Contents volume 17 no. 9 September 1990

Contents volume 17 no. 9 September 1990     

Future conferences and symposia (September 2010)

Events

Future conferences and symposia (September 2010)     

The September 11 attack: A percolation of individual passive support

A model to terrorism is presented using the theory of percolation. Terrorism power is related to the spontaneous formation of random backbones of people who are sympathetic to terrorism but without being directly involved in it. They just don't oppose in case they could. In the past such friendly-to-terrorism backbones have been always existing but were of finite size and localized to a given geographical area. The September 11 terrorist attack on the US has revealed for the first time the existence of a world wide spread extension. It is argued to have result from a sudden world percolation of otherwise unconnected and dormant world spread backbones of passive supporters. The associated strategic question is then to determine if collecting ground information could have predict and thus avoid such a transition. Our results show the answer is no, voiding the major criticism against intelligence services. To conclude the impact of military action is discussed. Received 7 February 2002     

Detection of infrasound from the Vitim bolide on September 24, 2002

An infrasonic signal from an atmospheric bolide explosion was detected on September 24, 2002 near the Vitim river, Irkutsk region (57.9 N, 112.9 E). The signal was detected by three spatially separated microbarographs of the Polar Geophysical Institute (PGI), Kola Science Center, Russian Academy of Sciences, Apatity (67.6 N, 33 E) at a distance of 4000 km from the source. The acoustic gravity signal from a falling meteorite at high latitudes was detected at such a distance for the first time in Russia.