletop Nuclear Fusion Device

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind.,-- Researchers are reporting new evidence supporting their earlier discovery of an inexpensive "tabletop" device that uses sound waves to produce nuclear fusion reactions.

The researchers believe the new evidence shows that "sonofusion" generates nuclear reactions by creating tiny bubbles that implode with tremendous force. Nuclear fusion reactors have historically required large, multibillion-dollar machines, but sonofusion devices might be built for a fraction of that cost.

"What we are doing, in effect, is producing nuclear emissions in a simple desktop apparatus," said Rusi Taleyarkhan, the principal investigator and a professor of nuclear engineer at Purdue University. "That really is the magnitude of the discovery - the ability to use simple mechanical force for the first time in history to initiate conditions comparable to the interior of stars."

The technology might one day result in a new class of low-cost, compact detectors for security applications that use neutrons to probe the contents of suitcases; devices for research that use neutrons to analyze the molecular structures of materials; machines that cheaply manufacture new synthetic materials and efficiently produce tritium, which is used for numerous applications ranging from medical imaging to watch dials; and a new technique to study various phenomena in cosmology, including the workings of neutron stars and black holes.

Taleyarkhan led the research team while he was a full-time scientist at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and he is now the Arden L. Bement Jr. Professor of Nuclear Engineering at Purdue.

The new findings are being reported in a paper that will appear this month in the journal Physical Review E, published by the American Physical Society. The paper was written by Taleyarkhan; postdoctoral fellow J.S Cho at Oak Ridge Associated Universities; Colin West, a retired scientist from Oak Ridge; Richard T. Lahey Jr., the Edward E. Hood Professor of Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI); R.C. Nigmatulin, a visiting scholar at RPI and president of the Russian Academy of Sciences' Bashkortonstan branch; and Robert C. Block, active professor emeritus in the School of Engineering at RPI and director of RPI's Gaerttner Linear Accelerator Laboratory.

The discovery was first reported in March 2002 in the journal Science.

Since then the researchers have acquired additional funding from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, purchased more precise instruments and equipment to collect more accurate data, and successfully reproduced and improved upon the original experiment, Taleyarkhan said.

"A fair amount of very substantial new work was conducted, " Taleyarkhan said. "And also, this time around I made a conscious decision to involve as many individuals as possible - top scientists and physicists from around the world and experts in neutron science - to come to the lab and review our procedures and findings before we even submitted the manuscript to a journal for its own independent peer review."

The device is a clear glass canister about the height of two coffee mugs stacked on top of one another. Inside the canister is a liquid called deuterated acetone. The acetone contains a form of hydrogen called deuterium, or heavy hydrogen, which contains one proton and one neutron in its nucleus. Normal hydrogen contains only one proton in its nucleus.

The researchers expose the clear canister of liquid to pulses of neutrons every five milliseconds, or thousandths of a second, causing tiny cavities to form. At the same time, the liquid is bombarded with a specific frequency of ultrasound, which causes the cavities to form into bubbles that are about 60 nanometers - or billionths of a meter - in diameter. The bubbles then expand to a much larger size, about 6,000 microns, or millionths of a meter - large enough to be seen with the unaided eye.

"The process is analogous to stretching a slingshot from Earth to the nearest star, our sun, thereby building up a huge amount of energy when released," Taleyarkhan said.

Within nanoseconds these large bubbles contract with tremendous force, returning to roughly their original size, and release flashes of light in a well-known phenomenon known as sonoluminescence. Because the bubbles grow to such a relatively large size before they implode, their contraction causes extreme temperatures and pressures comparable to those found in the interiors of stars. Researches estimate that temperatures inside the imploding bubbles reach 10 million degrees Celsius and pressures comparable to 1,000 million earth atmospheres at sea level.

At that point, deuterium atoms fuse together, the same way hydrogen atoms fuse in stars, releasing neutrons and energy in the process. The process also releases a type of radiation called gamma rays and a radioactive material called tritium, all of which have been recorded and measured by the team. In future versions of the experiment, the tritium produced might then be used as a fuel to drive energy-producing reactions in which it fuses with deuterium.

Whereas conventional nuclear fission reactors produce waste products that take thousands of years to decay, the waste products from fusion plants are short-lived, decaying to non-dangerous levels in a decade or two. The desktop experiment is safe because, although the reactions generate extremely high pressures and temperatures, those extreme conditions exist only in small regions of the liquid in the container - within the collapsing bubbles.

One key to the process is the large difference between the original size of the bubbles and their expanded size. Going from 60 nanometers to 6,000 microns is about 100,000 times larger, compared to the bubbles usually formed in sonoluminescence, which grow only about 10 times larger before they implode.

"This means you've got about a trillion times more energy potentially available for compression of the bubbles than you do with conventional sonoluminescence," Taleyarkhan said. "When the light flashes are emitted, it's getting extremely hot, and if your liquid has deuterium atoms compared to ordinary hydrogen atoms, the conditions are hot enough to produce nuclear fusion."

The ultrasound switches on and off about 20,000 times a second as the liquid is being bombarded by neutrons.

The researchers compared their results using normal acetone and deuterated acetone, showing no evidence of fusion in the former.

Each five-millisecond pulse of neutrons is followed by a five-millisecond gap, during which time the bubbles implode, release light and emit a surge of about 1 million neutrons per second.

In the first experiments, with the less sophisticated equipment, the team was only able to collect data during a small portion of the five-millisecond intervals between neutron pulses. The new equipment enabled the researchers to see what was happening over the entire course of the experiment.

The data clearly show surges in neutrons emitted in precise timing with the light flashes, meaning the neutron emissions are produced by the collapsing bubbles responsible for the flashes of light, Taleyarkhan said.

"We see neutrons being emitted each time the bubble is imploding with sufficient violence," Taleyarkhan said.

Fusion of deuterium atoms emits neutrons that fall within a specific energy range of 2.5 mega-electron volts or below, which was the level of energy seen in neutrons produced in the experiment. The production of tritium also can only be attributed to fusion, and it was never observed in any of the control experiments in which normal acetone was used, he said.

Whereas data from the previous experiment had roughly a one in 100 chance of being attributed to some phenomena other than nuclear fusion, the new, more precise results represent more like a one in a trillion chance of being wrong, Taleyarkhan said.

"There is only one way to produce tritium - through nuclear processes," he said.

The results also agree with mathematical theory and modeling.

Future work will focus on studying ways to scale up the device, which is needed before it could be used in practical applications, and creating portable devices that operate without the need for the expensive equipment now used to bombard the canister with pulses of neutrons.

"That takes it to the next level because then it's a standalone generator," Taleyarkhan said. "These will be little nuclear reactors by themselves that are producing neutrons and energy."

Such an advance could lead to the development of extremely accurate portable detectors that use neutrons for a wide variety of applications.

"If you have a neutron source you can detect virtually anything because neutrons interact with atomic nuclei in such a way that each material shows a clear-cut signature," Taleyarkhan said.

The technique also might be used to synthesize materials inexpensively.

"For example, carbon is turned into diamond using extreme heat and temperature over many years," Taleyarkhan said. "You wouldn't have to wait years to convert carbon to diamond. In chemistry, most reactions grow exponentially with temperature. Now we might have a way to synthesize certain chemicals that were otherwise difficult to do economically."

"Several applications in the field of medicine also appear feasible, such as tumor treatment."

Before such a system could be used as a new energy source, however, researchers must reach beyond the "break-even" point, in which more energy is released from the reaction than the amount of energy it takes to drive the reaction.

"We are not yet at break-even," Taleyarkhan said. "That would be the ultimate. I don't know if it will ever happen, but we are hopeful that it will and don't see any clear reason why not. In the future we will attempt to scale up this system and see how far we can go."

CITATION: Additional Evidence of nuclear emissions during acoustic cavitation. R.P. Taleyarkhan (Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana 47907), J.S. Cho (Oak Ridge Associated Universities, Oak Ridge, Tennessee 37830), C.D. West (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York 12180), R.T. Lahey Jr. (Rensselaer), R.I. Nigmatulin (Russian Academy of Sciences, 6 Karl Marx Street, Ufa 450000, Russia), and R.C. Block (Rensselaer).

Source: AScribe Newswire & zpenergy.com
http://www.zpenergy.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=654?

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