Slashdot Mirror
The Millennia After Tomorrow?
frankthechicken writes "Analysis of a three-kilometer-long ice core drilled from the Antarctic, has revealed our planet has had eight ice ages during that period, punctuated by rather brief warm spells - one of which we enjoy today. And fortunately, the end of the world is not the day after tomorrow, instead it may be expected on Sunday, 17000."
that logs when the world should end by each means, list them chronologically.. like: y2k bug: 2000 Earth losing its magnetic field and possibly letting radiation in: 3000? Asteroid: Ice Age:17000 Loss of a Sun: any others?
ok.. so heads you lose tails I win. right?
It's interesting that the last 100m of ice should be so difficult. I wonder if there are any additional complications from waiting until November to finish the drilling... At that depth, they say the ice is just above the melting point from geothermal heat, so I'm assuming that it is somewhat plastic and under huge pressure from the 3km of ice above it. I wonder if they had to take precautions against pressure closing the hole before they finish drilling?
Very impressive, anyway. I hope they manage to complete the ice core this time. It's amazing to think of how long that ice has been there, untouched.
I check Google News frequently, because if the world ended, how else would I know?
I expect there would be a story something like, "The world has ended, if you are still working, you are out of touch."
What is the proper way to behave when the world ends? Do you make backups and shut down your computer?
Don't do anything radical, because it might be a mistake.
Off topic: I put some links together of the 36 books and movies that say that the U.S. government has become corrupt: Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government.
Note that the Slashdot submission didn't reference the BBC story.
I've read somewhere, that there is a current of thought that the Ice Age was unleased by the global warming period, and that it's a sort of "correction" for global warming. Let me explain in more detail:
Global warming causes less ice at the poles(not really anyone notices), that turns up as coastal water, that water absorbs more heat from the sun, and keeps it in water(away from land), this in turns makes the land colder and colder, until bam you have an ice age. Exactly how long it lasts is until the sea freezes back enough that the landmass can regain its prior heat.
N.B. Global warming is a global phenomenon, nothing in it says humans have to be anywhere near where it's warmer... That's why we don't much like the idea...
Hmm... it's a surprise to see this on Slashdot. I suppose some explanation is in order.
I'm part of an isotope science research group at my university (please, no pasting links - they're not that hard to find anyway). I'm just finishing my honours degree on new meteorite dating techniques, but other students/professors/staff do a lot of work on heavy metal contamination of the environment (mainly lead as an indicator of industrialisation and global dust levels, and indium and bismuth as volcanic indicators). We collaborate with a number of research groups around the world, including the one in Grenoble and others in Venice and Tasmania.
The work we do mainly involves Thermal Ionisation Mass Spectrometry (TIMS - uses a solid sample), while other labs use TIMS as well as Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS - uses a liquid or gas source). We have and are analysing the Vostok, Dome C and Law Dome samples. One professor in my lab has used TIMS to show how the lead in the ice cores has risen dramatically in response to such events as the Roman Empire processing large ore bodies (to make weapons, shields etc - this was published in Nature ~1994) and also the start of the industrial revolution. Our general focus at the moment is completing a climatic record going back as far as we can. However, due to the extreme cleanliness of the ice cores, processing must be carried out in Class 10 clean rooms (initially at sub-zero temperatures to prevent the ice from melting) to prevent contamination. We routinely measure amounts of lead on the order of a few picograms (10^-12 grams) or less. It is rather slow going.
To give an idea about the problems involved in drilling the ice cores, you have to realise that 3km underground there is a lot of pressure due to the weight of the ice sitting above. 3km is roughly Antarctic bedrock, which is a far down as we can drill. The further down you go, the denser the ice becomes and hence harder to drill. However, you can't just speed up the drill to get the ice faster because you will melt it. The last few hundred metres before bedrock will take a lot longer to drill than the ice above it.
The initial decontamination procedure of the ice cores is somewhat lengthy and inconvenient. As we are looking to find heavy metals in the ice, we have to remove any contamination caused by the drill. So we use a plastic lathe (all of our lab equipment is teflon and is soaked in 10M HNO3 for about 3 months before use) to strip the outer layers of the ice core in succession (the core samples we receive range from ~0.3-1.5m in length). Keep in mind you are working at about -18 degress C here for about 6 hours at a time - not fun. Then we analyse small chunks of the inner core. The decontamination is normally done in Tasmania, and then we get samples shipped on dry ice to us and other labs around the world. There have been some rather tense moments as planes have been late and baggage delayed!! While I remember, a 30cm ice core might be worth around $30k (total cost of drilling / length of ice recovered).
Um, I think that's most of what I can add without going into extremem technical detail, but I'll try to answer any questions anyone has.
European scientists endured temperatures of as low as -40 Celsius
-40 Celsius isn't so bad. Now, -40 Fahrenheit, on the other hand...
- Tony
There are 52 Sundays in the year 17000, starting with January 5th, 17000. I demand to know which Sunday, and why it won't be some other day of the week.
Not nearly as bad as -40 K.
The article doesn't give enough information to entertain the statement "Next Ice Age 15000 years away", especially with the certainty that the statement implies.
Perhaps they should have said "given no human intervention, and if past records are an indicator of future performance (generally a no-no, but what have we got instead?), then the next ice age probably won't happen for 15000 years." But that doesn't make for a very pithy headline.
I think the research is fantastic. This kind of stuff gives us the baseline that we need in order to understand how we are affecting the world. But unfortunately carbon dating and other forms of isotope dating are generally not accurate enough to show us what's happening over the course of the last 50 years. Perhaps you could do a "count the rings" approach - looking for new ice accumulation each year and its eventual heavy freezing at -100 degrees... probably wouldn't work... but basically we don't know what we're doing to the atmosphere.
You would need a record that shows the amazing increases in various atmospheric components that we're putting into it and no subsequent effects...
Actually the most interesting bit of information seems either overlooked by the reporter or intentionally left oblique.
There was a change in length and temperature of the cold and warm spells that the Earth underwent. Given the numbers the article suggests, that change was relatively coincident with the change in CO2 levels. Well, now we've put CO2 level back where they were before... so why don't they assume that temperatures (and lengths of time) will go back to how they were then? (big assumption, but no bigger than "you're safe for 15000 years."
Rudy
1. 2.
You forgot:
Nuclear war/winter
Global warming catastrophy
AI conquest (ala Matrix or System Shock. Mmm.. SHODAN...)
Alien invasion
Religious Armageddon
The return of disco
Freak biological accident (eg: virus)
Grey goo/nanotech-style disaster
Mass civil/govt/corporate war (ala Titor)
Universe collapsing
Death of Windows/Microsoft
Intergalactic phenomenon (eg: black hole, solar colision, etc)
Any of us getting a date with a supermodel
Earth's core stopping
Global scale natural-disasters (think Noah's ark)
Sun exploding or expanding
RIAA stops suing people
Chemical accident/atmosphereic poisioning
Bush says something intelligent
Linux finally having it's "year of the desktop"
I think that about covers it.
This should actually be modded funny.. for those of you who don't get it, type "convert -40c to f" in google. in other news, a lot of people consider a pound of steel to weigh more than a pound of feathers..
As pointed out, global warming may be natural and human activity little or nothing to do with overall global temperatures. Or humans may be the straw that breaks the camel's back. The point is we don't know. A lot of global warming debate seems to be based on computer models that have problems. I seem to remember the 1970s had many books and news articles about the new ice age right around the corner. So it might be wise to continue various climate research until we have a better understanding about weather and human impact on global climate before we make major and costly changes to our civilization and technologies that may in fact do nothing.