Red dwarfs are stars that are cooler than our own sun. They’re much smaller, about a third of the sun’s size, and dimmer. And they are fairly common in our corner of the Milky Way galaxy. In fact, most or our neighboring stars are red dwarfs.

A planet orbiting a red dwarf can orbit much more closely without getting burned up. The Earth sits right in the middle of our Goldilocks Zone, where water neither boils away nor freezes solid, and it takes us 365.25 days to make one orbit. Red dwarf planets can have an orbit as short as just 20 days. Imagine, a three week long year. “Honey, didn’t we just celebrate New Year’s last month?”

Here’s where it gets interesting: scientists belonging to the Harvard/Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics carefully examined 64 nearby stars targeted by Kepler. They found no less than 95 planets orbiting those stars, and, of those 95, they found three planets of interest. That’s a ratio of 1 potential Earthlike planet for every 32 planets discovered – an astonishingly high ratio of potential earths out there.

The planets discovered range in size from 90% of Earth’s size up to 170%, and all of them are in the Goldilocks zone of their red dwarf hosts. Now, sit down before you read the next paragraph.

These most recent discovered planets of interest are only 300 to 600 light years away. That’s still a heartbreakingly long way away, but it’s just a ninth of the distance to Kepler-64F, the other most recent Goldilocks Zone planet discovery.

The net result of this discovery is that the likelihood of discovering an Earthlike star in our own stellar neighborhood is dramatically higher than we once thought.

You can read more about this most interesting discovery at NASA.gov/Kepler.

Kepler-37D is literally the third rock from the star Kepler-37. The innermost planet in that system is little Kepler-37B, a sun-blasted ball of rock only slightly bigger than our own sun-blasted moon. A sunny high noon on Kepler-37B, and they are all sunny, would most likely seem daytime high temperature of roughly 800 degrees fahrenheit, or 700 degrees Kelvin. The next planet out, Kepler 37-C,  is about 3/4 the size of our home, but is orbits its sun so closely that it, too, is probably shy of water. In fact, neither one of these worlds appears to have an atmosphere.

The third rock from that sun is about twice the size of Earth. It’s still closer to its sun than we are, which puts it at the wrong end of the Goldilocks Zone, and it is traveling fast. Where it takes us 365.25 days to get around our sun, 37d makes the trip in just 40.

The significance of this planetary discovery is the relatively small size of the planets themselves. New technologies, most importantly astroseismology, are helping astronomers to find smaller and smaller orbiting bodies.

Astroseismology is a new science that listens to the shock waves created by a star’s nuclear core. The frequency of these waves, which are generated by every star, provide an excellent resource for determining a star’s mass and size. The accuracy of these measurements, which are believed to have an error rate of just three percent, allow scientists to capture data on even the smallest planets orbiting the star.

Out of the box, this information tells us more about the origin and structure of our own solar system as we can now more accurately peer into others. More importantly, it greatly increases the number of candidate planets within the Goldilocks Zone for each of the 150,000 stars the Kepler telescope watches.

The gang of planets in orbit around Kepler-37 are important not so much for their life-bearing capability (even Kepler-37d is too hot for that), but for the milestone breakthrough in planet hunting that they represent.

You can learn more about the Kepler project at NASA.gov/Kepler.

At the beginning of April, 2013, however, a run-of-the-mile Jupiter-sized gas giant orbiting a red dwarf star turned out to be anything but run-of-the-mill. Scientists were astounding at the strange dance between this presumed planet and its host star.

Kepler examines stars for two phenomena – occlusion and wobble. When the light from a star dims regularly, it stands to reason that a body must be orbiting the star. The amount of starlight reduced tells us the size, while the frequency of the dimming tells us the diameter of the body’s orbit. Nearly every planet tugs on its host star, causing it to wobble in its passage through the galaxy. The degree to which the star wobbles in its orbit tells us the mass of the planet tugging on it.

Imagine Kepler scientists surprise, then, when they found that the red dwarf star discovered in April was actually orbiting the planet! The planet, in fact, turned out not to be a planet at all, but a white dwarf star – a star similar to our sun that had burned out and shrunk to the size of Jupiter. For all that tiny size, however, it is still just as massive as the sun, and has the same gravitational power.

The red dwarf star has been captured by the gravitational field of the white dwarf, even though the white dwarf is unbelievably tiny, as stars go. The two stars form a pair of binary stars.

There is one more twist to the story: When the tiny white dwarf star passes on the far away side of the red dwarf, the red dwarf’s light gets dimmer. Repeat: dimmer. When the white dwarf passes between the ref dwarf and us, its light is concentrated in an Einsteinian gravitation lens and shines at us far more brightly.

Not all the planets Kepler finds are Earthlike. In fact, after this most recent discovery, it’s safe to say that not all the planets Kepler finds are even planets!

You can learn more about the Kepler project at Nasa.gov/Kepler.

Still, it’s quite an achievement to spot a planet in the star Kepler’s “Goldilocks Zone” at that astounding distance. A star’s “Goldilocks Zone” is the orbital distance from the the star at which a planet is neither too hot nor too cold – rather like the route our planet travels around the sun. In Kepler’s case, one of the planets, with the romantic name Kepler-62F, is only 40% bigger than Earth, making it the closest to Earth-sized of any planet found so far.

Although Kepler-62F is too far away to be seen with a conventional light-gathering telescope, it lies within the range of vision of the Earth-orbiting telescope Kepler . In fact, the star Kepler is named after the telescope Kepler, which is itself named after Johannes Kepler, the astronomer.

The planet was discovered by the telescope Kepler using two different ways. The first was by measuring the amount and regularity of the star Kepler’s light. Logic says that if a planet orbits a star, the light from the star will dim slightly as the planet goes between us and it. The amount of dimming tells us how big the planet is relative to the star.

The second method the telescope Kepler used to “see” the planet at that distance was by measuring the amount of “wobble” it induced in the star Kepler’s path. It’s hard to imagine, but each planet tugs a little tiny bit on its host star, causing it to wobble ever so slightly in its trek across the night sky. Big planets cause a sizable wobble, while tiny planets cause just the slightest murmur. By carefully examining both the light and position of the distant star, the telescope Kepler helped astronomers “see” the planets orbiting it.

Which brings us back to Kepler-62F. It orbits the star Kepler comfortably in the star’s Goldilocks Zone, a distance not unlike ours from our sun, and appears to be of a rocky composition, similar to our own. It is not unlikely that there is liquid water there, which means, possibly, there could be life there. Sadly, as the planet is roughly 18 quadrillion miles (that’s 18 followed by 15 zeroes), the chances of visiting there to say hello are just the littlest bit remote.

Male and female Canada Geese look the same, but the females are slightly smaller than the males.  They have a black head and neck with white under the chin and on the cheek.  The chest is a lighter color, with a brownish body.  There are seven subspecies of Canada Geese, each being slightly diffent in size.  The average lifespan of a Canada Goose is 15 to 18 years. 

Normally wild birds are afraid of people but in areas where they come into contact with people, Canada Geese are not afraid.  In Vancouver I had a chance to get up close to these beautiful birds many times, you can see in this picture (below) they were not even alarmed as I walked through them while they were napping.

In Vancouver’s Stanley Park the birds are often chased by children but my wife has told me sometimes the geese will chase the kids too!

At one time hunting nearly drove some subspecies to extinction, but now most populations are stable, or even considered to be “too high” by some people.

In Stanley Park there are reports that the park’s people go around in the spring shaking the goose eggs to kill the unhatched chicks to reduce the population.  Canada Geese normally are ground laying birds, nesting near the pond or on islands in a pond.  But, I am also told that the birds there are so smart they started to hide their nests in the forest and later learned how to nest in the trees.

Above is a painting my wife did of a Canada Goose defending its nest from a natural predator, the skunk.  Nesting in the forest would not be normal for this bird, but my wife painted this after seeing them nesting in the woods at Stanley Park, in Vancouver.

Incubation for Canada Goose eggs is normally 24 t 28 days.

Note that these are wild birds, however some subspecies may be kept as pets only if the area allows it and the person has a permit.

Other Articles you Might Like

The Difference Between a Goose and a Duck

Information and Pictures of Great Blue Herons in Stanley Park

Feeding Raccoons in Stanley Park

Introduction

Environmental Sustainability is a growing problem worldwide and if it continues life as we know it will come to a bitter end. Large Corporations that have no concern for the environment and/or a lack of knowledge on the topic are constantly producing harmful emissions into the environment. While many corporations are making an effort into going “green” we have yet to make a significant impact globally.

The Idea in a Nutshell

There are many ways of going green, in which if everyone participated the environment could last much longer than where it’s headed now. Going “green” doesn’t have to be a difficult and expensive process. If the right steps are taken in the right direction to improve the environment, a significant change can take effect and the world can be a cleaner place. This article will show you areas that corporations are polluting the planet and the necessary implementations to combat the growing problem.

The Top 10 Things You Need to Know About Environmental Sustainability

1. Air Pollution

Carbon dioxide, methane, sulfur dioxide, and chlorofluorocarbons are the four main greenhouse gases that large corporations are emitting out today.  In the past 150 years, such activities have pumped enough carbon dioxide into the atmosphere to raise its levels higher than they have been for hundreds of thousands of years. (National Geographic)In the growing effort to provide a solution governments are taking precautions and making a dent in the ongoing problem. One way is through the Kyoto Protocol, an agreement between countries that they will cut back on carbon dioxide emissions. Another method is to put taxes on carbon emissions or higher taxes on gasoline, so that people and companies will have greater incentives to conserve energy and pollute less. (National Geographic)

2. Climate Change

Our Earth is warming. Earth’s average temperature has risen by 1.4°F over the past century, and is projected to rise another 2 to 11.5°F over the next hundred years.(EPA.gov) These greenhouse gases will continue to increase unless we as a people make a global effort to decrease these emissions exponentially. If this pollutant path continues we can expect these negative things to happen such as an increase in earth’s temperature, influence the patterns and amounts of precipitation, reduce ice and snow cover, as well as permafrost, raise sea level, and increase the acidity in our oceans.(epa.gov) These negative things are currently building now and if they continue they will have a major impact on every area of our lives as to what we eat, what we drink, what we breathe, and the world around us.

3. Emergencies

Millions people along the gulf coast were affected by the BP oil spill in 2010. The oil rig was poorly monitored and as a result millions of barrels of oil poured into the Gulf of Mexico detrimentally affecting coastal southeast United States and the entire oil business as a whole. Coastal wetlands, wildlife, and millions of people were at a loss at the mistake that British Petroleum made not properly regulating there plant. BP is the fourth largest energy company in the world employing more than 80,000 people.(cnn.com)When making a mistake like that it would cost the company billions of dollars in clean-up and legal fees in an effort to make things right.

4. Green Living

Being energy efficient is using the same or more services while using less energy than before. The major effect of going “green” can be achieved if everyone and every business do their part.  Clean energy supply includes renewable energy and clean distributed generation, such as combined heat and power. Many businesses are installing renewable energy and combined heat and power at their buildings to save them money, reduce their environmental impact, and provide greater control of their energy use.(epa.gov)

5. Health and Safety

Going “green” includes more than just reducing, reusing and recycling materials. Incorporating green ideas into your workplace can significantly reduce overhead costs and your company’s environmental impact, while improving health and safety.(ehow) Companies can easily make the switch for going green while still being safe. They can incorporate the use of “green” cleaners, lighting, travel cost and even monitor the air conditioner to cut cost and be more energy efficient. Buy ENERGY STAR products, when needed and be sure the “stand-by mode” functions is activated. If every American home replaced their 5 most frequently used light fixtures or the bulbs in them with ENERGY STAR qualified lighting, we would save close to $8 billion each year in energy costs, and together we’d prevent the greenhouse gases equivalent to the emissions from nearly 10 million cars.(epa.gov)

 6.   Land and Cleanup

Hazardous waste can be released accidentally from storage facilities. Under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), owners or operators of treatment, storage or disposal (TSD) facilities are responsible for investigating and cleaning up these accidental releases. EPA calls this kind of cleanup a Corrective Action. (epa.gov)These pollutants can harm your health and the environment, and cause property damage. People are starting to fight back and many environmentalist and environmentalist companies are filing lawsuits against big pollutant corporations who are destroying the earth from its core. In one recent case, Earth justice has filed a legal challenge on behalf of the Florida Wildlife Federation to block Gov. Rick Scott and the Florida Cabinet from allowing Big Sugar and corporate vegetable plantations to continue farming state-owned land in the Everglades for another 30 years. The farming causes severe pollution in the very areas where taxpayers are footing the bill for a multi-billion-dollar Everglade environmental restoration project.(earthjustice.org)

Environmental Protection Agency Seal (Photo credit: DonkeyHotey)

7. Pesticides

Pesticides can be toxic to humans and lower animals. It can take a small amount of some toxins to kill. And other toxins that are slower acting, may take a long time to cause harm to the human body. Pesticide production can be dangerous, too. One disaster at a pesticide manufacturing plant was in Bhopal, India. The plant accidentally released 40 tons of an intermediate chemical gas, methyl isocyanate, used to produce some pesticides. In that disaster, nearly 3,000 people were killed immediately, overall approximately 15,000 deaths occurred. Today nearly 100,000 people suffer from mild to severe permanent damage as a result of that disaster. In China, it’s estimated that 500,000 people suffer pesticide poisoning annually, and some 500 of them die.(global healing center) Seeing the significant impact that these pesticide companies are creating there are many steps they can take to ensure a safe result while still making the environment a safe place from pest. By establishing global laws in effect to protect against this homicide, companies need to own up to their mistakes and begin implementing more environmentally safe products in their everyday use.

8. Waste

Handling, storing and disposing of waste can be very important when trying to keep an eco-friendly planet. Improper use of waste can result in contamination of essential products we use every day. The elimination of these wastes has to be down to a science to rid these contaminates properly to ensure the health and safety of the human race and our planet. When corporations illegally or improperly dispose of their waste they can damage the environment around them so significantly that sometimes their error cannot be undone. In a situation with Costco, they violated California state law on improper handling of waste products in the summer of 2012 and were fined 3.6 million dollars to ensure the cleanup and restoration. (bizjournals.com)

9. Water

Water in the main substance to keep the body healthy and without pure water there would be no life on the planet. In the United States, water utilities treat nearly 34 billion gallons of water and Americans drink more than one billion glasses of tap water per day. (epa.gov) Keeping up with where we get the water and ensuring that contaminates do not come into contact with that water is an important task for environmental officials.

10. Efforts to change

Regarding efforts to change starts with a small step with numerous people, businesses and programs. If everyone comes together with the effort to change the world for a more greener environment it will encourage more to do the same. This change will not happen overnight but over time, if done effectively, could reverse the damage that has already been done and offer a start to a new eco-friendly environment.

The Video Lounge

This video changed my perspective on how environmental factors severely affect the world as a whole.  People and corporations do not realize the importance of the decisions they make and how something so small could make such an significant impact on the other parts of the world.  Opening my eyes to my own personal carbon footprint and how it can be greatly reduced by doing simple everyday things changed my reality to environmental sustainability. Once you realize the actions you can take to prevent carbon emissions makes you want to gather others and unite as a group effort to save the environment as a whole.

My Take

My take on Environmental Sustainability is that it is a concept that is continually growing and will not stop growing until the whole earth and everyone in it has a complete change in the way we treat our planet. When we become courteous about our environments future we begin to act in ways that are more eco-friendly than before and positive change takes place. When large corporations begin to implement going “green” the world will notice a difference in everyday life and begin to want to conserve the planet rather than destroy it. Everyday has to be a new day for everyone and letting go off the past is essential in creating a more green and positive future not only for our children but for our children’s children as well.

References

http://www.globalissues.org/article/55/corporations-and-the-environment

www.epa.gov

http://environment.naturalgeographic.com/environment/global-warning/pollution-overview/

http://earthjustice.org/news/press/2013/earthjustice-files-lawsuit-to-stop-further-pollution-overview/

http://www.globalhealingcenter.com/effects-of-pesticides/effects-of-pesticides

http://bizjournals.com/sacramento/news/2012/06/04costco-fined-waste-product-settlements.html.

http://truth-out.org/news/item/10921-the-toxic-100-top-corporate-airpolution-identified

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Contact Information

To contact the author of “The Management Playbook: What You Need to Know about Environmental Sustainability,” please email Luke McQuade at david.mcquade@selu.edu.

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About the Publisher

David C. Wyld (dwyld@selu.edu) is the Robert Maurin Professor of Management at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, Louisiana. He is a management consultant, researcher/writer, and executive educator. He also serves as the Director of the Reverse Auction Research Center (http://reverseauctionresearch.com/), a hub of research and news in the expanding world of competitive bidding. His blog, Career News 24/7, can be viewed at http://wyld-about-careers.blogspot.com/.

In the past, this place is owned by a farmer family. But, after they realise that this place is great for tourist attraction, this place finally open for public. Hamilton Pool is in Travis, Austin, Texas, AS, about 30 miles from Austin. This place is open for public from 9.00-18.00 a clock every day. You can camp out here, but of course you have to pay a fee.

Okay, let’s start to see the wonderful photos below : 

So, what do you think about this place? Please leave you comment. Thank you

My other collection:

• Must See!! Amazing Photos of The Meteor That Crashed in Russia!!
• Amazing!! Seven Greatest Buildings in The World [Photo Collection]
• Must See!! Funny Photos When Cats Feel Surprised [Photo Collection]
• YOU Must See!!amazing Photos of The Volcano Eruption of Puyehue Volcano in Chile!!!
• An Outstanding Photos of Beautiful Places in Indonesia!! (Photo Collection)

1. The name coyote (canis latrans) means “barking dog:.

2. They can run at speeds clocked at 25-35 MPH.

3. They rarely attack humans…and I mean rarely.

4.Ecologically they hunt and kill rodents humans do not like and see as pests.

5. Their habitat extends from Alaska to Panama and they have been seen as far south as Costa Rica.

6. Dogs are DISTANT relatives of the coyote.

7. Their name comes from Aztec stories of coyotl and legends of other native people who honor the coyote calling him “little wolf”.

8.Their size varies from 25lbs to 75lbs. And are known for their yellow eyes, that stare out of the dark of night.

9. Urbanization has destroyed many of their habitats, yet they have adjusted and become “Urban Coyotes”.

10.Adaptation to the fast changing humanized world seems to be a natural trait of the mammal. He is seen on airport runways chasing planes, sneaking food from dumpster around malls and restaurants and have even been seen eating watermelon!

11.He is a nocturnal animal usually, traveling and hunting in the dark. You will normally only hear their owls and not see them.

12. Coyotes only known predators are -wolves, mountain lions and humans.

13. They like the wolf mate for life.

14. They have been known to snatch small pets (dogs,cats,ferrets), if left unattended in urban yards, especially during times of drought and harsh winter weather.

15. They are extremely important to keeping rodent populations under control.

16. Raising them as pets is usually unsuccessful, as they love their freedom to roam and explore.

meteor when passing on the sky

The meteor looks like a giant fire ball

The meteor cross the city

When a meteor exploded over the sky

meteor visible from a great distance

The smoke left by the meteor

buildings that were hit by meteor fragments

the buildings destroyed by the meteor fragments

The windows are broken because the explode of the meteor

the buildings destroyed by the meteor fragments

So many proken windows glass

The interior of the buildings also.

Amazing!!

a woman who was injured due to window glass flakes

a man who was injured due to window glass flakes

Ok, that’s all the photos which I have. So, what do you think about all the photos above? About the tragedy? Please leave your comment. Thanks

Calling them superstorms and unusually harsh weather systems is sensational news reporting and not really correct reporting!

When I was a child in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s we had many storms during the winter that dumped 2-3 feet of snow and ice on us. I lived in upstate New York and the Washington, D.C. area when these storms would come upon us.

Yippee, we all would scream no school for few days and we could make snowmen, go sled riding, make snow caves and modified igloos.

The biggest problem was were to put the snow that was plowed to the curbs on city streets and narrow roads that were not 4 lane highways (yet). We always enough food!? We had a pantry and a freezer. Plus my mom canned fresh foods during the summer, for winter eating.[Why, because food was seasonal back in the day.] Power might go out for a day or two at most, but it usually didn’t.

I remember snowstorms my dad, along with all the neighborhood dads, would spend hours digging with their shovels to make paths out to the street, to their cars, clearing the doorways from the house, knocking snow off roofs so theey wouldn’t collapse, cleaning away snow from the mailboxes so maybe a mail truck could leave some mail!

Come on folks! It used to snow alot in New England and Colorado and Utah and Minnesota and New York and Pennsylvania. Why else did they build ski slopes in these areas of the country? Why was Lake Placid an Olympic Site? Because they got a lot of snow,right?

I moved to the south in order to escape the winter weather, because I was not a snow bunny, so get a grip weather reporters and National News commentators. Super Storms, you call these out of the ordinary. Climate change that we need to prepare for, I don’t think so. It seems like we are just being revisited by winters from “back