Indian Ocean

INDIAN OCEAN
The Indian Ocean - the world's third largest body of water- already forms center stage for the challenges of twenty-first century. The greater Indian Ocean region encompasses the entire arc of Islam, from the Sahara desert to the Indonesian archipelago. Although Arabs and Persians are known to Westerners primarily as desert people, they have also been great seafarers. Today, the reaches of Indian Ocean include Somalia, Yemen, Iran, Pakistan, Myanmar, India, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Indonesia etc. The Indian ocean is dominated by two immense bays, the Arabian sea and the Bay of Bengal, near the top of latter sits two ferociously guarded sovereignty (with vast military) and astonishing independent countries in the world Myanmar and Pakistan. In Myanmar where the competition over energy and natural resources between China and India looms Although we are seeing countries building up their sea powers, the sea powers has been less threatening in recent centuries than land power. Navies make port visits, and armies invade. Even if the comparative size of the most powerful navy -US navy - decreases in the decades ahead, the United States will remain the one great power from the outside Indian Ocean region with a major leverage position among rising Asian navies. Throughout history sea routes have mattered more than land routes. Even in jet and information age, 90 percent of global commerce and 65 percent of all oil travel by sea. The Indian Ocean accounts for 50 percent of world’s container traffic and 70 percent of petroleum products pass through. Choke points include straits of Malacca, Hormuz (Shatt Al Arab Waterways known in local). 40 percent of world trade passes through Malacca, 40 percent of all traded crude oil passes through Hormuz. India is dependent on oil for nearly 33 percent of its energy needs, 65 percent of which is imported from Persian Gulf countries. Coal imported from Mozambique, South Africa, Indonesia ands Australia. Liquefied natural gas (LNG) is imported from Qatar, Malaysia and Indonesia to India, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Western Europe. This shipment will have major decrease when ongoing Myanmar-Bangladesh-India gas pipe line project, Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline project which Iran will supply India with 7.5 million tons of LNG annually for 25 years starting 2009, Turkmenistan-Pakistan-Afghanistan pipeline project are completed.     

Myanmar currently exports more than 1 billion cubic feet of gas (28 million cubic meters) a day of natural gas from its two offshore projects in the Gulf of Martha ban to neighboring Thailand via an underwater and overland pipeline network. Thailand pays an estimated 2 billion dollars a year for the gas imports. China has signed a 2.4-billion-dollar loan agreement with Myanmar to finance the construction of a natural gas pipeline between the countries. The loan was inked between the China Development Bank Cooperation and Myanmar Foreign Investment Bank on November 30, 2010 in Napyitaw, the new capital, the Myanmar Times reported. The pipeline is to run from Rakhine State on the Myanmar coast, site of the Kyauk Phyu national gas project, to Yunnan province in southern China. The loan will be mainly for the natural gas project in Kyauk Phyu, which involves Myanmar, China, Korea and India, where Myanmar has 7.3 percent of the shares. The loan would help bring speed up construction of the project. Under the Myanmar-China gas scheme, India is to help build a new port in Sithwe, Rakhine, to handle gas from offshore reserves and China will construct a 1,000-kilometer pipeline to deliver the gas overland to Yunnan. Yunnan is the China’s major gateway to Indochina. China is currently building two high speed rail systems for Myanmar and Thailand from Kumming, Yunnan’s Capital. At the same time China will be utilizing KyaukPhyu deep sea port for Bulk Carriers. According to the plan 35 containers ships can be unloaded their cargo simultaneously. That will be one of largest in Asia when it is completed similar to Sri Lanka’s just completed Chinese built Hambantota huge port. India is also intimately helping Iran to develop the port of Char Bahar on the Gulf of Oman as forward operating base for Iran’s navy.

On the manpower side approximately 3.5 millions Indians working six Arabs states such as United Arab Emirates and sending home $4 billion remittances annually. And India’s trade will grow with Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan which has become a strategic rear base for India against Pakistan which is poised to become an important energy partner. India has also been expanding its military and economic ties with Myanmar because of rich natural resources such as oil, natural gas, coal, zinc, copper, uranium, timber and hydropower which China are also heavily invested. India is enlarging its navy of 155 ships third largest in the world (after US and China). US has 276 ships with superior technology is still bigger than combined strength of 10 other Navies including China and India. China government is already adopted ‘a strings of pearls’ policy in Indian ocean. It has built and building large naval bases and listening posts in Pakistan, other facilities in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh. Other large naval bases not in Indian Ocean but in South China Sea islands of Paracels and Spratly islands. Interesting point is that 75 percent of world population living within 200 miles of the sea, the world’s military future may well be dominated by naval (and air) forces operating over vast regions.

California's High Speed Rail Status (as of Dec 2010)

California's planned high speed line will likely to be the first true high speed rail to be built in the US with more than 11 billion in financing secured construction could begin as early as 2011


Cost of Journey

• Car ( $ 200)
• Plane ($ 225)
• Tran ($130)

Total Time

• Car (6hr:45min)
• Plane (4hr:15min)
• Train (2hr:25min)

Carbon dioxide Emitted

• Car (209lb)
• Plane (178lb)
• Train (50lb)

Federal Express
Simulus fund for Los Angeles - San Diego high speed rail
The infusion adds to a USD 9billion bond approved by voters in 2008


Hi Speed Trains around the World

• France
• Japan
• Chinese

Bid
The Chinese Ministry of Railways is bidding head on with US giant General Electric (GE) to build California's high speed rail network has promised to provide financing, technology, equipment, many high end engineers and high end technicians. Potentially raising what role US Companies including GE and American workers will play in the project. California and other US States will need to ensure that Chinese investment satisfies multiple US interests, including labor


High Speed Rail Stations

• Anaheim
• Bakersfield
• Sacramento 

World's Fastest Train (as of Dec 10 2010)

TITAN (TIE-TUN)

One moon orbits our planet Earth. Saturn has the most moons in our solar system. So far, 62 moons have been discovered in Saturn's orbit, and 53 of them have been officially named.ne moon orbits our planet Earth. Saturn has the most moons in our solar system. So far, 62 moons have been discovered in Saturn's orbit, and 53 of them have been officially named. 


In many respects Saturn's largest moon, Titan, is one of the most Earth-like worlds we have found to date. With its thick atmosphere and organic-rich chemistry, Titan resembles a frozen version of Earth, several billion years ago, before life began pumping oxygen into our atmosphere.

Titan is of great interest to scientists because it has a substantial, active atmosphere and complex, Earth-like processes that shape its surface. The moon is enveloped by an orange haze of naturally produced photochemical smog that frustratingly obscured its surface.

Titan's surface is shaped by rivers and lakes of liquid ethane and methane (the main component of natural gas), which forms clouds and occasionally rains from the sky as water does on Earth. Winds sculpt vast regions of dark, hydrocarbon-rich dunes that girdle the moon's equator and low latitudes. Volcanism may occur as well, but with liquid water as the lava.

On its journey to Saturn, Cassini carried the European-built Huygens probe. On Jan. 14, 2005, Huygens achieved humankind's first landing on a body in the Outer Solar System when it parachuted through Titan's murky skies. Huygens took measurements of atmospheric composition and wind speeds during its decent, along with an incredible series of images showing telltale patterns of erosion by flowing liquid. The probe came to rest on what appeared to be a floodplain, surrounded by rounded cobbles of water ice.

As the Cassini Equinox Mission progresses, the spacecraft will monitor Titan's atmosphere and surface for signs of seasonal change. The spacecraft's radar and camera systems will continue to peer through the haze, expanding our high resolution maps of the surface. And scientists will eagerly await new data that could confirm the presence of a liquid ocean beneath the giant moon's surface.

The exploration of this amazing place is just beginning. Frigid and alien, yet also remarkably similar to our own planet, Titan is a new world – revealed before our very eyes by the Cassini and Huygens spacecraft.

Scientists report definitive evidence of the presence of lakes filled with liquid methane on Saturn's moon Titan.

• Based on the lake characteristics, Cassini scientists think they are observing liquid-filled lakes on Titan today. Another possibility is that these depressions and channels formed in the past and have now been filled by a low-density deposit that is darker than any observed elsewhere on Titan. However, the absence of wind-blown features in this area makes the low-density hypothesis unlikely.
• These northern hemisphere lakes are the strongest evidence yet that Titan's surface and atmosphere have an active hydrological cycle, though with a condensable liquid other than water. In this cycle, lakes are filled through methane rainfall or intersect with a subsurface layer saturated with liquid methane.
• As Titan's seasons progress over the 29-year cycle of Saturn's orbit around the sun, lakes in the winter hemisphere should expand by steady methane rain, while summer hemisphere lakes shrink or dry up entirely.

RECENT DISCOVERIES (as of Dec 12 2010)
When Cassini arrived in 2004, Saturn's northern hemisphere had a different look than when NASA's Voyager spacecraft flew by the planet in 1980. When Voyager visited, it was near the time of equinox, with ring shadows only across the equator and golden-hued clouds covering the planet. When Cassini got to Saturn, ring shadows draped across the northern hemisphere, whichappeared bluish, much like the deep, clear atmospheres of Uranus and Neptune. Scientists say that the ring shadows probably cooled the atmosphere down in the north, so golden and tan-colored clouds, visible in the Voyager images, sink to depths where they are no longer visible. (See Cassini Spacecraft Witnesses Saturn's Blues.)


Saturn has powerful lightning storms, 10,000 times stronger than on Earth, that occur in huge, deep thunderstorms columns nearly as large as the entire Earth. The storms occasionally burst through to the planet's visible cloud tops.


Saturn's auroras vary from day to day as on Earth, but rather than last a few minutes as on Earth, they can continue for days. The Sun's magnetic field and solar wind may have more to do with the aurora than previously believed.