Truth and Hammer

Author: Truth & Hammer

  • How yoga teacher Amanda Eller survived 17 days lost in a Hawaiian jungle

    How yoga teacher Amanda Eller survived 17 days lost in a Hawaiian jungle

    A jogger who spent 17 days lost and injured in a dense jungle on the Hawaiian island of Maui — where she survived by eating wild fruits and even a few moths she was able to catch — has been rescued.

    Amanda Eller, 35, a yoga instructor and physical therapist, was spotted Friday by a helicopter crew that had been searching for her for days.

    “There were times of total fear and loss and wanting to give up, and it did come down to life and death, and I had to choose,” Eller told ABC from her hospital bed. “I chose life.”

    After last being seen on May 8, Eller’s white Toyota RAV4 had been found at a trailhead with the key hidden under the driver’s side front tire and her phone and wallet left inside.

    Her mother Julia Eller said that after her daughter had jogged three or four miles on the trail, she laid down on a log to rest, and when she got up, was completely disoriented.

    She had intended to go on a three-mile run but somehow got turned around.

    Eller told her father she was able to walk for the first five to eight days but at some point, she fell into a ravine, which was about seven miles from where she left her car.

    Besides breaking her leg, she had bruised both ankles and suffered severe sunburn.

    “Just like we’ve been saying — you get turned around in these woods,” Javier Cantellops said.

    “You get lost, you’re gone,” he said.

    “It was straight out of a movie.”

    Barefoot and suffering a broken leg, Eller was spotted after she heard the chopper and frantically waved to the crew.

    “We’ve been flying almost two hours, which is our fuel limit. We were on our way back, flying over the streams, and there she was, waving her arms at us from down below,” Chris Berquist, who led the air search, told reporters.

    “There was no mistake it was her. Even from 200 feet, we knew.”

    Cantellops, a former Airborne Ranger who was also in the aircraft, recalled the emotional moment the crew spotted Eller down below.

    “We all look to our right … and out of the woodwork, man, you see Amanda Eller, my friend, coming out, waving her hands,” he said.

    “It was unbelievable, dude. And, of course, we all lose it.”

    source

  • Salvini wins majority and says a ‘NEW Europe is born’

    Salvini wins majority and says a ‘NEW Europe is born’

    he group has around 32 percent of the vote so far on the night, way ahead of the Democratic Party. Interior minister Matteo Salvini leads League, which came third in the 2018 general election. Following his victory, Mr Salvini said in Milan: “A new Europe is born.

    “I am proud that the League is participating in this new European renaissance.”

    He said previously: “As far as I’m concerned, if the League wins nothing changes in Italy, everything will change in Europe, starting from tomorrow.”

    The head of the party’s Senate Riccardo Molinari added: “The League has probably become the top party in Italy.”

    The exit poll suggests that League will claim between 27 and 31 percent of the vote.

    The group’s coalition partner, the anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S) was beaten by the centre-left Democratic Party (PD) which came second with 21-25 percent, exit polls showed after voting ended.

    Mr Salvini had hoped to gain significant ground in the EU.

    He stepped up intensive campaigns to attempt to claim a majority in Italy.

    source

  • Robocrop: world’s first raspberry-picking robot set to work

    Robocrop: world’s first raspberry-picking robot set to work

    Quivering and hesitant, like a spoon-wielding toddler trying to eat soup without spilling it, the world’s first raspberry-picking robot is attempting to harvest one of the fruits.

    After sizing it up for an age, the robot plucks the fruit with its gripping arm and gingerly deposits it into a waiting punnet. The whole process takes about a minute for a single berry.

    It seems like heavy going for a robot that cost £700,000 to develop but, if all goes to plan, this is the future of fruit-picking.

    Each robot will be able to pick more than 25,000 raspberries a day, outpacing human workers who manage about 15,000 in an eight-hour shift, according to Fieldwork Robotics, a spinout from the University of Plymouth.

    The robot has gone on trial in the UK, as the farming industry battles rising labour costs and Brexit-related shortages of seasonal workers.

    Numbers of seasonal workers from eastern Europe have diminished, partly due to Brexit fears but also because Romania and Poland’s surging economies have persuaded their own workers to remain in their home countries .

    The robot has been developed in partnership with Hall Hunter, one of Britain’s main berry growers which supplies Tesco, Marks & Spencer and Waitrose. Standing at 1.8 metres tall, the wheeled machine with its robotic arm has begun field trials in a greenhouse at a Hall Hunter farm near Chichester in West Sussex.

    Guided by sensors and 3D cameras, its gripper zooms in on ripe fruit using machine learning, a form of artificial intelligence. When operating at full tilt, its developers say the robot’s gripper picks a raspberry in 10 seconds or less and drops it in a tray where the fruit gets sorted by maturity, before being moved into punnets, ready to be transported to supermarkets.

    The final robot version, expected to go into production next year, will have four grippers, all picking simultaneously.

    Separate field trials in China have shown the robot can pick tomatoes, and it has also been let loose on cauliflower.

    source

  • Cops using ‘Minority Report’ predictive policing could see INNOCENT citizens framed

    Cops using ‘Minority Report’ predictive policing could see INNOCENT citizens framed

    The Sci-Fi movie Minority Report was set in a world in which police arrested people for crimes that were only predicted and not committed.  But now real life is emulating fiction, according to campaign group Liberty.  A report by Liberty called “Policing by Machine” reveals the widespread use of biased “predictive policing” that they claim threatens everyone’s rights and freedoms.  The report collates 90 Freedom of Information requests sent to every force in the UK.  These programmes also “learn” over time and become more autonomous when making predictions, without having to be programmed. There are two types of predictive policing, predictive mapping programmes, and individual risk assessment programmes. Predictive mapping programmes use police data about past arrests to identify “hot spots” of high risk and police are then directed to patrol the areas. But Liberty says these tend to be areas that already experience “over-policing”. Liberty says it simply presents a biased picture of how police have been responding to crime and people from black, Asian and minority ethnic communities are disproportionately more likely to be arrested.

    This leads the program to assume that the areas where they live or spend have more crime. Ms Couchman added: “When police strategy is influenced by historic bias, this will lead to more people from minority communities being subject to excessive surveillance where they are over-policed and over-criminalised. This leads to unfair and inefficient policing for us all. “There is a case for using data to address issues in policing and criminal justice, including bias, but rights issues surrounding privacy, free expression and discrimination are not being properly addressed in a way that make this tech part of a legitimate policing strategy.” Liberty says the biggest problem with the program is the lack of transparency. Police claim that a human will be overseeing the computer programs, but even officers deploying the technology will be unable to explain fully how it arrives at its conclusion. This means people can’t hold the programs to account or properly challenge the predictions they make.

    The campaign group says the way to tackle the root causes of crime in the UK is to invest properly in housing, education and deprivation that leads to people becoming criminals.

    source

  • California doctor vacationing on Maui identified as victim of fatal shark bite

    California doctor vacationing on Maui identified as victim of fatal shark bite

     A 65-year-old California man has died after suffering an apparent shark bite while swimming off Maui, officials said Saturday.  On Sunday, Maui Police spokesman Lt. Gregg Okamoto confirmed the identity of the victim as Thomas Smiley, who was visiting from Granite Bay, Calif.  California media said Smiley was an optometrist who had just retired this year.  According to information from the Maui Fire Department along with the state Department of Land and Natural Resources, Smiley was swimming about 60 yards from shore near the Kaanapali Shores resort Saturday.  “They pulled the man up. He looked unconscious when they transferred him to the other gurney. And we could see that they were trying to do CPR on him,” said witness Allison Keller.  But they could not revive him. Witnesses said it was a traumatic situation.  As we got closer, I saw some blood on his stomach and then I got looking a little bit more and his wrist, it looked like the skin on his wrist was just torn off,” Keller said.  “And then I got looking closer and his entire left leg from his knee down was just missing. There was no blood or anything.” Keller says the victim was vacationing on Maui with his wife. Dr. Gary Taxera was his best friend and knew him for more than 40 years. He says Smiley was scheduled to fly home the next day. “He was just in the wrong place, at the wrong time, doing something in a place he loved, doing something that he was extremely comfortable and loved,” Taxera said. He said Smiley left an impact on everyone he encountered. “He had a personality bigger than life in a really good way … He was a good-hearted man and people who didn’t get to know him, really missed out,” Taxera said. Smiley leaves behind a wife, three children and six grandchildren. The incident is the first fatal shark bite in the islands since 2015. There have been five fatal shark attacks off Hawaii since 2004, and all five happened in Maui waters, according to the DLNR. The DLNR put up shark warning signs in the area. It’s unclear what type of shark was involved in the incident.

  • The Wealth Detective Who Finds the Hidden Money of the Super Rich

    The Wealth Detective Who Finds the Hidden Money of the Super Rich

    Gabriel Zucman started his first real job the Monday after the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Fresh from the Paris School of Economics, where he’d studied with a professor named Thomas Piketty, Zucman had lined up an internship at Exane, the French brokerage firm. He joined a team writing commentary for clients and was given a task that felt absurd: Explain the shattering of the global economy. “Nobody knew what was going on,” he recalls.

    At that moment, Zucman was also pondering whether to pursue a doctorate. He was already skeptical of mainstream economics. Now the dismal science looked more than ever like a batch of elaborate theories that had no relevance outside academia. But one day, as the crisis rolled on, he encountered data showing billions of dollars moving into and out of big economies and smaller ones such as Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, Hong Kong, and Singapore. He’d never seen studies of these flows before. “Surely if I spend enough time I can understand what the story behind it is,” he remembers thinking. “We economists can be a little bit useful.”

    A decade later, Zucman, 32, is an assistant professor at the University of California at Berkeley and the world’s foremost expert on where the wealthy hide their money. His doctoral thesis, advised by Piketty, exposed trillions of dollars’ worth of tax evasion by the global rich. For his most influential work, he teamed up with his Berkeley colleague Emmanuel Saez, a fellow Frenchman and Piketty collaborator. Their 2016 paper, “Wealth Inequality in the United States Since 1913,” distilled a century of data to answer one of modern capitalism’s murkiest mysteries: How rich are the rich in the world’s wealthiest nation? The answer—far richer than previously imagined—thrust the pair deep into the American debate over inequality. Their data became the heart of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders’s stump speech, recited to the outrage of his supporters during the 2016 Democratic presidential primary.

    Zucman and Saez’s latest estimates show that the top 0.1% of taxpayers—about 170,000 families in a country of 330 million people—control 20% of American wealth, the highest share since 1929. The top 1% control 39% of U.S. wealth, and the bottom 90% have only 26%. The bottom half of Americans combined have a negative net worth. The shift in wealth concentration over time charts as a U, dropping rapidly through the Great Depression and World War II, staying low through the 1960s and ’70s, and surging after the ’80s as middle-class wealth rolled in the opposite direction. Zucman has also found that multinational corporations move 40% of their foreign profits, about $600 billion a year, out of the countries where their money was made and into lower-tax jurisdictions

    source

  • Alabama Sets Record for Adoption, Shattering Common Pro-Choice Argument

    Alabama Sets Record for Adoption, Shattering Common Pro-Choice Argument

    Alabamians adopted a record number of foster children in their state during the 2018 fiscal year, AL.com reports.  According to the Alabama Department of Human Resources (DHR), 710 foster children were adopted last year, up from 509 in the 2017 fiscal year and 502 in 2016.  “It sends a strong, wonderful message to all the foster care children in our state,” Gov. Kay Ivey said when announcing the accomplishment.  DHR Commissioner Nancy Buckner said about 70 percent of foster children return to their biological families. “But those that don’t, they need their own loving, caring, permanent family and that’s what it’s all about,” she explained.  Buckner said the increase in adoptions last year was partly due to the involvement of juvenile courts, judges, and the DHR.  “We recognize that children need permanency. We all need family. We need family connection. And we’ve all gotten together. We’re doing some partnership things together. So, we’re all on the same page and we’re trying to push permanency through,” the commissioner said.  Alabama’s adoption record is getting attention weeks after Gov. Ivey signed a law that virtually outlaws all abortions in that state.  Pro-abortion advocates criticized the state for allegedly being anti-women and only caring about children before they are born.  However, Alabama families have shown to have an interest in protecting the well-being of children both in and outside the womb from their latest adoption statistics. ‘

    TO HAVE YOUR VOICE HEARD ON ABORTION GO HERE TO PROTECT THE UNBORN.

     

  • America’s ‘Explicit Covenant with God’: How a Nation Pledged to God Can Save a World…or Lose It

    America’s ‘Explicit Covenant with God’: How a Nation Pledged to God Can Save a World…or Lose It

    Covenants are viewed as the most sacred and binding of deals – an oath that’s never to be broken. America’s earliest settlers made a covenant with God to serve and proclaim Him throughout the earth.  These days, however, Americans appear to have forgotten this covenant and that can have dire consequences.  Christian leader Dutch Sheets explained to CBN News how God’s relationship with us is set by sacred covenant.  This author of Giants Will Fall said, “It’s even what He based our salvation on: ‘I’m coming to bring a new covenant through Jesus. The shedding of His blood ratifies this covenant.’ It is a binding together that in Him is unbreakable.”

    America Began in Covenant

    Early English settlers also wanted their new land to share such a binding covenant with God. Christian historian Eddie Hyatt, author of The Great Prayer Awakening of 1857-58, said those who came to Jamestown starting in 1607 put it in their Virginia Compact.  “To propagate, to expand the gospel, the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ and to take the gospel to people who were ‘lying in darkness and had no knowledge of the one true God.’ They said that was the reason they had come,” Hyatt stated.  The Pilgrims arriving in Massachusetts stated the same in 1620. Jerry Newcombe, author of The Book That Made America, paraphrased what they wrote down: “‘Having undertaken a voyage for the glory of God and the advancement of the Christian faith.’”  Newcombe explained of the Pilgrims and Puritans who followed, “They came for God as opposed to coming for gold.”  Hyatt says John Winthrop, leading 700 Puritans to Massachusetts in 1631, said it like this: “‘Others may come to the New World for wealth and furs.’ He said, ‘We have another goal, another end. We have entered into an explicit covenant with God to be His people in this New World.’  And they wanted to be that city on a hill. They wanted to be a model of Christianity for the rest of the world to see.”  David Barton of Wallbuilders said as these early settlers wrote out their covenants, “They were very cognizant of the fact that we answer to God. We need to get God at the center of what we do. If we do, He’ll bless us.  If we don’t, we’re in trouble.”

    These Covenants Became Models for the US Constitution

    These early covenants pledged the signers to each other and to obeying the laws they’d form with God’s guidance.  As Newcombe put it, “This was something that would bind each man and each person to the whole community as an agreement under God.” According to historian William Federer, such compacts became the model for the US Constitution, whose authors were also very much guided by their Christian faith. The writer of the online AmericanMinute.com stated, “George Washington at the beginning of the Constitutional Convention, he said ‘the event is in the hand of God.’”

    How Has America’s Constitution Lasted So Long?

    “They saw the Constitution as being a very religiously-based document,” said Barton. “It was also a very covenantal-based document. We made a covenant. The Constitution is a covenant of these states.” He went on, “The average length of a constitution in the history of the world was 17 years. So how have we gone 230 when everybody else was going 17?   And so political science professors looked to see where the Founders got their ideas.” Barton pointed out they studied 3,154 direct quotes from these Founders’ political writings and discovered how much God’s Word figured in them. He summed up, “The number one source was the Bible: 34 percent of all those quotes in those political documents, etc., came out of the Bible.” Sheets explains in his book Giants Will Fall  that the makeup of the government was shaped by biblical passages like Isaiah 33:22, writing, “Our nation’s form of government was actually taken from scripture.  ‘The Lord is our Judge {Judicial Branch}…Lawgiver {Legislative Branch}…and King {Executive Branch}.’” The Founders put God first and foremost in the Declaration of Independence.  Federer stated, “It says right in there ‘appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world.’ In this founding document, we appealed to God. We invited Him to be a part of this American experiment.” The Founders put Scripture on the Liberty Bell, Leviticus 25:10: “Proclaim liberty throughout the land to all the inhabitants thereof…”The concept of this being one nation UNDER God harkens back to Jesus telling Jerusalem in Luke 13:34 that He wanted to “…hide you UNDER my wings, covering and protecting you.”

    Dire Consequences of Deserting Covenant

    What happens though, as parts of the nation don’t want to be under God, disregard parts of the Constitution, and no longer honor sacred oaths? Sheets warned, “We have walked away from covenant with Him.” And even from the marriage covenant, with the divorce rate soaring 302 percent in the 20th century.  Newcombe argued, “A lot of the things that we’re experiencing in America today are because we’ve disregarded God’s covenant.” America, once the number one exporter of the Gospel, is now the number one importer of illegal drugs and the number one exporter of pornography. Newcombe explained God warned about this, saying, “‘Obey me then I will bless you. But if you disobey me, I will remove my blessing.’”

    So Much Is on the Line

    If America really is to be the place from which the Gospel is spread to the whole world, then the salvation of billions hangs in the balance. Sheets believes there’s hope, but only if Americans return to honoring their covenant with God, because that makes us His family. Sheets gave an example, saying, “If the kids across the street I don’t know, if they do something evil or wrong, I feel no responsibility to try to bring them back into the fold, because I’m not in covenant with them. I’m not in that relationship. God is the same way.” Barton pointed out the long-suffering faithfulness of the Lord, saying, “We’re told in Psalm 105 He keeps His covenant for a thousand generations.”Sheets added, “I don’t think there’s a stronger force in the world.” So there’s a chance the nation can still someday completely fulfill the prophecy of destiny Jamestown chaplain Robert Hunt said in 1607 as he came ashore in Virginia, just a few miles from where the Christian Broadcasting Network’s headquarters are located. Hyatt explained, “He made this declaration which I believe was prophetic. He said ‘from these very shores the Gospel shall go forth, not only to this New World, but to all the world.’ And that was just not very far from CBN!” It just takes getting back to covenant. As Joel 2:13 says, “Now return to the Lord your God, for He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in loving-kindness.”

  • Operation Restored Warrior: Reaching out to Veterans Before It’s Too Late

    Operation Restored Warrior: Reaching out to Veterans Before It’s Too Late

    It’s estimated a military veteran commits suicide each hour of every day. One organization hopes to change that by helping vets fight their way back to restoration.

    Healing for Hidden Battle Scars

    Veterans fighting overseas not only suffer physically but emotionally as well –- hidden battle scars that make life difficult back home.  That’s where “Operation Restored Warrior” comes in. To find it, CBN News traveled to the heart of Colorado.  With its wide open spaces and large horse corral, the 4 Eagle Ranch resembles something out of the Old West. But take a closer look and you’ll see much more. Organizers of Operation Restored Warrior say it’s a location where healing takes place.  While the program welcomes all faiths, its core Christian ministry is the five-day program called the “Drop Zone.”  “A ‘drop zone’ is a place in enemy territory where you go take that ground,” Keith Poole, Army veteran and ORW facilitator, told CBN News. “And very often in kind of Christian environments we refer to things as retreats. ‘I’m going to go to a retreat,’ and that just didn’t sit well with us as professional military men.”  “It’s like why are we retreating? How about if we go gain ground?” Poole continued. “So we specifically call coming to a Drop Zone, a counter-attack, and that appeals to warriors.”

    Rescue, Rebuild and Restore

    That counter attack is three-fold: rescue, rebuild and restore.  “Warriors come to this place because they’re looking for hope, and often the enemy has just beat them down,” Poole explained. “But this is the place where they know there’s some hope, and when they get here what they find out is that this is where healing is.”  “And that hope and healing is here because Jesus is here,” he continued.  The intensive program involves targeting areas of the heart that need healing. ORW leaders hold to the belief, “Psychology reveals; Jesus heals,” and say it’s been proven hundreds of times.

    Literal Life-Saver

    For participants like Navy veteran Paul Williams, the program can be a literal life-saver.   “July 2nd of this year I had written a note, and I was ready to go,” he shared with CBN News. “And it just didn’t happen. I went back to my truck to go get the gun, and it wasn’t there.”  “So I just started praising Jesus with my praise and worship music and said, ‘You know what, I need to give this ORW, Operation Restored Warrior, a really good shot,’” Williams continued.  And that decision led to victory.  “I was able to open up to Paul, the founder of ORW, about all the trash that I’ve been carrying, and it felt so good to finally just let it out,” Williams explained. “I can’t thank this organization enough.”  “I came here fighting’ for my life, and I’m going to walk away a champion,” he said, trying to fight back tears. “So I love them a lot, and I’m super thankful for it.”

    A Unique Gift 

    Former atheist Paul Lavelle started ORW nine years ago.  “Around 2008, I felt like Jesus just put in my heart that he had gifted me my whole life to rescue people, and I felt like I had a unique gift of healing as well,” the Air Force veteran told CBN News. “But I had no idea it had to do with anything spiritual.”  “And about 2008, I just felt this nudge that I had to do something,” Lavelle continued. “ORW – our focus is to heal, and we bring Jesus into that healing process.”  Army veteran Braxton Dunbar dealt with many things, including suicidal thoughts, before coming to ORW.  “I was definitely a broken, a broken man, had a lot of depression and anxiety, a lot of anger, a whole lot of anger and just felt lost, really just didn’t… didn’t know where my place was, didn’t know how to find my place either,” he shared with CBN News. Dunbar accepted Christ during the Drop Zone and decided to get baptized. “The same individual that prayed with me, Jordan, kind of came to me and said, ‘You accepted him yesterday, and you verbally accepted him into your life. Would you want to show the action of it?’” Dunbar recalled. “And there was no question at all. I said, ‘Absolutely. I’d love to.’” Retired Air Force Chaplain Steve Frick also received healing through the program. “ORW doesn’t just help; they heal,” he told CBN News. “And that’s a little hard to hear when you first get here. But I’m telling you it’s true.”

    Healing Adventure 

    In addition to powerful sessions building up the faith of the men, the Drop Zone also allows time for recreational activities like fly fishing. What can they learn from this? Lavelle says it nourishes the soul among other things. “The reason we do the activities is because it’s part of a spiritual longing for a man to have adventure in his life,” he said. “It’s one of the core desires of a man.” “And so as part of this restoration process, we want to remind them that there is adventure out there,” Lavelle continued.

    Before It’s Too Late

    Army veteran Chris Fields is the Drop Zone lead facilitator. He, too, once contemplated taking his life and also lost fellow service members to suicide. Fields understands the urgency of going through this program before it’s too late. “Don’t wait another moment to reach out and to ask for help,” he said. “I used to think that I was ten feet tall and bulletproof. I ate barbed wire in the morning, and you can surmise what I did in the afternoon.””But when I reached out for help I’m stronger than I ever was… and it just takes one moment, one moment to say, ‘Okay, let me see what this is all about.’ And then let Jesus take it from there,” he continued.

    This article was originally published in 2017. It’s being reprinted in honor of America’s troops on Memorial Day.

     

  • Scientists uncover exotic matter in the sun’s atmosphere

    Scientists uncover exotic matter in the sun’s atmosphere

    Scientists uncover exotic matter in the sun's atmosphere
    A solar flare captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory in 2015. Credit NASA, SDO. Credit: NASA/SDO.

    Scientists from Ireland and France today announced a major new finding about how matter behaves in the extreme conditions of the Sun’s atmosphere.

     

    The scientists used large radio telescopes and ultraviolet cameras on a NASA spacecraft to better understand the exotic but poorly understood “fourth state of matter”. Known as , this matter could hold the key to developing safe, clean and efficient nuclear energy generators on Earth. The scientists published their findings in the leading international journal Nature Communications.

    Most of the matter we encounter in our everyday lives comes in the form of solid, liquid or gas, but the majority of the Universe is composed of plasma—a highly unstable and electrically charged fluid. The Sun is also made up of this plasma.

    Despite being the most common form of matter in the Universe plasma remains a mystery, mainly due to its scarcity in on Earth, which makes it difficult to study. Special laboratories on Earth recreate the extreme conditions of space for this purpose, but the Sun represents an all-natural laboratory to study how plasma behaves in conditions that are often too extreme for the manually constructed Earth-based laboratories.

    Postdoctoral Researcher at Trinity College Dublin and the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies (DIAS), Dr. Eoin Carley, led the international collaboration. He said: “The solar atmosphere is a hotbed of extreme activity, with plasma temperatures in excess of 1 million degrees Celsius and particles that travel close to light-speed. The light-speed particles shine bright at , so we’re able to monitor exactly how plasmas behave with large radio telescopes.”

    “We worked closely with scientists at the Paris Observatory and performed observations of the Sun with a large radio telescope located in Nançay in central France. We combined the radio observations with ultraviolet cameras on NASA’s space-based Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft to show that plasma on the sun can often emit radio light that pulses like a light-house. We have known about this activity for decades, but our use of space and ground-based equipment allowed us to image the radio pulses for the first time and see exactly how plasmas become unstable in the .”

    Studying the behaviour of plasmas on the Sun allows for a comparison of how they behave on Earth, where much effort is now under way to build magnetic confinement fusion reactors. These are nuclear energy generators that are much safer, cleaner and more efficient than their fission reactor cousins that we currently use for energy today.

    Professor at DIAS and collaborator on the project, Peter Gallagher, said: “Nuclear fusion is a different type of nuclear energy generation that fuses plasma atoms together, as opposed to breaking them apart like fission does. Fusion is more stable and safer, and it doesn’t require highly radioactive fuel; in fact, much of the waste material from fusion is inert helium.”

    “The only problem is that plasmas are highly unstable. As soon as the plasma starts generating energy, some natural process switches off the reaction. While this switch-off behaviour is like an inherent safety switch—fusion reactors cannot form runaway reactions—it also means the plasma is difficult to maintain in a stable state for energy generation. By studying how plasmas become unstable on the Sun, we can learn about how to control them on Earth.”

    The success of this research was made possible by the close ties between researchers at Trinity, DIAS, and their French collaborators.

    Dr. Nicole Vilmer, lead collaborator on the project in Paris, said: “The Paris Observatory has a long history of making radio observations of the Sun, dating back to the 1950s. By teaming up with other radio astronomy groups around Europe we are able to make groundbreaking discoveries such as this one and continue the success we have in solar radio astronomy in France. It also further strengthens scientific collaboration between France and Ireland, which I hope continues in the future.”

    Dr. Carley previously worked at the Paris Observatory, funded by a fellowship awarded by the Irish Research Council and the European Commission. He continues to work closely with his French colleagues today, and hopes to soon study the same phenomena using both French instruments and newly built, state-of-the-art equipment in Ireland.

    Dr. Carley added: “The collaboration with French scientists is ongoing and we’re already making progress with newly built radio telescopes in Ireland, such as the Irish Low Frequency Array (I-LOFAR). I-LOFAR can be used to uncover new plasma physics on the Sun in far greater detail than before, teaching us about how matter behaves in both plasmas on the Sun, here on Earth and throughout the Universe in general.”

    More information: Eoin P. Carley et al, Loss-cone instability modulation due to a magnetohydrodynamic sausage mode oscillation in the solar corona, Nature Communications (2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-10204-1

    Journal information: Nature Communications
    Citation: Scientists uncover exotic matter in the sun’s atmosphere (2019, May 24) retrieved 24 May 2019 from https://phys.org/news/2019-05-scientists-uncover-exotic-sun-atmosphere.html
    This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.

    This content was originally published here.