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By Michelle Nichols

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Dozens of U.S. billionaires pledged on Wednesday to give at least 50 percent of their fortunes to charity as part of a philanthropic campaign by two of the world's richest men -- Warren Buffett and Bill Gates.

Based on Forbes magazine's estimates of the billionaires' wealth, at least $150 billion could be given away.

Among the rich joining The Giving Pledge campaign are New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, media moguls Barry Diller and Ted Turner, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, "Star Wars" movie maker George Lucas and energy tycoon T. Boone Pickens.

A total of 40 of the richest people in the United States, including Microsoft founder Gates and investor Buffett, now have taken the pledge.

Since launching the campaign in June, Buffett, Gates and his wife Melinda have spoken to about 20 percent of the wealthiest people in the United States -- 70 to 80 billionaires -- in a bid to persuade them to give away their fortunes.

"In most cases we had reason to believe that the people already had an interest in philanthropy," Buffett said. "It was a very soft sell but 40 have signed up."

"We're looking forward to enlisting many of these 40 to go out and make some calls also so we can report an even greater milestone but we're off to a terrific start," he said.

The campaign asks U.S. billionaires to give away at least half their wealth during their lifetime or after their death, and to publicly state their intention with a letter explaining their decision.

Gates has an estimated $53 billion fortune, which places him second on the Forbes magazine list of the world's richest people, and Buffett, who made his fortune with insurance and investment company Berkshire Hathaway Inc, ranks third on the list with $47 billion.

The Giving Pledge does not accept money but asks billionaires to make a moral commitment to give their fortunes to charity.

TAX BREAK NOT A MOTIVATION

"I've long stated that I enjoy making money, and I enjoy giving it away," energy tycoon Pickens, who is worth about $1 billion, said in his Giving Pledge letter. "I'm not a big fan of inherited wealth. It generally does more harm than good."

Buffett and Gates will hold several dinners later this year to recruit more billionaires, and members of The Giving Pledge also will meet annually to discuss their philanthropy.

Buffett and Gates also are due to meet with some of the wealthiest people in China in September and India in March.

"We ... hope that this catches fire in some other countries," Buffett said. "If they want to take what we think is a good idea and run with it, we will be cheering."

Forbes said the United States is home to 403 billionaires, the most of any country. Individual Americans gave more than $227 billion in 2009, according to a the Giving USA report by the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University, down just 0.4 percent from the previous year despite the U.S. recession.

"I have always thought that the best thing to do is to make the world better for your kids and your grandkids rather than just give them some money," Bloomberg, who is worth $18 billion, told reporters. "Your kids get more benefit out of your philanthropy than your will."

Buffett said none of the members of The Giving Pledge were driven by tax breaks. "Not one has talked to me about taxes," he said. "Anybody who is entitled to take a tax deduction takes it but I think the motivation goes far, far beyond taxes."

Real estate and construction billionaire Eli Broad, venture capitalist John Doerr, media entrepreneur Gerry Lenfest and former Cisco Systems Chairman John Morgridge joined Gates and Buffett when The Giving Pledge was launched in June. Another 34 members were announced on Wednesday.

Buffett pledged in 2006 to give away 99 percent of his wealth to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and family charities. Bill and Melinda Gates have so far donated more than $28 billion of their fortune to their foundation.

The full list of billionaires and their letters can be seen at www.thegivingpledge.org.

By Lynne Peeples, OurAmazingPlanet Contributor / August 4, 2010

"Within less than 100 million years, everything that has been crystallized on the west will have melted on the east," said lead researcher Thierry Alboussiere of Université Joseph Fourier in Grenoble.

The idea counters traditional theory that the big ball at the center of the Earth stands still, growing uniformly in all directions as the planet cools. It could shed light on the nature of the core — such as its age, apparent seismic mismatches, and a mysterious coating of dense fluid on its surface.

Seismic clues

About a billion years ago, the middle of the Earth began slowly solidifying from the inside out. The planet is hottest at its center, possibly even hotter than the surface of the sun, yet the core's iron is thought to be solid because of the extreme pressure that has raised its melting temperature. As it freezes, according to theory, the inner core takes in more iron, sending lighter elements up through the liquid outer core. This movement is thought to drive Earth's magnetic field.

Since scientists can't journey the 4,000 miles (6,400 kilometers) to the center of the Earth to see what's going on, insight of the 1,600-mile (2,570-km) wide innermost layer more or less stops there. But bits and pieces of indirect information come in all the time, through earthquakes. [Editor's note: An earlier version of this story misstated the Earth's radius.]

"Whenever there is a big earthquake, seismic waves get sent out in all directions and seismographs around the globe record the wiggles," said Michael Bergman of Bard College at Simon's Rock, Mass., who was not involved with the study but wrote an accompanying commentary on it for the journal Nature.

Earthquakes help scientists learn about the inner depths of the planet because seismic waves change speed as they move through different mediums. Researchers can piece together this information to figure out what kinds of rocks and minerals are located in different parts of the Earth's interior.

"But earthquakes don't occur everywhere on the surface of Earth, so we don't have enough data to completely constrain the inner core," Bergman told OurAmazingPlanet. "We have to take what nature can give us."

Over the last couple of decades, nature has offered more questions than answers. Seismologists noticed that waves appear to travel faster through the inner core from north to south than from west to east. Seismic properties also seemed to vary between the Eastern and Western hemispheres of the globe.

These findings did not fit with the traditional picture of the inner core, and neither did the 124-mile (200-km) thick layer of dense material detected on its surface.

"How do you build this dense layer next to the inner core when you're only releasing light material?" Alboussiere said in an interview.

He and his colleagues had an idea that could explain some of the discrepancies. What if rather than just crystallizing over its entire surface, the inner core was simultaneously melting and solidifying on opposite sides? Then perhaps the melting side could inject dense material into the outer core.

Eastward shift

Through mathematical models and lab experiments, the team determined that this may, in fact, describe the dynamics of the inner core in a way that is compatible with seismology's recent discoveries.

They speculate that the inner core is shifted slightly off-center, just to the east. This would put more pressure on the western side, where it would be closer to the center of the planet, and less pressure on the eastern side. The result could be a perpetually denser Western hemisphere and a continual flow of dense fluid from the east that eventually spreads out atop the entire inner core. It might also inspire a re-evaluation of how the Earth's magnetic field is generated and a recalculation of the age of the inner core and its oldest piece.

"The inner core is basically regenerating itself. And superimposed on that is this overall cooling that makes the inner core bigger and bigger over time," Bergman said. "That's just cool to think about."

The study is detailed in the Aug. 4 edition of the journal Nature.

A simple design. I wonder which planets the design is depicting.

http://www.cropcircleconnector.com/2010/lurkeleyhill/lurkeleyhill2010a.html

August 3, 2010 - Unusual Denmark Aurora After Gigantic Solar Flare.

“Seeing the sun erupt on such a global scale has galvanized the international
community of solar physicists. Researchers are still sorting out the complex
sequence of events and trying to understand why they all happened at once.”

On August 1st, the entire Earth-facing side of the sun
erupted with a C3-class solar flare of many filaments of magnetism
that lifted off the sun's surface, along with radio bursts and a
coronal mass ejection. The green aurora above was photographed in Denmark
on August 4, at 56 degrees latitude. Image © 2010 by Jesper Gronne.

Its really hard for me to great everyone due to the fact that I am at work so here is a general greeting for one and all. Especially new members. I welcome you all with open arms. May the light shine on you always.

http://www2.nict.go.jp/y/y223/simulation/realtime/index.html