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LY £H © oF VEN? TOP-SECRET SPACE PLANE "DISAPPEARS" FOR TWO WEEKS T" X-37B was launched in April amid much publicity but scant detail about its true use. The X-37B was built by Boeing's Phantom Works division, but the program was originally headed by NASA. It was later turned over to the Pentagon's research and development arm and then to a secretive SUPER-FAST FLIP OF EARTH'S POLES FOUND he Earth's magnetic Thales swap every 300,000 years, a process that normally takes up to 5,000 years. In 1995, an ancient lava flow with an unusual magnetic pattern was discovered in Oregon, USA. It suggested that the field at the time was moving by six degrees a day—at least 10,000 times faster than usual. an US Air Force unit. In May, avid skywatcher Ted Molczan studied the X-37B's orbit from his home in Toronto and said that its behaviour suggested it was testing sensors for a range of new spy satellites. Since then, the X-37B has been arguably the least-secret secret project on the planet, as fellow backyard astronomers joined in the scrutiny, aided by how-to video guides and applications such as the Simple Satellite Tracker. That is, they did until 29 July when the shuttle disappeared, causing all kinds of consternation and conspiracy theories about its fate. It was spotted two weeks later by a skywatcher in South Africa, who noticed that it was some 30 kilometres higher and on a different trajectory, according to calculations from other colleagues in Rome and Oklahoma. Mr Molczan believes this may be another small piece of the puzzle about what role the shuttle may play in US military operations. It could drop a spy satellite on one run, then pick it up on the next without the satellite ever having been detected. The X-37B can theoretically stay airborne for up to 270 days. Concerned arms control advocates say this is clearly the beginning of the "weaponisation of space". (Source: News.com.au, 25 August 2010, http://tinyurl.com/2cacxjn) "Not many people believed it," says Scott Bogue of Occidental College in Los Angeles. Such fast flips are impossible, according to models of the Earth's core, but this is now the second time that evidence has been found. At that rate, a full flip would take less than four years, but there could be another interpretation. "It may have been a burst of rapid acceleration that punctuated the steady movement of the field,” says Dane Bogue and his colleague Jonathan Glen of the United States Geological Survey in Menlo Park, California, say that they have found a second example in Nevada. The lava rock suggests that in one year, Earth's magnetic field shifted by 53 degrees (Geophysical Research Letters, DOI: 10.1029/2010GL044286). Bogue. Earth is overdue for a reversal, and rapid shifts would cause widespread chaos—for navigation and migratory birds, for instance. (Source: NewScientist.com, 3 September 2010, http://tinyurl.com/2datyov) rt often tokes me all worn fo met axureer emai fs. Sane rss 6 * NEXUS OCTOBER - NOVEMBER 2010 www.nexusmagazine.com