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Earth's Core Made In Miniature
ananyo writes "A 3-meter-tall metal sphere full of molten sodium is about to start work modeling the Earth's core. The gigantic dynamo, which has taken researchers ten years to build, 'will generate a self-sustaining electromagnetic field that can be poked, prodded and coaxed for clues about Earth's dynamo, which is generated by the movement of liquid iron in the outer core.'"
Next step get miniature planets... heck and make them look like a palm tree... rather than get a palm tree visible from space... has already been done, get a palm tree visible from space for a change
Never antropomorphize computers, they do not like that
Now, it's Earth after Universe.
In other words, they created a spherical model of Earth in vacuum.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Suddenly I'm having a craving for a Cadbury Cream Egg.
They probably know this physical model will exhibit a magnetic field because they did a FEA and CFD simulations of the thing. So why then did it have to be built?
You can get molten sodium at 105C?
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
This model is inaccurate as it does not provide for the Reptilian space.
"The world is a construct of forceful imagination. Those who don't know walk around in the reailties of those who do"
...on our doomsday device to stop the earth's core from spinning.
Small scale tests first before we build the full-size model.
They could let Mythbusters have it when they are done. Take it to a suitable pond (inside a dense metropolitan area the way things are going for them lately), rig it with explosives to open the outer shell, and let all that yummy sodium drop into the water. Make sure several angles of slo-mo are being shot.
Is a miniature Aaron Eckhart and douchey french guy?
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
How can this produce accurate results that will possibly match that of reality? This device (unless they are planning to put it on the space station) will be overwhelmingly influenced by the (real) earth's gravity. Convection will obviously be way off.
So, unless they are trying to model how the earth's core would act if it were enclosed in a giant metal sphere and placed on a gigantic table subject to one-gee, won't this simulation be way off?
Even if they put it in space, I'm not sure the simulation would be correct, the forces provided from the self-gravitation would probably be off.
Just like the Earth's core shields us from the harmful particles that disrupt power grids and the like, couldn't this type of setup produce a shield that could protect a spaceship from them as well?
Disclaimer: This shield will not protect you against phaser fire and photon missiles.
in relationship to yesterdays article on physical models in the age of computers (http://science.slashdot.org/story/11/12/06/1736231/physical-models-in-an-age-of-computers). This is a great example of when a physical model is invaluable to scientific research even though a computer model could have been used. What happens in theory doesn't always hold true in practice.
Yawn! Wake me when they have a dual-core earth.
The single-core model is bound to revolve to slowly!
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
This will be awesome if they can make a stable magnetic field. I imagine the heat and power required to keep equilibrium temp and speed could easily be taken from some atomic battery. Perhaps even a thorium core. The resultant shield would protect the crew/equipment on distant voyages. This is the start of some truly groundbreaking tech.
A la Cities In Flight. Cool!!
Hmmm, knowing that I've seen this before, I decided to go lookabout http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/engineering/4277476 Ummm so what did they do? Apparently they emptied the thing of the sodium it had in 2009, either that or the 2009 article is in error.
Not sure if this is all that interesting, appears to just be a pr piece to help ensure people don't forget about them. Not sure why there is a time discrepancy. The show I saw before has some sort of sodium filled ball for measuring magnetic fields, and I assume that it's probably the same one. Since I watch most of my documentaries on Netflix now, I have to assume this thing is several years old.
/* TODO: Spawn child process, interest child in technology, have child write a new sig */
Ten years in the making, the US$2-million project is nearly ready for its inaugural run.
That's incredibly cheap for a project like this. Over the 10 years it took to build, that's only $200k/yr. That's only 2 or 3 salaries, not including materials, and overhead.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
I just want to say I'm really glad that it visibly spins. If it were just a funny looking sphere sitting there that made noises, this would more or less all be for naught. But since it actually spins while it makes noises, you can tell that real science is being done. I'm not saying it couldn't use a few concentric rings, each spinning on its own axis, but this is definitely a step in the right direction.
Their may be a grammatical error, misspeling, or evn a typo in this post.
Surely there is a cheaper quicker way to do this?
In CYC's defense I see no shortcut to AI but I also question the path taken by CYC.
My bet: neither experiment pans out: both are _eventually_ defunded.
How does going out sailing on a boat (in California, Corinthia, Chicago (or any other place starting with the letter C, being home to a yacht club) advance the cause of AI? Also, why do you assume that the 3 m spinning ball of sodium will not produce useful results?
Is 1563649 a prime number?
They can make a tiny Hillary Swank to go in and restart it!
Hmm.. What about internal pressure of the Earth's core ? They forgot about that. I guess this is what happens when the US Educational System dumbs down the physics books! I predict the dynamo will not be self sustaining.
The cocksucking leftist made an unfunny joke on Slashdot.
what?
Maybe you'd like to tell us what it is? Modeling the liquid metal core of the Earth with a sphere of liquid metal seems like a pretty reasonable approach to me. And given the scale of the project, a $2 million price tag doesn't seem particularly high.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
A dynamo may have phase changes in it are very hard to model or may require expensive tiny grid cells or modeling accuracy. It was a big announcement in the mid-1990s to model magnetic pole-flipping on a supercomputer. And took three months to compute.
to have a fixed 'core' and just rotate the sensors?
According to another post, http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2562758&cid=38292628, this experiment has already yielded results.
How many science projects have you worked on that cost less than $200,000 a year?
Sentient bacteria have constructed a 0.000000708 meter tall model of the model of the earth.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
Wow, you wingnuts really are a colossal pack of thin-skinned faggots, aren't you?
Dropping sodium into water (or anything water based) at room temp causes an "energetic" reaction.
Boiling Water would most likely be worse LOTS WORSE (like Halon Dump worse).
This is definitely Kids Do Not Try This AT Home territory.
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
Just a stupid question, but could something like this eventually become the "core" of a spaceship to provide a protective magnetic field for its occupants?
...if it were a life-sized replica...we would have quite a problem on our hands.
Isn't this a physical model like the San Francisco Bay model? Like the kind of models that computers have made obsolete?
I read an article on Slashdot the other day that there was some debate about their usefulness.
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I feel more like I do now than I did before.
Look guys, sorry if you misconstrued my comments. I honestly don't know why they made an experiment with this design. I was thinking, if they wanted to remove the effects of gravity, shouldn't they do a 2D simulation using a (relatively) thin flat plate of liquid sodium held horizontally? But then I have no clue if this would give any better results. I've heard that 2D supercomputer simulations of exploding supernovas turn out to be completely different (wrong?) from 3D simulations (which are much more expensive to carry out).
Anyway, the point is that I'm completely unqualified to judge these experimental designs, I was just wondering why something as obvious as gravity could be ignored. Is it that convection does not play a part in the phenomenon they are examining? Almost always I add something like "I am not an experimental physicist" to my postings, you'll see this on my (many!) prior postings. I guess I was just in a hurry this time. I have the absolute highest respect for scientists, my best friend is a tenured professor of theoretical chemistry and I know I couldn't do one-hundredth the math related stuff he does (I know, I've tried). I really wish I was smart enough to be a scientists; I consider myself to be very creative (I used to design theme parks!) but I just don't have what it takes. Sometimes I think Einstein was wrong when he said "imagination is more important than knowledge" but maybe he wasn't referring to knowledge of math.
That said, here's some puzzles that I've been thinking about while pondering this sodium sphere; if you wanted to model the convection caused by gravity (and heat) using a 2D analog, could you use a spinning disk filled with small particles and a refrigeration (cooling unit) at the center? When spun, the colder denser particles would be flung to the periphery of the disk whereupon they would be heated by contact with the "surface" and then sink back towards the center. By reversing the "forces"; centrifugal force (I know it's a "fake" force) instead of gravity but also reversing the hot and cold sources, wouldn't you have a good 2D simulation of the hot earth core and inwardly attracting gravity?
Now, as I said earlier, I've heard that 2D simulations sometimes are grossly incorrect at modeling 3D phenomenon. Too bad there is no way to spin something so that all points on a sphere have a centrifugal force. Or is there? Remembering that spinning a disk is just rotating a 2D plane in the third dimension, I was wondering can a 3D sphere be rotated in a (hypothetical) fourth or higher dimension?
Certainly I don't have any ability to do, if I had access to the fourth dimension I'd be using it for a lot of other things than rotating spheres! (Like robbing banks). But what if THE ENTIRE 3D UNIVERSE was rotating as some physicists have wondered, except not in the third dimension but in the fourth dimension. Would all the pieces feel an outward acceleration like a spinning plate? Wouldn't every object feel a force the was proportionately as strong as it was from the "center"? Would this explain cosmic inflation or even dark energy?
See sometimes not knowing (enough) math and science allows you to think really crazy things!
Why do they need sodium? Why any other conductive liquid is not good enough?
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.