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Doomsday Vault: First Tree Samples Arrive At Underground Seed Store
An anonymous reader writes "The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, built into an Arctic mountain, received its first delivery of tree seeds. Opened in 2008, the vault is designed to withstand all natural and human disasters. From the article: "The 'doomsday' vault built into an Arctic mountain, which stores seeds for food crops in case of a natural disaster, has received its first delivery of tree samples. Norway spruce and Scots pine seeds have arrived at the frozen vault, which is located on Svalbard, an archipelago owned by and north of Norway. The organizations behind the vault hope to bring more seeds from outside of the Nordic countries. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault will now look after the samples and use them to monitor how natural forests change. They will also keep them as back-ups, in case any of the species are lost, and to see how the forests change during breeding."
Wow. I don't know where to begin with all of the inaccuracies and impossibilities in that video. It was clearly made by someone with a very vivid imagination and a serious lack of actual scientific knowledge. All capped off by an inattention to detail. Here's the 10 most obvious flaws (to me, at least):
1) When the asteroid is approaching Earth, why is it glowing as if it's already on fire? It's a big ball of space rock. The burning wouldn't begin for a few million more miles as it enters the atmosphere.
2) The asteroid survives the descent through the atmosphere intact and without shedding any debris.
3) The impact takes way the hell too long. It wouldn't slow down much as it blasted through the atmosphere, so that dramatic slow descent before impact is pure bullshit.
4) There is an instant and light-speed-breaking shockwave at the moment of impact. Impossible.
5) A wave of fire spreads across the ocean. In reality, such an impact would cause a massive wall of water, not fire.
6) The firestorms wouldn't happen. The steam generated by the heat of the impact would extinguish them. Also, the atmosphere is nearly 80% nitrogen. A sustained firestorm without fuel (and the fiery clouds are clearly separated from the ground) is nearly impossible.
7) There would be one hell of a cloud of steam and debris. It wasn't pictured at all.
8) Due to #7, there would be a "nuclear winter". So most likely everyone would freeze to death, not burn to death.
9) The crater would be much smaller, submerged underwater, and any magma that was released into it might form an island. It certainly wouldn't have a glow visible from space. (How far underwater can you see? Yeah. And that's a lot less than 11 km, which is where ocean trenches bottom out.)
10) The idiots that made that video did a pan around the earth at the end, but there's no sun anywhere nearby. What, did the asteroid kick its ass too? No? Then it's just the dumbass graphics modeling team that forgot that particular detail. Or more accurately, left it out because the earth is "darkening" and it interfered with the OMG HORRIFFIC DOOM they were trying to project.
It's just typical bad Discovery Channel crap. It makes for good TV (at least for morons that don't cringe when they watch it), but it's scientifically crap.
Consider that video survived.
Here again, the Scandinavians prove they are the most superior culture on the planet. While much larger nations with far more resources are spending on their resources on military adventurism and weapons systems (including nations who also have possessions far north of the Arctic Circle, namely Russia), the Scandinavians have the highest quality of life in the world and are looking out for the future with this seed vault.