Monthly Archives: February 2013

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Satirist Beppe Grillo (left) and Silvio Berlusconi, both winners in yesterday’s deadlocked  Italian elections.

Current projections suggest that against all predictions Silvio Berlusconi’s rightwing coalition will dominate the Italian Senate – but Pier Luigi Bersani’s leftwing grouping will end up the biggest in the Chamber of Deputies. The result for Italy seems likely to be gridlock – and perhaps further elections within months. 

Satirist Beppe Grillo has established his Five Star Movement as a political force to be reckoned with as his anti-establishment insurgents seem likely to end up the biggest single party in a political system usually made up of small parties working in coalition. 

 

“This is a story of anti-austerity and one where most hadn’t expected the anti-austerity /anti-European parties to do anywhere near as well as they have.

“The Italian voter has spoken out and this has thrown up political instability as perhaps the number one issue facing Europe in 2013.”

 

A stock market analyst this morning.

 

Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement Becomes Italy’s Election Success Story (Guardian)

coronal

Of this extraordinary footage collected by the Solar Dynamics Observatory, (each second in this video corresponds to 6 minutes of real time), NASA Explorer sez:

Eruptive events on the sun can be wildly different. Some come just with a solar flare, some with an additional ejection of solar material called a coronal mass ejection (CME), and some with complex moving structures in association with changes in magnetic field lines that loop up into the sun’s atmosphere, the corona.
On July 19, 2012, a moderately powerful solar flare exploded on the sun’s lower right hand limb, sending out light and radiation. Next came a CME, which shot off to the right out into space. And then, the sun treated viewers to one of its dazzling magnetic displays — a phenomenon known as coronal rain.
Over the course of the next day, hot plasma in the corona cooled and condensed along strong magnetic fields in the region. Magnetic fields, themselves, are invisible, but the charged plasma is forced to move along the lines, showing up brightly in the extreme ultraviolet wavelength of 304 Angstroms, which highlights material at a temperature of about 50,000 Kelvin. This plasma acts as a tracer, helping scientists watch the dance of magnetic fields on the sun, outlining the fields as it slowly falls back to the solar surface.

awesomer/videosift