by tyler | Apr 13, 2023 | CNN, world
The European Space Agency is about to send a spacecraft to explore Jupiter and three of its largest and most intriguing moons.
The Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer mission, or Juice, was expected to lift off Thursday at 8:15 a.m. ET aboard an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. But a lightning risk postponed the launch, which has been rescheduled for Friday at 8:14 a.m. ET.
Watch the launch live on ESA’s website or YouTube channel.
Weather can often cause launch delays and postponements. Specific weather criteria must be met in order for rockets to safely lift off. The James Webb Space Telescope, which launched aboard an Ariane 5 from the same location in December 2021, also faced similar delays due to adverse weather conditions around Kourou.
Once launched, the spacecraft will separate from the Ariane 5 launcher after 28 minutes. Over the course of the next 17 days, Juice will deploy its solar arrays, antennas and other instruments, followed by three months of testing and preparing the instruments.
Juice will take eight years to reach Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system. During its lengthy cruise, the spacecraft will utilize some gravitational slingshots as it flies by Earth, our moon and Venus to help with the journey.
INTERACTIVE: The search for life in our solar system
Once Juice arrives at Jupiter in July 2031, the spacecraft will spend about three and a half years orbiting the gas giant and conducting flybys of three of its moons: Ganymede, Callisto and Europa. Toward the end of the mission, Juice will focus solely on orbiting Ganymede, making it the first spacecraft to ever orbit a moon in the outer solar system.
Ganymede, Callisto and Europa are ice-covered worlds that may contain subsurface oceans that are potentially habitable for life.
Meanwhile, NASA’s Europa Clipper mission, launching in 2024, is expected to reach Jupiter in April 2030 and conduct nearly 50 flybys of Europa, eventually reaching just 16 miles (25 kilometers) above the moon’s surface.
Together, the two missions could unlock some of the biggest mysteries about Jupiter and its moons.
Exploration of Jupiter began with NASA’s Pioneer and Voyager missions in the 1970s, followed by dedicated Jupiter missions like Galileo and the Juno probe. Juno has been orbiting Jupiter and flying by some of its moons since 2016.
The Juice mission has five main objectives, including using its powerful suite of 10 instruments to characterize the three icy moons and determine whether they harbor oceans, uncover what makes Ganymede so unique and determine if the moons are potentially habitable for life.
Planetary scientists want to know how deep the oceans are, if they contain salty or fresh water and how that water interacts with the ice shell of each moon. Ganymede, Callisto and Europa also have different surfaces. Juice could reveal what kind of activity has caused some of them to look dark and cratered or paler and grooved.
Ganymede is the largest moon in the solar system, larger than Pluto and Mercury, and it’s the only one that has a magnetic field similar to Earth. Juice’s instruments can reveal the moon’s rotation, gravity, shape, interior structure and composition and peer through its icy crust using radar.
Juice will also conduct a detailed analysis of Jupiter to determine how the complex magnetic and radiation environment around this massive planet shaped its moons, as well as how Jupiter formed in the first place. Understanding more of Jupiter’s origin story can help scientists apply those findings to Jupiter-like planets found outside of our solar system.
Jupiter’s magnetic field is 20 times stronger than Earth’s and it has a harsh radiation environment, both of which impact its moons. The Juice mission was designed to unravel what takes place as Jupiter interacts with its moons, including auroras, hot spots, radio emissions and waves of charged particles.
Although the three moons are encased in thick ice shells, interior heating could be taking place at each moon’s core — and that warmth could make the interior oceans possible habitats for past or existing life.
Juice can search the moons for evidence of the building blocks of life, including elements like carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, iron and magnesium.
Previous missions like Galileo and Cassini, which visited Saturn and its moons, confirmed that liquid water can be found on planets and moons far away from the sun — and that water is likely to exist under the surface.
“I think Juice is a confirmation that our understanding of where to search for potential habitability has changed in the last 20 years,” said Michele Dougherty, Royal Society research professor at Imperial College London and principal investigator of Juice’s magnetometer.
Life as we understand it on Earth requires liquid water, a heat source and organic material — “and then you need those first three ingredients to be stable enough over a long enough period of time that something can actually happen,” Dougherty said.
“With Juice, we want to confirm there’s liquid water in these moons, confirm their heat sources. Other instruments will be able to remotely sense whether there’s organic material on the surface as well. And so it’s putting all of those ingredients together,” she said.
Juice’s truck-size spacecraft has been designed to survive a long journey to Jupiter — and it has to survive the extremes of the gas giant’s environment once it arrives. Two cross-shaped solar arrays will provide the spacecraft with power and lead-lined vaults protect its most sensitive electronics.
The ESA-led mission includes contributions from NASA and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency. Testing and modeling of Jupiter’s radiation belts allowed engineers to prepare for what Juice will encounter.
“A key achievement of this model for us was to show that what at first seemed to be a dangerous place was not completely out of reach,” said Christian Erd, Juice spacecraft and system manager, in a statement. “Around three and a half years at Jupiter will involve the equivalent radiation exposure of a telecommunications satellite in geostationary Earth orbit for 20 years — which we have plenty of experience in managing.”
In order to help Juice survive, its trajectory was designed to fly past Callisto 21 times but only swing by Europa twice. Europa is the closest to Jupiter and sits well within its radiation halo. Just two orbits of the moon will cause the spacecraft to experience a third of its overall radiation exposure.
Some of Juice’s instruments are shielded, while others will be exposed to the elements to probe the atmospheres of Jupiter and its moons. Multiple imagers and sensors will capture and send back data across different wavelengths of light.
Given the eventual distance between the spacecraft and Earth, it will take 45 minutes to send a one-way signal to Juice. But that’s nothing compared to the years-long wait for Juice to arrive at Jupiter.
Scientists are already anticipating the unique data Juice will return.
“I think the most critical time is the first flyby we have of Ganymede,” Dougherty said. “The first one or two flybys is when we are going to confirm the existence of an ocean.”
by tyler | Apr 12, 2023 | CNN, world
Here is a look at the life of Elon Musk, the billionaire entrepreneur behind Tesla and SpaceX.
Birth date: June 28, 1971
Birth place: Pretoria, South Africa
Birth name: Elon Reeve Musk
Father: Errol Musk, engineer
Mother: Maye (Haldeman) Musk, nutritionist and model
Marriages: Talulah Riley (2013-2016, divorced for the second time), (2010-2012, divorced for the first time); Justine Wilson (2000-2008, divorced)
Children: with Justine Wilson: Nevada, died at 10 weeks; twins Griffin and Xavier; triplets Damian, Saxon and Kai; with Grimes: X Æ A-Xii and Exa Dark Sideræl; with Shivon Zilis: twins (names unknown publicly)
Education: Attended Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, 1990-1992; University of Pennsylvania, B.S. in economics and B.A. in physics, 1995; briefly attended Stanford University in 1995
CEO and lead designer of Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX), a commercial space exploration company.
CEO and product architect of electric automaker Tesla Motors.
Chairman of Musk Foundation, an organization supporting research on renewable energy, human space exploration and pediatrics.
At age 12, sold his code for a video game called “Blastar” to a computer magazine for $500.
Film director Jon Favreau has said Musk helped inspire the on-screen version of genius billionaire Tony Stark in the “Iron Man” films.
1995 – Musk co-founds Zip2 Corp., a company that develops online city guides.
1999 – Sells Zip2 to Compaq for $307 million.
March 1999 – Co-founds X.com, an online banking and financial services company.
March 2000 – X.com merges with Confinity and is renamed PayPal in 2001.
June 2002 – Musk founds SpaceX, with the intention of decreasing the cost and increasing the accessibility of space travel.
October 2002 – PayPal is acquired by eBay in a $1.5 billion deal. Musk pockets $165 million.
February 2004 – Musk joins Tesla as chairman of the board and oversees the initial round of investment funding.
October 2008 – Becomes CEO and product architect of Tesla.
December 8, 2010 – The Dragon, an unmanned craft developed by SpaceX, splashes down in the Pacific Ocean. The Dragon is the first commercial spacecraft by a privately owned company to orbit the Earth and return.
May 25, 2012 – The Dragon makes history as the first private capsule to connect to the International Space Station (ISS).
May 31, 2012 – After delivering more than 1,000 pounds of cargo, including food, clothing, computer equipment and supplies for science experiments to the ISS, the Dragon splashes down about 560 miles off Baja, California. Musk declares the flight a “grand slam.” It is the first commercial mission completed by a privately-owned spacecraft.
December 11, 2015 – Announces plans to help fund a non-profit artificial intelligence research center called OpenAI.
April 8, 2016 – For the first time, SpaceX lands its Falcon 9 rocket on a drone ship.
March 30, 2017 – SpaceX launches a used rocket. This is the first time in the history of spaceflight that the same rocket has been used on two separate missions to orbit.
June 1, 2017 – Quits two of President Donald Trump’s business advisory councils after the president announces he will pull the United States out of the historic Paris climate agreement. Musk tweets, “Am departing presidential councils. Climate change is real. Leaving Paris is not good for America or the world.”
February 6, 2018 – SpaceX launches Falcon Heavy, the world’s most powerful operational rocket. The rocket carries a red Tesla roadster into space, replete with a fake astronaut in the driver’s seat.
August 7, 2018 – Musk announces, via Twitter, that he is considering taking Tesla private. He claims that funding has been secured.
August 10, 2018 – Two shareholders file lawsuits accusing Tesla and Musk of violating federal securities law by allegedly making false statements to boost the company’s stock price. Musk’s tweet about securing funding to take Tesla private on August 7 boosted Tesla’s stock price immediately. But in the days following, it lost most of those gains, reacting, at least in part, to reports from Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal that the federal Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating Musk’s claim.
August 24, 2018 – In a statement posted on the Tesla website, Musk says he intends to keep the company public after consulting with the board of directors.
September 17, 2018 – Vernon Unsworth, the caver who helped rescue 12 boys and their soccer coach from a flooded cave in Thailand in July, files a defamation lawsuit against Musk in a federal court in California. Musk grew angry with Unsworth after the caver criticized Musk’s attempts to help with the Thai cave rescue effort by building a miniature submarine. On Twitter, Musk made the unfounded claim that Unsworth was a “pedo” or pedophile. Musk doubled down on his claim in other tweets before deleting them. On December 6, 2019, a jury decides that Musk did not defame Unsworth.
September 18, 2018 – Tesla confirms that the Justice Department is investigating whether comments made by Musk in August about taking the company private were illegal.
September 27, 2018 – The Securities and Exchange Commission sues Musk for making “false and misleading” statements to Tesla investors via Twitter on August 7. The SEC asks that Musk be prevented from serving as an officer or a director of a public company.
September 29, 2018 – Musk agrees to a settlement over fraud charges with the SEC. Under the terms of the settlement, Musk will step down as chairman of Tesla and pay a $20 million fine. Tesla also agrees to pay a $20 million fine, appoint two new independent directors and establish a committee to oversee Musk’s communications.
December 18, 2018 – Demonstrates his Boring Company’s first tunnel, built as an experiment in underground transportation with the aim of providing alternative routes to traffic-jammed streets.
February 25, 2019 – After Musk tweets about the number of cars he anticipates Tesla will produce in 2019, the SEC asks a federal judge to hold him in contempt of court for violating the terms of the settlement. The agreement bars Musk from posting company info on social media without pre-approval.
March 7, 2019 – Bloomberg reports that Musk’s Department of Defense security clearance is under review. He resubmitted his application after he smoked marijuana during a live podcast interview in September 2018.
April 26, 2019 – Musk reaches a settlement with the SEC to resolve the case involving the 2018 tweet about taking Tesla private at $420 a share. According to the agreement, Musk cannot tweet about some topics without obtaining pre-approval from an experienced securities attorney.
September 28, 2019 – Musk reveals a prototype of Starship, the rocket and spacecraft at the center of his plan to colonize Mars. During an hour-long presentation about the next steps, he says the first passengers could board Starship and travel to orbit within a year.
March 23, 2020 – California Governor Gavin Newsom announces that Musk had acquired 1,000 ventilators and would be distributing them to help California hospitals treating patients infected with the coronavirus. Weeks later, Newsom’s Office of Emergency Services tells CNN that the governor’s office had been speaking to hospitals in the state every day and to date had “not heard of any hospital system that has received a ventilator directly from Tesla or Musk.” In a series of tweets, Musk asked Newsom to “please fix this understanding” and included a partial list of hospitals he said had been sent ventilators.
April 29, 2020 – After tweeting about coronavirus for months, Musk calls stay-at-home orders meant to slow the coronavirus pandemic “fascist” and likens them to “forcibly imprisoning people in their homes.”
May 4, 2020 – Musk announces the birth of his son, X Æ A-12 Musk, with singer Grimes.
May 9, 2020 – Tesla files suit against Alameda County, California after local officials there refused to let the company reopen its Fremont factory. Via social media, Musk threatens to move the Tesla’s headquarters out of California, to a state where shelter-in-place rules are less restrictive.
May 24, 2020 – Grimes announces she and Musk have changed their son’s name to X Æ A-Xii in an Instagram post.
May 30, 2020 – SpaceX and NASA launches Falcon 9, the first launch from US soil since 2011.
August 28, 2020 – Musk reveals a protype of an implantable chip for the brain in a pig test subject. The implant from his company, Neuralink, would connect wirelessly to a small, behind-the-ear receiver that could communicate with a computer.
January 11, 2021 – In a YouTube video, it is announced that Musk has donated $5 million to the online learning organization Khan Academy.
May 8, 2021 – Musk hosts “Saturday Night Live.”
December 13, 2021 – Time magazine names Musk as Person of the Year.
March 10, 2022 – In an interview with Vanity Fair, Grimes reveals she and Musk welcomed their second child together, a daughter named Exa Dark Sideræl Musk.
April 4, 2022 – Twitter says in a filing that Musk has bought 9.2% of its shares. The following day, Twitter says in a regulatory filing that it plans to appoint Musk to its board for a term that ends in 2024. As part of the deal, Musk agrees not to acquire more than 14.9% of the company’s shares while he remains on the board. On April 10, it is announced that Musk has decided not to join the board.
April 13, 2022 – An SEC filing shows that Musk has made an offer to purchase Twitter.
April 25, 2022 – Twitter agrees to sell itself to Musk in a deal valued at around $44 billion. Less than a month later, Musk announces via Twitter that the deal is temporarily on hold. In his tweet, Musk links to a Reuters report about Twitter’s most recent quarterly disclosure regarding its spam and fake account problem.
July 8, 2022 – In an SEC filing, Musk moves to terminate his deal to buy Twitter because he believes the company is “in material breach of multiple provisions” of the original agreement.
July 12, 2022 – Twitter files a lawsuit against Musk in an effort to force him to follow through with his deal to buy the company.
October 27, 2022 – Musk officially completes his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter. The deal’s closing averts a looming legal battle if the acquisition did not close by 5 p.m. ET Friday, October 28.
November 16, 2022 – Musk testifies in his own defense in a Tesla shareholder lawsuit examining the massive compensation package that helped make him the world’s richest person. The lawsuit, filed by plaintiff Richard J. Tornetta in Delaware’s Chancery Court, alleges that Musk’s huge 2018 pay package was unjust enrichment, and alleges the board failed to meet its legal duty to act in the best interest of Tesla shareholders. Tesla said at the time it could be worth nearly $56 billion, and the net value today is $50.9 billion.
April 2023 – Twitter adds “Government-funded Media” labels to the Twitter accounts for BBC, PBS, and Voice of America. Twitter initially adds a “state-affiliated” label for NPR but switches it to “Government-funded” following an email exchange between Musk and NPR.
by tyler | Apr 12, 2023 | CNN, world
Here’s a look at the Vatican, also known as the Holy See, the spiritual and governing center of the Roman Catholic Church
The full name of the country is State of Vatican City.
It stands on Vatican Hill in northwestern Rome, Italy west of the Tiber River. It is comprised of roughly 100 acres.
Tall stone walls surround most of Vatican City.
Historical documentation says that St. Peter was crucified at or near the Neronian Gardens on Vatican hill and buried at the foot of the hill directly under where the main altar of St. Peter’s Basilica now stands. Excavations at the basilica between 1940 and 1957 located the tomb believed to be St. Peter’s.
Vatican City has its own pharmacy, post office, telephone system and media outlets. The population is 1,000 (2022 est.)
The Vatican is an absolute monarchy. Full legislative, judicial and executive authority resides with the pope.
The world’s second-largest Christian church after the Yamoussoukro Basilica in Cote d’Ivoire. St. Peter’s is not a cathedral, which is a bishop’s principal church. The pope is the bishop of Rome, and his cathedral church is in Rome.
Built on the foundation of the first St. Peter’s, the new basilica took 120 years to complete. Masonry, sculpture, painting and mosaic work continued for nearly 200 years.
The dome of the basilica was designed by Michelangelo.
The church is shaped like a cross and is almost 650 feet long.
In the grottoes, beneath the basilica, is a papal burial chamber.
The Vatican Palaces consist of several connected buildings with over 1,000 rooms. Within the palaces there are apartments, chapels, museums, meeting rooms and government offices.
The Palace of Sixtus V is the pope’s residence.
The Vatican museums, archive, library, gardens and other offices make up the remainder of the palaces.
A separate structure from the basilica, designed for the papal court, was commissioned by Pope Sixtus IV della Rovere.
It is the site of the papal conclave and where elections for the new pope are held.
It is one of the world’s most famous galleries of biblical art with the ceiling by Michelangelo, tapestries by Raphael and Rosselli’s Last Supper.
320s – Construction begins on the first St. Peter’s, by order of Constantine the Great.
1473-1481 – The Sistine Chapel is constructed.
April 18, 1506 – Pope Nicholas V begins rebuilding and expanding St. Peter’s Basilica.
1508-1512 – Michelangelo paints the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
February 11, 1929 – The signing of the Lateran Pacts between the Holy See and Italy establishes Vatican City State, the smallest independent nation in the world, covering only 109 acres.
June 7, 1929 – The Treaty of the Lateran is ratified. Pope Pius XI gives up all claims to the Papal States, and Italy agrees to the establishment of the independent State of Vatican City.
October 11, 1962-November 21, 1964 – The 21st Ecumenical Council of the Roman Catholic Church, known as Vatican II, is held under orders of Pope John XXIII. The council included 2,700 clergymen from all walks of Christiandom looking to improve relations with the Catholic Church. By the end of the council there is a new pope, Paul VI, a new constitution for the Church and new reforms.
June 2011 – Pope Benedict XVI sends the first Vatican tweet announcing the opening of a news site, “Dear Friends, I just launched News.va Praised be our Lord Jesus Christ! With my prayers and blessings, Benedictus XVI.”
October 6, 2012 – The pope’s former butler Paolo Gabriele is convicted of aggravated theft for leaking confidential papal documents and sentenced to 18 months in prison. In December 2012, Gabriele is pardoned by the pope and released to his family.
November 10, 2012 – Claudio Sciarpelletti, a computer technician, receives a two-month suspended sentence for leaking Vatican secrets to the media.
May 2013 – Missio, a smartphone app, is launched by Pope Francis. The app provides Catholic news from the Vatican and around the world.
November 24, 2013 – The Vatican exhibits the bones of a man long believed to be St. Peter, one of the founding fathers of the Christian church, for the first time.
January 10, 2019 – The Holy See launches its official athletics team after receiving the blessing of the Italian Olympic Committee. Among the first members of the Vatican Athletics track team are nuns, priests, Swiss Guards, museum workers, carpenters and maintenance workers.
March 2, 2020 – The Vatican opens its secret archives containing World War II-era documents from the controversial papacy of Pope Pius XII.
December 24, 2020 – Due to Covid-19 restrictions, the pope holds a sparsely attended Christmas Eve mass with only 200 people in attendance, including 30 cardinals. The Christmas Eve mass, which usually attracts up to 10,000 people, is a landmark event in Vatican City.
July 3, 2021 – The Vatican releases a statement saying that it has indicted 10 people, including an Italian cardinal, for several alleged financial crimes including extortion, corruption, fraud, forgery, embezzlement and abuse of power. The investigation, which started in July 2019, was carried out by the Vatican in cooperation with Italian authorities and revealed “a vast network of ties between financial market operators who generated substantial losses for the Vatican finances.”
by tyler | Apr 12, 2023 | CNN, world
Here is a look at the life of his Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, Buddhist spiritual leader of the people of Tibet.
Birth date: July 6, 1935
Birth place: Taktser, Amdo, Eastern Tibet
Birth name: Lhamo Dhondup
Father: Choekyong Tsering
Mother: Dekyi Tsering
Education: Geshe Lharampa Degree (Doctorate of Buddhist Philosophy), 1959
The Dalai Lamas are considered the manifestations of the Bodhisattva (Buddha) of Compassion, who chose to reincarnate to serve the people.
This Dalai Lama, the 14th Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatsois, is the 74th manifestation of Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva, the enlightened Buddha of compassion.
Tibetans normally refer to His Holiness as Yeshe Norbu, the Wishfulfilling Gem, or simply Kundun – The Presence.
Has traveled to numerous countries with a message of religious and cultural tolerance and peace.
Awarded a Nobel Peace Prize.
1938 – Is taken from his family in Taktser to the Kumbum monastery after a delegation of monks looking for the new Dalai Lama find him.
February 22, 1940 – Enthronement ceremony takes place in Lhasa, Tibet. His birth name is forfeited and he assumes the name Jetsun Jamphel Ngawang Lobsang Yeshe Tenzin Gyatso.
November 8, 1950 – Chinese soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army invade Tibet at Lhasa.
November 17, 1950 – The Dalai Lama assumes full political power as Tibetan Head of State and Government ahead of schedule. Investiture is moved up from his 18th birthday as a result of China’s invasion of Tibet.
1954-1959 – Participates in unsuccessful peace talks in Beijing with Chinese leaders including Mao Tse-Tung, Chou En-lai and Deng Xiaoping. In 1959, the talks end when the Chinese army forces 80,000 Tibetan refugees into exile.
March 17, 1959 – Goes into exile; leaves Lhasa for India dressed as a soldier.
April 21, 1959 – Officially takes up residence in exile in Mussoorie, India.
1960 – Dharamsala, India, becomes home to the Dalai Lama and headquarters of the government-in-exile of Tibet.
1963 – Enacts a new Tibetan democratic constitution based on Buddhist principles and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
September 30, 1973 – Meets with Pope Paul VI at the Vatican, the first ever meeting of a pope and a spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists.
May 1977 – The Chinese government makes the Dalai Lama a conditional offer, the opportunity to return to Tibet after acceptance of Chinese rule over Tibet. The offer is rejected.
August 3, 1979 – Arrives in the United States for a 49-day tour.
February 2, 1986 – Meets with Pope John Paul II in New Delhi.
September 1987 – Attends the Congressional Human rights Caucus in Washington, DC, and proposes a Five Point Peace Plan for Tibet’s future.
1989 – Wins the Nobel Peace Prize for his dedication to the nonviolent liberation of Tibet.
April 16, 1991 – White House meeting with US President George H. W. Bush, the first ever between the spiritual leader and a president of the United States.
May 6, 1993 – Meets with US President Bill Clinton and US Vice President Al Gore at the White House.
September 1995 – Tours the United States urging government involvement with talks with China over Tibetan autonomy.
March 27, 1997 – Meets with President Lee Teng-hui of Taiwan in Taipei.
December 25, 1997 – Disney, through Touchstone Pictures, releases the biopic “Kundun,” directed by Martin Scorsese.
November 10, 1998 – Requests assistance in opening official negotiations with China regarding the future of Tibet at a meeting of senior government officials in Washington, DC, that includes Clinton. The Dalai Lama says that the distrust between himself and China is too great to re-open the talks.
May 2001 – Meets with US President George W. Bush, Congressional leaders and US Secretary of State Colin Powell, among others in Washington, DC.
2002 – Speaks out against China, stating that China should embrace democracy if the country is to be a major world power in the coming years. He also criticizes the United States-led war on terrorism, saying that the use of force to override terrorists overlooks the underlying problems that lead to terrorism.
September 2003 – Begins a 16-day tour of the United States in San Francisco. Other cities he visits include New York; Boston; Washington, DC; and Bloomington, Indiana, meeting again with Bush and Powell.
September 19-22, 2004 – Tours South Florida and gives a series of public and private lectures on peace and religious and cultural harmony. Lecture sites include University of Miami and Florida International University.
November 8, 2005 – Meets with Bush and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in Washington, DC.
September 11, 2006 – Receives honorary Canadian citizenship in a ceremony at Vancouver’s GM Place Stadium.
February 5, 2007 – The Dalai Lama is named a presidential distinguished professor at Emory University in Atlanta.
June 22, 2007 – Appears in the documentary, “Ten Questions for the Dalai Lama,” a 2001 interview done in India that shows some of the life and teachings of the Dalai Lama.
October 9-31, 2007 – Visits North America. While in Washington, DC, he is awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by Bush. He later visits Emory University in Atlanta for a conference and installation as a presidential distinguished professor.
January 2008 – Calls for peaceful protests during the upcoming Beijing Olympics, to highlight the plight of Tibet.
March 18, 2008 – States during an interview that he would step down as leader of Tibetan exiles if violence in Tibet were to get out of control.
April 13, 2008 – Arrives in the US for a 10-day tour that makes stops in Seattle, Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Hamilton, New York.
April 21, 2008 – The Dalai Lama is made an “honorary citizen” of Paris, over the objections of French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s political party.
May 23, 2008 – Meets with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown in London.
June 12, 2008 – Urges his supporters not to cause trouble when the Olympic torch passes through Tibet; he also reiterates a general plea for his supporters not to target the torch or the Olympic games.
October 6, 2009 – US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi awards the inaugural Lantos Human Rights Prize to the Dalai Lama, honoring his commitment to ending global injustices.
February 18, 2010 – Meets with US President Barack Obama at the White House.
March 10, 2011 – Announces plans to devolve political power to an elected leader of the Tibetan exile movement.
May 29, 2011 – Approves amendments to the exiled constitution, formally removing his political and administrative responsibilities.
July 16, 2011 – Meets with Obama at the White House.
May 14, 2012 – Accepts the Templeton Prize, an award worth £1.1 million ($1.77 million) that honors “outstanding individuals who have devoted their talents to expanding our vision of human purpose and ultimate reality.”
February 21, 2014 – Meets with Obama at the White House.
September 7, 2014 – The German newspaper Die Welt publishes an interview with the Dalai Lama in which he suggests ending the tradition of choosing a spiritual leader for the Tibetan people. The article sparks discussions about whether the Dalai Lama was declaring that he will not be reincarnated. He later clarifies his comments during an interview with the BBC, saying that it is “up to the Tibetan people” whether another Dalai Lama will arise after his death.
May 6, 2016 – The New York Times reports the launch of the Atlas of Emotions, a project commissioned by the Dalai Lama. Created by psychologist Paul Ekman for $750,000, it is reportedly a “map of emotions” that aims to help people find inner peace.
June 15, 2016 – Meets with Obama at the White House, his fourth meeting with the US president.
December 14, 2017 – Announces the release of the Dalai Lama app.
March 22, 2018 – Sonam Dagpo, spokesperson for the Central Tibetan Administration announces that the “His Holiness is invited to different countries but he has cut down public engagements because of age. He is exhausted after teaching for a long period of time. Therefore a few commitments have been canceled.”
April 9, 2019 – Aides announce that the Dalai Lama has been hospitalized with a chest infection, but is in stable condition. He is discharged two days later.
July 6, 2020 – Coinciding with his 85th birthday, the Dalai Lama releases an album of teaching and mantras accompanied by music titled “Inner World.”
April 10, 2023 – Apologizes after a video emerged showing the Dalai Lama kissing a boy on the lips and then asking him to “suck my tongue” at an event in northern India.
by tyler | Apr 11, 2023 | CNN, world
The James Webb Space Telescope has spied colorful, never-before-seen details in one of the most well-observed remnants of an exploded star.
The glowing gas and dust of Cassiopeia A is all that remains of a star that exploded in a supernova, and its light reached Earth for the first time 340 years ago. It’s the youngest known supernova remnant in our galaxy, which is why the celestial object has been studied by a multitude of ground and space-based telescopes.
Cassiopeia A is located 11,000 light-years away in the Cassiopeia constellation, and the remnant stretches for 10 light-years.
Insights from Cas A, as the remnant is also known, allow scientists to learn more about how stellar explosions occur.
Astronomers turned the Webb telescope and its instruments in the direction of Cas A to see if the observatory’s infrared capabilities could pick up anything other telescopes have missed. Infrared light is invisible to the human eye, allowing Webb to spy otherwise invisible aspects of the universe.
“Cas A represents our best opportunity to look at the debris field of an exploded star and run a kind of stellar autopsy to understand what type of star was there beforehand and how that star exploded,” said Danny Milisavljevic, assistant professor at Purdue University and principal investigator of the Webb program that captured the new observations, in a statement.
“Compared to previous infrared images, we see incredible detail that we haven’t been able to access before,” said co-investigator Tea Temim, research astronomer at Princeton University, in a statement.
Webb’s new infrared image of Cas A has been translated into visible light so the human eye can see the remnant’s colors. Red and orange light on the remnant’s exterior indicates warm dust, where material ejected from the star before it exploded is colliding with surrounding gas and dust.
Inside the bubble-like structure of the remnant, bright pink light can be seen, along with features that resemble clumps and knots. This material came from the exploded star and includes glowing heavy elements like argon, neon and oxygen.
A bright green loop along the right side of the bubble has also captured the interest of researchers.
“We’ve nicknamed it the Green Monster in honor of Fenway Park in Boston. If you look closely, you’ll notice that it’s pockmarked with what look like mini-bubbles,” said Milisavljevic. “The shape and complexity are unexpected and challenging to understand.”
The team is still trying to understand the sources behind all of the different colors in the image.
Studying remnants like Cas A can help scientists understand cosmic dust, a building block for stars and planets, and how exploded stars release elements crucial for life.
“By understanding the process of exploding stars, we’re reading our own origin story,” Milisavljevic said. “I’m going to spend the rest of my career trying to understand what’s in this data set.”
by tyler | Apr 10, 2023 | CNN, world
The Italian Coast Guard is leading rescue efforts to save at least 400 migrants adrift on a boat in the Mediterranean Sea between Italy and Malta, along an immigration route that NGOs have warned is perilously dangerous.
Three rescue operations involving several vessels are ongoing to assist the boat of 400 migrants, as well as another boat with an estimated 800 people on board, the coast guard told CNN.
The boat carrying 400 migrants is about 170 miles southeast of Capo Passero, off the coast of Calabria, and is at risk of capsizing after being stranded for at least 24 hours.
The support service Alarm Phone said in a tweet Sunday that it had received a call from the boat, which had departed from Tobruk, Libya, overnight, adding it had reported the situation to authorities, but no rescue operation had been announced.
Many on board require medical attention, Alarm Phone said, including a child, a pregnant woman and a disabled person. It said passengers reported some distressed people may have jumped overboard, including one person who it said was unconscious on the boat. The boat’s hull had filled with water, it added.
Every year, tens of thousands of migrants fleeing war, persecution and poverty risk the treacherous route in search of better economic prospects. They travel in dinghies that are unfit for the journey and can be left stranded, sparking major diplomatic rows between European countries in the region.
In 2022, 105,131 people reached Italy via the Mediterranean Sea, according to the latest figures from the UN’s refugee agency. The same data found that 1,368 were left dead or missing. In March, at least 28 migrants died after their boats sank off the coast of Tunisia as they tried to cross the Mediterranean to Italy.
So far this year, 27,875 people have made the voyage. Most arrivals have journeyed from the Ivory Coast, Guinea, Bangladesh, Tunisia and Pakistan.
German NGO Sea-Watch International tweeted it had found the boat on Sunday, adding Maltese authorities had ordered two nearby merchant ships not to rescue those on board, but had asked one of them to supply the boat with fuel, food and water. CNN has contacted the Maltese authorities for comment, but has not yet received a response.
Sea-Watch told CNN on Monday that the weather had become “very bad” during the night, with waves up to 1.5 meters (5 feet). “Due to the number of people on the boat and the current weather conditions, there is an urgent risk that the boat will capsize,” a spokesperson for the NGO said.
“The sea rescue coordination center in Malta must therefore immediately initiate a rescue operation. Instead, however, merchant ships are instructed to simply dispense gasoline so that the boat can sail to Italy on its own, which is terribly dangerous,” the spokesperson continued.
Alarm Phone said in a tweet it had managed to reconnect with the boat during the early hours on Monday, adding the migrants had continued their journey and had now reached the shared Search and Rescue (SAR) zone between Malta and Italy. “They report high waves and strong wind. Still, no rescue is in sight! Don’t abandon them at sea, rescue [them] now!” the NGO urged.
The Italian Coast Guard told CNN Monday more than 1,700 migrants had arrived on the Sicilian island of Lampedusa in the last 48 hours. It added there were now 1,800 migrants in a space designed for 400. Lampedusa, the closest Italian island to Africa, is a major destination for migrants seeking to enter European Union countries.
