Slashdot Mirror
Earth's Core Spins Faster than Earth
Dreamwalkerofyore writes "The New York Times has an article on a recent affirmation that the earth's core rotates faster than the earth proper. From the article: 'Confirming assertions first made in 1996, a team of geophysicists are presenting data in the journal Science today showing that the earth's inner core... spins faster than the rest of the planet. Over a period of 700 to 1,200 years, the inner core appears to make one full extra spin.
That extra spin could give scientists information about how the earth generates its magnetic field.'"
So I'm just wondering: does this delta-omega have anything to do with the fact that the Earth's magnetic field reverses itself every 200,000 years or so? Please begin rampant conjecture and wild speculation. Extra credit to anyone who can credibly bring Roswell or right-wing conspiracies into the discussion. Fnord.
Seems logic to me. The core is spinning and the outside of earth has drag to cope with.
The core spins faster because the bodies of the US founding fathers are spinning in their graves at such high RPM.
I don't see how this could be all that technologically useful for consumers, but for the military, I'd like to see little plastic spheres that, when twisted, generate their own little magnetic fields without any other materials than what the enemy would expect to be naturally residing in an area. Drop a few around a desert or combat area, and watch their compasses/electrical equipment go out.
I'll subscribe to Slashdot when I see a month without a dupe, a typo, or an article the "editors" didn't read.
Whoah, it looks like it's going to complete one full spin in the next decade, that's going to make Y2K look like a walk in the park.
Play Command HQ online
Given that the Earth's rotation is slowing down, isn't it immediately apparent that the liquid core must spin faster than the outside. It's just basic fluid dynamics. If apply a torque to the outside of a fluid filled region, the middle of that region will feel the effect last.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
With this different rotation at the core, what type of Baseball pitch is the earth? And was it thrown left or right handed?
Personally I think we've been thrown a curve-ball.
Sorry couldn't resist.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
We'll need to do core dump analysis.
If the core slows down due to friction with the mantle, will there be an effect on the magnetic field surrounding the Earth? Without the magnetic field, my understanding is that the Van Allen radiation belt will also not exist, and that in turn would expose the Earth to the full-on radiation of the Sun.
I'm no scientist, of course. But I wonder what the implications of the spinning core means. Also, how long would it take to stop spinning, or to develop a wobble?
There have been a slew of large earthquakes around the world lately. Could it be related?
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
Jeez no one subscribes to the Giant Hampster in a Giant Wheel at the core of the Earth theory anymore? I mean if that hampster dies then we are all really screwed.
News Reporters Make Tasty Polar Bear Treats!
...but I think we all know that the Earth's center is hollow. I mean, where else would the Molton Rock people be living? They can't survive in a liquid iron environment. That's just stupid.
What do I have to do to get a sig around here?! www.bearscanfly.org
1. Make reference to really bad movie.
2. Mention title of movie for the hard of hearing.
3. Create a pretend lesson learnt from the really bad movie.
4. In a new post in a duplicate account, make reference to how pathetic the original post is.
5. ????
6. Profit^H^H^H^H Karma?
While researching this, the scientists also discovered that the earth is not flat, and that gravity usually pulls towards the center.
Seriously, though, what's the big deal? This wasn't even news 10 years ago, so why make a big fuss over it now...
-Space for rent
My spinning wheel is much faster and I don't do a announcement about it.
The Core: 2003 The article: "assertions first made in 1996" Paying attention: not you
rewriting old code for insane cash.
Really, we don't need oil - we need to hook up a generator to Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, and George Mason!
Get your Unix fortune now!
alongside the "Spinning Core" theory. This theory is just as valid, and children need to be taught different points of view.
Sorry, had to do it.
Freedom would be not to choose between black and white but to abjure such prescribed choices. -Theodor Adorno
Honestly what is the problem with the New York Times login?
I signed up way back at the stary and I have never received any email to the address I signed up with.
That address was solely created for the nytimes.com site too.
Get over it.
Anyone know if this might have any effect on the axial tilt and precession (41,000 and 26,000 year wobble cycles) of the Earth?
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
I had heard on Discovery that it is due to the rotation of the Earth's core that we have the concept of poles. Our poles keep switching their polarities. Is thare any indication that such a change is going to happen anytime soon? Going by statistics, our poles should have changed by now.
God overclocked the core, and saw that it was good.
Couple that with the fact that a human's unprompted circadian cycle is actually about 25 hours long, and it begins to explain a lot... to someone...
Seeing bad movies only encourages them. Watch responsibly
Everyone head to the east with their car and go as fast as possible.
:)
And everyone around the world, press the breaks all at once, while riding to the east.
That may be enough to accelerate the Earth's rotation
Léa Gris
And what is causing the spin-down? Is it friction against empty space?
If it is gravitation from other bodies? I would think this would affect the entire earth, not just the outer part of the earth(you can not shield gravitation. )
You can say that tidal friction causes this, but wouldn't the same gravity of the moon create tides in the flowing lava?
How about New Scirntist's coverage? Or LiveScience.com?
No bugmenot required, and they're science sites.
Slashdot gets more retarded every day, I swear.
(this post's mind-reading captcha="resorts")
I wonder what the rotation rate of Mars' core is. We know it's either liquid or solid and liquid (the latter being what Earth has), so it could have a difference, which would create a magnetic field. Only problem is, Mars doesn't have a magnetic field. However, Mars' field might also be hiding, as it does on Earth when changing the north and south poles which can take hundred to thousands of years. Now we've only been watching Mars with any sophistication for decades, which means Mars could have a field that's currently undergoing a reversal. If it isn't undergoing a reversal, and the two rotations are different, then it would prove enlightening on why that is the case.
From TFA: "The thing is acting like a huge rotor in an electric motor," Dr. Richards said. "Except this one is running a billion amps." Wow, so you can jump start your car from anywhere in the world!
This just in: the center of a 12" record travels at a greater number of RPMs than the outer edge. Reactions from the Doobie Brothers were not reported.
The Earth's core also bounces from North to South. Not sure if it is a remnant of the colision that formed the Moon, or part of its conservation of momentum from the outer crust trying to change it's vector, the core being a giant defacto gyroscope.
Eventually I will post the math. =)
kulakovich
Cool, the nukes worked. ;-)
no cure for cancer.
Great to see the timely Slashdot article. I need a reminder about these things every nine years or so.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
It's Superman's fault. All cuz that bitch, Lois Lane, went and died, so he flew real fast and sped up the crust, then switched it back, but now the inside is still all fucked up....
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
There's a threshold where the fields around the rotor get disorganized (expect geomagnetic migrations to get all screwed up,) and then field lines reverse as the threshold is crossed.
Nothing actually happens to the rotor (it doesn't spin backwards all of a sudden) but the field lines generated are inverted.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
> The core spins faster because the bodies of the US founding fathers are spinning in their graves at such high RPM.
Hell, even Ronald Reagan is starting to rotate a bit.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Friction is not an energy source. Without nuclear reactions/something, it would cool down just as fast, just that there would be some linkage between kinetic energy and heat.
I wonder if it gets faster as it gets cooler and as such generates more heat due to the extra rotation, so as such it only slowly cools. Also given gravety and the way the earth forms it would be logical to conclude that the mass of the core would be pretty dense and I wonder what effect solar particals and other exotic particals have as they fly thru space and most matter upon the dense core. I mean if they were to interact with anything it would be something large and dense as there is more chance of a collision/slow down/interaction.
Interesting stuff non the less, but dont see us wrapping large coils around the earth and using it to generate electricity just yet. On that note does lightning manifest itself to induce an internal motor action inside the core - reverse dynamo stylee.
Who needs space when we have many great questions left all below our feet.
Maybe, It's like the spoked rims on a pimped ride. When it spins forward really fast it appears to be spinning backward. So perhaps, millions of years ago, It was spinning VERY fast... So fast that the magnetic field lines appeared (and affected) backward from the flow. And then when the flow slowed, the field normalized. And so on, until we get our current rates.
Marques Johansson
slashdot poster jumps to moronic conclusion. Many in the community believe it may have something to do with smoking too many doobies whilst spinning platters.
"Our interests are to see if we can't scale it up to something more exciting," he said.
The effect of gravity of the moon (and really all other objects in the solar system, to a smaller scale) on the earth as they rotate. Tidal dragging is the reason why the moon has locked its rotation with the earth (so that it always faces us).
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
"We" only say homosexual sex is wrong
:)
Oh, good! They can be fags as long as they don't do anything faggy.
I'm sorry, I couldn't resist.
BenCurry.net
Every time a heavy chunk of crust breaks free and sinks into the liquid, it's like the skater pulling their arms in - it spins faster. Momentum is conserved, but at the shorter radius this translates into higher angular velocity. All the heavy stuff is in the center, and it must have spun up when that first happened. Is the difference still there, or is the process still happening a little bit?
"homo erectus and their ancestors certainly survived many previous reversals. There is no uncontested evidence that a magnetic field reversal has ever caused any biological extinctions."
Homo erectus didn't have a society totally dependant on electronics for it's economics and machines to feed it's population. Of course we'll survive a reversal, but it won't be pleasant for those involved.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Stop the world, I want to get off.
rewriting history since 2109
...there is no core what so ever? I mean, why didn't nobody think about that the crust we live on is just some excretion material of the exit from a blackhole? The other end of the tube so we live on the crap of some swallowed up planets and other materials. :)
I was a stranger for the thing, i wasn't facing the crowd, ive been riding on empty with my head in the clouds
Bless you. I was hoping somebody else out there would remember Mrs. Richards.
I think it's actually powered by the White House Press Secretary.
While Vulcan and Hephaestus were gods of the earth and of volcanoes, they were only minor characters in the Olympian pantheon
Sorry to be a pedantic bore, but Vulcan was a Roman god, and not of the Olympian pantheon ;^) - also I don't think Vulcan was crippled like Hephaestus, but I'm not 100% sure on that one. Does this put him back in the frame ...?
... No! I've just found out that he lives in Birmingham, Alabama, under constant supervision - so he has an alibi.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Now we are getting way off topic...
The point is that the laws don't say much (two lines total) about homosexual sex. It says nothing of homosexuality (and even the ultra-orthodox believe an ommission is the same as saying that it's okay). It only discusses the act and no where does it mention the idea that two people can't live together and love each other, even if they are both men or both women. And if they love each other then it is pretty much okay. Christians always seem to take things out of context - and there is your problem. As I said, any lust based sex is denounced - that includes masturbation, rape, lying to get someone in the sack for a quickie, fsck'n someone you don't love, what have you. But we are talking about "our" morality - not anyone else's. You see, we don't view these restrictions as things that everyone should[n't] be doing - we view them as things that we should[n't] be doing. I keep kosher, my gf doesn't, I wouldn't even think of asking her to not eat pork. In fact I watched her eat bacon, eggs and sausage this morning (just 48 minutes ago).
So to wrap up:
They can be fags as long as they love each other.
Get your Unix fortune now!
There are some sneers money can buy. For everything else, there's slashdot.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Tell that to the confused ducks who fly to Alaska for the winter every time a reversal happens
"He who throws mud, loses ground." - proverb
if Mars isn't clothed behind its field, then it has been fully exposed - or "mooning" us - for the past several hundred years? For shame!
"He who throws mud, loses ground." - proverb
If a reversal increases the mutation rate, one could reasonably posit that it causes cancer. Perhaps now the hyperactive supernannies in the United States who insist on warning labels on everything, will want a giant sign readable from space: "WARNING BY THE UN SURGEON GENERAL: Residing on Earth longer than 200,000 years may cause cancer. Use at own risk."
"He who throws mud, loses ground." - proverb
Some people doubt the existence of God, but I propose a doctrine of Intelligent Deogenesis. By postulating the existence of a creator who created God, we can account for the Intelligent Design in the characteristics of God Himself. Clearly, a being of God's infinite intelligence is the product of a being of intelligence. Theories that God evolved from monkeys or one-celled organisms fail the BS test, since God is clearly irreducible in his complexity. God simply sprang fully-formed from the mind of Man. Cogito ergo sum, lorem ipso dolor, quid pro quo, alea jacta est, et cetera.
Since the date and time would then be fixed, I think the alterations required to code this would be fairly simple :)
Is it just me that thinks the parent should have been marked +5 Funny... or cynical, or is everyone on slashdot a republican?
The Digital Couture Collection
That's all. Come on, mods.
It's your job to supply credible sources for extraordinary claims, friend. The Sun's field flips every 11 years, AND I'M STILL HERE.
It's so very apt that the "To confirm you're not a script, please type the word in this image" word is "contempt"!
Yes, and sometimes sarcasm can be interpreted as insightful.
As another poster pointed out, sarcasm is often insightful.
What Smidge has pointed out (quite nicely, I must say) is that pretty much EVERY scientific theory/explanation can be trivialized in this matter. Let's face it, here's what ID boils down to:
1. The world, and everything in it, are complex. No one would argue this.
2. In trying to understand complex things, we might miss some details, or in fact most of the detail. Again, no one would argue this.
3. Because we can't claim a perfect, 110% understanding of something, there's simply no way we can ever understand any of it. Logical fallacy. However, because of this:
4. Therefore everything was created by God. Everything is the way it is because of God. Otherwise how could things be this way?
Oh, and
5. My theory's as good as yours, because I say so, and yours is quite frankly far to complicated to understand whereas mine is simple and therefore correct.
#3 is WHY ID is not 100% laughed at by people, and #5 is why it's accepted so widely.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Or should I say speculation, since I had no empirical data.
Anyway, while at SCIENCE CAMP, I proposed to one of the adults a 'different core rotation rate theory.' I remember the look he gave me very clearly: "yeah, right."
Of course, he was right to be skeptical. I was way off, apparently, since my proposal was that it was related to gravity, not the magnetic field. Oh, to be young again.
Computational Chemistry products and services.
This is a very interesting statement. It looks, on the surface, like you're trying to be open minded and not judgemental, but you have put in an interesting judgement: the stipulation of "as long as they love each other."
So what is the moral concept that you believe in this particular instance? That is, is the important thing in a relationship merely the sentiment behind it or the way in which the sentiment is effected? Also, which meaning of the word "love" do you mean in your statement? What happens if we replace 'fags' with 'racists' or 'alcoholics' or 'atheists' or any other term you might want to put in there?
I have to say I don't have answers to any of these things, but the way you phrased your statement just puts this strange little feeling that something's not right in my gut. I'll even posit that the thing "not right" is actually my viewpoint, but in either case I'm not sure in what way.
*pause to think*
Hrm. Now that I've thought about it: What gets me is that it appears (I note that this may not be the case; the following is based on that assumption) your statement is humanist: it places humans at the top of the 'reverence' scale. That is, humans and their feelings and well-being and their endeavors are the thing of utmost importance. Oddly enough, I think this falls into the same category as most environmentalism, politics, and sociology which is focused on "people will suffer (mentally or physically)!" rather than some other standard. Regardless of which "flavor" turns out to be correct, I believe there is a standard outside humanity; be it some "god" or just the pure physical mechanics of the universe, humanity is subject to something outside ourselves, and I think the humanist view denies this truth.
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
Frictional dissipition isn't a source of heat? Whaaa?
Check out Io and Europa and then reconsider that statement.
There are ocean's on both sides, and on average they are just as far from the moon as the center of the earth.! ?
Fox News has posted a conflicting report declaring the Earth's core a "No Spin Zone."
so now...what age do i put on earth's birthday card?
Don't ya hate it when the correct spelling of your favorite screen name is taken?
"Its" is proper for "it is", and the possesive of "it".
The poles flipping probably won't make humans feel different or anything, and barring any crazy concentration or increase in the the magnetic field during such a process, shouldn't affect electronics unless they are directly related to measuring the magnetic characteristics of Earth.
Many other animals, most notably birds migration habits, will be drastically altered when looking at the pole-flip phenomenon from a beginning-to-end perspective, but any changes to any living thing's behavior will be as subtle as any other process would be if spread out over several hundred years.
So yes, people are "monumentally stupid" to be freaking out about this, IMHO.
A B A C A B B
yes and television and radio goes all screwey, sometimes it even knocks out power grids, fries satelites and even electrinics on the ground lots of annoying things, all from 4 light-seconds away; imagine it underfoot.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
I'm not sure about the parent or grandparent, but its not the field that I am concerned about, but the Cosmic Rays that the Earth's magnetic field may sheild us from.
r .html
If you aren't familiar with Cosmic Rays:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_rays
And IBM even has done reasearch on what Cosmic Rays does to electronics:
http://www.research.ibm.com/journal/rd40-1.html
http://www.research.ibm.com/journal/rd/421/ziegle
Think of it like an EMP bomb. The flip wouldn't give us enough radiation from cosmic rays to maybe kill us, but it's speculated that while its in limbo it would be enough to flip electrons in memory and kill sensitive electronic equipment.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
"Its" is absolutely not proper for "it is", the apostrophe in "it's" is required for that meaning.
"I believe there is a standard outside humanity; be it some "god" or just the pure physical mechanics of the universe, humanity is subject to something outside ourselves, and I think the humanist view denies this truth."
I suggest you research humanism in more depth before you assert that rational humanists deny the laws of physics. Through the ages, under various labels, humanism has been mischaracterized under a variety of evil, satanic, orwellian, or socialist labels.
Humanists are very much centered on fact-based reality and measurable results of experimentation.
Most have philosophical 'beliefs' that are based on the latest scientific findings.
Believe whatever misconceptions you want, but devotees of humanism will continue to base their beliefs on actual measurement, rather than mysticism, spiritualism, and fables.
I didn't desert Windows; Windows deserted me: BSOD
Its more like 8 light minutes from where I am sitting. Which planet are you on?
Perhaps folks want a discussion* on what that might actually mean (considering most are too lazy to Wiki or Google for it). Incidentally, from the Wikipedia at least, some of my understanding of humanism is correct, but considering the page cites that humanism includes things as opposed as Christianity (which I'm confused to see how it fits into humanism according to the Wikipedia) and relativism, it seems that humanism isn't a very restrictive term. That could account for the "mischaracterization" of which you spoke.
* We got a Politics section - any chance we can get a Philosophy section?
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
Gravimagnetic energy pulses from the galactic core to our sun and from the sun to the earth. The energy pulse from the sun is like a blade turning in the blender. The whipped cream at the center is rotating faster because the liquid metal core is the most efficient converter of the incoming energy, and the rotation speed tapers off toward the outside. Since it is not a homogeneous medium (different densities in the layers) you get discontinuous jumps in velocity from layer to layer. In other words, the core rotates faster than the surface. Such wisdom in baking.
People have known this since the mid-1990s. I wonder why the journal even bother publishing this old result. Actually it is new data confirming an old result.
I wonder if it has any effects on gravity
The speculation of differential rotation was due to an expensive computer simulation by Harvard physicist Glatzmier in the mid-1990s. People hadnt done this calculation before because it was incredibly expensive: two months of a supercomputer time in the mid-1990s. First the cost comes from calculating fluid flow and electrodynamics simultaneously. Second, because the magnetic field is somewhat chaotic (unstable), yu have to have lots of tiny grid cells and time steps in a three dimensional sphere. One result of his calculation is the magnetic field in the liquid outer core has enough energy to push it differentially with respect to the earth's rotation. A second result is he predicted magnetic pole reversals in manner observed in the rock records- periods of great stability, punctuated by "flickering". Some of these flickers turn into complete reversals. Incidentally, the earth is in a "flickering phase" right now.
Get more RAM!
Set your phasers on "funky"!
The Earth's magnetic field doesn't shield us from cosmic rays.
y c.html
n u_rayonnement.html
t ml
I hate to respond to AC's but you need education:
From:
http://www.srl.caltech.edu/personnel/dick/cos_enc
Discovery and Early Research: Cosmic rays were discovered in 1912 by Victor Hess, when he found that an electroscope discharged more rapidly as he ascended in a balloon. He attributed this to a source of radiation entering the atmosphere from above, and in 1936 was awarded the Nobel prize for his discovery. For some time it was believed that the radiation was electromagnetic in nature (hence the name cosmic "rays"), and some textbooks still incorrectly include cosmic rays as part of the electromagnetic spectrum. However, during the 1930's it was found that cosmic rays must be electrically charged because they are affected by the Earth's magnetic field.
Now these articles don't specifically come out and say that the magnetic field protects us, but explains how it works and one of the main concerns about colonization on mars because it doesn't have a strong magnetic field:
http://helios.gsfc.nasa.gov/magnet.html
http://www.sievert-system.org/WebMasters/en/conte
http://www-spof.gsfc.nasa.gov/Education/wcosray.h
If the earth's magnetic field doesn't protect us from cosmic rays then what does? The Atmosphere... Maybe, but it's apparent in those sites that the rays from the Sun and deep space are affected by Earth's magnetic field.
Also note it's mentioned in Wikipedia's Rare Earth Theory article.
The impact may also result in a large moon to stabilize the axis, and the cores of the original planet and the impacting body merging to form an over-massive core could produce a powerful magnetic field to protect against solar radiation.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
No, that's not right.
"It's mine, give it back."--WRONG!
This phrase is actually correct. If you can replace
"it's" with "it is", then "it's" is correct. That applies here.
The earth's core spins faster than the earth's shell eh? Isn't this obvious. I had this figured out before high school, I'm wondering now why this is so amazing.
so yes, it is so simple. The tides swishing water round the earth do tow things in this regard: They speed the Moon up in its orbit (so its orbit is actually dropping!) and they slow the rotation of the earth. So it's exactly as gowen says: Given that the Earth's rotation is slowing down, isn't it immediately apparent that the liquid core must spin faster than the outside. It's just basic fluid dynamics. If apply a torque to the outside of a fluid filled region, the middle of that region will feel the effect last.
In addition, the stiffness of the crust, and the extremely high viscosity of the mantle both limit deformation. Thus the effects of the tidal pulls transport far more mass in the very fluid oceans. That fluid motion is what visibly causes the tie to rise and fall. Nothing like obseveable facts to help us sift wheat from chaff in a scientific discussion!
Homo erectus was also probably "used to" the idea that most of them didn't live to 30 years of age.
The idea that skin cancer rates, just to pick a totally hypothetical example, might go up tenfold, just to pick a totally made-up factor, would be met by a shrug: "Who the hell ever lived long enough to die of cancer?"
Things could get pretty damn bad in modern terms without creating something that would show up in the million-year-old fossil record. Consider how little direct evidence we see today of the flu pandemic of the early 20th century, or the various Black Death pandemics of the late Middle Ages.
The diameter of the earth is much much greater than the diameter of the core. This means the earth spins faster than the inner most core since there is a lot more mileage that is covered per spin. Now to to say the core spins around more times than the earth would be correct but even that is a pretty small difference considering the 700-1200 years to make the extra spin according to the article.
The Overclocking Theory completes the previously ill-conceived Intelligent Design theory.
It provides a logical explanation to all our glitches...
All heil the Flying Spaghetti Monster!
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
Except for all that ionizing radiation that will get in when the Van Allen belts are attenuated to the point of nonexistence.
We've secretly replaced Slashdot with new Folgers Crystals - let's see if it notices.
If the server BF2 server that I'm playing on crashes when the magnetic field changes, I'm going to be really pissed!
Valkyrie is about to die! Wizard needs food -- badly!
The moon is causing the Earth's rotation to slow. Wikipedia cites this to be 15ns/yr. Sure this is slow, but so is the difference.
Perhaps it's causing this?
Homo erectus didn't have a society totally dependant on electronics for it's economics and machines to feed it's population. Of course we'll survive a reversal, but it won't be pleasant for those involved.
What a load of nonsense!
Electronics and machinery are not dependent on the orientation of the earths magnetic field. Why on earth would they be that?
The earth's magnetic field is about 50 microteslas in strength. I have personally seen computers operate happily in static fields over 10 times stronger than that.
(although the CRT displays tend to get warped after long periods of time)
have been privy to this information for centuries.
Also, which meaning of the word "love" do you mean in your statement? What happens if we replace 'fags' with 'racists' or 'alcoholics' or 'atheists' or any other term you might want to put in there?
You see, I don't care what people do - as do many who share my stance (Jews at large, but not all by any means). What you do is great, fine - but in ourselves we expect, or rather have the dogma, like many others have that sex between two people for lust is wrong. Am I guilty? Sure, but I was looking at it more from the dogmatic view. As far as love between "racists", "atheists" or the others, I say that it doesn't matter unless they are Jews. Even then it isn't my place to say if two of any type get together - but maybe we have to talk about the racism or alcoholism. I no doubt have a duty to step in if I can save anyone's life or save you from great harm - however I have to balance that with my emotions and only think of the dogma (Law, Torah, Talmud, whatever) and not create a rule that doesn't exist.
That is, humans and their feelings and well-being and their endeavors are the thing of utmost importance. Oddly enough, I think this falls into the same category as most environmentalism, politics, and sociology which is focused on "people will suffer (mentally or physically)!" rather than some other standard.
The first lesson that God teaches man, in my religion and dogma, is that it is absolutely important that your actions with another must be approached with the idea that their well being is connected to your own. You must not do others harm as it is connected throughout the community. Making another person die, then held captive, then murder, steal from, lie to, and then later basically deprive of liberty or property in any way. It is a basic moral code that even real cannibals share - their practice is often punishment for violating the moral code. Watch the upcoming "Tribe" show on Discovery to see how this type of behavior is almost universal. The "shun" is to say that you aren't making it in society - no matter who celebrates it (Amish to Catholics and beyond).
Not that any execution of this code is great, the idea stands that by taking from someone you take from yourself. As far as this relates, it isn't my place to judge your inner feelings, if you have psychological bond then that is a good thing for the world. My dogma can't tell you how to live your life, it only tells me to protect you. It tells me how to live my life, and the stance from Adam to Moses to the Rabbinical leaders of today say that your interactions with another is more important than your inward desires. It is how your desire affects the world around you.
I guess, healthy gay men apply only. I don't want to see someone having gay sex because they have a warped view because of a way they were raised (male prostitution comes to mind, but I refer to those who suffered a traumatic experience or whatever). We are against lustful sex, where you like to have quick one-time sex with another or have sex with both types of partners because you just love sex that much. This applies however to most behaviors, and restrictions are abound to help reinforce that overall behavior. It's more of hedonism that we are against, than homosexuality, when it comes down to it.
Get your Unix fortune now!
4 light seconds? How about ~8 light minutes.
The sun is approximately 93 million miles form earth. Light travels 186,000 miles per second. with you math, we are a mere 744, 000 miles from the sun.
"Artificial Intelligence usually beats real stupidity."
Flames warranted. Didn't realize by my web layout that someone already pointed this out. I shall go and beat my head into the wall several times until I understand the implications of my fauz pas.
OJ
"Artificial Intelligence usually beats real stupidity."
go look up what happens in the middle of the flip - i suppose you think that the field just rotates 180 degrees, not losing any of its strength in the meantime?
We've secretly replaced Slashdot with new Folgers Crystals - let's see if it notices.
Mars' magnetic field is produced by a light-plum coloured monolith (with gigantic N and S markings) that was sunk to the planet's core millions of years ago.
diagram of light-plum monolith at Mars' core
Just like the famous black monolith that's guarding the region of the gas giants, its probally responding to Earth's radio traffic and has reduced Mars' manetic field to unmeasurable field strength.
If we ALL look the other way it may resume normal strength, but I wouldn't bet my life on that!
(David Bowman, EVA near HUGE Monolithic Win-PC in orbit around Jupiter) "My God - its full of Malware!"