Whew! With the help of melatonin and lorazepam ( similar to valium) I managed to sleep almost through the night, Christmas Eve. For the first time in 8 years. Christmas has become one of the harder times of the year for me. It precedes the anniversary 13 January of my son’s death. Thankfully we did have him for his first Christmas, blissfully unaware of how lucky we were at the time.

Then came 1998, and doing my firefighter thing Christmas morning, 3 am, while a father, son and 2 daughters died in the flames of their Christmas Eve fireplace ashes….reignited after being moved as far as the pantry, soon to go to the trash during the expected day-after cleanup. And lastly, Christmas afternoon, California time, the tsunami near dawn of the 26^th in my second homeland, Thailand. So many caught by surprise, so much terror and death and destruction. Knowing someone who is missing makes it personal. Knowing nature is always up to something makes it scary. Knowing it was Christmas, makes it sad.

 

Saying “Merry Christmas” to everyone you see, you don’t think about it….that to some, this is the worst part of the year, not the best. That may be why I don’t respond with the same sort of glee you feel. But it’s OK…it’s getting better.

 

I think.

Children of the Tsunami
They lost homes, family members and friends, possessions, and their dreams turned to nightmares in the tsunami of December 26, 2004. But the young people who survived the murderous wave didn’t lose a future—and for some of these “children of the tsunami” the future could be bright. More than 100 of these brave youngsters participated in a photo workshop sponsored by the organization Insight Out. After being taught how to master a camera they were encouraged to use it to illustrate their post-tsunami world. The results of their work—shown in December at Bangkok’s Foreign Correspondents Club—are very impressive. Remarkable, even, when it’s considered that some of the children are as young as 11. Several of the young photographers are Burmese. 

 

http://www.irrawaddy.org/Tsunami.html

 

Amazing, touching photos from a different cultural perspective. Just shows WE ARE ALL ONE.

If you haven't been outside the US in awhile (or ever), you don't know how America is viewed by other cultures. That view is not a pretty one, due primarily to the unilateral war in Iraq, but also due to the perception that we are consuming more than our fair share of the planet's resources.

For two primary reasons, my approach to gifting has taken a decidedly different turn this season. I am pooling all the money I normally would have spent (or should have spent, in some cases, and didn't) for gifts at birthdays and Christmas/New Years and participating in a micro loan project or three. Using www.kiva.org, micro loans will be made in Africa to help folks not as capital-rich as Americans begin businesses that will raise the owners' standard of living above poverty-level (in many cases). As money is repaid, it will be let out again, to continue the work, and more will be added each year as birthdays and holidays pass. Primary reason number 1 is to change the perception of America from a culture that only takes to a culture that also knows how to help others. Reason number 2 is that I have been uncomfortable with giving things to family and friends who already have the resources to purchase everything they desire. I fear gifting that usually ends up in a closet or garage, or worst of all, the trash, just for the 'thought that counts". If it is true that the thought is what's truly important, then let my gift to you be the improvement in someone's future, the betterment of our world culture, a gift that will change someone's life forever.

Please consider the concept yourself, for 2007 and beyond. I believe that poverty is truly the driving force behind terrorism. If we are to ever overcome the wars that continue to sap lives and property we must address this issue. What better legacy can you leave your family, friends and descendants than a world free of war?

I Wish You Could See

 

Author Unknown

 

I wish you could see the sadness of a business man as his livelihood goes up in flames, or the family returning home, only to find their house and belongings damaged or lost for good.

I wish you could know what it is like to search a burning bedroom for trapped children, flames rolling above your head, your palms and knees burning as you crawl, the floor sagging under your weight as the kitchen below you burns.

I wish you could comprehend a wife’s horror at 3 am as I check her husband of 40 years for a pulse and find none. I start CPR anyway, hoping to bring him back, knowing intuitively it is too late, but wanting his wife and family to know everything possible was done to try to save his life.

I wish you knew the unique smell of burning insulation, the taste of soot-filled mucus, the feeling of intense heat through you turnout gear, the sound of flames crackling, the eeriness of being able to see absolutely nothing in dense smoke…sensations I’ve become all too familiar with.

I wish you could understand how it feels to go to work in the morning after having spent most of the night hot and soaking wet at a multiple alarm fire.

I wish you could read my mind as I respond to a building fire…”Is this a false alarm or a working fire? How is the building constructed? What hazards await me? Is anyone trapped?”

Or to a medical call, “What is wrong with the patient? Is it minor or life-threatening? Is the caller really in distress or is he waiting for us with a 2 X 4 or a gun?”

I wish you could be in an emergency room as a doctor pronounces dead the beautiful 5 year old girl I’ve been trying to save these last 25 minutes. Who will never go on her first date or say the words, “I love you Mommy” again.

I wish you could know the frustration I feel in the cab of the engine, my arm tugging again and again at the air horn chain, as you fail to yield the right-of-way at an intersection or in traffic.

When you need us, however, your first comment upon our arrival will be “It took you forever to get here!”

I wish you could know my thoughts as I extricate a girl of teenage years from the remains of her automobile. “What if this were my sister, my girlfriend or a friend? What will her parents’ reaction be when they open the front door to find a police officer with his hat in his hand?”

I wish you could know how it feels to walk in the back door and greet my parents and family, not having the heart to tell them that I nearly did not come back from the last call.

I wish you could feel the hurt as people verbally and sometimes physically, abuse us or belittle what we do, or as they express their attitudes of “It will never happen to me.”

I wish you could realize the physical, emotional and mental drain or missed meals, lost sleep and foregone social activities in addition to all the tragedy my eyes have seen.

I wish you could know the brotherhood and self-satisfaction of helping to save a life or preserving someone’s property, or being able to be there in time of crisis, or creating order from total chaos.

I wish you could understand what it feels like to have a little boy tugging at your arm and asking “Is Mommy OK?” Not even being able to look him in the eyes without tears of your own and not knowing what to say.

Or to have to hold back a long time friend who watches his buddy having rescue breathing done on him as they take him away in the ambulance. You know all along he didn’t have his seatbelt on.

Unless you have lived this kind of life, you will never truly understand who I am, we are, or what our job means to us.

I wish you could though.

China is stepping up its research and development of nuclear power

Westinghouse, the nuclear-plant builder sold by British Nuclear Fuels earlier this year, has won a billion-dollar contract to build reactors in China.

The deal, worth about $8bn (£4.1bn), is for four nuclear plants - two at Sanmen in Zhejiang province, with another two at Yangjiang in Guangdong.

An expected decline in fossil fuels and increasing energy demands have prompted many nations to focus on nuclear power.

Analysts said that the deal may also help soothe trade tensions with the US.

'Relationship driven'

US-based Westinghouse defeated a number of other international companies to win the tender, including France's Areva and Russia's Atomstroiexport.

The fact that Westinghouse is now owned by Japan's Toshiba may also have helped secure the deal, especially after Japan's new Prime Minister Shinzo Abe signalled an intention to restore friendlier ties with China.

"This is all relationship driven," said David Hurd, an analyst at Deutsche Bank.

"The US is putting pressure on China at the moment, so China's response is 'let's throw them a bone,'" he explained.

The US, which is running a record trade deficit with China, estimated that the deal would create more than 5,000 American jobs. At the heart of the deal was the promise of a transfer of technology from the US firm to China, analysts said.

 

Here's the link to the entire article:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6187491.stm

US wants visitors to have machine-readable passports

The ePassport is one of the many measures pursued by the United States and governments internationally after the horror of 11 September.

It will, we are promised, keep the unwanted and dangerous outside our borders, while streamlining entry for those welcome to come and visit.

But as the implementation of the scheme gets underway it is becoming clear that there could be serious problems with it.

Five-minute replica

So when Lukas Grunwald and Christian Bottger realised they could clone the new ePassport they were pretty sure it would be identical to the original, and undetectable. So how did they do it?

The chip inside the ePassport is a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) chip of the type poised to replace the barcode in supermarkets.

The 'enhanced' security features of ePassports are being questioned

The good thing about RFID chips is that they emit radio signals that can be read at a short distance by an electronic reader.

But this is also the bad thing about them because, as Lukas demonstrated to me, he can easily download the data from his passport using an RFID reader he got for 200 Euros on eBay.

Lukas is less forthcoming about where he got what is called the Golden Reader Tool, it is the software used by border police and it allows him to read the chip on his ePassport, including the photo.

 

Now for the clever bit. Thanks to a software he himself has developed, called RFdump, he downloads the passport's data onto his computer and then onto a blank chip.

Using a standard off-the-shelf component you can just buy at a component store you can have a cloned ePassport in less than five minutes.

 

Here's the link to the entire article:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online/6182207.stm

The opening paragraphs of a piece by Jaime O'Neill:

More than 3,700 Iraqi citizens died in that country's violence during October, perhaps three-quarters of them in Baghdad, a city of 6 million people. If an American city the size of San Francisco were to suffer a proportionate level of violence, it would mean about 10 or 11 dead people each day, bleeding to death on Market Street, or calling for help as they wait for an ambulance that never shows up at some blast-blackened Starbucks on Van Ness Avenue.

But that, of course, is only the dead. Many more are injured, rushed to San Francisco General or any of the other hospitals now overwhelmed by the horrendous wounds caused by daily explosions and flying metal. Then, too, ever-larger numbers of San Franciscans are sick, and it has become more difficult for them to get treatment. Doctors have fled, trying to get their own families away from the violence. Others would flee, too, but the Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate are nearly impassable to all but military convoys, those soldiers also at risk whenever they travel.

Now imagine the families of the 300 dead people in San Francisco -- all the fathers or mothers, brothers or sons, uncles and cousins. Conservatively, let us imagine that each fatality left behind six surviving relatives. That's 1,800 people, newly aggrieved and angry, a huge pool of anger and grief created during that one month of October, now ready to join the thousands upon thousands of angry and aggrieved people who lost loved ones in all the months that preceded October.

here's the link to the entire article: 

 

 http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2006/12/10/ING89MRGNK1.DTL

 

I embrace change. I seek personal growth daily. If I’m not learning something new, I quickly become bored and look for a way to add excitement to what’s going on. Some call it multi-tasking, some call it distraction. Either way, I lose focus on what’s really happening if I’m not expanding my knowledge.

Because learning and taking on new challenges is so exciting to me, I can’t envision a day when I would just ‘give up’ and choose dying rather than boredom. Because I’m an atheist, I don’t believe there’s a heaven waiting once I ‘tire’ of this existence. Consequently, immortality shines bright in my mind, and I would welcome it with open arms. The best we can do in that regard at this time, however is cryonics. The current state-of-the-art in cryonics involves learning to freeze tissue without creating ice crystals, a technique known as vitrification. Much research continues to be needed before this becomes an accepted, trouble-free solution to an autopsy, yet progress is being made. I agree with the philosophy that future medicine will be able to cure disease that baffles us today, Much as a heart that had stopped beating meant death in the 1800’s, the medical advances of CPR and defibrillators have extended many useful lives that would have been lost a century ago. Ongoing research into nanotechnology holds promise of future cures and repairs we can only dream of today. Delivering my body into a future where it can be repaired and restarted, taking advantage of other physical modifications developed during the interim, is a very attractive idea to one who desires to live and learn forever.

Hence my participation in a cryonics organization. My activities began in late 1990 when I attended a week-long training presented by one of the top researchers in the field at the time. It was a great introduction into the field of medicine, with a focus on the issues that occur during the time when our legal system decides someone is no longer a viable member of society. At the urging of the instructor, I soon enrolled in a class to become an Emergency Medical Technician. EMTs are pre-hospital basic life support workers whose goal is to stabilize and transport a patient to a hospital following a medical emergency. Having taken the cryonics transport team training, I had the privilege of using those skills in two Bay Area cases, the first in late 1991 and the second in early 1992.

I had been present for the last moments of my first step-father passing away in the late 1970’s, but otherwise had not witnessed someone’s death before these two incidents. What touched me in all three instances was the gradual progression of death, the inability of myself or the nurse attending to identify a precise ‘moment’ or event of death. Breathing had been slowing down for hours or even days. It would be 6 breaths per minute, then 4, and soon 3, maybe 2 now and after an hour we see 1 breath every minute. The heart continues to beat. Muscles occasionally twitch. But the eyes are rolled back and pupils wide open, hinting at brain death, a message that just hasn’t made it to other organs yet. At what point is the damage irreversible for modern technology? Shouldn’t the person be ‘pronounced’ at that time? Wouldn’t it be better to preserve someone’s brain, repository of memory and personality, at a point where it remained viable if given a functioning body for support?

The goal of cryonics is to retain as much viable tissue for later reanimation as possible. Under the current mindset, doctors and relatives are restrained from hastening anyone’s ‘demise’ under threat of murder prosecution. I contend that failing to preserve memory and personality when that is possible is truly as bad a crime. While I understand the paranoia that surrounds the idea of ‘assisted suicide’, ie. “Grandma needs to go quickly, I need my inheritance to pay this month’s mortgage”, I also can’t condone allowing folks, who might otherwise be revived in some future medical scenario, slip away because of archaic laws which have failed to maintain pace with science.

We know that having independent medical evaluations can lead to consensus that one’s medical condition is beyond cure given current techniques. Why, at the time this determination is made, must the patient be forced to endure what is often a pain-wracked withering away? Why can’t an intervention be allowed designed to preserve as much memory and personality as possible, in the hope that future science will be able to help this person? Not everyone will sign up for this kind of treatment, because many, if not most, hold a pessimistic view of the future, and have no desire to see the results of their own life’s actions a few hundred years down the road. But why can’t a minority that is interested be allowed the chance to fulfill their life’s dream?

 

In addition to posting comments here at http://cr.unchy.com

you may address comments on this article to  derek@galactictrading.com

I've my share, too. Mike (http://cr.unchy.com/weblog/mike) just complained about his DSL provider, not the one he originally signed up with, but the multinational that acquired his first choice.This site also pulled in a blog that complained about telemarketers a few days ago. Here's my own telemarketing horror story:

Just over a year ago, while in Mississippi in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, I filled a prescription through an online pharmacy. Things were good for a few months, but then I began to get phone calls. The call would start off with several seconds of silence, while the computer was deciding if a person or an answering machine had picked up. Deciding on the former, the call would then patch through to a person who was reading from the screen and pitching a refill. When the number of calls I was receiving approached 3 a day, I began to complain. This was in February. By the end of March, the volume of calls had increased to 7 or 8 a day, all from different area codes. With a 4 month trip to Thailand on the horizon, I began to complain that these calls would be expensive to me, and would they please stop calling?

You can imagine where this is going. In July, for instance, I began to keep a log. I was receiving (in Thailand) over 15 calls a day. As most were originating from the East Coast, I was receiving them at 1, 2 and 3 am. I was also expecting a phone call from work about a particular problem, so I was unable to turn off my phone when I went to sleep. Needless to say, the wife is not a happy camper by this time.

I continue to be plagued with calls, though signing up with the "Do Not Call" registry has cut them significantly. I've threatened lawsuits, I've not answered, I've set a special ring tone for the offending numbers, I've spoken with 'supervisors' who have assured my I'd get taken off the list 'as of midnight tonight'...and still the calls continue. Anyone know a good lawyer?

I've mentioned in this blog before, that I like writing 50 word stories. There's an article in the November 2006 issue of Wired magazine about 6 word stories. I know Mike (http://cr.unchy.com/weblog/mike) will like Arthur C Clarke's version, which Mr. Clarke refused to pare: "God said, 'Cancel Program GENESIS.' The universe ceased to exist."

 

Here's my first one:

Dreaming. Boss calls. Back to work. 

For those of you who don’t know me, I spent several months in Mississippi following Hurricane Katrina, working for FEMA in Biloxi and the surrounding communities. I have tried to follow the rebuilding efforts in the South because of that experience. Actually, I should say, the lack of rebuilding. Government programs, as you might suspect if you are as cynical about government as I am, have been slow to pay out funds, and the insurance companies have been far worse. But as I heard in this presentation from the MIT website, there may be other factors involved, not just government red tape. 

Comments made at MIT on 21 September 2006 by Philip Thompson, PhD.

Author of “Double Trouble: Black Mayors, Black Communities and the Struggle for Deep Democracy”

(these comments are paraphrased)

 

[After a decade of working in the public housing programs of New York City, he went to New Orleans last winter. He went to the Lower Ninth Ward and was told there were still bodies under the rubble. He had been in NYC in 2001 and remembers distinctly that a big effort was put into recovering human remains following the WTC collapse, indeed not even just every body, but every fragment of a body. It was seen as a point of national honor and pride, that we couldn’t leave any trace of a human being. (My note: since he gave this talk, it has come to light that there are still remains in the underground tunnels under the WTC site. The recovery operation wasn’t as thorough as we had been led to believe.)

But in New Orleans many months after the storm, he is told the Fire Dept has to go in, and that means overtime pay, and  they need equipment to lift the debris, and they couldn’t get FEMA to release the money.]

 

It’s just infuriating. What did the people of New Orleans do wrong? Is the problem that you can’t spin NEW ORLEANS the way you can spin terrorism politically? Therefore it’s not on the agenda at the White House? Therefore peoples’ family members stay under rubble? They can’t have peace? This is wrong, it’s just wrong. You can’t help but wonder…if these people were richer, or politically influential, this wouldn’t have happened. What is it, about people in New Orleans that could allow this? We have to put the situation in New Orleans in a broader political context: that is, government has been under assault in this country for 25 years. The very idea of government, much less planning, and much of the hostility towards government has racial undertones, of wasting money on urban populations, poor people, people of color who don’t deserve it, who don’t do anything for themselves and in addition, not only southern states, you have white suburban voting populations who buy into this philosophy of legislators who cut programs to city governments and you end up with cities that are very vulnerable. A big part of the explanation of why rebuilding is so difficult and why we saw what we saw on television has to do with the underfunding of cities. It’s amazing, embarrassing, and outrageous that after the largest natural disaster in 100 years in a city, we’re talking about a 3.5 million dollar grant from the Rockefeller foundation, from a private foundation, as critical to pulling together planning for a major city. That’s less than a current Democratic candidate for governor is spending on his summer house in the Berkshires.

 

 

There’s more….if you are interested, here’s the link to the talk: (he comes on at about the 34 minute mark):

http://mfile.akamai.com/12800/rm/mitworld.download.akamai.com/12800/mitw-dusp-planning-katrina-21sep2006-32k.ram

I must ask….where are the American religious leaders? Why aren’t they taking an active role in sparking debate about this in America?

 

 

Archbishop questions Trident plan

 

 

The need, legality and morality of updating the UK's Trident nuclear deterrent have been questioned by the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Rowan Williams said many people would never accept the morality even of threatening destruction by "intrinsically indiscriminate" weapons.

On Monday, Tony Blair outlined plans to spend up to £20bn on a new generation of submarines for Trident missiles.

It would be "unwise and dangerous" to give up nuclear weapons, he told MPs.

BBC religious affairs correspondent Robert Piggott said Dr Williams had been frequently frustrated at being bypassed in public discussion of moral issues. In July, a group of bishops warned Mr. Blair that the possession of Trident weapons was "evil" and "profoundly anti-God".

Church leaders have been unusually passionate and united over Trident.

The head of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland, Cardinal Keith O'Brien, said the system prevented peace rather than protecting it.

The leader of the Anglican Church in Wales, Archbishop Barry Morgan, insisted in September that the money spent on it could instead save 16,000 children from dying from preventable diseases every day.

 

From the BBC 5 December 2006

I am an atheist. I do not believe in God or religion.

 

I understand that 75% of Americans claim to believe in God, and that I am in the minority. But this is not new, I’m not your average American anyway.

 

I have a huge problem with the idea of original sin. That I be condemned for the actions of others, in particular others who are said to have existed thousands of years ago, is absurd. I accept responsibility for my actions, and do not require the framework of religion to act in an ethical manner, or to act to better the world. It is enough for me to see my actions make life better for others. I don’t require a promise of heavenly reward to spur me to action. “Do you really believe that all our problems stem from a woman being deceived by a talking snake?”

 

I acknowledge that my consciousness is limited. When I place my focus on a certain idea or desire, it is natural that I would notice manifestations in the physical world that are related to my area of focus. This is not prayer, nor are the manifestations I become aware of the answer to a prayer by some omnipotent being. Visualization serves to create an expectation in my mind of what I hope to perceive, and in some instances I do in fact, perceive what I desire. There is no cause and effect relationship. I said for many years that I believed in karma. Actually what I believed was that my focus would make me aware of like manifestations, and so the actions I undertook would make me see similar actions by others. This is not a proof that there is a supreme being exacting retribution on behalf of others. “Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day; give him religion, and he’ll starve to death praying for a fish.”

 

My ethics leave no room for killing others. This is true both for myself and for the state which acts in my name, whether it be killing in other countries through war or killing other citizens through capital punishment. I am troubled by the hypocrisy of religious believers, who in spite of a commandment against killing, support a government which not only condones killing but actively pursues killing those of other belief systems. My belief stems not from any religious doctrine but from a conviction that I have no right to take the life of another. Life is something we will have for a limited time, and we are to enjoy it and use it to our best ability. “Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt tortured, fined and imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity.” Thomas Jefferson

 

In practice, I have a problem with the way people ‘cherry-pick’ the beliefs that they will follow. Selective memory, or outright twisting of dogma to meet your own agenda, seems to be the way religion is practiced around the world. We would all be better off if we stuck to reason, logic and rationality in our relationship with the world. There is no need for a God to be involved for you to do the right thing for others. You already know what is right.

 

 

If you agree and would like T-shirts, mugs or bumper stickers with sayings and pictures that advertise our beliefs, please visit my website:

http://www.galactictrading.com

A quote from a story in today's paper:

 

"NASA wants Discovery back from it's mission by New Year's Eve because shuttle computers aren't designed to make the change from the 365th day of the old year to the 1st day of the new year while in flight."

 

??????? My watch is able to do that.

Meteorite yields life origin clue

Hollow spheres found in a primordial meteorite could yield clues to the origin of life on Earth

 

Scientists say that "bubbles" like those in the Tagish Lake meteorite may have helped along chemical processes important for the emergence of life.

The globules could also be older than our Solar System - their chemistry suggests they formed at about -260C, near "absolute zero".

Details of the work by Nasa scientists are published in the journal Science.

Analysis of the bubbles shows they arrived on Earth in the meteorite and are not terrestrial contaminants.

These hollow spheres could have provided a protective envelope for the raw organic molecules needed for life.

Dr Lindsay Keller of Nasa's Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, Texas, told BBC News that some scientists believed such structures were "a step in the right direction" to making a cell wall.

But he emphasised that the globules in Tagish Lake were in no way equivalent to a cell. The hollow spheres seem to be empty, but they do have organic molecules on their surfaces.

Mike Zolensky, a Nasa mineralogist, commented: "If, as we suspect, this type of meteorite has been falling on to Earth throughout its entire history, then the Earth was seeded with these organic globules at the same time life was first forming here."

Co-author Keiko Nakamura-Messenger of JSC told BBC News: "We reported only 26 globules in this paper, because they are small and hard to analyse. But we have seen hundreds in a small area. We can estimate that there are billions of them in this meteorite."

The ratios of different forms, or isotopes, of the elements hydrogen and nitrogen in the meteorite are very unusual, which suggests the structures did not come from Earth, say the scientists.

"The isotopic ratios in these globules show that they formed at temperatures of about -260C, near absolute zero," said co-author Scott Messenger, also from Johnson Space Center.

"The organic molecules most likely originated in the cold molecular cloud that gave birth to our Solar System, or at the outermost reaches of the early Solar System."

The Tagish Lake meteorite was collected immediately after its fall over Canada in 2000. It has been maintained in a frozen state, minimising the potential for terrestrial contamination.

 

Another BBC News story about this meteorite from 22 July 2002:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2144150.stm

 

The first BBC story from 5 September 2000:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/911228.stm

 

Japanese scientists have expressed their delight at the performance of the Hinode spacecraft which was sent into orbit in September to study the Sun.

The probe has returned remarkable close-up images of solar features that researchers hope will yield valuable new insights into the star's activity.

Hinode's primary goal is to investigate solar flares, colossal explosions that occur in the Sun's atmosphere.

The platform was built with the assistance of UK/US research teams.

The new pictures, which have been coloured and turned into movies, show the behaviour of sunspots, which are slightly cooler areas on the star's surface and marked by intense magnetic activity.

Hinode's orbit gives it a near-continuous view of the Sun Enlarge Image

In one shot a huge eruption is seen over a sunspot.

"We knew [Hinode could] observe the Sun clearer than any other 'scopes, however I never thought that we could see such high-resolution images," said Dr Yoshinori Suematsu, from the Hinode project office at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan.

"So I am very amazed; I am very much looking forward to analysing individual magnetic fields on the Sun's surface which had never been available to see."

The spacecraft was launched from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (Jaxa) Uchinoura Space Centre at Uchinoura Kagoshima in southern Japan on 22 September.

It makes continuous, simultaneous observations in the extreme-ultraviolet, X-ray and optical portions of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Scientists want to see precisely how changes in the magnetic field at the Sun's surface can spread through the layers of the solar atmosphere to produce, ultimately, a flare.

Sunspots just appear dark next to their even brighter surroundings

Flares are more than just spectacular - they can hurl particles and radiation at the Earth, disrupting communications and posing a hazard to astronauts.

Researchers want to understand, in particular, the key trigger mechanisms involved.

"We could successfully collect data about individual magnetic fields which could provide a clue to solve the mystery of eruption and temperature gaps," said Dr Suematsu.

Hinode is part of a fleet of spacecraft now dedicated to understanding the relationship between the Sun and the Earth.

Its launch was followed last month by that of Stereo, a US space agency (Nasa) mission that will make 3D observations of our star. Its focus will be coronal mass ejections, a related phenomenon to solar flares that also influence the "space weather" around the Earth.

 

This report is courtesy of BBC News.