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Pictures of Kuril Islands Volcano From ISS
KindMind writes "The Daily Mail has cool pictures of the Sarychev Peak (Kuril Islands) volcano eruption taken from the ISS back on June 12. From the article: 'A chance recording by astronauts on the International Space Station has captured the moment a volcano explosively erupted, sending massive shockwaves through the atmosphere. Sarychev Peak, one of the most active volcanoes in the world, had been sitting quietly in the Kuril Island chain near Japan for 20 years, when it suddenly sprang to life on June 12. Fortuitously, the International Space Station was flying overhead at the time, and managed to capture this spectacular image of the ash-cloud tearing through the atmosphere, sending clouds scattering in its wake in a perfect circle.'"
The original NASA story is here with large desktop background sized images. If you don't visit the weekly top ten site, you really should. Some of those images are breathtaking. Check out the thunderstorm anvil over Africa.
My work here is dung.
Video, or I don't believe you exist ;)
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Of course NASA will deny everything.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
No! That is my previously secret volcanic lair exploding you insensitive clod.
Almost exactly what an atomic detonation would look like from space, even down to the clouds being pushed aside and the "pileus cloud" that you see above atomic blasts from years ago.
All I can say is wow, that's cool.
"Computers are a lot like Air Conditioners" "They both work great until you start opening Windows"
Could also be a picture of what happens when I try to talk to a woman in a bar.
Equine Mammals Are Considerably Smaller
Well under a 10th of a percent of one, in all likelihood.
"Our studies show that globally, volcanoes on land and under the sea release a total of about 200 million tonnes of CO2 annually...the global fossil fuel CO2 emissions for 2003 tipped the scales at 26.8 billion tonnes." (link to source, and so you can see that I didn't do anything sneaky with that elision
Not exactly. Japan claims only the "Southern Kuriles" that is, from Iturup (Japanese Etorofu) southward, as per the Japanese-Russian Treaty of 1855. The Soviet Union attacked Japan at the very end of WWII and occupied all of the Kuriles. Japan is clearly in the right in that the Soviet Union had no legal claim to the Southern Kuriles. Basically, the current Russian occupation was a gift of Japanese territory from Roosevelt and Churchill to Stalin. The island on which the volcano is located, Matua, is in the Northern Kuriles and is not claimed by Japan.
Yes! I saw that as well, wasn't mentioned in the summary. This is the first time i've heard of a dark molecular cloud? So it blocks out all light from the stars behind it and somehow there are no stars in-front of it even though it's 500 LY away?
500 LY is our local neighborhood, galactically speaking, not even one quarter of the way across the arm of the galaxy's spiral that we are in. The map at the bottom of this page gives an idea of the scale of 500 LY. For comparison, let's look at the Orion nebula (middle "star" in Orion's sword). It is about 1200 LY away, and there aren't very many stars directly between us and it, even though it is about halfway across the arm that we are in.
"How they are formed is unknown, but clouds such as this are thought to be a birthing place for new stars."
I thought Nebulae were responsible for that?
Nebula are typically what's left over after a star dies, and yes can provide the matter for new star formation. But that isn't the only (or even main) mechanism. Anytime you have a large concentration of matter in space, gravity has a tendency to pull it together and form stars.
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
So how many human civilizations' worth of CO2 and other emissions did that just kick out? ;-)
The comments on the original are to the same tune. What makes anyone think that volcanoes are a significant source of CO2? Where would the CO2 that volcanoes are supposed to emit come from?
Volcanoes do emit some C02, but then, they emit some of just about everything. Their climate effects are mostly reduced atmospheric heat content due to an increase in ash and aerosols in the upper atmosphere. This effect is particularly pronounced for tropical volcanoes because (surprise!) Earth gets most of its sunlight in the tropics, and while the ash/aerosol cloud does spread out over a few months timescale to all latitudes, its effect is greatest at the latitude of the volcano.
"Volcanoes emit far more CO2 than humans" is the equivalent of "Anthropogenic CO2 emissions increase the frequency and severity of hurricanes". The majority of people on both sides in the public debate on climate change have left the science far, far behind, and are happy to believe stuff that "just makes sense" to them.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
sending clouds scattering in its wake in a perfect circle
clouds being pushed aside
The circular hole in the stratus cloud deck is pretty cool, but I think it's not caused by the detonation pushing clouds away. Unlike a firecracker or grenade explosion, the amount of gas released is tiny compared to the amount of air heated by the blast. The clear-sky circle isn't caused by air moving outward *away* from the volcano, but rather down, *toward* it.
What goes up must come down. The volcano heats air near it, causing it to rise and forming the ash column at the center. But if that air is rising, air nearby the volcano must be *descending* to compensate. Rising air cools adiabatically, causing water vapor to condense, forming clouds; descending air warms adiabatically, causing water droplets to evaporate, making the clouds vanish.
Because, on a per country basis, or a per energy-usage basis, let alone a per capita basis, China and India pollute far, far less than the US. Even if China and India tripled their pollution output, on a per-capita basis they would pollute only a small fraction of the amount of pollution per capita that the US would be spewing after conforming to the Kyoto requirements.
Sigh. Yes. Because we (the industrialized countries) have already been at it for ~200 years, have created the great majority of the human-generated CO2 that is in the atmosphere currently, and, logically, we should be the ones to move first on solutions. Upon successfully meeting the initial goals, the plan was for India and China (among other countries) to be held to the same standard, because we can then say "See? It can be done." If we sit back and do nothing, then why shouldn't they proceed to do exactly the same thing we already did for a couple of centuries? The point is: they have ZERO reason to be held to any standard at all, because neither were we for all of that time. They want to do what we did, how can we possibly say "No, you can't do that." However, if we can change, then they can too, and they have no excuse.
If you read the Kyoto Accord, you can find the rationale for the approach taken. It was never intended to be the final agreement, or that developing countries would be off the hook FOREVER. All I hear are people whining about how countries like India and China don't have to do anything. Duh. Neither did we. The level of misunderstanding about this point is amazing. It's like telling the latecomers to a party that they can't have the same amount of pizza that you've been stuffing in your gut for hours, and that you're still consuming faster than ever. The Kyoto Accord is a bargain along the lines of "Look, yes, so far I've been wolfing down pizza as fast as I can get it, but I'll show you I can cut back to 2 slices of pizza an hour, and then isn't it reasonable to expect you do to the same?"
Of course, none of it is likely to happen now, so we're probably going to have to be content with whatever impact will result as developing countries proceed with little or no restraints at all. So much for the pizza.
The part that amazes me is that I, as a human, simply can't comprehend the sheer volume of matter required to form a star. It has to have enough fuel to capable of fusion for billions of years to really be stable. I can calculate and write down the numbers and do the math... but I truly can't visualize in a non-abstract fashion how much matter that is.
Truly amazing.