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Three people were arrested Monday for selling fake Indian Premier League (IPL) tickets in the city, police said.

“Two men, Sarfaraz Ahmed and Mohammed Faiyaz, were picked up from College Street area by the city police’s detective department while another offender Mirajul Haq was held from Keshab Chandra Street locality,” a senior Kolkata Police officer said.

According to sources, Haq was the owner of a digital printing shop where Ahmed and Faiyaz had forged the IPL tickets.

Police said two more people were also held for interrogation.

“They made 1,000 fake digital printouts of IPL tickets. They also forged the IPL hologram. We have seized some tickets from them and are now trying to confiscate the rest of fake tickets,” the officer said.

Police said the three men were brought before a city court Monday and remanded in to 10 days of police custody.

High winds forced US space agency NASA to cancel the planned launch of a solar probe Wednesday.

The countdown for the launch of the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) was called off because the wind load was higher than allowed, NASA said. An earlier launch was also delayed due to bad weather, and a NASA meteorologist had cautioned Tuesday that high winds could threaten Wednesday’s launch.

The SDO is the “crown jewel” of a fleet of NASA satellites planned to collect more details about what’s going on underneath and above the surface of the sun, said Michael Luther, a NASA official overseeing the programme.

Under the Living With a Star programme, scientists said they hope to better predict the sun’s periodic release of billions of tons of matter that can endanger human life and health, corrode oil pipelines, disrupt communications and cause power surges.

From earth’s orbit, the SDO is to collect data over five years and download 1.5 terabytes every day, which will be managed by a special receiving centre on earth.

While various elements of the sun have been studied over the years, the SDO will be the first to present a “comprehensive view” of all the elements.

The solar probe will collect 60 images a minute with 10 times the resolution of high-definition television, 24 hours a day, measuring the sun’s extreme ultraviolet light and mapping its plasma flows and magnetic fields.

Dean Pesnell, a project scientist, said the programme was vital to figuring out how to predict solar disruptions.

“The sun’s magnetic fields are the equivalent of tectonic plates on earth,” said Alan Title, an astronomer on the project. When they shift, they are “capable of releasing massive amounts of energy.”

Under the normal 11-year cycle of solar disruptions, also known as sunspots, the SDO’s mission will coincide with the next storms in 2013 or 2014.

NASA planned to launch a solar probe Wednesday to help unlock more secrets about the sun, whose massive storms affect earth’s weather and can pose danger to earth dwellers.

The Solar Dynamic Observatory (SDO) is the “crown jewel” of a fleet of NASA satellites planned to collect more details about what’s going on underneath and above the surface of the sun, said Michael Luther, a NASA official who is overseeing the programme, in a webcast briefing.

Called the Living With a Star programme, scientists said they hope to better predict the sun’s periodic release of billions of tons of matter that can endanger human life and health, corrode oil pipelines, disrupt communications and cause power surges.

After an earlier launch was delayed due to bad weather, a NASA meteorologist said high winds could also threaten Wednesday’s launch.

From Earth’s orbit, the SDO will collect data over five years and download 1.5 terabytes every day – the equivalent of 500,000 songs onto an iPod, said Elizabeth Citrin, project manager.

A special receiving centre on earth will manage the data.

“This is way cool,” said Madhulika Guhathakurta, lead programme scientist for Living With a Star, holding up an iPhone.

While various elements of the sun have been studied over the years, the SDO will be the first to present a “comprehensive view” of all the elements, she said.

“This is the whole picture,” she said. It will show “what happens on the sun and what happens to us here.”

Indian scientist Rajendra Pachauri has refused to apologise for a mistake in a 2007 climate change report and hit out at his critics, declaring: “the larger picture is solid”.

“The larger picture is solid, it’s convincing and it’s extremely important. How can we lose sight of what climate change is going to do this planet? What it’s already done to the planet?” Pachauri was quoted saying Wednesday.

Pachauri, who has been targeted by some British papers for personal attacks based on his lifestyle, also rejected allegations that he wore expensive suits as “ridiculous”.

Pachauri, who chairs the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change (IPCC), said he will not resign over a mistake in a key climate change report that claimed Himalayan glaciers would melt away by 2035.

“You can’t expect me to be personally responsible for every word in a 3,000-page report,” the scientist told The Guardian in an interview published Wednesday.

“I don’t do too many populist things, that’s why I’m so unpopular with a certain section of society.”

He dismissed claims of a second error about Amazon destruction, saying they were the result of a “factory” of people “only there to create pinpricks and get attention”.

“The reality is that in several parts of the world, which will be influenced by the impacts of climate change, it’s an unfortunate fact that we just don’t have peer-reviewed material available.”

About a recent report in a British newspaper that he wore $1,000 (about Rs.45,000) suits and lived a lavish lifestyle, he said: “It’s ridiculous and it’s a bunch of lies.”

“There is a tailor who stitches all my suits for Rs 2,200,” he said, adding his salary was fixed in the range of Rs.190,000 (2,600 pounds) a month.

US space agency NASA Monday named five aerospace companies to come up with concepts for transporting humans into orbit under plans announced by the Obama administration to shift responsibility for transportation into space to private firms.

NASA awarded a total of $50 million to the companies to study human spaceflight alternatives after the retirement of the space shuttle later this year. The money comes from government stimulus funds authorized by Congress to jump-start the faltering US

economy last year.

Earlier Monday, the Obama administration said it hoped to axe existing plans for the Constellation programme, to create a new spacecraft and rockets to replace the shuttle and return to the moon. Instead it announced plans for commercial companies to ferry

astronauts into low-earth orbit.

The companies are Blue Origin, The Boeing Company, Paragon Space Development Corporation, Sierra Nevada Corporation and United Launch Alliance. The agreements are to develop ideas about carrying crew and investigating future commercial spaceflight.

After six years of unprecedented exploration, NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Spirit will no longer be a fully mobile robot.

NASA has designated the once-roving scientific explorer a stationary science platform after efforts during the past several months to free it from a sand trap were unsuccessful.

The venerable robot’s primary task in the next few weeks will be to position itself to combat the severe Martian winter.

If Spirit survives, it will continue conducting significant new scientific research from its final location. The rover’s mission could continue for several months to years.

“Spirit is not dead, it has just entered another phase of its long life,” said Doug McCuistion, director of the Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

“We told the world last year that attempts to set the beloved robot free may not be successful. It looks like Spirit’s current location on Mars will be its final resting place.”

Ten months ago, as Spirit was driving south beside the western edge of a low plateau called Home Plate, its wheels broke through the crusty surface and churned into soft sand hidden underneath.

After Spirit became embedded, the rover team crafted plans for trying to get the six-wheeled vehicle free using its five functioning wheels. The sixth wheel had quit working in 2006, limiting Spirit’s mobility.

The planning included experiments with a test rover in a sandbox at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, plus analysis, modelling and reviews. In November, another wheel quit working, making a difficult situation even worse.

Recent drives have yielded the best results since Spirit became embedded. However, the coming winter mandates a change in strategy.

It is mid-autumn at the solar-powered robot’s home on Mars. Winter will begin in May. Solar energy is declining and expected to become insufficient to power further driving by mid-February, said a NASA release.

The rover team plans to use those remaining potential drives for improving the rover’s tilt. Spirit currently tilts slightly toward the south. The winter sun stays in the northern sky, so decreasing the southward tilt would boost the amount of sunshine on the rover’s solar panels.

Canadian and US scientists want to block the sun to cool the earth and limit global warming.

Research and field-testing on what they call “geo-engineering” of the earth’s atmosphere to limit risk of climate change must begin quickly, say scientists from the University of Calgary in Canada, and the University of Michigan and Carnegie Mellon University in the US.

Studies on geo-engineering or solar radiation management (SRM) should be undertaken collectively with government funding, rather that unilaterally by nations, argue the scientists.

They say SRM would involve releasing mega-tonnes of light-scattering aerosol particles in the upper atmosphere to reduce earth’s absorption of solar energy, thereby cooling the planet.

Another technique would be to release particles of sea salt to make low-altitude clouds reflect more solar energy back into space, the scientists say.

“Collaborative and government-supported studies on solar-radiation management will help identify technologies to combat climate change,” writes David Keith of Calgary university in an article in Nature this week.

“Solar-radiation management may be the only human response that can fend off rapid and high-consequence climate change impacts. The risks of not doing research outweigh the risks of doing it,” says Keith, who has co-authored the opinion piece with Edward Parson at the University of Michigan and Granger Morgan at Carnegie Mellon University.

However, SRM should not take the place of deep cuts in industrial greenhouse gas emissions and taking action to adapt to climate change, say the scientists.

They say: “We must develop the capability to do SRM in a manner that complements such cuts, while managing the associated environmental and political risks.”

The scientists want governments worldwide to establish a global research budget for SRM. This budget should grow about $10 million to $1 billion a year between now and 2020, they say.

They say research results should be made available to every nation and risk assessments be as transparent and international as possible.

The occupants of the International Space Station (ISS) orbiting Earth, finally have the Internet access.

Astronaut Timothy Creamer, an inhabitant of the station, worked with flight controllers to establish access to the Internet since its arrival in the orbital complex last month. His efforts were rewarded on Friday.

He posted the first “tweet” directly from space. “Hello Twitterverse! Whatever he has written can be translated as “Hello universe Twitter!”.

Previously, the astronauts had to send Twitter messages via e-mail Control Center in Houston, who undertook to circulate on the Internet.

The ISS crew can now access the Internet through an indirect connection: a laptop computer in the station they can see another computer-based control center through which they can surf the Web

via ub-news.com

Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has lastly apologized for errors related to non-compliance procedures of IPCC’s work errors on the Himalayan glaciers.

The offending passage in the report of over 900 pages submitted by the Working Group II of IPCC, which assesses the vulnerability of natural systems and socio-economic climate change and adaptability is about the Himalayan glaciers, which depends on Asia for its water resources, the report states that they are retreating faster than anywhere else in the world and that if this pace continues, the probability is high that they disappear from 2035.

Researchers, including the American glaciologist Graham Cogley (Trent University), went up the wire until the source of the error. In a letter to the journal Science, Cogley and his colleagues explain that this passage does not rely on studies published in journals with referees but a report on the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), resuming his even unpublished data of Indian glaciologist Syed Iqbal Hasnain, the rate of retreat of Himalayan glaciers.

2350 or 2035?

As at the date of 2035, it would be a double shell. The complete sentence report, predicting a decline of “500,000 to 100,000 kms by 2035″ would be a bad copy and paste from one document referring to the retreat of all glaciers on Earth (the surface of the glaciers’ Himalaya is approximately 30,000 kms) by 2350, not 2035, Cogley said.

These conclusions have been questioned by some participants in the adoption of the report in 2007 but ultimately retained. Since, they were criticized by glaciologists and seemed definitively contradicted by a report issued last November by the Indian government glaciologist Vijay Kumar Raina. This work showed that the Himalayan glaciers did not shrink any faster than the rest of the world.

The recognition of the “blunder” should ultimately facilitate the work of scientists on this subject. The trouble of the IPCC is to discuss the conclusion. It is especially more data, glaciers in putting together many puzzles scientists. Understand why it melts, how fast, etc. ..

This case recalls that the process of proofreading and verification of sources placed on the IPCC editors must be strictly followed. However it does not call into question the major conclusion of the IPCC report of 2007 contained in the contribution of Working Group I on the scientific basis of climate change since the industrial revolution human activities have led to a rapid increase in gas concentrations greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which is the cause of global warming of the planet.

Via ub-news.com

The Indian space agency will launch a series of rockets from its two centres between Thursday and Sunday to study Friday’s solar eclipse and its aftereffects.

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is getting ready to send up a series of sounding rockets – rockets carrying instruments to measure the physical parameters of the upper atmosphere – from Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh and Thumba in Kerala to study the effects of the solar eclipse.

The solar eclipse Friday will be for a duration of 11.8 minutes. The sounding rockets will be fired before and after.

“On Jan 15 and 17, Rohini 560 (RH 560) sounding rockets will be launched in a parabolic flight path to measure various atmospheric and ionospheric parameters connected with the solar eclipse,” Satish Dhawan Space Centre Associate Director M.Y.S. Prasad told IANS from Sriharikota.

The nine-metre RH 560 rockets weigh 1.5 tonnes and carry a 100-kg payload of instruments each. The two-stage rocket will take the instruments 500 km above the earth’s surface.

From Sriharikota, there will be one launch each on Friday and Sunday.

Most of the rockets will be launched from ISRO’s Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station (TERLS) in Kerala.

According to ISRO officials, four rockets will be launched Thursday from TERLS and five Friday.

The rockets fired from TERLS are smaller than RH 560. They will reach 75 to 120 km above the earth.

A similar coordinated experiment was conducted in 1980 and since then ISRO has set up several facilities to study the data.