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Your Dog's Playdate With His New Farm Friends -- 6 Steps to Condition Your Dog To Big Animals!

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(Photo credit: Roman Adrianowycz)

July 12th was National Cow day: How did you celebrate it?

I may be a dog expert but the cow truly calls to me. Whether I'm taking a dog to visit a local herd or passing a farm along the highway I aways reflect upon the cow's peaceful nature. I envision them during my deep breathing exercises. To me, they are calm, patient, yet mindfully unyielding.

But dogs aren't always on the same page. Calm is not a word I'd use to describe most dogs facing up to a large, hooved animals.

Thankfully, when it comes to conditioning your dog to respect farm life or to play nice with a passing horse, your neighbor's pot-bellied pig or even deer in the field, look no further: cows rock.

If you need to condition your dog to big animals, cows are the ideal teaching aides. Here's why:

1) Cows -- especially those accustomed to noise, people, and other dogs - will rarely give, even a barking dog, more than a passing nod. Since prolonged stares from other animals can trigger a dog's fear or defensiveness, a passing nod is a better bet when conditioning your dog's tolerance level.
2) Cows move slowly, making them least likely to ignite a dog's chasing instinct.
3) Cows are food motivated (although they prefer grasses to liver treats) so most will keep eating even in the midst of barking and chaos.

Whatever large animal you hope to condition your dog or puppy to, go find a cow and get started.

WARNING: Always leash your dog or puppy when conditioning her to livestock, and stay at least 20 feet outside the other animal's enclosure. A cow may charge or kick a dog that enters their personal space.

Prerequisite: Teach your dog the meaning of "Find it." Watch my video to learn how to play the "Find it" game. This fun exercise will help you to positively redirect your dog's focus no matter what the distraction!

Take Alongs: When setting out, bring anything your dog loves to eat, chew or play with. Use rewards and distractions to positively engage your dog in the presence of an otherwise frustrating distraction (like a cow).

Step One
Start on an Empty Stomach
Wait to feed your dog until you see the cow. Help your dog associate cows to food treats and all his favorite things!

Step Two
Bring various treats and bones
Think about what rewards get your dog most excited and which ones barely raise her tail. Rate each from your dog's perspective and bring out the highest rewards when you're cow-side.

Step Three
Watch your dog's talking points
Calculate your dog's comfort zone. Dogs will startle to the site of farm animals unless conditioned to them from a young age. Watch your dog's talking points to determine how he feels: his eyes, ears, tail, and posture. Does your dog lean back? Translation: caution. Does he lean forward and bark? Translation: your dog is willing to use whatever means to defend himself.

Step Four
Determine your dog's comfort zone
If your dog's reacting, you're already standing too close. Stand as far away from the cow as you need to until your dog can stand comfortably. Now play the "Find it" game: Get a handful of high-value treats, say "Find it," and cast a handful of treats to the ground to distract your dog.

Step Five
Gradually move closer
Gradually lessen the distance to the cow as you increase the value of the treats. If your dog sneaks a peak, praise him! Tell him he's a good boy then take a few steps backward as you wave a treat in front of his face. Does he look to you? Super! If not you may be moving too close too quickly. Depending on your dog's reactivity you may need to repeat this adventure several times until your dog feels comfortable in the presence of this gentle giant.

Step Six
Rate your success
Success doesn't look particularly fancy. You don't want your dog prancing around carelessly or sulking behind you either. Success is a dog who can tolerate the presence of any other animal or person without getting riled up or reactive.

Wondering how you're progressing? Check back in with your dog's talking points -- eyes, ears, tail, posture -- and see what they have to tell you. "Relaxed" is good. "Bored" is even better.

And while you're at it, send us an update in the comment section below. A photo or short video, with dogs especially, is worth a thousand words.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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This story of bipartisanship will make you believe in government again

A professor of mine at the University of Michigan Law School once said that problems become more solvable when people lower their voices and work things out.

Few in Washington have been lowering their voice in recent years. As I noted in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, Congress rarely produces little more than partisan rancor, which made the recent passage of a historic chemical safety law so exceptional - and inspiring.

I'm referring to the Lautenberg Act, the most important environmental legislation in two decades, which the House and Senate passed overwhelmingly and President Obama signed into law last month.

In the midst of the final negotiations over that bill, I found myself on the phone with Sen. James Inhofe, the conservative Oklahoma Republican best known in my circles for throwing a snowball on the Senate floor to mock global warming. But we didn't talk about any of that.

Instead we discussed our shared commitment to finding a way forward to reform an outdated law that failed to keep toxic chemicals out of homes, schools and workplaces.

That conversation helped me realize how right my teacher had been. Despite our profound and public disagreements over the years on climate change, we had found a way to work together and make progress.

It reminded us of old-fashioned legislating, where parties work toward common ground rather than jockey for partisan advantage. The subsequent victory showed that some of the oddest bedfellows in Washington can, in fact, deliver major reform.

Two developments broke the stalemate

Health and environmental advocates had spent more than two decades pushing for an overhaul of the Toxic Substances Control Act, our main chemical safety law that had remained unchanged since the era of bell-bottoms and disco. Despite the law's obvious flaws, efforts at reform stalled.

In every Congress for the past decade, Democrats introduced strong legislation, bills that my organization supported. And each time they were blocked by those worried about overregulating the chemical industry.

That's until two developments tipped the scale.

First, consumers' rising concerns over unregulated chemicals in everyday products began to register with retailers, product manufacturers and state lawmakers. Companies began reformulating products to remove certain ingredients, and retailers asked suppliers to do the same.

Spurred by activists, states stepped in to fill the void left by the broken federal system that couldn't even regulate a known danger like asbestos. This, in turn, created a patchwork of overlapping rules that manufacturers found confusing and onerous, adding more pressure on lawmakers from both parties to craft a national solution.

Second - and here's the clincher - negotiating partners sought and found common ground.

Like the old days on Capitol Hill

The late Sen. Frank Lautenberg, a New Jersey Democrat and public-health champion who got smoking banned on airplanes in the 1980s, introduced the first bipartisan reform bill with Sen. David Vitter, a Republican Louisiana legislator typically more concerned with reducing environmental regulations.

When Sen. Lautenberg died in 2013, Sen. Tom Udall, a New Mexico Democrat and long-time environmental advocate, stepped up to lead the effort to advance and improve the legislation.

Democratic Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse, Ed Markey, Jeff Merkley, Tom Carper and Cory Booker threw their support behind the bill after securing changes to strengthen the role of states, among other improvements. Sen. Barbara Boxer, after attaining concessions preserving additional authority for her home state of California and other states, eventually signed on as well.

Sen. Inhofe, who had recognized that a national regulatory program would bring greater certainty to the business community, led negotiations on the Republican side.

The House assembled its own set of unusual partners: Republicans John Shimkus and Fred Upton worked with Democrats such as Frank Pallone, Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer.

Broad, bipartisan coalition demanded progress

Bipartisan negotiations ultimately produced legislation that won near unanimous support in Congress - and, critically, a strong endorsement from the White House. It worked because we built a broad coalition demanding progress on this issue, and because lawmakers worked hard to navigate outside interests and pressures.

For too many in Washington, even talking to the opposition, much less working across the aisle, is a sin. In an era of narrow majorities and divided government, that is a recipe for certain failure.

It appears some are looking at the moral calculation in the wrong way. Because if a willingness to work with people you normally oppose leads to fewer hazardous chemicals in our children's lives, we have all won.

This article originally appeared on the EDF Voices blog and is reprinted with permission.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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Don't Assume My Dog Is Friendly

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It happened again. I was walking along a park trail with Bodhi, enjoying the 6 a.m. calm. That the park is largely empty at that hour is something I really enjoy. But suddenly, a man walking 3 dogs appeared, headed toward us on the path. As there was plenty of room to move over, that's exactly what we did in hopes of avoiding them.

Upon spying us, the two cocker spaniels continued to prance along with their cockers-don't-care attitudes, while the Lab mix acted as though Bodhi was a long lost relative who owed him money. In his over-the-top enthusiasm, the dog pulled free of the man's grip. Flexi leash banging along behind him, he began to run toward us.

You wouldn't let your child run up to every stranger you pass. Why would you possibly let your dog do the same?

Now, Bodhi is not an aggressive dog, but when I adopted him from the shelter five years ago, he was very dog reactive. I worked long and hard to teach him alternatives to lunging and barking at other dogs, and he does very well now. He's still insecure around other dogs (which is what the behavior was really about), but now when he sees them he voluntarily places himself by my side and looks at me for further instructions. Great, right? Sure. Until despite our best efforts, another dog rushes up to Bodhi or otherwise invades his space. Then, depending on how worried he is, all bets are off and violence could ensue.

As the Lab headed toward us I called to the man, "Please grab your dog!"

"Oh," he replied, "Don't worry. He's friendly!"

"Mine might not be!" I called back.

The man looked surprised, and finally managed to get the dog back on leash.

Unfortunately, this is far from a rare occurrence. I wonder, if I were walking a 200-pound black mastiff with glowing yellow eyes, how many dogs would end up wafting our way on clouds of intended friendliness. I remember when Mojo, my soul dog who passed in 2008, was alive. Walking my very tall, handsome 120-pound, mostly-black, German shepherd-Rottweiler-Malamute-wolf mix down the street, people would often cross to get out of our path, even though Mojo was not at all aggressive towards people. I do not, however, remember dogs flying toward us and people telling us not to worry.

In this particular case, the dog pulled the leash out of the man's hand. Mistakes happen. But more frequently, it's a case of someone walking a dog off leash and ignorantly assuming everything will be fine. It's irresponsible to put your dog in the way of potential harm by assuming that other dogs are friendly, even if they look as though they are.

You wouldn't let your child run up to every stranger you pass. Why would you possibly let your dog do the same? Do everyone a favor and don't assume my dog -- or any other dog you pass -- is friendly. It's the truly friendly thing to do.

Nicole Wilde is a canine behavior specialist and author. You can visit her website, follow her on Facebook and view her photography/art here.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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ExxonMobil Is Still Funding Climate Science Denier Groups

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ExxonMobil officials may hem and haw when reporters ask them if the company still funds climate science denier organizations, but the numbers don't lie.

The company says it acknowledges the reality of global warming and claims it supports a carbon tax, but its recently disclosed list of 2015 "public information and policy research" grantees shows it spent nearly $2 million last year on more than a dozen think tanks, advocacy groups and associations that dispute climate science and disparage renewable energy.

That's significant from both a legal and political perspective.

There are legal implications because ExxonMobil is currently under investigation for allegedly misleading investors and the general public about climate risks. Its scientists, who were conducting cutting-edge climate research as far back as the 1970s, cautioned top management that continuing to burn vast quantities of fossil fuels could be catastrophic. Instead of heeding those warnings, the company stressed scientific uncertainty to protect its long-term profitability and bankrolled denier groups to spread disinformation.

Likewise, it is politically significant because, by sowing doubt about climate science and the potential of carbon-free energy sources, denier groups provide cover for elected officials to stand in the way of progress.

Two Decades of Duplicity

Shortly after the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol international climate treaty, Exxon went on a spending spree to block federal efforts to address global warming. The company, which was outed by a 2007 report by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), spent $18.62 million from 1998 -- a year before it merged with Mobil -- through 2005 on a network of more than 40 groups. From 2006 through last year, it spent another $14.35 million, for a total of $33 million.

That's just what can be gleaned from the company's tax filings and statements, however. Corporations are not required to disclose all of their political spending, and there is reason to suspect ExxonMobil has spent quite a bit more on its climate disinformation campaign. A former ExxonMobil executive who wishes to remain anonymous told UCS that the company secretly allocated as much as $10 million annually for what insiders called climate "black ops" from 1998 through 2005.

In any case, according to its own figures posted last week, ExxonMobil spent $1.96 million on 16 denier and obstructionist groups last year. Ten of them, including the American Enterprise Institute, American Legislative Exchange Council, Federalist Society and Hoover Institution, were among those listed in the 2007 UCS report.

So what is ExxonMobil getting for its money? Let's take a look at a handful of last year's grantees to find out.

U.S. Chamber of Commerce: Half of ExxonMobil's 2015 denier donations -- $1 million -- went to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the same amount it gave the Chamber in 2014.

The Chamber acknowledges that climate change is happening, but discounts the prevailing scientific consensus that it is largely due to human activity, mainly burning fossil fuels. When pressed about the Chamber's position during a March 2014 Senate hearing, Karen Harbert, head of the Chamber's Institute for 21st Century Energy, replied that there is a "robust debate" over what is causing climate change. "It is caused by a lot of things," she insisted.

Harbert's scientifically indefensible comment was not surprising. The Chamber has a long history of disputing climate science, and that has alienated some of its members. In 2009, Apple, Exelon, Nike, PNM Resources and PG&E, for example, cancelled their memberships after Chamber Vice President William Kovacs demanded that the EPA convene a "Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century" on climate science with witnesses, cross-examinations and a judge ruling on the reality of global warming. "It would be evolution versus creationism," Kovacs explained. "It will be climate change science on trial."

Those high-profile defections apparently had little impact on the Chamber's position. In May 2014, just days before the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced its draft Clean Power Plan to reduce power plant carbon pollution, the Chamber released a grossly misleading report attacking the proposed rule. The report, which was also sponsored by the American Petroleum Institute, was denounced not only by the EPA, but also by PolitiFact.com and the Washington Post. Among its many faults, the report wildly inflated the cost of the rule and failed to consider the benefits of cutting carbon emissions.

Last October, the Chamber and 14 other business associations filed a lawsuit against the EPA, arguing that the Clean Power Plan exceeds the agency's authority to regulate the energy sector, and the Chamber's priorities for 2016 include opposing EPA efforts to curb carbon emissions as well as the agency's science-based finding that global warming endangers public health and the environment.

Manhattan Institute: ExxonMobil gave the Manhattan Institute $200,000 in 2015, boosting the company's total donations to the self-described free-market think tank to $1 million since 1998. In turn, the institute has been cranking out papers and articles denouncing efforts to cut carbon and maligning renewable energy technologies.

Last summer, for example, Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Oren Cass dismissed the idea of a carbon tax -- ExxonMobil's supposed preferred policy -- as a "shell game" in an article he wrote for National Affairs. He followed up that essay in October with a white paper calling the impending U.N. climate negotiations in Paris a "farce." What did Cass propose as a better solution? He urged policymakers to "abandon fruitless negotiations and focus instead on the realistic option of promoting innovation and preparing for any future adaptation that may be necessary."

The institute's longtime point man on energy, Robert Bryce -- who previously worked for the ExxonMobil-funded Institute for Energy Research -- says he's "agnostic" about climate change. Over the years he has written numerous columns for the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Wall Street Journal and other publications praising oil, natural gas and coal and disparaging wind and solar. A recent Bryce column in the National Review, for instance, denounced tax breaks and subsidies for the wind industry but ignored the fact that, since 1918, federal oil and gas industry subsidies have averaged $4.85 billion a year in today's dollars.

American Legislative Exchange Council: ALEC, a secretive lobby group that drafts sample corporate-friendly legislation for state lawmakers, has received $1.79 million from ExxonMobil since 1998, and that investment is still paying dividends. At ALEC's annual meeting last July, for example, corporate and legislator members collaborated on bills and resolutions that would inhibit state implementation of the Clean Power Plan, hamper the solar industry from selling electricity directly to homes and businesses, and undermine state renewable energy standards by restricting investment in wind and solar.

One of the keynote speakers at that meeting, Stephen Moore -- founder of the Club for Growth and a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation -- declared at a plenary session that the "biggest scam of the last 100 years is global warming." ALEC's official position on climate change is only slightly more nuanced, leaving open the question of the role human activity plays. "Climate change is a historical phenomenon," its website states, "and the debate will continue on the significance of natural and anthropogenic contributions."

With that scientifically challenged position, it's no wonder ALEC invites speakers for its conferences from such notorious climate science denier groups as the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, the Heartland Institute and, of course, the Heritage Foundation -- all former ExxonMobil grantees.

While ExxonMobil and other major carbon producers Chevron and Peabody Energy remain steadfast ALEC members, more than 100 corporations have severed ties with the organization for a variety of reasons, including its stance on climate change. Those companies include a number of heavy hitters in the energy sector, including American Electric Power, BP, ConocoPhillips and Shell.

National Black Chamber of Commerce: From 2002 through last year, the National Black Chamber of Commerce (NBCC) received $1.1 million from ExxonMobil, and the organization's president, Harry C. Alford, is unapologetic about taking fossil fuel industry money. "Of course we do and it is only natural," Alford states on the NBCC website. "The legacy of Blacks in this nation has been tied to the miraculous history of fossil fuel.... [F]ossil fuels have been our economic friend."

Last summer, NBCC published a report that falsely claimed the Clean Power Plan would pose "economic hardship" on poor and minority Americans. A UCS analysis found that the report was based on fraudulent claims from previously published studies, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's anti-Clean Power Plan report from 2014. In fact, unchecked climate change would likely hurt poor and minority communities most.

More recently, Alford wrote an opinion piece attacking the Clean Power Plan for The Hill, a Washington political trade publication. Like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's bogus 2014 report, Alford's June 29 column vastly exaggerated the cost of the proposed rule and did not factor in the billions of dollars in health and economic benefits that would result from cutting carbon pollution.

ExxonMobil's Pretzel Logic

Last fall, UCS and reporters at InsideClimate News and the Los Angeles Times revealed that Exxon's own scientists had warned the company decades ago about the potential for climate catastrophe. The new revelations also showed that the company responded to that bad news by downplaying climate risks and helping establish the climate science denial network.

A number of journalists did follow-up stories, pressing ExxonMobil officials about the company's longtime support for denier groups. They didn't always get the same answer.

During an interview last September with Richard Keil, ExxonMobil's senior media relations advisor, WNYC's On the Media host Bob Garfield pushed Keil for an explanation. "Please clarify this for me: Are not funding, or did not fund them?" Garfield asked. Keil's response was unequivocal. "We are not funding," he said.

When asked the same question by the New York Times in early November, then-Vice President of Public and Government Affairs Kenneth Cohen likewise said no. "We stopped funding them in the middle part of the last decade because a handful of them were making the uncertainty of the science their focal point," he said. "Frankly, we made the call that we needed to back away from supporting the groups that were undercutting the actual risk" of global warming.

Cohen's response wasn't a surprise. He made the same disingenuous claim back in February 2007, a few weeks after UCS disclosed that ExxonMobil had been spending millions of dollars on climate science denier groups. Greenwire, a trade news organization, reported that Cohen said the company "has stopped funding them."

The surprise came on November 9, three days after the New York Times story ran, when PBS NewsHour host Judy Woodruff asked Cohen if ExxonMobil has been funding denier groups. This time he took a different tack.

"Well, the answer is yes," replied Cohen, who retired from the company in January. "And I will let those organizations respond for themselves."

But before anyone declares a victory for corporate transparency, it turns out that Cohen's moment of candor was, well, momentary.

On December 1, a Washington Post story quoted yet another ExxonMobil spokesperson who qualified Cohen's remark. Alan Jeffers, a media relations manager, said the company "rejects the premise" that it has been funding climate science denial.

"We were engaged with funding public policy groups on policy issues, not on science," Jeffers explained. "We made our position known on some climate policies that made us unpopular with environmental activists, and they tried to position that as us funding climate denial. And that's just not accurate."

Not accurate? As Jeffers, Keil and their former boss, Cohen, surely know, the think tanks, advocacy groups and associations ExxonMobil has been sponsoring all these years lie about the science to strengthen the argument against doing anything to address climate change. After all, if people believe climate science is a fraud -- or at least "far from settled" -- they will see no reason to support a carbon tax, cap-and-trade system, or any other climate policy. And that line of reasoning, which protects the status quo, seems to suit ExxonMobil just fine.

Elliott Negin is a senior writer at the Union of Concerned Scientists. UCS staff members Dave Anderson and Jayne Piepenburg provided research for this article.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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"Red Geysers " --Previously Unknown Phenomenon Discovered Killing Off Galaxies of the Universe (Today's Most Popular)

An international team of scientists has identified a common phenomenon in galaxies that could explain why huge numbers of them turn into cosmic graveyards. Galaxies begin their existence as lively and colorful spiral galaxies, full of gas and dust, and actively forming bright new stars. However, as galaxies evolve, they quench their star formation and turn into featureless deserts, devoid of fresh new stars, and generally remain as such for the rest of their evolution. But the mechanism that produces this dramatic transformation and keeps galaxies turned off, is one of the biggest unsolved mysteries in galaxy evolution.

Now, thanks to the new large SDSS-IV MaNGA survey of galaxies, a collaborative effort led by the University of Tokyo and involving the University of Oxford has discovered a surprisingly common new phenomenon in galaxies, dubbed "red geysers", that could explain how the process works. Researchers interpret the red geysers as galaxies hosting low-energy supermassive black holes which drive intense interstellar winds. These winds suppress star formation by heating up the ambient gas found in galaxies and preventing it to cool and condense into stars.

Lead author Dr Edmond Cheung, from the University of Tokyo's Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe, said: 'Stars form from the gas, but in many galaxies stars were found not to form despite an abundance of gas. It was like having deserts in densely clouded regions. We knew quiescent galaxies needed some way to suppress star formation, and now we think the red geysers phenomenon may represent how typical quiescent galaxies maintain their quiescence.'

'Stars form from the gas, a bit like the drops of rain condense from the water vapour. And in both cases one needs the gas to cool down, for condensation to occur. But we could not understand what was preventing this cooling from happening in many galaxies,' said Co-author Dr Michele Cappellari, from the Department of Physics at Oxford University. 'But when we modeled the motion of the gas in the red geysers, we found that the gas was being pushed away from the galaxy center, and escaping the galaxy gravitational pull.'

'The discovery was made possible by the amazing power of the ongoing MaNGA galaxy survey' said Dr Kevin Bundy, from the University of Tokyo, the overall leader of the collaboration. 'The survey allows us to observe galaxies in three dimensions, by mapping not only how they appear on the sky, but also how their stars and gas move inside them.'

Using a near-dormant distant galaxy named Akira as a prototypical example, the researchers describe how the wind's driving mechanism is likely to originate in Akira's galactic nucleus. The energy input from this nucleus, powered by a supermassive black hole, is capable of producing the wind, which itself contains enough mechanical energy to heat ambient, cooler gas in the galaxy and thus suppress star formation.

The researchers identified an episodic quality to these jets of wind, leading them to the name red geysers (with 'red' colour due to the lack of blue young stars). This phenomenon, discussed in the paper with reference to Akira, appears surprisingly common and could be generally applicable to all quiescent galaxies.

The study made use of optical imaging spectroscopy from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey-IV Mapping Nearby Galaxies at Apache Point Observatory (SDSS-IV MaNGA) program.

Does the image at the top of the page show one galaxy or two ? This question came to light in 1950 when astronomer Art Hoag chanced upon this unusual extragalactic object. On the outside is a ring dominated by bright blue stars, while near the center lies a ball of much redder stars that are likely much older. Between the two is a gap that appears almost completely dark. How Hoag's Object formed remains unknown, although similar objects have now been identified and collectively labeled as a form of ring galaxy. Genesis hypotheses include a galaxy collision billions of years ago and the gravitational effect of a central bar that has since vanished. The above photo taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in July 2001 revealed unprecedented details of Hoag's Object.

The Daily Galaxy via University of Oxford

Image credit: http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php?t=31821

ALMA Observatory Spies Monster Black Hole at Center of a Spectacular Spiral Galaxy

"Extreme Black Hole Jets Signal Galaxy Mergers" --Hubble/ALMA Observatories

"Biggest Explosion Since the Big Bang" --From a Supermassive Black Hole a Billion Times the Mass of Our Sun

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European Space Agency: Existence of a Black Hole "Gravitational Vortex" Discovered

The European Space Agency's orbiting X-ray observatory, XMM-Newton, has proved the existence of a "gravitational vortex" around a black hole. The discovery, aided by NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) mission, solves a mystery that has eluded astronomers for more than 30 years, and will allow them to map the behavior of matter very close to black holes. It could also open the door to future investigations of Albert Einstein's general relativity.

Matter falling into a black hole heats up as it plunges to its doom. Before it passes into the black hole and is lost from view forever, it can reach millions of degrees. At that temperature it shines X-rays into space.

In the 1980s, pioneering astronomers using early X-ray telescopes discovered that the X-rays coming from stellar-mass black holes in our galaxy flicker. The changes follow a set pattern. When the flickering begins, the dimming and re-brightening can take 10 seconds to complete. As the days, weeks and then months progress, the period shortens until the oscillation takes place 10 times every second. Then, the flickering suddenly stops altogether. The phenomenon was dubbed the Quasi Periodic Oscillation (QPO).

"It was immediately recognized to be something fascinating because it is coming from something very close to a black hole," said Adam Ingram, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, who began working to understand QPOs for his doctoral thesis in 2009.

During the 1990s, astronomers had begun to suspect that the QPOs were associated with a gravitational effect predicted by Einstein's general relativity: that a spinning object will create a kind of gravitational vortex.

"It is a bit like twisting a spoon in honey. Imagine that the honey is space and anything embedded in the honey will be "dragged" around by the twisting spoon," explained Ingram. "In reality, this means that anything orbiting a spinning object will have its motion affected." In the case of an inclined orbit, it will "precess."

This means that the whole orbit will change orientation around the central object. The time for the orbit to return to its initial condition is known as a precession cycle.

In 2004, NASA launched Gravity Probe B to measure this so-called Lense-Thirring effect around Earth. After painstaking analysis, scientists confirmed that the spacecraft would turn through a complete precession cycle once every 33 million years.

Around a black hole, however, the effect would be much more noticeable because of the stronger gravitational field. The precession cycle would take just a matter of seconds or less to complete. This is so close to the periods of the QPOs that astronomers began to suspect a link.

Ingram began working on the problem by looking at what happened in the flat disc of matter surrounding a black hole. Known as an accretion disc, it is the place where material gradually spirals inwards towards the black hole. Scientists had already suggested that, close to the black hole, the flat accretion disc puffs up into a hot plasma, in which electrons are stripped from their host atoms. Termed the hot inner flow, it shrinks in size over weeks and months as it is eaten by the black hole. Together with colleagues, Ingram published a paper in 2009 suggesting that the QPO is driven by the Lense-Thirring precession of this hot flow. This is because the smaller the inner flow becomes, the closer to the black hole it would approach and so the faster its Lense-Thirring precession cycle would be. The question was: how to prove it?

"We have spent a lot of time trying to find smoking gun evidence for this behavior," said Ingram.

The answer is that the inner flow is releasing high-energy radiation that strikes the matter in the surrounding accretion disc, making the iron atoms in the disc shine like a fluorescent light tube. The iron releases X-rays of a single wavelength—referred to as "a spectral line."

Because the accretion disc is rotating, the iron line has its wavelength distorted by the Doppler effect. Line emission from the approaching side of the disc is squashed—blue shifted—and line emission from the receding disc material is stretched—red shifted. If the inner flow really is precessing, it will sometimes shine on the approaching disc material and sometimes on the receding material, making the line wobble back and forth over the course of a precession cycle.

Seeing this wobbling is where XMM-Newton came in. Ingram and colleagues from Amsterdam, Cambridge, Southampton and Tokyo applied for a long-duration observation that would allow them to watch the QPO repeatedly. They chose black hole H 1743-322, which was exhibiting a four-second QPO at the time. They watched it for 260,000 seconds with XMM-Newton. They also observed it for 70,000 seconds with NASA's NuSTAR X-ray observatory.

"The high-energy capability of NuSTAR was very important," Ingram said. "NuSTAR confirmed the wobbling of the iron line, and additionally saw a feature in the spectrum called a 'reflection hump' that added evidence for precession."

After a rigorous analysis process of adding all the observational data together, they saw that the iron line was wobbling in accordance with the predictions of general relativity. "We are directly measuring the motion of matter in a strong gravitational field near to a black hole," says Ingram.

This is the first time that the Lense-Thirring effect has been measured in a strong gravitational field. The technique will allow astronomers to map matter in the inner regions of accretion discs around black holes. It also hints at a powerful new tool with which to test general relativity.

Einstein's theory is largely untested in such strong gravitational fields. So if astronomers can understand the physics of the matter that is flowing into the black hole, they can use it to test the predictions of general relativity as never before - but only if the movement of the matter in the accretion disc can be completely understood.

"If you can get to the bottom of the astrophysics, then you can really test the general relativity," says Ingram. A deviation from the predictions of general relativity would be welcomed by a lot of astronomers and physicists. It would be a concrete signal that a deeper theory of gravity exists.

Larger X-ray telescopes in the future could help in the search because they are more powerful and could more efficiently collect X-rays. This would allow astronomers to investigate the QPO phenomenon in more detail. But for now, astronomers can be content with having seen Einstein's gravity at play around a black hole.

"This is a major breakthrough since the study combines information about the timing and energy of X-ray photons to settle the 30-year debate around the origin of QPOs. The photon-collecting capability of XMM-Newton was instrumental in this work," said Norbert Schartel, ESA Project Scientist for XMM-Newton.

The results reported in this article are published in "A quasi-periodic modulation of the iron line centroid energy in the black hole binary H 1743-322", by Adam Ingram and colleagues, to appear in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 461 (2): 1967-1980

The Daily Galaxy via Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical

Image credit: Tomoharu Oka (Keio University)

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No Big Bang --"Our Universe Was Formed From an Older Collapsing Universe"

A new study of the early universe reveals how it could have been formed from an older collapsing universe, rather than being brand new. The universe is currently expanding and it is a common theory that this is the result of the ‘Big Bang' the universe bursting into existence from a point of infinitely dense and hot material.

"Our model's ability to give a possible solution to the problem of the Big Bang opens the way to new explanations for the formation of the universe," said Steffen Gielen, a theorectical physicist with the Imperial College of London.

However, physicists have long debated this idea as it means the universe began in a state of complete breakdown of physics as we know it. Instead, some have suggested that the universe has alternated between periods of expansion and contraction, and the current expansion is just one phase of this.

This so-called ‘Big Bounce' idea has been around since 1922, but has been held back by an inability to explain how the universe transitions from a contracting to an expanding state, and vice versa, without leading to an infinite point.

Now, in a new study published today in Physical Review Letters, Dr Steffen Gielen from Imperial College London and Dr Neil Turok, Director of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Canada, have shown how the Big Bounce might be possible.

Cosmological observations suggest that during its very early life, the universe may have looked the same at all scales meaning that the physical laws that that worked for the whole structure of the universe also worked at the scale of the very small, smaller than individual atoms. This phenomenon is known as conformal symmetry.

In today's universe, this is not the case particles smaller than atoms behave very differently to larger matter and the symmetry is broken. Subatomic particle behaviour is governed by what is called quantum mechanics, which produces different rules of physics for the very small.

For example, without quantum mechanics, atoms would not exist. The electrons, as they whizz around the nucleus, would lose energy and collapse into the centre, destroying the atom. However, quantum mechanics prevents this from happening.

In the early universe, as everything was incredibly small, it may have been governed solely by the principles of quantum mechanics, rather than the large-scale physics we also see today.

In the new study, the researchers suggest that the effects of quantum mechanics could prevent the universe from collapsing and destroying itself at end of a period of contraction, known as the Big Crunch. Instead, the universe would transition from a contracting state to an expanding one without collapsing completely.

Dr Gielen said: “Quantum mechanics saves us when things break down. It saves electrons from falling in and destroying atoms, so maybe it could also save the early universe from such violent beginnings and endings as the Big Bang and Big Crunch.”

Using the idea that the universe had conformal symmetry at its beginning, and that this was governed by the rules of quantum mechanics, Dr Gielen and Dr Turok built a mathematical model of how the universe might evolve.

The model contains a few simple ingredients that are most likely to have formed the early universe, such as the fact that it was filled with radiation, with almost no normal matter. With these, the model predicts that the effect of quantum mechanics would allow the universe to spring from a previous universe that was contracting, rather than from a single point of broken physics.

Dr Turok said: “The big surprise in our work is that we could describe the earliest moments of the hot Big Bang quantum mechanically, under very reasonable and minimal assumptions about the matter present in the universe. Under these assumptions, the Big Bang was a ‘bounce', in which contraction reversed to expansion.”

The researchers are now investigating how this simple model can be extended to explain the origin of perturbations to the simple structure of the universe, such as galaxies. “Our model's ability to give a possible solution to the problem of the Big Bang opens the way to new explanations for the formation of the universe,” said Dr Gielen.

'Perfect Quantum Cosmologial Bounce' by S Gielen and N Turok is published in Physical Review Letters.

The Daily Galaxy via Imperial College London

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LA Fishing by Neil Kremer

There are hundreds of spear fisherman lurking in the Southern California waters every evening. For some childhood James Bond fantasy reason, that is just awesome to us.