Author: Ibrahim El Merehbi

Three Supermoons in a row (Science@NASA)

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This month as well as the following two months will have three consecutive supermoons. The exact dates and (rise) times (Beirut time) of these supermoons are as follows:

  1. July 12 @ 1940
  2. August 10 @ 1906
  3. September 9 @ 1904
 But what are supermoons?

Supermoons are moons that happen to be at a point of their orbit whose distance is the shortest to Earth. That is they happen to be closest to Earth.
This particular (close) point of the orbit is called the “perigee” thus the scientific term for a supermoon is the “perigee moon“.

Some people have linked supermoons with natural disasters such as tsunami’s like the 2011 tsunami that occurred facing the coast of Japan which destroyed the Fukushima nuclear power plant and the 2004 tsunami that hit the Indian ocean since they occurred in a 1-2 week period within a supermoon.

Scientifically no evidence has been found in this regard. For a detailed explanation check the Berkeley Seismological Laboratory Outreach Program FAQ “Can the position of the moon or planets affect seismicity?” under “Common Myths and Misconceptions”.

Beware of the comming supermoons… whooo!

Lebanese start to face unprecedented water problems

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Water shortages due to low precipitation levels and lack of nation-wide water management

Lebanon has long been a country abundant in water and as such most Lebanese have taken water for granted thinking that they will never have a shortage in or problems with it.

It was apparent that this year has had very little rain [1,2]. Indeed the numbers indicate that the precipitation levels have not even reached half the average annual of 900 ml. This, of course, has led to a huge deficiency in water reserves [3,4]. But the main problem does not lie in the low precipitation levels this year rather it lies in the incompetence of the Lebanese authorities “and most Lebanese” to manage and conserve water.

On one hand, the authorities have not been doing their job of investing in the main source of life by managing the water (and sewage as a matter of fact; see below on this) in order to effectively exploit it and not waste it. They have not been working on conserving this abundance in water by preventing leakage, building dams, replenishing underground reservoirs, introducing artificial ponds, or dealing with the r
andom wells being dug and un-licensed water suppliers.

This is demonstrated in what Claude Tabbal, an expert on the water resources in Lebanon, said to Azza el-Masri and Raed Khalil of the Al-Akhbar newspaper [4] on June 26:

”We get 800 cubic meters of water per year, but up to 65 percent of it is lost each year”

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Fruit Flies fly to the International Space Station (Science@NASA)

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Selected OpenCourseWare – Quantum Mechanics & Atomic Phyics

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[MIT] 8.04 Quantum Physics I, Spring 2013 (Adams, Allan, Matthew Evans, & Barton Zwiebach) [Course home, Lecture videos]

This course covers the experimental basis of quantum physics. It introduces wave mechanics, Schrödinger’s equation in a single dimension, and Schrödinger’s equation in three dimensions. It is the first course in the undergraduate Quantum Physics sequence, followed by 8.05 Quantum Physics II and 8.06 Quantum Physics III.

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Lettuce Orbit Earth – A New Form of Life Takes Root on the ISS (Science@NASA)

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