Why rubber blocks keep appearing on Europe's beaches

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By Matt Cantor

Newser

A woman takes a photograph on her phone of the view from a beach in Portsmouth, England, on Oct. 31, 2014.(AP Photo/Alastair Grant)

From Britain to Spain to Denmark, rubbery blocks have recently washed up on beaches, all bearing the same word: Tjipetir. It's still not certain where each block comes from, but a woman who found one while walking her dog in England has a pretty good idea, the BBC reports.

After Tracey Williams posted on a Facebook page about her investigation into the matter, two individuals who haven't been publicly identified told her about a Japanese ship sunk 150 miles west of Britain's Scilly Isles during World War I.

The Miyazaki Maru carried the blocks, and it has recently been subject to salvage work, resulting in their release, the sources explained. The blocks have their origins in Indonesia, where they get their name from a 19th- and 20th-century rubber plantation in West Java.

The rubber-like stufflikely a tree gum called gutta-perchawas once used for such diverse purposes as insulating cables and making golf balls. Williams' theory is supported by a British official in charge of the country's wreck lawsthe Receiver of Wreck, as she's known.

But "many ships would have been carrying gutta-percha, so it's possible that the cargo is coming from more than one source," Williams notes. One of those sources could be the Titanic, which listed such blocks among its cargo, the Daily Mail reports.

Interesting pieces of history, but not so appealing to conservationists: "The thing we find most worrying is that this is biodegradable rubber and here it is, 100 years later, in near-perfect condition," says one.

(In other weird beach finds, a two-headed dolphin recently washed ashore.)

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Why rubber blocks keep appearing on Europe's beaches

Silverado burn area sees voluntary evacuations; flooding possible at beaches

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SILVERADO, Calif. (KABC) --

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A voluntary evacuation for the burn area was ordered at 8 a.m. Tuesday and affects all homes east of 30311 Silverado Canyon Rd., where the Silverado Fire scorched approximately 1,000 acres in September. There's not enough vegetation on the steep hillsides to hold back water.

Sandbags for canyon residents are available at the Orange County Fire Authority's Station 14, 29402 Silverado Canyon Road, as well as at an Orange County Public Works' Maintenance Yard, 20811 El Toro Road in Lake Forest.

The Red Cross opened a shelter at El Modena High School at 3920 East Spring Street in the city of Orange.

Hay bales and K-rails are in place to prevent mud flows and property damage, and heavy equipment is on scene ready to move debris.

A steady downpour was falling over Silverado Canyon burn area since around 7 a.m. Nearly an inch of rain had fallen by about 7 p.m.

Emergency crews are on standby and many residents say they're braced and ready.

"My wife has already evacuated with pets. So when mandatory comes in, I'm out of here," said area resident Ron Shepston.

Shepston lives at the base of a steep, narrow and sloping road. He and his neighbors have been scurrying to prepare for the worst.

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Silverado burn area sees voluntary evacuations; flooding possible at beaches

Germany Invests 11M Euros in South African MeerKAT Radio Telescope

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The Minister for Science and Technology of South Africa and the President of the Max-Planck-Society (MPG) today announced that the MPG and the Max-Planck-Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR) in Bonn will make available a total of 11 million (approximately R150 million) to build and install radio receivers on the South African MeerKAT radio telescope.The receivers will be built by the MPIfR and will operate in the S band of radio frequencies. They will be used primarily for research on pulsars, the rapid spinning neutron star which emit very regular radio pulses and so can be used as highly accurate clocks to test extreme physics. Two other sets of receivers, for the L band and ULF band of frequencies, are already under construction in South Africa.The President of the MPG, Martin Stratmann, said: We consider MeerKAT to be an important undertaking as it is not only a preeminent astronomy project, but also a light-house project for science in Africa in general. The MPG is very pleased to enable close collaboration between its scientists and the South African community and looks forward to see MeerKATs first glimpse of the universe with the receivers of the MPIfR.Welcoming the strong and growing collaboration between South Africa and Germany, Minister of Science and Technology Naledi Pandor said that the investment is an endorsement of the excellence of the MeerKAT and the South African team which designed and is building it. Minister Pandor added that this significant investment by a leading global research organization of prestigious repute, home to several Nobel Prize winners, was an important vote of confidence, in South African science in general and the MeerKAT specifically. South Africa and Germany have a vibrant science and technology partnership, with radio astronomy fast becoming a blossoming flagship area of cooperation, evidence by huge interest in academic and industrial cooperation from both sides. Minister Pandor concluded, MeerKAT is already acclaimed internationally as a world-class instrument -- thanks to our partnership with Max Planck, MeerKATs ability to perform transformational science for the benefit of global knowledge production will be considerably boosted. Awaiting the start of construction of the SKA, South Africa and our international partners such as Max Planck, continue to set the pace for global radio astronomy.MeerKAT will be the most sensitive cm wave radio telescope in the world until the SKA is built. It is expected to do transformational science on pulsars and other areas of astronomy.Contacts:Lorenzo RaynardSKA SA Communication Manager+27 (0)71 454 0658lorenzo@ska.ac.zaLunga NgqengeleleMedia Liaison Officer, Ministry of Science and Technology+27 (0)82 566 0446lunga.ngqengelele@dst.gov.za

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Germany Invests 11M Euros in South African MeerKAT Radio Telescope

Opening the African Sky – New Receiver for MeerKAT Telescope

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A new radio astronomical receiver project of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy has received full funding by the Max Planck Society. The scientific defined frequency range from 1.6 to 3.5 GHz can only be observed under significant sensitivity losses with the 100-m Effelsberg radio telescope due to man-made radio emission, the so-called radio frequency interference. Thus the MeerKAT observatory, currently under construction in South Africa, has been chosen as a host for this receiver system. MeerKAT, will be the most sensitive observatory of the southern hemisphere in the centimeter wavelength regime. Thanks to its unique location at the Karoo semi-desert in South Africa, MeerKAT is hardly influenced by interference. The 11 million euro receiver project will not only grant the Max Planck scientists access to a world-class facility and its unique unrestricted view on our galaxy but also extend the frequency range for all MeerKAT scientists and thus empower MeerKATs scientific potential even further.Radio astronomy provides an independent view of the cosmos. It allows the study of objects and processes that are otherwise not accessible, and enables the study of a wide range of questions in fundamental physics and astrophysics. The discovery space is mostly limited by the sensitivity of the radio telescopes, but other factors like sky access, time and frequency resolution, throughput (or survey speed) and complementarity to existing facilities, are hugely important factors. Currently, major efforts are underway to make progress on all these factors. An upfront development is provided by the MeerKAT observatory in South Africa. When completed it will already be a world-class facility in stand-alone mode.MeerKAT will even be more sensitive than the largest fully-steerable radio telescopes in the northern hemisphere, the 100-m radio telescope at Effelsberg and the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia. In addition, it will provide a spatial resolution comparable to an 8 km diameter telescope. The science potential of MeerKAT is therefore enormous.The MeerKAT receiver project at our institute provides a receiving system that is finely tuned to the science interests of Max Planck scientists, says Gundolf Wieching, head of the electronics division at MPIfR where the new receiver will be built. This will allow us to exploit this formidable new instrument and to bring Max Planck scientists to an optimal position to harness other future facilities.The funded receiver for a frequency range from 1.6 to 3.5 GHz will enable science that falls into the core interests of the MPIfR. Our research interests include fundamental physics with tests of theories of gravity and gravitational wave detection by means of pulsar observations, states Michael Kramer, Director at MPIfR and Head of its Fundamental Physics research department. The project is actually expected to do transformational science on pulsars and other areas of astronomy. Other areas include the exploration of the dynamic radio sky, for example with the detection of fast cosmological radio bursts, and also highly sensitive molecular spectroscopy of the interstellar medium or high-resolution imaging of radio sources using very long baseline interferometry. Each of these science topics alone makes the exploitation of MeerKAT extremely desirable, but together they provide the most compelling background for an excellent positioning of Max Planck scientists in this highly active research field.In addition to providing the frontend, the complete project also includes the design and the construction of a state-of-the-art digital backend system which will turn MeerKAT into a discovery machine for pulsars and other time-domain phenomena. The receiver system will be designed and constructed by the MPIfR in collaboration with colleagues from the Universities of Manchester and Oxford The investment is an endorsement of the excellence of the MeerKAT and the South African team which designed and is building it, concludes Bernie Fanaroff, Director of the SKA South Africa project. We welcome the strong and growing collaboration between South African and German scientists in astronomy.PIO Contact;Dr. Norbert JunkesPress and Public OutreachMax-Planck-Institut fr Radioastronomie, Bonn+49 228-525-399njunkes@mpifr-bonn.mpg.deScience Contacts:Dr. Gundolf Wieching,Max-Planck-Institut fr Radioastronomie, Bonn+49 228-525-175wieching@mpifr-bonn.mpg.deProf. Dr. Michael Kramer,Director and Head of Research Department Fundamental Physics in Radio AstronomyMax-Planck-Institut fr Radioastronomie, Bonn+49 228-525-278mkramer@mpifr-bonn.mpg.deMore InformationThe MPIfR MeerKAT Receiver will provide a receiving system, i.e., a frontend plus a backend system for time-domain processing. The detection frequency covers a range from 1.6 to 3.5 GHz, it is a dual polarization system with an analogue to digital converter stability below one pico second (10^-12 s, this is equivalent to a light travel distance less than 0.3 mm). The continuous data rate of 5.5 terabit/sec (1 terabit = 10^12 bit) is equivalent to the content of 147 DVDs per second or 0.5 million DVDs per hour. With such a huge amount of data they have to be reduced online, requiring a calculation power of several petaops (10^15 operations per second). These highly demanding requirements will lead to new technological developments also useful for future instrumentations beyond the scope of radio astronomy.MeerKAT is a fully funded radio observatory under construction in the Northern Cape of South Africa. It will be the largest and most sensitive radio telescope in the southern hemisphere until its integration into the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) in the middle of the next decade. MeerKAT will consist of 64 13.5-m dishes, each with an offset-Gregorian configuration, designed by the German VERTEX company. Such configuration provides an unblocked aperture for increased sensitivity but also facilitating optical, imaging quality and good rejection of unwanted radio frequency interference from satellites and terrestrial transmitters. When completed, MeerKAT will be nearly 5 times more sensitive than the 64-m Parkes radio telescope, the largest radio telescope in the southern hemisphere now.

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Opening the African Sky - New Receiver for MeerKAT Telescope

The Moment of Truth for BICEP2 (Synopsis) [Starts With A Bang]

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Image credit: Caltech & CTCP All rights Reserved, viahttp://preposterousuniverse.com/MCTCP/astro.php.

The paradigm of physicswith its interplay of data, theory and predictionis the most powerful in science. -Geoffrey West

So earlier this year, the BICEP2 team shook up the world by announcing the discovery of primordial gravitational waves: a signal from the earliest stages of the Universe, going all the way back tobefore the Big Bang!

Image credit:the BICEP2 collaboration, viahttp://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2014-05.

By looking at the photon polarization data, they claimed to have surpassed the gold 5 standard for announcing a discovery in physics. But recently, thats been walked back, as there could have been a systematic error at play: simple emission from our own Milky Way.

Image credit: ESA / Planck Collaboration, via http://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/mpa/institute/news_archives/news1101_planck/news1101_planck-en-print.html.

Later this month, the Planck team will release their results, and either confirm or refute BICEP2. Heres where we standon the eve of that announcement.

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The Moment of Truth for BICEP2 (Synopsis) [Starts With A Bang]