"Even so, 70 sextillion is greater than the estimated number of sand grains on all the world's beaches and deserts - about 10 times more."

hi guys! is this a consequence of coincidence?...well, i do not think it is...
read..you will enjoy ...

"The universe contains about 70 sextillion - or 70 thousand million million million - observable stars, according to the most accurate estimate yet made of the number - a figure that far exceeds all previous estimates.

The calculation was made by a team led by astronomer Dr Simon Driver of the Australian National University in Canberra and announced this week at the 25th General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union in Sydney.

"Even for a professional astronomer used to dealing in monster numbers, this is mind-boggling," said Driver. "This is not the total number of stars in the universe, but it's the number within range of our telescopes. The real number could be much, much larger still - some people think it is infinite."

Even so, 70 sextillion is greater than the estimated number of sand grains on all the world's beaches and deserts - about 10 times more.

The team - which included Dr Jochen Liske from the Royal Observatory Edinburgh, Dr Nicholas Cross of Johns Hopkins University, Professor Warrick Couch from the University of New South Wales in Sydney and Dr David Lemon from St Andrews University - did not physically count the stars.

Using some of the world's most powerful telescopes, they instead took a representative sample by counting all the galaxies in one small region of the universe closest to Earth. By measuring precisely how bright each galaxy was, they were able to estimate how many stars it contained and then extrapolated this out to the whole region of the universe visible through telescopes.

The team believes its estimate is 10 times more accurate than any previous one because it combines the best counts of galaxies ever conducted with the most modern cosmological measurements of the geometry of the universe.

The calculation was made as part of the world's largest galaxy survey, the Two-Degree Field Galaxy Redshift Survey, results from which were also presented to the meeting this week. The survey, run by the Anglo-Australian Observatory in rural New South Wales, aims to measure the distances of 250,000 nearby galaxies.

Driver noted that the vast majority of stars are too dim to see with the naked eye, which can pick out only around 5,000 stars from even the darkest places, and only 100 or so in the middle of a big city.

But he argues that most stars probably have planets, a fraction of which probably have life: "But they are very, very far away. It's not so much a question of whether other life exists, but whether we will ever be able to contact them, given the massive distances involved."

Last year, Dr Charles Lineweaver and doctoral student Daniel Grether of the University of New South Wales in Sydney, calculated that our Milky Way galaxy contains about 300 billion stars, of which about 30 billion are like our Sun, and at least 1.5 billion theoretically have orbiting planets the size of Jupiter.

In 1999, observations by NASA astronomers, using the Hubble Space Telescope, suggested that there are 125 billion galaxies in the universe.

http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s910295.htm

Long Walk to Freedom

We as children of humanity,owe you !!!
Thanks for your great struggle and devotion..
Dear friends, today is the birthday of N. Mandela...
regards,

http://myhero.com/hero.asp?hero=nelsonMandela
"I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die."



Imagine growing up in a country where drinking out of the wrong water fountain might get you thrown into jail; where a man might have the very same job as his neighbor, but because of the color of his skin get paid less in a year than the other man made in a week; where the government told you that your ancestors and their ways of living were wrong and savage and not even human. Sounds like some futuristic film, doesn't it? Well, for Nelson Mandela, this was no movie. Growing up in South Africa under the Apartheid system of government meant these things, and worse, were part of daily life.
But Nelson Mandela was a fighter. Instead of bowing down to this unjust system of government, he became a lifelong warrior in the battle to free South Africa. Starting out as a leader of an underground political movement called the African National Congress (ANC), Mr. Mandela played a part in many dramatic demonstrations against the white-ruled government.

His career in the ANC was cut short in 1964 when he was sentenced to life in prison. The notorious Rivonia Trial, as his sentencing was called, is now seen as nothing more than a cruel ploy used by the white South African government to silence Nelson Mandela once and for all. But even while in prison, Mr. Mandela continued to be a beacon of hope for his people who carried on the struggle against Apartheid in his absence.In 1990, after 27 years of imprisonment, Nelson Mandela was freed. His release marked the beginning of the end for Apartheid. In less than five years after his release, Mr. Mandela was awarded the Nobel Peace prize and elected president of South Africa.

Today, thanks to the self-sacrifice of Nelson Mandela, Apartheid has been outlawed. Everyone in South Africa now has an equal opportunity at home and at work to live comfortable, productive lives. Nelson Mandela is one of the world's true freedom fighters, and his life and personal triumphs will be remembered long after the world has forgotten the evils of Apartheid.

"I have walked that long road to freedom. I have tried not to falter; I have made missteps along the way. But I have discovered the secret that after climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb. I have taken a moment here to rest, to steal a view of the glorious vista that surrounds me, to look back on the distance I have come. But I can rest only for a moment, for with freedom comes responsibilities, and I dare not linger, for my long walk is not yet ended."

The human body is a miracle of symmetry, as well as of asymmetry.

The human body is a miracle of symmetry, as well as of asymmetry. Scientists know how an embryo develops in the womb to form this symmetry and asymmetry, but they are completely ignorant of how the particles-the particles that reach the embryo through the mother and function as building blocks in the formation of the body-can distinguish between right and left, how they are able to determine the place of each organ, how each goes and inserts itself in the exact place of a certain organ, and how they understand the extremely complicated relations among cells and organs, and their requirements. This is so complicated a process that if a single particle which should be placed in, for example, the pupil of the right eye, were to go to the ear, it could lead to malfunction or even death. Another point relevant here is that all animate beings are made from the same elements coming from earth, air and water, and similar to one another with respect to the members and organs of their bodies, yet they are almost completely different from one another with respect to bodily features, visage, character, desires and ambitions. This uniqueness of the individual is so reliable that one can be identified absolutely by one’s finger prints.

NO COMMENTOS!

U.S. military forays since 1898
1898-1902: Cuba
Victory in the Spanish-American War of 1898 left the U.S. in possession of Spain’s last major Caribbean colony. After independence in 1902, Washington sent troops back well into the 1930s, when Fulgencio Batista seized power. The U.S. helped keep him there until Fidel Castro’s revolution in 1959.

1898-1946: Philippines
Washington governed the Philippines as a province from the end of the Spanish-American war until 1946. A hefty garrison force fought a bloody conflict with pro-independence Filipino rebels. By the time Japan conquered the Philippines in 1942, however, a path toward independence already had been agreed. After independence in 1946, U.S. troops remained on two large bases leased from Manila until 1999 and Washington routinely intervened in domestic politics.

1904-1999: Panama
Washington won rights “in perpetuity” to the territory around the Panama Canal after helping locals secede from Colombia. Washington did little to promote democracy for decades. In 1999, the canal and adjacent territory were turned over to local sovereignty and the county currently is a functioning democracy.

1905-1924: Dominican Republic
U.S. Marines intervened and occupied this nation on the eastern side of Hispanola after European states hinted they would intervene to stave off the nation’s bankruptcy. American troops left in 1924, but the U.S. Treasury controlled the country’s finances until 1941. In 1965, Marines imposed a new pro-American government. True democratization failed to take root until the mid-1970s. Today, the country is a functioning democrac

1912-1925: Nicaragua
American Marines ruled Nicaragua for 13 years beginning in 1912, fighting nationalist rebels before leaving in 1925. They returned in 1928 to fight a new rebel leader, Augusto César Sandino. The U.S. withdrew in 1934 after killing Sandino, leaving Anastasio Somoza in charge. Somoza ruled as U.S.-based dictator until his overthrow by Soviet-inspired Sandinista guerrillas in 1979. A CIA-based war against them ended in 1989, when free elections forced the Sandinista regime out of power.

1915-1934: Haiti
U.S. Marines entered Haiti in 1915 after a mob killed the Haitian ruler. Some 20,000 American troops stayed there, running the country via military administration, until 1934. The Marines left power in the hands of Haiti’s national guard, which, in turn, installed the brutal Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier into power. He and his son Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier ruled until 1986, when Baby Doc fled to Paris.

1945-1952: Japan
Gen. Douglas MacArthur sat as military governor of Japan between 1945-1949. By absolving Emperor Hirohito of his wartime guilt, MacArthur successfully blunted opposition to the democratization of Japan, most notably the drafting of a new constitution that foreswore war and established electoral laws. In April, 1952, a peace treaty took effect and the Allied occupation ended.

1945-54: Germany
The four victorious Allied powers occupied sectors of German territory and quadrants of its capital city, Berlin. The occupation quickly broke down into rival Western vs. Soviet zones. “De-Nazification” and Marshal Plan aid began to transform Western Germany by the early 1950s, and in 1954 it emerged as the independent West German state.

1945-1948: South Korea
The defeat of Japan left Korea, a Japanese colony, split between U.S. and Soviet control. The U.S. military governed the southern part of the peninsula until 1948, when elections established the Republic of Korea. U.S. forces remained, however, when the Soviet-backed north refused to hold elections. In 1950, North Korea attacked and war raged until 1953. U.S. forces – some 38,000 – have stayed ever since.

1945-1955: Austria
As in Germany, Austria – which had been annexed by the Germans in 1938 – was split between victorious powers. Austria's status remained unclear for a decade until a treaty ended the occupation, recognized independence and forbade unification with Germany.

1965-73: South Vietnam
When communist guerillas defeated French efforts to reestablish its Indochina colony in 1953, the U.S. stepped in to back the anti-communist Vietnamese government. Drawn progressively into the maelstrom, Washington formally landed combat troops in 1965, their numbers topping out at 500,000 in 1969. Throughout, the South’s government remained undemocratic and corrupt. The U.S. pulled out in 1973, and the South was overrun by communist North Vietnamese troops in 1975.

1983-84: Grenada
U.S. troops landed on this tiny Caribbean island, citing the arrival of Cuban military advisers and the threat they allegedly posed to American medical students studying there. After a short battle, U.S. troops took control of the island, deposed its left-leaning “military council” and organized free elections before leaving in 1984. The country is now a functioning democracy.

1994-99: Haiti
When the Duvalier dictatorships ended in 1986, the Haitian military took direct control of the country. An election in 1993 quickly led to a coup, which in turn caused the U.S. to threaten invasion. The threat forced the generals into exile, restoring the ousted president, Jean-Bertrande Aristide. U.S. and other international forces patrolled the country until 1999.

1995-present: Bosnia-Hercegovina
The collapse of Yugoslavia beginning in 1990 led to civil war in its most ethnically diverse republic, Bosnia-Hercegovina. European-led U.N. force tried to restore order but failed. In 1995, after years of steering clear, the U.S. intervened and imposed a peace treaty that included a NATO-led occupation of the fractured state. Some 6,000 U.S. troops are still there, along with 40,000 other forces, in 2003. A democratic state is struggling to emerge,

2002-present: Afghanistan
A U.S.-led campaign to find al-Qaida leaders harbored by the Taliban government swept elements of both from the central Asian nation. Prospects for democracy remain extremely fragile. In early 2003, some 9,000 U.S. forces remained in and around Afghanistan, many engaged in the hunt for Osama bin Laden.

http://www.msnbc.com/news/938233.asp#BODY

ever since the pre-age...hegomony and domination of the "male" has been "on" ..even today although the majority of "female" is higher..male mostly controls the world...
what is the main reason of stark domination?
intelligence, physical superiority(?),....?
in the middle of "opposition sex" discussion...nice to expand the circle...join!!!