Posted by
Hemos
on from the getting-flatter-all-the-time dept.
RJG2 writes "MSNBC has an article stating that Earth's gravitational field has changed, becoming stronger towards the equator, thus becoming flatter. The cause has yet to be determined, but it is assumed changes in ocean levels are responsible."
There are two competing factors, the force away from the center of the earth caused by the Earth's rotation, and that of gravity. The Earth is about 15km different in diameter from poles to equator, with the equator being further away than the poles. While it might be true that the Earth's gravity field (the gravitational equipotential field, or the "geoid" I believe) has been getting flatter, it still isn't round. While I haven't checked the equations lately, I think gravity still wins out over the rotational part, and you'd be _heavier_ when you moved to the poles, due to being in closer proximity to the center of the earth.
-- If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide. -Ghandi
Good point. I guess I'm a northern hemisphere bigot.
Are there actually any people south of the equator anyway?? I know there are some over in that place they call Europe, but actually _south_ of the equator? Come on! They probably just _look_ human, you know, like Martha Stuart.:-)
-- If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide. -Ghandi
That's weird because I just saw a news story yesterday that the Earth is getting FATTER at the equator, due to movement of some magma mass or something. You'd figure gravity would be slightly less as a result. It already bulges out at the equator anyhow.
I've been blaming my weight gain on candy bars and junk food. What a relief to find out it's actually just more gravity!
And maybe the shrinking waistband in all my pants is due somehow to the warping effect the extra gravity is having on space?
Change In Time?
by
ackthpt
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· Score: 5, Interesting
I've been hearing about this on the BBC for the past couple of days. The thought that occurred to me was this: if mass is moving from the poles to the equator, will the rotation of the earth slow, even a tiny amount, but enough that we have to adjust time in a few years?
I expect so.
--
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The earth's rotation is slowing anyway. This is the reason that they insert those "leap seconds" every few years to compensate for the lost time. To my knowledge like 16 leap seconds have been added since the government started tracking time with atomic clocks. I'm to lazy to find a link now though, as its just about time to drive home;)
The Earth's rotational rate is changing due to energy lost during ocean and earth tides (the solid part of the earth goes up and down in response to the gravitational tugging of the moon as well), as well as a differential rotation between the Earth's inner and outer core, etc. I don't think a small change in sea level will do too much compared to what is already occuring. The Earth has a radius of about 6371 Km, pretty much all of it having a denisty _significantly_ larger than water (a good chunk of the earth consists of nickel-iron after all!). I don't think a couple more meters of water will do much.
-- If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide. -Ghandi
True, but like everything, the earths rotation is more complex. Every once in a while a storm get enough wind to speed things up. (And presumably the reverse happens too) Thats why the leap seconds don't happen with any pattern.
Re:Change In Time?
by
Fenris2001
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· Score: 3, Interesting
In short - yes. But it won't have any major effect. The number of seconds in a year already fluctuates as large weather systems (El Nino) change the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere. Like a spinning ballet dancer extending her arms, excess water in the atmosphere near the Equator causes the Earth's rotation to slow. However, the total change is miniscule - something like half a nanosecond per year. Particle physicists and others who need extremely accurate measures of time make adjustments for these effects. The rest of us don't notice.
I don't think a couple more meters of water will do much.
And how much will our future space elevators slow the Earth over time? These equatorial spokes won't be very massive but they'll extend thousands of kilometers like giant arms, and additionally, Earth'll lose momentum for every unit of mass that never returns to the surface.
I'm sure it'd still be a miniscule but measurable effect.
But hey! We could always attach giant solar sails to the ends of these spokes such the sun's solar energy would "spin" the Earth back up to equilibrium.:-)
BUT, to get an idea of the size of the earth, if you were to draw a big circle on a piece of paper, the crust of the earth, the part we spend all our time on and haven't ever drilled through even half of it, would be over represented by the thickness of the line. (Crustal thickness on average is say 40 Km, the earth is 6371 Km in diameter, that's about.63%. By percent weight its even smaller (by alot)). A good 6000 km diameter of the earth is made of nickel-iron (DENSE!), and the mantle of the earth aint too light either.
And even if we don't ever get the weight back from space elevators, I bet the time integrated weight of all the space dust and meteors we sweep out of space over millions of years would offset it.
Anyway, I just don't think most Slashdotters understand the magnitude of the volumes and forces they are talking about. The tidal forces of the moon are much more significant, and even that's barely measurable integrated over very long time periods.
But what the hell. I'm a geophysics grad student, and am probably a little over anal about these things.:-)
-- If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide. -Ghandi
The earth's rotation is slowing anyway. This is the reason that they insert those "leap seconds" every few years to compensate for the lost time
No. Thats a misunderstanding. The earths is slowing down. But this is measured in milliseconds pr century and is completely negligible in this context.
The reason for the frequent insertions of leap seconds is that the definitions of the time-span of a second and our definition of the length of a year (in seconds) don't match up. If we adjusted our definition of a second just a little bit we could tune the length of a second to make it fit our definition of the length of a year, and then we only needed to make a correction once a century.
Back to the Future quote
by
uncoveror
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· Score: 5, Funny
"There's that word again, heavy. Is there a problem with the Earth's gravitational pull?"
-- The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
Re:Magnetic Pole Changing
by
Foxxz
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· Score: 3, Funny
PS-We could probably fix this if we all degauss our monitors at 0900 hours tomarrow:P
Ocean levels?
by
Arandir
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· Score: 3, Interesting
What changes in ocean levels? Did this just happen yesterday or something?
Considering that I live at an altitude of 20 feet and one mile from the ocean, I would think I would be one of the first people to know if the ocean level was changing. From what I can tell, the level of the Pacific Ocean is still the same as it was when I was a kid.
-- A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
This doesn't necessarily mean anything... if you read the article it also says that due to the ice-age rebound some areas go up 1/4 of an inch a year.
If you were in an area that goes up only, say, 1/10th of an inch a year, your 'the level of the sea hasn't changed' observation would mean that the sea level has, in fact, gone up 2 inches (let's assume you were a kid 20 years ago)
Just out of curiousity, if the ocean levels rose 15-20 cm in 100 years, how do you extrapolate and say that in the next 100 years, coastal cities are going to be underwater? Are there that many cities that are built at an elevation of 10 centimeters?
--
How can we continue to believe in a
just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
15-20cm is more than you think. Considering that the world population (and corresponding heat generation) Has more that quintupled in the last fifty years and is going to double in the next 30 we might have some problems. 15-20cm in a city with a high water table wil destroy sewer systems, contaminate fresh water aquifers, soften and weaken building foundations, further erode beaches, and generally require expensive engineering solutions to alleviate problems.
Global warming won't kill us, but it is a royal pain in the ass.
It's the SHAPE, see Net Scientist
by
Great_Geek
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· Score: 2, Informative
New Scientist also has an article on this, see http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id= ns999 92628
The MSNBC report is misleading - the measurement (by satellites)is of gravity, but the conclusion is about the shape of the planet. The prime suspect, currently, is ocean currents.
Ask my ex workmate, it's the NT7 :)
by
jukal
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· Score: 4, Funny
My ex-workmate is rather convinced (don't ask me why:))) that changes like this are caused by the NT7 asteroid which, he believes, will shift earth's magnetism that everything will basicly destroy. Yup, he belives it does not hit the earth, it just passes by so that everything gets wicked. He might be almost blind, but he is a hellable coder. So prepare to get extincted!
Re:Ask my ex workmate, it's the NT7 :)
by
SandSpider
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· Score: 2
My ex-workmate is rather convinced that changes like this are caused by the NT7 asteroid which, he believes, will shift earth's magnetism that everything will basicly destroy.
--
There is nothing so good that someone, somewhere, will not hate it.
Re:Magnetic Pole Changing
by
Xaoswolf
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· Score: 2
I'm not a geologist, but I don't believe that the magnetic feild surrounding the earth had anything to do with gravity. Magnetic North has been wandering around the globe for years without any change in gravity.
If you're referring to a differential gravitational attraction similar to that involved in Roche Limit" deformation of orbiting bodies, then no. What you're suggesting implies that the gravitational pull on the equator is significantly stronger than that on the polar regions. Since gravitational attraction drops off exponentially as the distance between the two bodies increases, that kind of differential pull only occurs when the gravitational bodies are relatively-speaking quite close together.
Perhaps if the moon had suddenly increased in mass a thousand-fold, but not possible due to distant stars or planets.
-- "So on one hand, honey is an amazingly sophisticated and efficient food source. On the other hand it's bee backwash."
There is indeed a secret base on the dark side of the moon. The Martians put it there. Whether it is the cause of the change in Earth's gravity field, I can't say.
-- The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
Re:If Global Warming is true, then...
by
dnoyeb
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· Score: 3
No.
Where does the melted ice go? -> equator. What makes gravity? -> mass.
More mass at the equator means more gravitational force.
Mid life crisis?
by
CrazyDwarf
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· Score: 4, Funny
It could be worse, we could be combing Ozone over from areas around the north pole.
-- It's easy to stand out when the general level of competence is so low.
Actually no. But the earths rotation will slow due to the spare tire.. Basically it works both ways. We already had a bulge due to rotation, this is from another source.
So if this change is due to rising ocean, or earth is getting fatter at the equator, won't this affect a whole shitload of other things?:
earth's rotation -> length of day -> amount of axial wobble change -> seasonal azimuth -> earth climate?
And if gravity is higher at the equator - won't this affect time, since time slows down in a higher gravity field? I'm sure that these changes are all rather insignificant taken separately, but taken together, doesn't this have an impact on accuracy of scientific measurements? Will everything need to be recalibrated?
-- These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Geez. The Earth's rotation is already slowing due to other things (and has been for a very long time), and the moment of inertia for the Earth is gigantic. A couple meters of water isn't going to change much, and the planetary climate changes are much more sensitive to other things than loosing a tiny bit of rotation every hundred millin years or so.
-- If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide. -Ghandi
A "couple of meters" change in ocean levels would destroy cities and, in some cases, whole nations. Much of my home state, Florida, would simply disappear. If we were to get more than one or two centimeters increase in just one year, you would do well to consider moving to higher ground within the next decade or so.
But that's just us. The planet as a whole has indeed been through far worse and emerged unscathed.
True, a couple meters would certainly be over stating the matter. I was over exaggerating to be sure.
However, you are very wrong about the normal variablity of sea level. The level of the Earth's oceans are _not_ the same level all over the world. Due to gravitational anomalies, wind, rotation of the earth, etc., you could raise the level of the ocean in some places quite a bit and never see it in other areas. The greatest variablity comes from temperature differences. Average sea level change has been measured to be as much as 40 cm in some places, and we haven't been measuring for that long. It is very possible to get higher anomalies. The area around Florida gets annual changes of at least a couple cm.
So, I will retract my rather hasty "meters" in my quick response, but you will forgive me if I don't worry about change of a couple cm, as I would have to head for the hills on a very regular basis.
Perhaps you meant integrated over the whole globe perhaps?? That would be disturbing. However that was certainly not the type of anomaly the article was referring to.
-- If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide. -Ghandi
The article was referring to a gravitational anomaly caused by the ocean raising near the equator, not everywhere. The whole point was that it was "going up in one place and down in another". That's the way gravitational anomalies are formed. If the water is the same elevation all over, the gravity field would certainly change, but change by a scalar amount everywhere, hence no anomaly (neglecting the very long wavelength effect of the missing ice in the ice caps, which is where the water would have to come from). They thought it was from changing long period ocean flow patterns, causing the water surface to "go up in one place and down in another". NOT raising the whole level of the oceans.
-- If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide. -Ghandi
What am I supposed to do?
by
Inexile2002
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· Score: 2
Seriously. This is cool in a totally irrelevant way, but what the hell am I supposed to do with this information? Bring it up at cocktail parties so that people's blank stares get even blanker? Should I worry about this? Is there some sort of website I can visit for day to day fluctuations? Is there something I can do to stop it, or speed it up (and which one am I supposed to want)?
I'm serious here! WHAT THE HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO DO WITH THIS INFORMATION?!? I feel like this should be huge or something but I just don't have any kind of context for this. I'm just going to act like I didn't read this article, and maybe get back to work.
I think I need a drink, I'm leaving early today.
Re:What am I supposed to do?
by
aardvaark
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· Score: 2
Don't worry about it, seriously. There are much stranger things about the Earth than this.
For instance, the Earth's gravitational field takes a big dip right over India. Why? Hell if anybody knows besides "there's a density anomaly in the mantle under India". The magnetic poles of the earth flip every tens of millions of years or so.
I can drone on for a while if you want, but I think you get the picture.
The whole thing is interesting to geophysicists, but it doesn't do anything to effect everyday life.
Feel safe. Go back to coding or whatever. Have a beer.
-- If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide. -Ghandi
Re:What am I supposed to do?
by
Inexile2002
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· Score: 2
I didn't so much feel threatened as just unable to file it anywhere. I had this convenient mental file system that I spent years tweaking, and never realized I didn't have a subdirectory in there somewhere for "Totally Random Facts About Changes In Planetary Gravity that are Not Connected To Anything".
Is binge drinking sort of a hard re-boot for the brain? Does excessive beer equal ctrl-alt-delete in a neural sense? I'll tell you tomorrow.
Re:What am I supposed to do?
by
aardvaark
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· Score: 2
NO! If more people learn geophysics I'll never get a job!
As far as the movie B.S. goes, how about something like "Honey, at those temperatures and pressures, diamonds flow like plastic. I don't think those steel drill bits would do the trick."?
-- If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide. -Ghandi
Re:It's also getting fatter!
by
ceejayoz
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· Score: 2
Dunno, but they're both on the front page at the same time - http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/08/0 2/1256225&mode=nested&tid=134
To some degree, yes the earth is flattened for that reason. Any *increase* in that flattening would assume that the centripetal acceleration experienced by masses on the equator was sufficiently pronounced to be able to counteract the natural gravitational pull experienced by every point on the earth towards its gravitational center - a flatter earth would therefore imply either a faster rate of rotation, or else a decrease in gravitational self-attraction.
Since we're not experiencing shorter days, and my ever-increasing weight indicates the earth's attraction for me is not lessening, I suspect that's not the cause. Besides, we're talking about a flatter gravitational field, not a flatter earth.:)
-- "So on one hand, honey is an amazingly sophisticated and efficient food source. On the other hand it's bee backwash."
Re:Magnetic Pole Changing
by
Zone5
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Actually, the polarity supposedly switches roughly every 200,000 years, and according to that school of thought we're currently way overdue to the tune of about 780,000 years. See here.
Assuming you believe all that, of course. As far as I know it's just a theory.
-- "So on one hand, honey is an amazingly sophisticated and efficient food source. On the other hand it's bee backwash."
Re:All those dang asteriods
by
eyepeepackets
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· Score: 2
Hmm, well, if there were external forces pulling on the planet we'd see other similar effects throughout the side of the solar system we're currently floating through. Perhaps a small piece of blackhole material (wouldn't have to be very big at all) might be able to do this, but there would be effects on all the floaters (planets, asteroids, comets, etc.) in the solar system and such effects would be noticable pretty quick I'd think, but only if someone were looking for them.
That could really, really screw us up and for a long time too. Imagine if all those asteroids suddenly had their courses changed.
Bah, I'm blaming all this paranoia on too much diet coke, heh.
-- Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!
all this talk about gravity brings me down. and don't bring up friction either, that's a drag.
Nope, it flows to the equator
by
sterno
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· Score: 3, Informative
Since the earth is spinning, the water tends to be forced to the equator by centrifugal force (although I think more correctly it's centripedal force, but whatever). So no matter where the water comes from, it will tend to flow to the equator.
Actually one likely side-effect of long term global warming is, ironically, an ice age. The water moves to the equator, and this causes the earth to spin slightly slower. The side-effect being that this cools the earth. I forget exactly why this is because I learned it in high school physics which was just over a decade ago.
--
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Re:Nope, it flows to the equator
by
God!+Awful
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· Score: 4, Informative
Since the earth is spinning, the water tends to be forced to the equator by centrifugal force (although I think more correctly it's centripedal force, but whatever).
IMHO, high school physics teachers really dropped the ball in explaining this one. A whole generation of high school graduates is confused about centrifugal vs. centripedal.
A body that is spinning around an axis or orbiting around point must be under continual force. Otherwise, they would simply fly off in a straight line at a tangent to the curve. This is the centripedal force. The centrifugal force is a "pseudo force", which means that it only exists in a non-intertial frame of reference.
Basically, what happens is that when you accelerate (whether in a straight line or in a circle), your inertia feels like a force in your frame of reference. When you sit in a moving car, from your point of view you feel like you are sitting still and the car is moving. We know that when an object is at rest, the forces on it are balanced. Therefore, in your frame of reference you feel a pseudo force which balances out the force that is being applied on the car. The pseudo force is really just the effect of your inertia.
So how does this apply to the water? Well, everything on Earth has inertia, and this inertia wants to keep it going in a straight line, even though the Earth is rotating. Solid objects, such as humans are obviously kept in place by simple static friction and wind resistance. Water and air are more mobile and they are less subject to friction (although they are still very subject to air/water pressure). That is the main reason why wind and ocean currents are very obvious whereas continental drift takes centuries.
So in reality, it is the inertia of the water that makes it more buoyant at the equator. The water at the equator is spinning faster than the water at the poles, so it is slightly less subject to gravity. Therefore it bulges out, "making room" for some extra water from the poles to move towards the equator.
Contrary to an early assumption on my part, European Linux users appear cleaner and in a better state of physical repair than their American contemporaries.
-- If we don't fight for ourselves no one will.
A reference on leap seconds
by
Adam+J.+Richter
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· Score: 5, Informative
The earth's rotation is slowing anyway. This is the reason that they insert those "leap seconds" every few years to compensate
for the lost time.
At first, I did not believe that such a small
change could account for the leap seconds, but
you're right
:
Through the use of ancient observations of eclipses, it is
possible to determine the average deceleration of the Earth to be roughly 1.4 milliseconds per day per century.
[...] Over the course of one year, the difference accumulates to almost one second, which is compensated by the insertion of a leap
second into the scale of UTC with a current regularity of a little less than once per year. Other factors also affect the Earth, some in unpredictable
ways, so that it is necessary to monitor the Earth's rotation continuously.
In order to keep the cumulative difference in UT1-UTC less than 0.9 seconds, a leap second is added to the atomic time to decrease the difference
between the two. This leap second can be either positive or negative depending on the Earth's rotation. Since the first leap second in 1972, all leap
seconds have been positive and there were 22 leap seconds in the 27 years to January, 1999. This pattern reflects the general slowing trend of the
Earth due to tidal braking.
Re:A reference on leap seconds
by
j_w_d
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· Score: 3, Funny
Based on this information, if the earth loses about 1 second every year, and given: 60 secs/min *60 min/hr *24 hrs/day, there are 86,400 seconds in a day. It follows then that in 86,400 years, the earth stops and starts turning backwards. Obviously this has to be the explanation for geomagnetic reversals. The earth as a washing machine.
-- ------
The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
Funny. If this continues indefinitely, all those people who claimed the world was flat were true visionaries way ahead of their time. Who'da thought that?!
Re:All those dang asteriods
by
tgibbs
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· Score: 2
One possible effect will be all those near misses [slashdot.org] and potential threats [slashdot.org] becoming reality.
No, remember that the earth's total gravity can't change unless we gain mass from somewhere. At asteroid distances, these slight asymmetries are going to average out, and the earth will attract like a point mass.
It took centuries for explorers to convince the world that the earth was round. Now it's flat again. What are we supposed to teach our children?
--
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda :wq
Re:Good Ol' Ga�a
by
questionlp
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· Score: 2, Funny
So that explains all of the heat streaks (aka hot flashes), wildfires (heartburn), flooding (sweating), and earthquakes (mood swings) that have been going on lately.
Yes, the Earth has a zero-G "sweet spot". It's even caused by the same phenomenon as on the Enterprise, cancelling gravitational fields, except this one is real. No, absolutely nothing mentioned in the article will change the zero-G sweet spot Earth has.
Discovery of the location of the "sweet spot" is left as an exercise for the reader, or a student of freshman college physics.
Re:Correllation is not Causation!
by
Jonny+Ringo
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· Score: 2
Find out this and more in,
Dianetics by L. Ron Hubbard
The Scientist Who Cried 'The Sky Is Falling!!!'
by
guttentag
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· Score: 2
In fact it turns out that the gravitational pull of the earth is changing such that when California is finally shaken loose by the San Andreas fault it will simply float off into the sky. The exact opposite of the sky falling. Also, it turns out that Columbus was wrong (the Earth is getting flatter, which implies it must have been significantly flat already) but happened to be in the right century at the right time.
In other news, the End of the World (TM) has been rescheduled for 2880 (no indication yet of whether it will still occur in February of that year).
I'm getting a little tired of these scientist pranks, but I'm waiting for Greenpeace to sue McDonald's over the Earth's newfound obesity.
The PR team responsible for the upcoming adaptation of Solaris awoke to find hundreds of nubile young men and women throwing money and drugs at them, found out that they'd won the Nobel Prize For Just Being You, and bankrupted Vegas in a 24-hour solid winning streak. .
-- --
Proud descendant of semi-nomadic cattle-herders.
(* Could there be any connection with the earth's magnetic poles looking like they're going to flip soon? *)
There is some speculation that nuclear forces in the deep center that power the magnetic fields may be on their last leg, and that they might run out any time now, exposing the earth to deadly cosmic rays by lowering the magnetic "sheild" that surrounds the planet.
However, the consensus is that we have another billion+ years before that happens.
Besides, the Sun is gonna heat up soon anyhow.
The Earth is in its late 50's WRT useful lifespan. Lets just hope it does not want to retire until we do (or we move off).
Actually its pretty scary...
by
Evil+Pete
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· Score: 5, Interesting
There appears to be a movement of a huge mass from the poles to the equator over the last 4 years. The article describes how they excluded the obvious culprits: melting ice, earth movements, atmosphere etc. And finally concluded that it is related to ocean circulation. Now that gives me the creeps!
Why the creeps? Because ocean circulation changes can happen relatively quickly and are implicated in the starting / stopping of ice ages. They are crucial indicators for climate change. And when the ocean circulation changes there is nothing humans can do about it.
Hopefully it either isn't the oceans or if it is it wont have a serious effect (dont believe my own words here... but it sounds comforting). Whatever, this requires some serious investigation, just hope they got it wrong.
-- Bitter and proud of it.
Re:Actually its pretty scary...
by
Beliskner
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· Score: 2
Or maybe it's an early indicator of a gravitational field reversal, or additional buffeting of the Earth's magnetic field by increased solar winds from the peak solar cycle?
-- A caveman dreams of being us, the incalculable power and riches. We dream of being Q, then what?
Re:Actually its pretty scary...
by
zCyl
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· Score: 2
It would be folly for us to expect our planet's climate to stay the way it is forever. For as long as we can look back the climate has been wildly fluctuating. However, if you are alive now, I can guarantee you that your ancestors survived the last ice age, and they managed to do it without any notable industry, technology, or global society.
Don't panic yet. Life is resilient and humans are resilient.
Given enough time, we'll eventually develop the technology to fix our climate where we like it. (Which will probably spark heated debates about where to set the global thermostat.) And in the interim, there's no good reason to panic.
Re:Actually its pretty scary...
by
Debillitatus
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· Score: 2
The article describes how they excluded the obvious culprits: melting ice, earth movements, atmosphere etc. And finally concluded that it is related to ocean circulation. Now that gives me the creeps!
Why the creeps? Because ocean circulation changes can happen relatively quickly and are implicated in the starting / stopping of ice ages. They are crucial indicators for climate change. And when the ocean circulation changes there is nothing humans can do about it.
Why are you more worried about ocean circulation than melting ice, atmoshperic changes, etc.? We can't do shite about any of them...
--
Come on, give it up, that's
Re:Actually its pretty scary...
by
Brainchild
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· Score: 2, Funny
maybe it's an early indicator of a gravitational field reversal
I sure hope not. Wouldn't want to see everything on the surface of the planet suddenly fly off into space....
--
:: "I am non-refutable." --Enik the Altrusian::
Re:Actually its pretty scary...
by
Nehemiah+S.
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· Score: 2
And when the ocean circulation changes there is nothing humans can do about it.
I have to disagree here. There has to be something we can do about it- it may be expensive, it may require a hell of a lot of research and maybe some geo-engineering with 100 megaton bombs or other "long levers", but imho it seems silly to think that we can be currently unconsciously changing the world's climate on one hand (greenhouse effect) and yet be completely unable to consciously change it back.
-- ... and there is no doubt, that one day he will be where the eye of his telescope has already been
Huh. I thought that was a line that was only used in Hollywood. Not only that, but it is so unbelievable that a real scientist would ever say such a phrase that I have to assume that this isn't real. Either this is an elaborate hoax, or this is all a Hollywood movie that has been kept secret from us for all these years, a la The Truman Show. Whichever, my advice is to "Hold on to your butts."
For those who were wondering, it's a joke.
--
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
Re:Slower rotation means....
by
fractaltiger
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· Score: 2
will the rotation of the earth slow, even a tiny amount, but enough that we have to adjust time in a few years?
I could certainly use sleeping in a 36 hour day... Too bad daylight will last longer too;) and latenite coding will be overwhelmingly long.
But by then, so many years will have passed that computers will be the ones coding and passing out to keep us alive, à la Matrix
-- "Wireless : LAN:: Laptop : Desktop"
Re:Magnetic Pole Changing
by
Dirtside
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· Score: 2
Offtopic reply:
I hate to be pedantic (aw, who am I kidding, I love being pedantic), but in general, saying "it's just a theory" is... well... not a good idea. (The page you referenced has a lot of bullshit new-agey stuff about higher dimensions and so on, but that's neither here nor there. Remember, "newage" rhymes with "sewage".:) )
To a scientist, a "theory" is something that explains all or most of the known evidence, is well-supported by facts, and makes testable predictions. Many well-established things like universal gravitation, aerodynamics, thermodynamics, and so forth, are all "theories".
The word you're probably looking for is "hypothesis", which means "an idea that potentially explains the facts, but isn't yet well-supported and well-tested enough to be considered a theory."
Of course, it's a pretty smooth continuum between the places where an idea is considered a "hypothesis" and where it becomes a "theory" but dismissing a scientific theory as "just a theory" is misguided at best.
-- "Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Only the Ice at the south pole
by
oliverthered
·
· Score: 2
Only the Ice at the south pole!!! the Ice at the north pole is floating, mealting it won't change the sea level. You can try this out at home with an ice cube and a glass of water.
Put some water into the glass. Then put an ice cube in the glass. Mark the water level at the side of the glass. Wait for the ice cube to mealt. Check the water level in the glass!
-- thank God the internet isn't a human right.
You both have your math wrong
by
Adam+J.+Richter
·
· Score: 2
"we gain (in effect) a second every year..."
That sentence can mean many different things. It is true that the our days are curerntly slightly
shorter than 86,400 seconds, and 365 times that difference adds up to about one second, but that has nothing to do with whether the days are now getting longer or shorter. The duration of one
rotation of the Earth on its axis is not getting shorter by one second every
year. It is getting longer by 1.4 milliseconds
every century, and I would guess that that deceleration will be weaker as the Earth slows down and the moon gets farther away.
Slight correction to my own posting
by
Adam+J.+Richter
·
· Score: 2
I wrote: "It is true that the our days are curerntly slightly shorter than 86,400 seconds [...]". I meant longer. The Earth's rotation as decelerated a bit since 1820, not accellerated. Sorry for any confusion.
Re:Computer populations
by
Dyolf+Knip
·
· Score: 2
Following that lead, and given that there is less gravitational pull at the poles, would that then mean that penguins have lost their attractiveness?
That might explain why Linux hasn't done well on the desktop market...
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe they'll settle for a flat gravitational field?
***
This is my Sig. This is my Glock, this is my Walther, and this is my Beretta.
Any questions?
Yo mamma so big that... n/m
Aren't we past due for the poles to flip?
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Judging by the diagram, this means that the Earth is getting shorter and fatter. Is this news? Thats what happens when you get older...
Cool! I can loose weight not by dieting, but by just moving further north!
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
That's weird because I just saw a news story yesterday that the Earth is getting FATTER at the equator, due to movement of some magma mass or something. You'd figure gravity would be slightly less as a result. It already bulges out at the equator anyhow.
I've been blaming my weight gain on candy bars and junk food. What a relief to find out it's actually just more gravity!
And maybe the shrinking waistband in all my pants is due somehow to the warping effect the extra gravity is having on space?
I expect so.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
"There's that word again, heavy. Is there a problem with the Earth's gravitational pull?"
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
PS-We could probably fix this if we all degauss our monitors at 0900 hours tomarrow :P
What changes in ocean levels? Did this just happen yesterday or something?
Considering that I live at an altitude of 20 feet and one mile from the ocean, I would think I would be one of the first people to know if the ocean level was changing. From what I can tell, the level of the Pacific Ocean is still the same as it was when I was a kid.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Isn't the spare tire a natural effect of the earths rotation.
Xaotik Designs
New Scientist also has an article on this, see= ns999 92628
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id
The MSNBC report is misleading - the measurement (by satellites)is of gravity, but the conclusion is about the shape of the planet. The prime suspect, currently, is ocean currents.
My ex-workmate is rather convinced (don't ask me why :))) that changes like this are caused by the NT7 asteroid which, he believes, will shift earth's magnetism that everything will basicly destroy. Yup, he belives it does not hit the earth, it just passes by so that everything gets wicked. He might be almost blind, but he is a hellable coder. So prepare to get extincted!
I'm not a geologist, but I don't believe that the magnetic feild surrounding the earth had anything to do with gravity. Magnetic North has been wandering around the globe for years without any change in gravity.
Xaotik Designs
I'll be able to float to work in the morning? Or take big moonsteps? Cool!
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
If you're referring to a differential gravitational attraction similar to that involved in Roche Limit" deformation of orbiting bodies, then no. What you're suggesting implies that the gravitational pull on the equator is significantly stronger than that on the polar regions. Since gravitational attraction drops off exponentially as the distance between the two bodies increases, that kind of differential pull only occurs when the gravitational bodies are relatively-speaking quite close together.
Perhaps if the moon had suddenly increased in mass a thousand-fold, but not possible due to distant stars or planets.
"So on one hand, honey is an amazingly sophisticated and efficient food source. On the other hand it's bee backwash."
No.
Where does the melted ice go? -> equator.
What makes gravity? -> mass.
More mass at the equator means more gravitational force.
It could be worse, we could be combing Ozone over from areas around the north pole.
It's easy to stand out when the general level of competence is so low.
Actually no. But the earths rotation will slow due to the spare tire.. Basically it works both ways. We already had a bulge due to rotation, this is from another source.
In related news, officials from North Stonington, CT and Hopkinton, RI have cited their recent border confusion on the "fattening" of the Earth.
~N
So if this change is due to rising ocean, or earth is getting fatter at the equator, won't this affect a whole shitload of other things?:
earth's rotation -> length of day -> amount of axial wobble change -> seasonal azimuth -> earth climate?
And if gravity is higher at the equator - won't this affect time, since time slows down in a higher gravity field?
I'm sure that these changes are all rather insignificant taken separately, but taken together, doesn't this have an impact on accuracy of scientific measurements? Will everything need to be recalibrated?
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Seriously. This is cool in a totally irrelevant way, but what the hell am I supposed to do with this information? Bring it up at cocktail parties so that people's blank stares get even blanker? Should I worry about this? Is there some sort of website I can visit for day to day fluctuations? Is there something I can do to stop it, or speed it up (and which one am I supposed to want)?
I'm serious here! WHAT THE HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO DO WITH THIS INFORMATION?!? I feel like this should be huge or something but I just don't have any kind of context for this. I'm just going to act like I didn't read this article, and maybe get back to work.
I think I need a drink, I'm leaving early today.
Dunno, but they're both on the front page at the same time - http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/08/0 2/1256225&mode=nested&tid=134
In a related story, the earth is getting fatter. Growing at the equator. Hmmm, sounds familiar.
To some degree, yes the earth is flattened for that reason. Any *increase* in that flattening would assume that the centripetal acceleration experienced by masses on the equator was sufficiently pronounced to be able to counteract the natural gravitational pull experienced by every point on the earth towards its gravitational center - a flatter earth would therefore imply either a faster rate of rotation, or else a decrease in gravitational self-attraction.
:)
Since we're not experiencing shorter days, and my ever-increasing weight indicates the earth's attraction for me is not lessening, I suspect that's not the cause. Besides, we're talking about a flatter gravitational field, not a flatter earth.
"So on one hand, honey is an amazingly sophisticated and efficient food source. On the other hand it's bee backwash."
Actually, the polarity supposedly switches roughly every 200,000 years, and according to that school of thought we're currently way overdue to the tune of about 780,000 years. See here.
Assuming you believe all that, of course. As far as I know it's just a theory.
"So on one hand, honey is an amazingly sophisticated and efficient food source. On the other hand it's bee backwash."
Hmm, well, if there were external forces pulling on the planet we'd see other similar effects throughout the side of the solar system we're currently floating through. Perhaps a small piece of blackhole material (wouldn't have to be very big at all) might be able to do this, but there would be effects on all the floaters (planets, asteroids, comets, etc.) in the solar system and such effects would be noticable pretty quick I'd think, but only if someone were looking for them.
That could really, really screw us up and for a long time too. Imagine if all those asteroids suddenly had their courses changed.
Bah, I'm blaming all this paranoia on too much diet coke, heh.
Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!
all this talk about gravity brings me down. and don't bring up friction either, that's a drag.
Since the earth is spinning, the water tends to be forced to the equator by centrifugal force (although I think more correctly it's centripedal force, but whatever). So no matter where the water comes from, it will tend to flow to the equator.
Actually one likely side-effect of long term global warming is, ironically, an ice age. The water moves to the equator, and this causes the earth to spin slightly slower. The side-effect being that this cools the earth. I forget exactly why this is because I learned it in high school physics which was just over a decade ago.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Contrary to an early assumption on my part, European Linux users appear cleaner and in a better state of physical repair than their American contemporaries.
If we don't fight for ourselves no one will.
At first, I did not believe that such a small change could account for the leap seconds, but you're right :
Funny. If this continues indefinitely, all those people who claimed the world was flat were true visionaries way ahead of their time. Who'da thought that?!
It took centuries for explorers to convince the world that the earth was round. Now it's flat again. What are we supposed to teach our children?
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
So that explains all of the heat streaks (aka hot flashes), wildfires (heartburn), flooding (sweating), and earthquakes (mood swings) that have been going on lately.
Yes, the Earth has a zero-G "sweet spot". It's even caused by the same phenomenon as on the Enterprise, cancelling gravitational fields, except this one is real. No, absolutely nothing mentioned in the article will change the zero-G sweet spot Earth has.
Discovery of the location of the "sweet spot" is left as an exercise for the reader, or a student of freshman college physics.
Find out this and more in,
Dianetics by L. Ron Hubbard
- Last week, the sky was falling
- Then we found out the scientists were just yanking our chain
- In fact it turns out that the gravitational pull of the earth is changing such that when California is finally shaken loose by the San Andreas fault it will simply float off into the sky. The exact opposite of the sky falling. Also, it turns out that Columbus was wrong (the Earth is getting flatter, which implies it must have been significantly flat already) but happened to be in the right century at the right time.
- In other news, the End of the World (TM) has been rescheduled for 2880 (no indication yet of whether it will still occur in February of that year).
I'm getting a little tired of these scientist pranks, but I'm waiting for Greenpeace to sue McDonald's over the Earth's newfound obesity.Mother Earth has hit menopause. Yikes!
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
is this going to be the transforation of the earth into DiscWorld?
The PR team responsible for the upcoming adaptation of Solaris awoke to find hundreds of nubile young men and women throwing money and drugs at them, found out that they'd won the Nobel Prize For Just Being You, and bankrupted Vegas in a 24-hour solid winning streak.
.
-- Proud descendant of semi-nomadic cattle-herders.
Actually the Earth is very slowly settling into being tidally locked with the Sun, much like the moon is tidally locked with earth.
Eventually, one side of the Earth will end up facing the Sun constantly. However, it'll take a very long time.
DNA just wants to be free...
(* Could there be any connection with the earth's magnetic poles looking like they're going to flip soon? *)
There is some speculation that nuclear forces in the deep center that power the magnetic fields may be on their last leg, and that they might run out any time now, exposing the earth to deadly cosmic rays by lowering the magnetic "sheild" that surrounds the planet.
However, the consensus is that we have another billion+ years before that happens.
Besides, the Sun is gonna heat up soon anyhow.
The Earth is in its late 50's WRT useful lifespan. Lets just hope it does not want to retire until we do (or we move off).
Table-ized A.I.
There appears to be a movement of a huge mass from the poles to the equator over the last 4 years. The article describes how they excluded the obvious culprits: melting ice, earth movements, atmosphere etc. And finally concluded that it is related to ocean circulation. Now that gives me the creeps!
Why the creeps? Because ocean circulation changes can happen relatively quickly and are implicated in the starting / stopping of ice ages. They are crucial indicators for climate change. And when the ocean circulation changes there is nothing humans can do about it.
Hopefully it either isn't the oceans or if it is it wont have a serious effect (dont believe my own words here ... but it sounds comforting). Whatever, this requires some serious investigation, just hope they got it wrong.
Bitter and proud of it.
"Whatever it is, it's big."
Huh. I thought that was a line that was only used in Hollywood. Not only that, but it is so unbelievable that a real scientist would ever say such a phrase that I have to assume that this isn't real. Either this is an elaborate hoax, or this is all a Hollywood movie that has been kept secret from us for all these years, a la The Truman Show. Whichever, my advice is to "Hold on to your butts."
For those who were wondering, it's a joke.
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
I could certainly use sleeping in a 36 hour day... Too bad daylight will last longer too ;) and latenite coding will be overwhelmingly long.
But by then, so many years will have passed that computers will be the ones coding and passing out to keep us alive, à la Matrix
"Wireless : LAN
Offtopic reply:
:) )
o de7.html, http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/evolution-fact.htm l, and http://www.eugeneres.org/scientificmethod.htm, for they all explain it far better than I do.
I hate to be pedantic (aw, who am I kidding, I love being pedantic), but in general, saying "it's just a theory" is... well... not a good idea. (The page you referenced has a lot of bullshit new-agey stuff about higher dimensions and so on, but that's neither here nor there. Remember, "newage" rhymes with "sewage".
To a scientist, a "theory" is something that explains all or most of the known evidence, is well-supported by facts, and makes testable predictions. Many well-established things like universal gravitation, aerodynamics, thermodynamics, and so forth, are all "theories".
The word you're probably looking for is "hypothesis", which means "an idea that potentially explains the facts, but isn't yet well-supported and well-tested enough to be considered a theory."
Of course, it's a pretty smooth continuum between the places where an idea is considered a "hypothesis" and where it becomes a "theory" but dismissing a scientific theory as "just a theory" is misguided at best.
Hope that helps, somehow. Check out http://phyun5.ucr.edu/~wudka/Physics7/Notes_www/n
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Only the Ice at the south pole!!!
the Ice at the north pole is floating, mealting it won't change the sea level.
You can try this out at home with an ice cube and a glass of water.
Put some water into the glass.
Then put an ice cube in the glass.
Mark the water level at the side of the glass.
Wait for the ice cube to mealt.
Check the water level in the glass!
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
That sentence can mean many different things. It is true that the our days are curerntly slightly shorter than 86,400 seconds, and 365 times that difference adds up to about one second, but that has nothing to do with whether the days are now getting longer or shorter. The duration of one rotation of the Earth on its axis is not getting shorter by one second every year. It is getting longer by 1.4 milliseconds every century, and I would guess that that deceleration will be weaker as the Earth slows down and the moon gets farther away.
I wrote: "It is true that the our days are curerntly slightly shorter than 86,400 seconds [...]". I meant longer. The Earth's rotation as decelerated a bit since 1820, not accellerated. Sorry for any confusion.
That might explain why Linux hasn't done well on the desktop market...
Dyolf Knip