No, the compass on your smart-phone, if you carry out it's calibration correctly, will continue to indicate the direction of your local magnetic field's north. Whether that magnetic field actually points anywhere near the rotation axis of the Earth is an entirely separate question for which you need to study your local geology, or consult a cartographer. The relationship between the two things (magnetic field, rotation axis) is not precise, even without the complications of geology.
If your phone's "compass" is actually a calculation derived from GPS data, then it'll be as incorrect as your GPS data and whatever assumptions the programmers made to produce that figure. Actually having a magnetic field sensor may be too horrible a concept for modern phone designers to contemplate, because !shiny.
Has the point made repeatedly by geologists (including this one, on Slashdot) penetrated into your mind that the evidence about the duration of pole-flip events puts them at taking centuries to millennia to happen. We could today be in the same pole-flip as our grand parents lived through and your great-great grand-descendants will continue living through.
Incidentally, for the birds, I wouldn't worry about it. Their ancestors lived through previous pole-flips without becoming extinct. [sarcasm] Not even for a single generation. [/sarcasm]
You'll notice that the paper was published in that news-stand favourite, Astrophysical Journal Letters (Bums'n'Tits Daily always cedes front-row space to ApJL). For even wider input, he posted it to one of the most popular sites on the internet, Arxiv.
It's almost as if the author doesn't care if a single scientist reads it, and instead it's only read by the general public. My post is an effort to reverse that trend.
Slashdot commentators lied to you. Simples.
(Incidentally, this is one scientist, doing a desktop study. You can buy an awful lot of those for the price of a war plane falling out of the sky.)
You are both the product and the customer. They need to keep you happy or you will leave, and then they can't sell your data to advertisers.
Actually, I'm pretty sure they can, and do, continue to sell their data (concerning you) after you leave the platform. The purchasers are likely to pay less for information about someone who hasn't logged into an account for 7 years, but I bet the sellers charge more for datasets that filter out such users.
Also customers have rights so better that we demand them.
I'm not at all sure that I have any rights. After all, I'm not a US citizen, and most of these companies are HQ'd in the US.
Wasn't that the point of taking people to Guantanamo Bay for torture? Because "abroad" and/ or "foreigner" means it doesn't matter.
Corollary - people who have invested in the future of the gene pool will not be allowed to use flying cars.
That's going to make the ride home from getting lucky at a party suck. You get breakfast, walk down to the street, hail a flying taxi, get into it, fly half way home and the taxi dumps you unceremoniously at the side of the road as the sperm fuses with the egg. And you'll never use a flying car again. And all because the condom ripped, or whatever.
How would it endanger lives? Once the car's autopilot (you think they're going to let people without a pilots license and a few hundred hours logged "on type" actually fly paying passengers in these things?) realises that the local air traffic control is not giving a good description of traffic, the aircraft will perform a safe landing at the nearest appropriate point. Probably an under-used bit of road.
Human over-ride would probably be permitted, on presentation of the pilot's license (biometric) and validation of her logbook for this particular model of vehicle. After all, that is how the regulations for other forms of commercial flight work, and what is different about this form of flight?
We're currently going through one of those periodic bursts of angst because a football player got killed when being flown commercially by a pilot without a commercial license, in an aircraft whose owners had not licensed it for commercial use (which has a higher maintenance and inspection load than for private use). Loosening commercial pilot licensing requirements is an idea that is going to fly much worse than a Mythbuster's lead balloon at the moment.
In addition to "ghoul's" comment, there is a simple lag factor. It takes days or weeks of warm sunshine to melt the foot to metre of winter snow when spring comes. The sun has to provide energy to raise the temperature to 0degC, then it has to provide more energy to overcome the latent heat of fusion of the ice into water (that energy goes to breaking down the crystal structure of the ice). That takes time. For multi-kilometre-thick ice sheets, that time can be in the millennia. Which is long enough to show up in the climate records.
Water, in the atmosphere, is our number-1 greenhouse gas. It always has been, and it always will be. It's contribution to current temperatures - today's, not a model of the future - is about 15degC. Without the water in the atmosphere, most of the planet would be frozen - the "Snowball Earth" scenario.
Carbon dioxide is the most labile of the GHGs, because we can - and have - significantly alter it's concentration by our own activities. Or by geological processes (the freezing of Antarctica is as much due to the erosion of the Himalayas removing CO2 from the atmosphere as it is to opening of the Drake Passage isolating it from equatorially-sourced ocean currents.
No, it's not simple. That doesn't make it incomprehensible.
Yes, but then the question is how much of the excess already in the atmosphere will get pulled out by natural activity?
No, that's not an important question. We know the answer from studying the rocks deposited incorporating atmospheric CO2 in the early Eocene. It'll essentially all get pulled out.
The important question is, how long will it take? And again, we have the answer from the geological record : it'll take 100 to 120 kiloyears.
Or have we initiated processes that will cause more carbon to be released?
Almost certainly, yes. And once again it's by looking at the geological record. Plus, of course, looking at methane releases from the thawing permafrost. The data is available - at a price, because it is commercially valuable. You can also use natural methane venting as a pointer to hydrocarbon deposits in the near sub-surface. I.e. oil and gas fields.
Now that difference could result in radical differences in climate due to changes in ocean currents. There's essentially no data about historical ocean currents because most of what is ocean now was ocean then,
Actually, estimating sea-bottom currents is a part of the process of evaluating the distribution of underground sand bodies for oil exploration. There is a huge literature on it - dozens of books of review papers alone, thousands of paper. We do have a reasonable understanding of past currents. When the Drake Passage opened - about 40 Myr ago - there was a signifiant change in ocean circulation because it opened up a new connection for the network. When Central America rose, that changed North Atlantic circulation. As Indonesia is growing (and when Australia/ PNG smashes into it) that is going to change the currents between Pacific and Indian oceans.
But describing these changes in words is hard - you really need the datasets. Maps derived from them are a good intermediary. And for that, well, dive into the literature. I only go into it as far as I need to.
Antarctica got to it's present location well over 40 million years ago, but was connected to South America at the time, forcing ocean currents to move heat from the equator to the pole. When (about 40 Myr ago) the Drake Passage opened, that heat supply stopped, and the freezing of Antarctica started.
Antarctica has not moved significantly in 5 million years. (It has moved around 250km in that time.)
As the oceans get warmer, California will also get more rains from rainclouds generated locally.
Actually, it's more likely that future California will get the rainfall associated with the chapperal of central Mexico, while what rainfall California and the Sierra Nevada used to get moves up to British Columbia and Washington.
Which will leave LA in approximately the position of the 7th Century Maya. And SF not a lot better.
And we don't know enough (anything much) about longer term cycles, feedbacks and so forth.
Err, that is pure, unadulterated bullshit. Detecting and studying those changes and cycles, globally, is part of my job as a geologist (though I use the data for evaluating the potential presence of producible hydrocarbons). If you actually believe that bullshit, you need to go back to junior school and re-learn some science.
That is to say, the cure may be worse for Humanity than the disease.
Humanity is fucked, at least for this next 100 to 200 thousand years. Which probably means for the rest of the duration of this species. When the global society collapses and the species goes through a round of allopatric speciation, something different will probably come out of it. Whether they'll be able to read a word of what we leave behind, or whether it'll be down to future archaeologists and geologists, is frankly, something I don't care about.
JG-C makes more than a few references throughout to Swade's work, who is an integral part of the project.
By complete coincidence, last week I noticed a "piece" in a Philomena Cunk spoof programme where her character is talking to Swade and - as is her schtick - getting completely the wrong, third, end of the stick.
As TFA says, they didn't, and still don't, know what Babbage intended to build. I mean, I did write that point in to TFA specifically so that I could tell people to RTFA, not so that people would comment without R-ing-TFA.
The point of TFA is that they're still trying to work out what Babbage wanted to build. And, to be honest, it remains possible that Babbage had not finalised his plans - at least the written plans.
I went round Bletchley Park a few years ago with the parents - Mum was still walking, so it must have been quite a few years ago - and don't recall seeing that machine. I'm certain I'd have played with it, dropping bits through an adder... I BET there is a flipflop somewhere that you can flip as if a cosmic ray hit the processor.
Got to go back, some day!
If you're going to get picky, then the reason that geologists have for some years been moving to describing it as the K-Pg boundary (if they abbreviate it at all) is that the Cretaceous and Palaeogene are the same level of the taxonomy of time units. Or you could talk equivalently about the M-C (Mesozoic-Caenozoic) boundary.
It didn't make much difference in my geological back yard, not compared to the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum.
They haven't died yet. In fact, there are more species of dinosaurs alive today than there are mammals, though we're killing both off pretty fast. Eventually, the number of species of dinosaurs and mammals is likely to remain the same - Homo sapiens and Gallus gallus.
Slashdot Mirror
If your phone's "compass" is actually a calculation derived from GPS data, then it'll be as incorrect as your GPS data and whatever assumptions the programmers made to produce that figure. Actually having a magnetic field sensor may be too horrible a concept for modern phone designers to contemplate, because !shiny.
Incidentally, for the birds, I wouldn't worry about it. Their ancestors lived through previous pole-flips without becoming extinct. [sarcasm] Not even for a single generation. [/sarcasm]
It's almost as if the author doesn't care if a single scientist reads it, and instead it's only read by the general public. My post is an effort to reverse that trend.
Slashdot commentators lied to you. Simples. (Incidentally, this is one scientist, doing a desktop study. You can buy an awful lot of those for the price of a war plane falling out of the sky.)
Actually, I'm pretty sure they can, and do, continue to sell their data (concerning you) after you leave the platform. The purchasers are likely to pay less for information about someone who hasn't logged into an account for 7 years, but I bet the sellers charge more for datasets that filter out such users.
I'm not at all sure that I have any rights. After all, I'm not a US citizen, and most of these companies are HQ'd in the US.
Wasn't that the point of taking people to Guantanamo Bay for torture? Because "abroad" and/ or "foreigner" means it doesn't matter.
That's going to make the ride home from getting lucky at a party suck. You get breakfast, walk down to the street, hail a flying taxi, get into it, fly half way home and the taxi dumps you unceremoniously at the side of the road as the sperm fuses with the egg. And you'll never use a flying car again. And all because the condom ripped, or whatever.
Human over-ride would probably be permitted, on presentation of the pilot's license (biometric) and validation of her logbook for this particular model of vehicle. After all, that is how the regulations for other forms of commercial flight work, and what is different about this form of flight?
We're currently going through one of those periodic bursts of angst because a football player got killed when being flown commercially by a pilot without a commercial license, in an aircraft whose owners had not licensed it for commercial use (which has a higher maintenance and inspection load than for private use). Loosening commercial pilot licensing requirements is an idea that is going to fly much worse than a Mythbuster's lead balloon at the moment.
That you don't see the point doesn't mean that there isn't a point.
BTW, what is an "EL 15"?
In addition to "ghoul's" comment, there is a simple lag factor. It takes days or weeks of warm sunshine to melt the foot to metre of winter snow when spring comes. The sun has to provide energy to raise the temperature to 0degC, then it has to provide more energy to overcome the latent heat of fusion of the ice into water (that energy goes to breaking down the crystal structure of the ice). That takes time. For multi-kilometre-thick ice sheets, that time can be in the millennia. Which is long enough to show up in the climate records.
Carbon dioxide is the most labile of the GHGs, because we can - and have - significantly alter it's concentration by our own activities. Or by geological processes (the freezing of Antarctica is as much due to the erosion of the Himalayas removing CO2 from the atmosphere as it is to opening of the Drake Passage isolating it from equatorially-sourced ocean currents.
No, it's not simple. That doesn't make it incomprehensible.
No, that's not an important question. We know the answer from studying the rocks deposited incorporating atmospheric CO2 in the early Eocene. It'll essentially all get pulled out.
The important question is, how long will it take? And again, we have the answer from the geological record : it'll take 100 to 120 kiloyears.
Almost certainly, yes. And once again it's by looking at the geological record. Plus, of course, looking at methane releases from the thawing permafrost. The data is available - at a price, because it is commercially valuable. You can also use natural methane venting as a pointer to hydrocarbon deposits in the near sub-surface. I.e. oil and gas fields.
Actually, estimating sea-bottom currents is a part of the process of evaluating the distribution of underground sand bodies for oil exploration. There is a huge literature on it - dozens of books of review papers alone, thousands of paper. We do have a reasonable understanding of past currents. When the Drake Passage opened - about 40 Myr ago - there was a signifiant change in ocean circulation because it opened up a new connection for the network. When Central America rose, that changed North Atlantic circulation. As Indonesia is growing (and when Australia/ PNG smashes into it) that is going to change the currents between Pacific and Indian oceans. But describing these changes in words is hard - you really need the datasets. Maps derived from them are a good intermediary. And for that, well, dive into the literature. I only go into it as far as I need to.
Antarctica got to it's present location well over 40 million years ago, but was connected to South America at the time, forcing ocean currents to move heat from the equator to the pole. When (about 40 Myr ago) the Drake Passage opened, that heat supply stopped, and the freezing of Antarctica started. Antarctica has not moved significantly in 5 million years. (It has moved around 250km in that time.)
Actually, it's more likely that future California will get the rainfall associated with the chapperal of central Mexico, while what rainfall California and the Sierra Nevada used to get moves up to British Columbia and Washington.
Which will leave LA in approximately the position of the 7th Century Maya. And SF not a lot better.
Err, that is pure, unadulterated bullshit. Detecting and studying those changes and cycles, globally, is part of my job as a geologist (though I use the data for evaluating the potential presence of producible hydrocarbons). If you actually believe that bullshit, you need to go back to junior school and re-learn some science.
Humanity is fucked, at least for this next 100 to 200 thousand years. Which probably means for the rest of the duration of this species. When the global society collapses and the species goes through a round of allopatric speciation, something different will probably come out of it. Whether they'll be able to read a word of what we leave behind, or whether it'll be down to future archaeologists and geologists, is frankly, something I don't care about.
Birdshot. Literally.
By complete coincidence, last week I noticed a "piece" in a Philomena Cunk spoof programme where her character is talking to Swade and - as is her schtick - getting completely the wrong, third, end of the stick.
As TFA says, they didn't, and still don't, know what Babbage intended to build. I mean, I did write that point in to TFA specifically so that I could tell people to RTFA, not so that people would comment without R-ing-TFA.
You were a friend of Mel?
The point of TFA is that they're still trying to work out what Babbage wanted to build. And, to be honest, it remains possible that Babbage had not finalised his plans - at least the written plans.
I went round Bletchley Park a few years ago with the parents - Mum was still walking, so it must have been quite a few years ago - and don't recall seeing that machine. I'm certain I'd have played with it, dropping bits through an adder ... I BET there is a flipflop somewhere that you can flip as if a cosmic ray hit the processor.
Got to go back, some day!
The NYT broke embargo on the story. They don't deserve the clicks.
It didn't make much difference in my geological back yard, not compared to the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum.
They haven't died yet. In fact, there are more species of dinosaurs alive today than there are mammals, though we're killing both off pretty fast. Eventually, the number of species of dinosaurs and mammals is likely to remain the same - Homo sapiens and Gallus gallus.