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CCNet, 72/2000 - 27 June 2000
------------------------------
"We saw an Angel with a flaming
sword in his left hand; flashing,
it gave out flames that looked as though
they would set the world
on fire".
-- Third Fatima
Prophecy, 26 June 2000
(1) VATICAN TRIES TO STEM APOCALYPTIC ANXIETY
Associated Press, 26 June 2000
(2) 'AN ANGEL WITH A FLAMING SWORD': THIRD FATIMA SECRET INCLUDES
COMETARY IMAGERY
Vatican, 26 June 2000
(3) MY ASTEROIDS ARE KILLING ME!
The Irish Times, 26 June 2000
(4) COMET LINEAR BRIGHT ENOUGH FOR BINOCULARS
Ron Baalke <baalke@jpl.nasa.gov>
(5) THE NEXT GENERATION SPACE TELESCOPE (NGST)
The American Institute of Physics Bulletin of
Physics
(6) ASTROBIOLOGY ARTICLES
Michael Paine <mpaine@tpgi.com.au>
(7) WINNING THE NEXT SPACE RACE
Wired.com, 26 June 2000
(8) AND FINALLY: GLOBAL COOLING SCARE
Newsweek, 28 April 1975
===========
(1) VATICAN TRIES TO STEM APOCALYPTIC ANXIETY
From the Associated Press, 26 June 2000
http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGIN7DHYX9C.html
Vatican Disclosing Details of Final Secret of Fatima
By Frances D'emilio
Associated Press Writer
VATICAN CITY (AP) - The "third secret" of Fatima is no
doomsday
prophecy as many have feared, the Vatican insisted Monday, but
rather a
message of encouragement that humanity can save itself, including
from
such apocalyptic scenarios as nuclear disaster.
As first disclosed last month, the Vatican reiterated that the
proper
interpretation of the so-called third secret was a foretelling of
the
1981 assassination attempt against Pope John Paul II.
Aiming to discourage any more speculation about the last message
that
three Portuguese shepherd children said they received from the
Virgin
Mary in 1917, the Vatican made public the entire handwritten text
of
the secret as set down by the sole surviving witness of the
series of
visions, Sister Lucia de Jesus dos Santos, now a 93-year-old
cloistered
nun.
"No great mystery is revealed; nor is the future
unveiled," wrote the
pope's guardian of orthodoxy, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, in a
document
containing the text. He said that a "careful reading of the
text" will
"probably prove disappointing or surprising after all the
speculation
it has stirred."
However, Ratzinger's commentary did contest suggestions by the
Turk who
shot the pope that he was merely an instrument of God's plan. The
pope,
shortly after he was shot, said that he believes the hand of the
Virgin
Mary deflected the attacker's bullet, allowing him to survive.
Citing one of the many images the children had, Ratzinger said
the
terrifying vision of an angel with a flaming sword
"represents the
threat of judgment which looms over the world."
"Today the prospect that the world might be reduced to ashes
by a sea
of fire no longer seems pure fantasy: man himself, with his
inventions,
has forged the flaming sword," the cardinal wrote in
apparent reference
to nuclear weapons.
But, Ratzinger continued, "the importance of human freedom
is
underlined: the future is not in fact unchangeably set, and the
image
which the children saw is in no way a film preview of a future in
which nothing can be changed."
Italian author Vittorio Messori, who collaborated on John Paul's
best-selling book "Crossing the Threshold of Hope,"
wrote in Sunday's
Corriere della Sera that the Vatican wanted "to immediately
block
other legends being added to the too many ones already in
circulation" in wake of the Cardinal Angelo Sodano's
announcement May
13 that the last secret pertained to the 1981 shooting.
The first two secrets are said to have foretold the end of World
War
I and the start of World War II, and the rise and fall of Soviet
communism.
Sodano, speaking last month at Fatima, said the
"interpretations" of
the children were of "a bishop clothed in white" who,
while making
his way amid the corpses of martyrs, "falls to the ground,
apparently
dead, under a burst of gunfire."
The 1981 assassination attempt against John Paul occurred on May
13,
the same day that the young shepherds in 1917 first reported
visions
of Mary.
A few days after Sodano unveiled the secret, Ratzinger said that
Catholics are free to believe or not believe the secret, since
such
apparitions do not constitute Catholic doctrine.
© Copyright 2000 Associated Press. All rights reserved.
===============
(2) 'AN ANGEL WITH A FLAMING SWORD': THIRD FATIMA SECRET INCLUDES
COMETARY IMAGERY
From the Vatican, 26 June 2000
http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20000626_message-fatima_en.html
The third part of the secret revealed at the Cova da Iria-Fatima,
on 13 July 1917.
I write in obedience to you, my God, who command me to do so
through
his Excellency the Bishop of Leiria and through your Most Holy
Mother
and mine.
After the two parts which I have already explained, at the left
of
Our Lady and a little above, we saw an Angel with a flaming sword
in
his left hand; flashing, it gave out flames that looked as though
they
would set the world on fire; but they died out in contact with
the
splendour that Our Lady radiated towards him from her right hand:
pointing to the earth with his right hand, the Angel cried out in
a
loud voice: ‘Penance, Penance, Penance!'
FULL SECRET at:
http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20000626_message-fatima_en.html
===================
(3) MY ASTEROIDS ARE KILLING ME!
From The Irish Times, 26 June 2000
http://www.ireland.com:80/newspaper/science/2000/0626/sci2.htm
'IT’S A DANGEROUS PLACE OUT THERE'
By Dick Ahlstrom
The Earth drifts through an enormous shooting gallery and we are
the
moving target, according to a new study of the plethora of nearby
asteroids large enough to destroy our planet.
"It is a dangerous place out there," Dr William Bottke
of Cornell
University and colleagues conclude in the current issue of the
journal
Science. He leads a US-French team that has discovered the
spatial and
size distribution of a large group of asteroids called NEAs for
near-Earth asteroids.
The study estimates that a veritable armada of asteroids, some
900 in
number, pass uncomfortably close to us on a regular basis. Some
fly by
at no more than a few moon distances from Earth every year.
"Sometime
in the future, one of these objects could conceivably run into
the
Earth," Dr Bottke said.
All of the 900 referred to in the study are a kilometre in
diameter or
larger, a size that could spell extinction for 90 per cent or
more of
the species that currently occupy the Earth. "One kilometre
in size is
thought to be a magic number, because it has been estimated that
these
asteroids are capable of wreaking global devastation if they hit
the
Earth."
FULL STORY at
http://www.ireland.com:80/newspaper/science/2000/0626/sci2.htm
===================
(4) COMET LINEAR BRIGHT ENOUGH FOR BINOCULARS
From Ron Baalke <baalke@jpl.nasa.gov>
Comet LINEAR Bright Enough For Binoculars
By Jeff Kanipe
space.com
23 June 2000
A comet heading for the inner solar system may not fulfill
expectations
of being bright enough to be seen with the naked eye, but
astronomers
are at least sure of one thing: it will be the brightest comet
since
Hale-Bopp graced the heavens three years ago. You can add another
thing. It should be bright enough to seen with binoculars.
The new comet goes by the mumbo-jumbo name of 1999 S4 LINEAR, an
acronym which stands for Lincoln Laboratory Near-Earth Asteroid
Research -- an automated-search program in New Mexico that images
regions of the night sky looking for asteroids and comets. This
one was
found in digital images made on September 27 and was reported, at
the
time, as "an unusual moving object."
Full story here:
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/comet_linear_000619.html
===================
(5) THE NEXT GENERATION SPACE TELESCOPE (NGST)
From The American Institute of Physics Bulletin of Physics News
<physnews@aip.org>
PHYSICS NEWS UPDATE, Number 490 June 22, 2000
by Phillip F. Schewe and Ben Stein
THE NEXT GENERATION SPACE TELESCOPE (NGST), 100 times more
sensitive
than the Hubble Space Telescope, sits at the top of the list of
desirable future observatories, a list formulated by the National
Academy of Sciences. The billion-dollar NGST should possess
an 8-m
mirror, an orbit 1 million miles from Earth, and an ability to
view the
most distant (and earliest) stellar objects in the universe at
infrared
wavelengths. Next in order of priority is the Giant
Segmented Mirror
Telescope (GSMT), a 30-m ground based telescope for complementing
with
superb spectroscopy the sharp imaging of the NGST; the $800
million
Constellation-X Observatory, specializing in x rays; an Expanded
Very
Large Array (EVLA) radio telescope; the Large-aperture Synoptic
Survey
Telescope (LSST), which would scan the whole sky, every week for
faint
objects; and the Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF), "the most
ambitious
science mission ever attempted by NASA," whose goal is to
search for
planets around nearby stars. (NAS website:
http://www.nationalacademies.org/topnews/.)
==================
(6) ASTROBIOLOGY ARTICLES
From Michael Paine <mpaine@tpgi.com.au>
Two articles in the online version of Scientific American are
interesting:
Aliens - where are they?
http://www.sciam.com/2000/0700issue/0700crawford.html
The Search for Extreme Life
http://www.sciam.com/2000/0700issue/0700profile.html
'If microorganisms exist on other worlds, the head of NASA's
fledgling
Astrobiology Institute plans to find them'
cheers
Mike
================
(7) WINNING THE NEXT SPACE RACE
From Wired.com, 26 June 2000
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,37236,00.html
by Nicholas Morehead
WASHINGTON -- There's another space race heating up between the
United
States and Russia, but this time it's the tourism industry that's
up
for grabs.
"There's something wrong here when entrepreneurialism has to
go to the
'Evil Empire' of years past," said Peter Diamandis, CEO of
ZeroGravity
Corp., which sells weightless flights to the general public using
Russian aircraft.
Diamandis cited the recent announcement by MirCorp, a Dutch-based
company, that it plans to launch commercial space flights to the
Russian-owned Mir space station for private citizens.
FULL STORY at
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,37236,00.html
================
(8) AND FINALLY: GLOBAL COOLING SCARE
From Newsweek, 28 April 1975
http://www.nationalpost.com/financialpost.asp?f=000621/323013&s2=fpcomment
THE COOLING WORLD
There are ominous signs that the Earth's weather patterns have
begun to
change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic
decline in food production -- with serious political implications
for
just about every nation on Earth. The drop in food output could
begin
quite soon, perhaps only 10 years from now. The regions destined
to
feel its impact are the great wheat-producing lands of Canada and
the
U.S.S.R. in the North, along with a number of marginally
self-sufficient tropical areas -- parts of India, Pakistan,
Bangladesh,
Indochina and Indonesia -- where the growing season is dependent
upon
the rains brought by the monsoon.
The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to
accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to
keep up
with it. In England, farmers have seen their growing season
decline by
about two weeks since 1950, with a resultant overall loss in
grain
production estimated at up to 100,000 tons annually. During the
same
time, the average temperature around the equator has risen by a
fraction of a degree -- a fraction that in some areas can mean
drought
and desolation. Last April, in the most devastating outbreak of
tornadoes ever recorded, 148 twisters killed more than 300 people
and
caused half a billion dollars' worth of damage in 13 U.S. states.
To scientists, these seemingly disparate incidents represent the
advance signs of fundamental changes in the world's weather.
Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the trend,
as
well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions. But
they
are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce
agricultural productivity for the rest of the century. If the
climatic
change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the
resulting
famines could be catastrophic. "A major climatic change
would force
economic and social adjustments on a worldwide scale," warns
a recent
report by the National Academy of Sciences, "because the
global
patterns of food production and population that have evolved are
implicitly dependent on the climate of the present century."
A survey completed last year by Dr. Murray Mitchell of the
National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reveals a drop of half a
degree
in average ground temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere between
1945
and 1968. According to George Kukla of Columbia University,
satellite
photos indicated a sudden, large increase in Northern Hemisphere
snow
cover in the winter of 1971-72. And a study released last month
by two
NOAA scientists notes that the amount of sunshine reaching the
ground
in the continental U.S. diminished by 1.3% between 1964 and 1972.
To the layman, the relatively small changes in temperature and
sunshine
can be highly misleading. Reid Bryson of the University of
Wisconsin
points out that the Earth's average temperature during the great
Ice
Ages was only about seven degrees lower than during its warmest
eras --
and that the present decline has taken the planet about a sixth
of the
way toward the Ice Age average. Others regard the cooling as a
reversion to the "little ice age" conditions that
brought bitter
winters to much of Europe and northern America between 1600 and
1900 --
years when the Thames used to freeze so solidly that Londoners
roasted
oxen on the ice and when iceboats sailed the Hudson River almost
as far
south as New York City.
Just what causes the onset of major and minor ice ages remains a
mystery. "Our knowledge of the mechanisms of climatic change
is at
least as fragmentary as our data," concedes the National
Academy of
Sciences report. "Not only are the basic scientific
questions largely
unanswered, but in many cases we do not yet know enough to pose
the key
questions."
Meteorologists think that they can forecast the short-term
results of
the return to the norm of the last century. They begin by noting
the
slight drop in overall temperature that produces large numbers of
pressure centres in the upper atmosphere. These break up the
smooth
flow of westerly winds over temperate areas. The stagnant air
produced
in this way causes an increase in extremes of local weather such
as
droughts, floods, extended dry spells, long freezes, delayed
monsoons
and even local temperature increases -- all of which have a
direct
impact on food supplies.
"The world's food-producing system," warns Dr. James D.
McQuigg of
NOAA's Center for Climatic and Environmental Assessment, "is
much more
sensitive to the weather variable than it was even five years
ago."
Furthermore, the growth of world population and creation of new
national boundaries make it impossible for starving peoples to
migrate
from their devastated fields, as they did during past famines.
Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take
any
positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to
allay
its effects. They concede that some of the more spectacular
solutions
proposed, such as melting the Arctic ice cap by covering it with
black
soot or diverting arctic rivers, might create problems far
greater than
those they solve. But the scientists see few signs that
government
leaders anywhere are even prepared to take the simple measures of
stockpiling food or of introducing the variables of climatic
uncertainty into economic projections of future food supplies.
The
longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it
to cope
with climatic change once the results become grim reality.
Copyright 1975, Newsweek
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