HPF’s Knowledge Base

Is it possible that Flight AF 447 was hit by solar flares while flying through the region known as the South Atlantic Anomaly; a place where cosmic and solar radiation exposure is at its highest on earth?

The time of the disappearance coincides with observations of sunspot 1019: “New-cycle sunspot 1019 burst through the surface of the sun on May 31st and it has been growing rapidly ever since (spaceweather.com)

Space weather affects us more than we’re aware of: Solar flares have previously caused electrical and communications disruptions in both radio and electrical circuits:

In 1859 telegraph systems worldwide went crazy: spark discharges shocked telegraph operators and set telegraph paper on fire. In March 1989, solar flares caused the blackout in Quebec.

What is a solar flare?

A solar flare is an explosion on the Sun that happens when energy stored in twisted magnetic fields (usually above sunspots) is suddenly released. Flares produce a burst of radiation across the electromagnetic spectrum, from radio waves to x-rays and gamma-rays.” (spaceweather.com)

X-rays May 31st - June 2nd 2009

South Atlantic Anomaly

This area is also described as the “dent in Earth’s protective bubble”: The South Atlantic Anomaly (SAA)

The South Atlantic Anomaly is caused by the torque of the earth’s magnetosphere and the planet itself. It is the region of the atmosphere and magnetosphere where the surface of the earth is closest to the vacuum of space. The primary characteristic of that region being higher levels of cosmic and solar radiation exposure to the planets surface.

Other links:

Solar Flares Could Seriously Disrupt GPS Receivers

“Strong solar flares cause Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers to fail, Cornell researchers have discovered. Because solar flares — larger-than-normal radiation “burps” by the sun — are generally unpredictable, such failures could be devastating for “safety-of-life” GPS operations — such as navigating passenger jets, stabilizing floating oil rigs and locating mobile phone distress calls.

” Kintner recalled that solar flares are accompanied by solar radio bursts. Because the bursts occur over the same frequency bands at which GPS satellites transmit, receivers can become confused, leading to a loss of signal.””

Solar Flares Cut Airplane Radio Contact

Sloshing Inside Earth Changes Protective Magnetic Field

Norwegian online newspapers:

http://www.vg.no/nyheter/utenriks/artikkel.php?artid=554258

http://www.vg.no/nyheter/utenriks/artikkel.php?artid=554267

http://www.vg.no/nyheter/utenriks/artikkel.php?artid=554240

http://www.dagbladet.no/2009/06/02/nyheter/air_france/utenriks/6520094/

http://www.dagbladet.no/2009/06/02/nyheter/air_france/utenriks/6517178/

Online newspapers:

http://www.telegraaf.nl/buitenland/4056742/___Brokstukken_ramptoestel_gezien___.html?p=2,1

http://www.focus.de/panorama/welt/air-france-absturz-26-deutsche-in-vermisstem-flugzeug_aid_404339.html

http://hd.se/utrikes/2009/06/01/flashtre-svenskar-paa-planet/

Find a popular running path, dig a giant hole, fill it with water, watch. It’s all too simple but works so well.

A whitepaper written by me on Commodore is available for download in PDF-format:

Commodore International: the rise and fall of a major corporation.

This paper is the result of an assignment for a course in organizational change I took in 2007. The paper discusses the reasons why Commodore went bankrupt, with the book On the Edge by Brian Bagnall as its major source.

Old Sierra-games come to life again on http://www.sarien.net

Sierra entertainment was the company during the 80s and early 90s when it came to graphical adventure games on home computers. The earliest adventure games were only text-based and Sierra were among the first to introduce graphical adventure games, including both text, graphics, and sound.

This is pure nostalgia for me as most of these games were a large part of my childhood during the period 1987-1992. My first Sierra-game ever was Police Quest 1: In Pursuit of the Death Angel.

Adventure games were much more fascinating than the pure action mainstream games dominating the computer game market. What fascinated me about the adventure games was that you had to explore every scene and everyone or everything you encountered throughout the story of the game; you had to think for yourself rather than just punch a key and shoot something (or someone). The thing about these games that had evolved from the pure text-based adventure games was that you had to type in an exact phrases or words to take different actions and progress in the story. This learning increased my English vocabulary enormously compared to my classmates who did  not play adventure games.

scene from Police Quest 1

Many hours were spent playing these games, and I was humoured to see them ported to Javascript and working on the web. I tested the games with Internet Explorer 6 and Firefox 3.0.10 and I found them to not work exactly perfect. Still, it was fun to roam around in “the land of the Lounge Lizards” and the forests of “the Black Cauldron” in true 8-bit nostalgia.

Nice work and all respect to the guys at sarien.net: You must have spent a lot of time porting these games!

The original link (http://prdownload.berlios.de/bitcontrol/bitcontrol-0.1.0-win32.zip) for this was down so I thought I’d put it up if someone else needs it.

bitcontrol-0.1.0-win32.zip

This is BitControl Bit 01/99 Editor, a VST plugin to work with Crumar Bit 01 / 99 analog synth.

This is the original BitControl Homepage

Crumar BIT 01 white

More info on this nice and underestimated synth from the 1980s can be found on vintagesynth.com