Is NASA Censoring Comet-Solar Impact Data?

 Analysis, News, Opinions  2 Responses »
Mar 132010
 

A comet-like body of significant brilliance apparently struck the sun yesterday.  We alerted our readers to the impending impact several hours before it occurred.

As the body, assumed to be a Kreutz sungrazer comet, plunged towards the sun, most observers switched to the STEREO Ahead COR1 and STEREO Ahead COR2 satellite imagers.

NASA’s STEREO consists of two virtually identical observatories orbiting the sun in different positions, one leading the earth in its orbit and one trailing our planet, to provide stereoscopic views of solar weather. NASA launched STEREO so that it can keep an eye on solar weather, particularly Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs), which have known destructive potential for orbiting satellites and even earthbound electrical systems.

The COR1 imagers were desirable for watching the comet strike because they have relatively small occlusion disks allowing observation of the inbound body to within about 150,000 miles of the turbulent solar “surface” composed of hot plasma. Images are normally uploaded to NASA’s STEREO website at five minute intervals and can be stitched together to construct a movie of solar events.

For example, to see the last movie from STEREO Ahead COR1, visit http://stereo-ssc.nascom.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/images, select “Ahead COR1”, boost the resolution to 512×512, click “Slideshow” and then depress the “Search” button. Leaving the dates blank will pull up the latest images. Using the date range 20100310 – 20100313 will provide all recorded images for the two impacts that occurred yesterday.

Indeed, as the doomed comet hurtled towards its fiery fate, Ahead COR1 provided several unmatched images until NASA stopped updating Ahead COR1 data immediately after impact where a bright streak can be seen leaving the sun at an odd angle. In fact, the update frequency of Ahead COR1 had already been throttled down from once every five minutes to once every hour with an eight hour gap preceding the appearance of the comet in the imager. The following sequence of photographs constitute those most temporally local to the comet impact event.

first comet image

This is the first Ahead COR1 image of the comet.

t-minus-2 frames to impact

The last image of the comet

This is the last image of the comet before it passes behind the occulter.

The comet has disappeared

The comet has disappeared behind the occulter in this frame.

A strange streak can be seen leaving the sun

A strange, bright streak can be seen apparently emanating from the sun. This is the last hourly update.

What is the cause of the lost data? Is it yet another demonstration of government incompetence? Or is this a continuing example of our government deciding to play our nanny, spoon-feeding us only the information they think we can handle?

In either case, NASA, if the data is available then make it available.  And next time don’t drop the ball again.

Will Construction of the Third Temple Start March 16th?

 Analysis, News  Comments Off on Will Construction of the Third Temple Start March 16th?
Mar 032010
 

As unlikely as it might seem, there is evidence to believe that construction of the Third Temple of Jerusalem will begin March 16th, only two weeks away.  The First Temple was built by King Solomon and destroyed by the Babylonians around 587 BC.  The Second Temple of Jerusalem was built in 516 BC, renovated by Herod around 20 BC and destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD.

For some Christian Dispensationalists like Hal Lindsey and Tim LaHaye, construction of the Third Temple coincides with the appearance of the Antichrist.

During the 1700s, a highly prominent Jewish Kabbalist prophet predicted that the Hurva Synagogue, originally constructed during his lifetime, would be destroyed and rebuilt twice.  The rabbi, Vilna Gaon, further prophesied that upon completion of the third synagogue, construction of the Third Temple would begin.

Disconcertingly, the Hurva Synagogue was, in fact, destroyed twice and the third synagogue is scheduled to be finished on March 15th of this year.  If Vilna Gaon is correct, work on the Third Temple will commence the following day, March 16th.

Vilna Gaon’s prophesy was not lost on Jewish media, with several Israeli media organs bringing it to light recently.

More evidence comes from our Georgia Guidestones research.  We have conclusively linked that monument with the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world.  The Burj Khalifa is located in Dubai and was opened on January 4th of this year, nearly thirty years after the Georgia Guidestones monument was completed.  We also uncovered evidence tying media mogul Ted Turner with building of the Georgia Guidestones.  This evidence was discussed during several of my recent radio interviews, the latest of which can be found here.

The Georgia Guidestones monument was completed on March 22, 1980.  71 days later, Ted Turner’s CNN started broadcasting.

71 days after the January 4th opening of the Burj Khalifa, formerly called the Burj Dubai, is March 16th, the exact date Vilna Gaon prophesied that work on the Third Temple would begin.

Discounting the mystical aspects of Vilna Gaon’s prediction, it is important to recognize that he was a very influential Kabbalist figure.  Kabbalist teachings form the heart of Freemasonic, Theosophical and New Age belief systems, the inspirational forces behind the Georgia Guidestones and the Burj Khalifa.  The same Luciferian cult who erected the Georgia Guidestones and the Burj Khalifa will likely feel motivated to fulfill Vilna Gaon’s prophesy.  Moreover, with the Burj Khalifa signifying a new Tower of Babel, erecting the Third Temple harmonically follows in a sinister plan to hearken in their false messiah, the Antichrist.

The pop singer Madonna, a high profile adherent of a New Age variation of Kabbalah, recently sought to purchase a home in Israel overlooking the Sea of Galilee so that she could witness the arrival of her Kabbalist messiah.

Apple iPad: It might be worse than you think

 Analysis  2 Responses »
Jan 282010
 

Apple introduced its greatly anticipated tablet computer, the iPad, yesterday.  It was impossible for the product to meet the unbelievable hype surrounding the computer’s debut, but even taking this into account, the reaction to the device, which will not ship for months, has been mostly negative.  Critics point out the iPad’s lack of multitasking, the low resolution XGA 4:3 screen, the clunky aesthetics (very unusual for Jobs-ian Apple), the lack of standard ports, no support for Adobe Flash, the high price compared with more capable netbooks and the awkward “iPad” moniker.

But few if any observers have mentioned that the iPad is probably very underpowered compared with much cheaper netbooks.

The Apple iPad uses a custom, 1GHz Apple A4 system-on-chip (SoC).  While details are lacking, the microprocessor is probably either the ARM Cortex-A8 (a superscalar design a little like the Intel Atom, but sans HyperThreading) or Cortex-A9 (an out-of-order superscalar design superficially analogous to the VIA Nano).  If that is the case, this explains why Apple chose to forgo multitasking because ARM chips are very slow.

ARM has been very successful at avoiding direct, objective performance comparisons of their chips with x86 counterparts.  However, I’ve been able to test an 800MHz ARM Cortex-A8 running Ubuntu Linux and compare its results to an 800MHz AMD Mobile Athlon and a VIA Nano L3050 downclocked to 800MHz.  The x86 systems ran the same version of Ubuntu Linux as the ARM box.

While the Nano and the Athlon are close to performance parity with each other, the ARM Cortex-A8 is less than one-half as fast as either x86 chip.  Moreover, the ARM CPU is much weaker on floating point calculations, providing lower that 25% of the performance of either x86 chip.

Worse, the ARM system frequently becomes unresponsive for several seconds at a time.  And even though I only ran the ARM system at 16-bit XGA resolution while the x86 systems ran at 24-bit 1080p resolutions, both x86 systems trounced the video performance of the ARM box.

After using the ARM Cortex-A8 Ubuntu system, it is safe to say that people migrating from x86 netbooks (which typically use 1.3-1.6GHz x86 processors) — or, heaven forbid, thin-and-light notebooks — will be very disappointed with the performance compromises they will encounter from stepping down to ARM.

So if Apple is deploying a 1GHz ARM Cortex-A8 in the iPad, overall performance will be worse than a 500MHz x86 chip — sometimes much worse.  And that level of performance won’t make many people happy.  For Apple’s sake, if the company is indeed using an ARM design in its iPad, let’s hope that they at least chose a multi-core Cortex-A9.  BSN* confidently claims that this is indeed the case.

I’m trying to get my hands on an ARM Cortex-A9 system.  The Cortex-A9 will boost performance over the A8 because it adds an Out-of-Order engine which reduces pipeline stalls.  However, I expect a 1GHz Cortex-A9 to be no faster than a 600-650MHz x86 counterpart at best.

These results don’t surprise me because several years ago when I was working at Centaur I compared the performance of an Intel XScale chip against a VIA C7.  The C7 creamed the XScale even though the ARM chip ran at a slightly higher clock speed.

I’m convinced Intel sold off XScale to Marvell because the chipmaker recognized that this performance deficit would be untenable once ARM chips inevitably began competing with x86 designs.  Of course, Intel’s response was to create the highly successful Atom.

I’m trying to get permission to publish the ARM Cortex-A8 results.  Check back in a few days if you are interested.

ARM CPUs certainly have their strengths, but raw performance is not one of them.  They will face very stiff competition as they go head-to-head with much more powerful x86 designs.

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