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Archive - 2011
2011-11-11 remembers end of WWI at 11th hour on 11th day of 11th month of 1918, left 9 million soldiers dead, 21 million wounded
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By the end of autumn 1918, the alliance of the Central Powers was unraveling in its war effort against the better supplied and coordinated Allied powers. Facing exhausted resources on the battlefield, turmoil on the home front and the surrender of its weaker allies, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire, Germany was finally forced to seek an armistice with the Allies in the early days of November 1918. On November 7, the German chancellor, Prince Max von Baden, sent delegates to Compiegne, France, to negotiate the agreement; it was signed at 5:10 a.m. on the morning of November 11. read more »
First space dockings: US Gemini 8, March 16, 1966; Russia Cosmos 186, Oct. 30, 1967; China Shenzhou 8, Nov. 4, 2011
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[2 November 2011] The unmanned Shenzhou 8 craft, launched earlier this week, made contact with the Tiangong-1 space lab at 1729 GMT. The union occurred over China itself.
Being able to dock two space vehicles together is a necessary capability for China if it wants to start building a space station towards the decade's end.
Although no astronauts were in the Shenzhou craft this time, future missions will carry people.
Tuesday's procedure (Beijing time 0029, Thursday) took place at an altitude of about 340km. It was automated but overseen on the ground at the Beijing Aerospace Flight Control Centre. read more »
CIWEM Environmental Photo of the Year 2011 Winner: two children living on very edge of survival, searching through junkyard
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This powerful image of two vulnerable children living on what seems like the very edge of survival has won Chan Kwok Hung from Hong Kong the title of Environmental Photographer of the Year 2011.
The photographer says: "The photo was taken in Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal and is of two children who lived nearby to the junkyard with their grandmother. Every day they searched the junkyard for something useful that they can resell for money so they can buy food. If they don't find anything their grandmother blamed them seriously. Unfortunately, they had found nothing for a few days, the little boy felt very hungry. I gave them some money and a biscuit after taking this photo. But who knows who will help them afterwards."
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Photo Gallery: CIWEM Environmental Photographer of the Year 2011 award winners
Photos courtesy Chan Kwok Hung / EPOTY.ORG / Barcroft Media
Photos of daring rescue: tiny lion cub falls off precipice in Kenya, mother lioness inches down cliff and saves her son
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Clinging on for dear life to the side of a vertical cliff, the tiny lion cub cries out pitifully for help.
His mother arrives at the edge of the precipice with three other lionesses and a male. The females start to clamber down together but turn back daunted by the sheer drop.
Eventually one single factor determines which of them will risk her life to save the youngster - motherly love.
Slowly, agonisingly, the big cat edges her way down towards her terrified son, using her powerful claws to grip the crumbling cliff side.
One slip from her and both animals could end up dead at the bottom of the ravine. read more »
World population to reach 7billion in few days (increased 1billion in 12yrs), world resources under more strain than ever before
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Room for one more? World population to reach 7 BILLION in next few days
Children most likely to be born in Asia-Pacific region
Fears over pressure on food supply and medical care
The world's population looks set to smash through the seven billion barrier in the next few days, according to the United Nations.
It comes just 12 years since the total reached six billion - with official estimates saying the figure will top eight billion in 2025 and 10 billion before the end of the century. read more »
Youngest Planet: newborn gas giant may be up to six times the mass of Jupiter, orbiting a sunlike star 450 light-years away
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Youngest Planet Picture: Gas Giant Seen in Throes of Creation... Baby world likely "deep red" to human eyes due to heat of formation.
A new picture of a Jupiter-like world swaddled in gas and dust is a direct image of what may be the youngest planet yet seen, astronomers report.
The newborn gas giant, dubbed LkCa 15b, orbits a sunlike star 450 light-years away in the northern constellation Taurus. The planet orbits inside a disk of material around the star that's no more than two million years old. By contrast, astronomers estimate our solar system is 4.6 billion years old.
The big baby planet may be up to six times the mass of Jupiter, according to theory-based calculations, and it appears to orbit 11 times farther from its parent star than Earth does from our sun.
The new picture was made in near-infrared light, but "the planet would probably appear a deep red to our eye, since it's still glowing from the heat of being formed," said Adam Kraus, lead study author and an astronomer at the University of Hawaii.
Separating Light From Light
Kraus and colleagues zeroed in on the young star based on previous observations that showed a conspicuous gap in the star's surrounding debris disk.
Such gaps are thought to be telltale signs that massive, newly formed planets are circling inside the disks—a protoplanet's gravity would clear away a wide swath of gas and dust as it accumulates matter. read more »
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