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Walter Munk's Astonishing Wave-Tracking Experiment
An anonymous reader writes in with a look at a scientist's interesting wave-tracking experiment and the incredible journeys that waves make. His name is Walter Munk, now in his 90s and a professor emeritus at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California. About 60 years ago, he was anchored off Guadalupe Island, on Mexico's west coast, watching swells come in, and using an equation that he and others had devised to plot a wave's trajectory backward in time, he plotted the probable origins of those swells. But the answer he got was so startling, so over-the-top improbable, that he thought, "No, there must be something wrong." His equations said that the swells hitting beaches In Mexico began some 9,000 miles away — somewhere in the southern reaches of the Indian Ocean, near Antarctica. "Could it be?" he wrote in an autobiographical sketch. Could a storm half way across the world produce a patch of moving water that traveled from near the South Pole, up past Australia, then past New Zealand, then across the vast expanse of the Pacific, arriving still intact – at a beach off Mexico? He decided to find out for himself. That is why, in 1957, Walter Munk designed a global, real life, wave-watching experiment.
... making waves.
Check out my sci-fi book "Lacuna" at http://goo.gl/MVxX8
What kind of non-story is that? One link points to some guy writing about how some other guys went to study waves at different locations. It doesn't say anything about how they did it, or has any technical information. The other link is a PDF scanned from a paper from 1982. Slow day when you have 32 year old news?
c++;
Why won't you edit?
He spends his life barking up the wrong three.
Waves isn't a physical thing that propagate over the seas. It's just various forces pushes water molecules, which makes his entire research moot.
Could a storm half way across the world produce a patch of moving water that traveled from near the South Pole
This reads like the voice-over for one of those embarrassingly poor 'documentaries' you sometimes see, where the producers have tried to sensationalize a fairly standard, scientific subject, and draw it out to fill a whole hour, when it could have been adequately explained in about 10 minutes. A shame, really, because the subject is in fact quite interesting.
However: waves don't move patches of water half-way around the globe; the actual water more or less stays in place. A wave is simply energy propagating through a medium, and it is quite astonishing to hear that an ocean wave can travel that far without dissipating, because the expectation is that it would spread out in a circular pattern and thus grow weaker with distance. I would have been interested in hearing what the explanation is.
I'm glad this was posted, at least for me. I had the pleasure of meeting him some years ago. I also worked for a scientist who had been a student of his for many years. Munk contributed greatly to the understanding of ocean waves.
You lost me at "produce a patch of moving water that traveled from near the South Pole,"
The south pole is sitting on top of 9000 feet of ice and under that there is dirt. Ain't no waves anywhere near there.
Ref: Me. Been there done that.
"Astonishing" - drink!
To surfers, this is common knowledge. The perfect waves they surf at places like Malibu (southern California) in the summertime are "southern hemi" swells -- swells that originate from powerful southern hemisphere wintertime storms (near Antarctica). The reason these swells can travel so far is the swell period which can be upwards of 20 seconds (that's a lot of energy). The limiting factor isn't distance over open ocean, but merely obstruction from land mass. With little to block the swells on their trajectory, it is certainly possible that a powerful storm under New Zealand can send waves to southern California. In fact, it happens on a regular basis.
What I'm not quite buying is the idea of a wind fetch in the Indian ocean sending a swell to California (or Mexico), since it would be entirely blocked by Australia.
an Ig Nobel and real Nobel. Andre Geim already did but not for the same work.
What's amazing is that the "paper" was a celebration of Monk's already interesting career ... upon his supposed retirement age at 65.
So yes for those who critiqued this as a slow news day, and yes for an old paper, and yes for perhaps obvious news.
But how about a celebration of the life of this man, this person, who kept going, starting at 65! I for one hope I could be some small percentage as 'meaningful' for me when I reach the 65 through 95 range!
xx
Bukowski said it. I believe it. That settles it.