Well, you were wrong, you were modded offtopic, not flamebait. A metamod should mark that unfair, as your link was ontopic. The creationist arguments about the magnetic field are pretty weak, though. The author shows that the total observable energy of the magnetic field over a century has declined, but admits that the data is good only for the last thirty years. He claims that as proof the field's energy has been steadily declining ever since creation. Unless God handed International Geomagnetic Reference Field data for the year 4004 B.C. to Adam, whose descendant then included that data in an appendix to the Bible, which was then included in the author's analysis, the claim is unjustified.
Also, I'd like to know why a devout believer would hide as an Anonymous Coward? Ashamed of your faith? Or maybe you're one of those rare Christians worried about karma. ; )
I think there's a problem with those high energy protons destroying ozone (mentioned in TFA), so sunblock might be necessary. And even if the total field doesn't weaken, during the reversal the dipole moment of the field will, leaving quadrupoles or octopoles or something. A magnetic field parallel to the ground is a good shield against charged particles, but a perpendicular field (a pole) actually guides charged particles towards the ground, hence phenomena such as aurora. If a pole erupts in my neck of the woods, I'd seriously consider moving elsewhere. Or dust off the ol' tinfoil hat and put it on.
At that rate of decline, the field could vanish altogether in 1,500 to 2,000 years, said Jeremy Bloxham of Harvard University. Hundreds of years could pass before a flip-flopped field returned to where it was 780,000 years ago.
As I recall from the Nova program, a field reversal was essentially caught in the act by a single layer of lava. The interior of the lava flow had frozen in it a magnetic field 6 degrees different from the field frozen in the top and bottom of the flow, which cool faster due to contact with the atmosphere and the ground. This happened in a short period of time (days or weeks?). So saying "at that rate of decline" is pointless, as the rate of change would probably increase during a reversal. To illustrate, I'd like to point out that the north magnetic pole has been migrating further north at an accelerating pace. Although the link's text claims the acceleration occurred around 1970, their map shows it started sometime between 1904 and 1948, with perhaps a brief deceleration in the '60s.
And the sun is becoming more active at the same time. Things could get quite interesting on our little planet.
Re:Temperature is not an issue
on
Sub-Zero Squirrels
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Organs are routinely frozen in DMSO (dimethyl sulfoxide), which protects the cells from ice-crystal damage. DMSO can have some toxic effects, but it still might have a place in the freezing of whole humans.
Telephones can be used during the commission of crimes. Like the irate soccer-mom who orders a hit over the phone to get rid of her daughter's cheerleading rival. So telephone companies should be ordered to monitor all content. That would involve an enormous investment in hardware and software to convert voice to text and then search it for mentions of criminal activity, but hey, that's the price we have to pay for security.
I'm really not sure that this is very significant news.
I hope you mean it's not significant to you. Current estimates of the energies of large impacts are very crude. It would take the world's entire nuclear arsenal to simulate just one, and the complex nature of large craters (multiple rings, central peaks) means our knowledge of smaller craters doesn't scale up well. The presence of this mineral gives an indication of the pressure and temperature under the impact site, and therefore a guess at the original energy of the explosion.
How's this important? It could tell us what mass and orbital velocity are necessary to make an asteroid an impact threat. If it turns out that even smaller rocks than we thought can create devastating explosions, it means we would probably have to throw a whole lot more money into telescopes to track them. On a related note, Scientific American's Nov. issue has an article on asteroid tugboats.
check this NASA webpage http://sec.noaa.gov/rt_plots/satenv.html. The last plot with the 'Estimated Kp' is what to look for. When the number is around 9, then there is great Aurora to be seen if the sky is clear and no streetlights around.
Even when the Kp is 9 or 10, aurora are not guaranteed. A previous poster had a link to a much better page, which is an actual map of the aurora over the Northern hemisphere. That page is linked from this page, which has links to both hemispheres, 'movies', higher-res current estimates, and slightly older plots.
I'm so full of shit. My remarks about surface area are ok. And it's true that metallic meteorites explode less often than stony meteorites, but not because of density. It may have more to do with the excellent heat conduction and the strength of metal, heat of vaporization, etc.. Here's an excellent page on meteor falls.
Metallic meteorites have a much better chance of surviving a trip to the Earth's surface than stony meteorites, so increased density means increased survival. Also, small surface area to volume ratios help (a spherical object will survive better than a plate).
At first glance, satellites, being somewhat rounded and made mostly of metal, seem to fit the bill. However, they have voids in them which lower their overall density. Furthermore, if the outer layer of the satellite is breached, then the interior surface becomes part of the exterior, and the surface area to volume ratio increases. Or to look at it a slightly different way, hot gases enter and start melting things (Columbia). So the satellite tends to come apart. But individual parts of the satellite do fit the bill as dense, low surface area survivors, so the end result is a rain of metallic debris.
But that discussion is more relevant to Earth. Mars's atmosphere is extremely thin. A satellite crashing through that might survive relatively intact. However, that also means that the atmosphere would not be able to bleed off much of its kinetic energy, so it would hit at great speed. I would expect a big explosion and crater, though I still can't guarantee bacteria wouldn't survive in debris throw clear of the explosion.
and so if there's no biochemical reason for them to die then they could live to a ripe old age.
A friend of mine was swimming off a beach in Bali and stepped on a long-spined urchin (unknown species) with both feet, which caused immediate and excruciating pain. After his brother helped him on shore, the Balinese natives broke the spines off right where they protruded from the bottoms of his feet. Then they poured lemon juice on the puncture sights and started pounding the soles of his feet with rocks, for hours. The pain was so excruciating he became delirious and started laughing.
The treatment broke up and dissolved the spines below the skin, and that probably saved his life. Apparently there's some sort of toxin, as he was extremely sick for the next 2 weeks. Had the spines remained embedded in his feet, there would have been enough toxin to kill him, a doctor told him later.
When talking amongst themselves, yes, they'll use metric or lightyears, A.U.'s, etc.. But when trying to communicate with the public they'll use units the public is used to. The BBC number 570 km. is a tipoff that they converted the number. 570 implies the diameter is known to within 10 kilometers, which it most certainly isn't. The NEAT website said 400 miles or 700 km, implying that the diameter is know only to the first digit, i.e. to within 100 km. Usually newspaper editors are ignorant of significant figures and when converting will include everything up to the decimal point.
Re:Links for Time Zone
on
Leonids 2003
·
· Score: 1
i don't know what was intended by 'western', but it's just another link to the central time zone.
Couldn't help but notice that the BBC says it has a diameter of 570 km. (which probably came from some American telling them 350 miles) and the original discoverers peg it at 700 km. or 400 miles. You might think that since the BBC was handed the scoop by the NEAT team (they have a link to the BBC article), they'd agree on the size.
Would you regret learning something? I'll assume you live in the northern hemisphere and you've experimented with a top before. After you sped it up, and as long as it was spinning fast enough, the axis it spun around didn't change much. You never noticed it suddenly flip over and spin on its head, did you? The Earth's rotation acts the same way.
The north pole of our axis of rotation is pointed at a spot in the universe known as the North Celestial Pole. There happens to be a star near that spot which has acquired the names of the North Star and Polaris. If you watched the stars all night, they'd all appear to rotate around this spot. This spot will always stay at the same altitude due North of you, unless you change latitude.
There's also a South Celestial Pole, and if you could see through the earth you'd see that the stars below your feet wheel around the South Celestial Pole. No matter how long you watched, though, stars within a certain distance of that pole will never rotate far enough to get above your horizon. For example, most northerners have never seen the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. I hadn't until I made a trip to South America. They're pretty strange looking.
He [was] the 1994 recipient of the Public Welfare Medal, the highest award of the National Academy of Sciences for "distinguished contributions in the application of science to the public welfare." Dr. Sagan received the NASA Medals for Exceptional Scientific Achievement and for Distinguished Public Service twice, as well as the NASA Apollo Achievement Award. Asteroid 2709 Sagan is named after him. He was also given the John F. Kennedy Astronautics Award of the American Astronautical Society, the Explorers Club 75th Anniversary Award, the Konstantin Tsiolokovsky Medal of the Soviet Cosmonautics Federation, and the Masursky Award of the American Astronomical Society. Dr. Sagan served as Chairman of the Division of Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society, as President of the Planetology Section of the American Geophysical Union, and as Chairman of the Astronomy Section of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
For 12 years, he was Editor in Chief of Icarus, the leading professional journal devoted to planetary research. He was the co-founder and first President of The Planetary Society and a Distinguished Visiting Scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology. At the time of his death on December 20, 1996, he served as the David Duncan Professor of Astronomy and Space Sciences and Director of the Laboratory for Planetary Studies at Cornell University.
Science needs more people like him. I've been trolled, haven't I?
Remove the spaces from the urls, I don't know why they're there
They come from the width of your text box, which in your case is 50 columns (the default). You can change that in your user Preferences under the Comments tab. However, it is rather rude to use plain text. One person saving time by not making links clickable wastes the time of the many people who want to use the link.
Sangharakshita wrote in the book A guide to the Buddhist Path: "I have defined religion as 'the achievement of the state of psychological and spiritual wholeness and in that state relating to other people and Ultimate Reality'. Religion is also the sum total of all the teachings and methods which conduce to that particular achievement. Buddhism reflects this definition- perhaps more purely than any other teaching...."
And I suppose you were trying to relieve the suffering of your fellow human being by calling him a dumbass. You're the least enlightened "Buddhist" I've ever encountered.
If it's an annular or partial eclipse you'll have problems, but a total eclipse isn't all that dangerous. A peak at a UV image of the sun reveals that the UV is limited to the lowermost corona and photosphere. Also the cornea and lens of your eye absorb most of the UV. It's the infrared radiation that's going to burn your retina. Cataracts aren't any funner than a burnt retina.
This is one of the most ill-conceived ideas i've ever heard. The most efficient use of an energy source occurs when it can be used in its raw form. Efficiency degrades with each conversion. Your scheme involves the following chain of energy conversions: "plasma" -> electric -> EM -> electric -> chemical -> electric -> EM -> electric (I assumed electricity is the desired final form on earth and that the satellites relay the energy without storing it). A solar panel on earth: EM -> electric.
Also, your power arrives at the battery in one pulse. Batteries don't just instantaneously absorb energy, they take time. A battery theoretically capable of storing as much energy as you're suggesting would explode if it actually absorbed that all at once. So you'd have to make your already gargantuan battery even more oversized.
Not to mention the fact that you'd have civilization dependent on an energy source (flares) that we can't even predict with any accuracy. Or the energy it would take to create this fantastic energy net in the first place. If your idea is so great, prove it with numbers.
Slashdot Mirror
Perry is this particular person's nickname for Peregrin Took, a.k.a. Pippin. Pippin is his familiar name in the books, not Perry.
Also, I'd like to know why a devout believer would hide as an Anonymous Coward? Ashamed of your faith? Or maybe you're one of those rare Christians worried about karma. ; )
I think there's a problem with those high energy protons destroying ozone (mentioned in TFA), so sunblock might be necessary. And even if the total field doesn't weaken, during the reversal the dipole moment of the field will, leaving quadrupoles or octopoles or something. A magnetic field parallel to the ground is a good shield against charged particles, but a perpendicular field (a pole) actually guides charged particles towards the ground, hence phenomena such as aurora. If a pole erupts in my neck of the woods, I'd seriously consider moving elsewhere. Or dust off the ol' tinfoil hat and put it on.
As I recall from the Nova program, a field reversal was essentially caught in the act by a single layer of lava. The interior of the lava flow had frozen in it a magnetic field 6 degrees different from the field frozen in the top and bottom of the flow, which cool faster due to contact with the atmosphere and the ground. This happened in a short period of time (days or weeks?). So saying "at that rate of decline" is pointless, as the rate of change would probably increase during a reversal. To illustrate, I'd like to point out that the north magnetic pole has been migrating further north at an accelerating pace. Although the link's text claims the acceleration occurred around 1970, their map shows it started sometime between 1904 and 1948, with perhaps a brief deceleration in the '60s.
And the sun is becoming more active at the same time. Things could get quite interesting on our little planet.
Organs are routinely frozen in DMSO (dimethyl sulfoxide), which protects the cells from ice-crystal damage. DMSO can have some toxic effects, but it still might have a place in the freezing of whole humans.
Telephones can be used during the commission of crimes. Like the irate soccer-mom who orders a hit over the phone to get rid of her daughter's cheerleading rival. So telephone companies should be ordered to monitor all content. That would involve an enormous investment in hardware and software to convert voice to text and then search it for mentions of criminal activity, but hey, that's the price we have to pay for security.
I hope you mean it's not significant to you. Current estimates of the energies of large impacts are very crude. It would take the world's entire nuclear arsenal to simulate just one, and the complex nature of large craters (multiple rings, central peaks) means our knowledge of smaller craters doesn't scale up well. The presence of this mineral gives an indication of the pressure and temperature under the impact site, and therefore a guess at the original energy of the explosion.
How's this important? It could tell us what mass and orbital velocity are necessary to make an asteroid an impact threat. If it turns out that even smaller rocks than we thought can create devastating explosions, it means we would probably have to throw a whole lot more money into telescopes to track them. On a related note, Scientific American's Nov. issue has an article on asteroid tugboats.
Owwwww!!!! My eye!!!!!!
Even when the Kp is 9 or 10, aurora are not guaranteed. A previous poster had a link to a much better page, which is an actual map of the aurora over the Northern hemisphere. That page is linked from this page, which has links to both hemispheres, 'movies', higher-res current estimates, and slightly older plots.
No. The sunspot cycle is 11 years.
I'm so full of shit. My remarks about surface area are ok. And it's true that metallic meteorites explode less often than stony meteorites, but not because of density. It may have more to do with the excellent heat conduction and the strength of metal, heat of vaporization, etc.. Here's an excellent page on meteor falls.
At first glance, satellites, being somewhat rounded and made mostly of metal, seem to fit the bill. However, they have voids in them which lower their overall density. Furthermore, if the outer layer of the satellite is breached, then the interior surface becomes part of the exterior, and the surface area to volume ratio increases. Or to look at it a slightly different way, hot gases enter and start melting things (Columbia). So the satellite tends to come apart. But individual parts of the satellite do fit the bill as dense, low surface area survivors, so the end result is a rain of metallic debris.
But that discussion is more relevant to Earth. Mars's atmosphere is extremely thin. A satellite crashing through that might survive relatively intact. However, that also means that the atmosphere would not be able to bleed off much of its kinetic energy, so it would hit at great speed. I would expect a big explosion and crater, though I still can't guarantee bacteria wouldn't survive in debris throw clear of the explosion.
They can move, on hundreds of tiny little tube feet.
A friend of mine was swimming off a beach in Bali and stepped on a long-spined urchin (unknown species) with both feet, which caused immediate and excruciating pain. After his brother helped him on shore, the Balinese natives broke the spines off right where they protruded from the bottoms of his feet. Then they poured lemon juice on the puncture sights and started pounding the soles of his feet with rocks, for hours. The pain was so excruciating he became delirious and started laughing.
The treatment broke up and dissolved the spines below the skin, and that probably saved his life. Apparently there's some sort of toxin, as he was extremely sick for the next 2 weeks. Had the spines remained embedded in his feet, there would have been enough toxin to kill him, a doctor told him later.
When talking amongst themselves, yes, they'll use metric or lightyears, A.U.'s, etc.. But when trying to communicate with the public they'll use units the public is used to. The BBC number 570 km. is a tipoff that they converted the number. 570 implies the diameter is known to within 10 kilometers, which it most certainly isn't. The NEAT website said 400 miles or 700 km, implying that the diameter is know only to the first digit, i.e. to within 100 km. Usually newspaper editors are ignorant of significant figures and when converting will include everything up to the decimal point.
i don't know what was intended by 'western', but it's just another link to the central time zone.
Couldn't help but notice that the BBC says it has a diameter of 570 km. (which probably came from some American telling them 350 miles) and the original discoverers peg it at 700 km. or 400 miles. You might think that since the BBC was handed the scoop by the NEAT team (they have a link to the BBC article), they'd agree on the size.
The north pole of our axis of rotation is pointed at a spot in the universe known as the North Celestial Pole. There happens to be a star near that spot which has acquired the names of the North Star and Polaris. If you watched the stars all night, they'd all appear to rotate around this spot. This spot will always stay at the same altitude due North of you, unless you change latitude.
There's also a South Celestial Pole, and if you could see through the earth you'd see that the stars below your feet wheel around the South Celestial Pole. No matter how long you watched, though, stars within a certain distance of that pole will never rotate far enough to get above your horizon. For example, most northerners have never seen the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. I hadn't until I made a trip to South America. They're pretty strange looking.
My source for the following:
He [was] the 1994 recipient of the Public Welfare Medal, the highest award of the National Academy of Sciences for "distinguished contributions in the application of science to the public welfare." Dr. Sagan received the NASA Medals for Exceptional Scientific Achievement and for Distinguished Public Service twice, as well as the NASA Apollo Achievement Award. Asteroid 2709 Sagan is named after him. He was also given the John F. Kennedy Astronautics Award of the American Astronautical Society, the Explorers Club 75th Anniversary Award, the Konstantin Tsiolokovsky Medal of the Soviet Cosmonautics Federation, and the Masursky Award of the American Astronomical Society. Dr. Sagan served as Chairman of the Division of Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society, as President of the Planetology Section of the American Geophysical Union, and as Chairman of the Astronomy Section of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. For 12 years, he was Editor in Chief of Icarus, the leading professional journal devoted to planetary research. He was the co-founder and first President of The Planetary Society and a Distinguished Visiting Scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology. At the time of his death on December 20, 1996, he served as the David Duncan Professor of Astronomy and Space Sciences and Director of the Laboratory for Planetary Studies at Cornell University.
Science needs more people like him. I've been trolled, haven't I?
They come from the width of your text box, which in your case is 50 columns (the default). You can change that in your user Preferences under the Comments tab. However, it is rather rude to use plain text. One person saving time by not making links clickable wastes the time of the many people who want to use the link.
Complete the hat trick by also searching for '1984' and 'Big Brother'.
Sangharakshita wrote in the book A guide to the Buddhist Path: "I have defined religion as 'the achievement of the state of psychological and spiritual wholeness and in that state relating to other people and Ultimate Reality'. Religion is also the sum total of all the teachings and methods which conduce to that particular achievement. Buddhism reflects this definition- perhaps more purely than any other teaching...."
And I suppose you were trying to relieve the suffering of your fellow human being by calling him a dumbass. You're the least enlightened "Buddhist" I've ever encountered.
Of course your green laser pointer is going to ruin your night vision more effectively than an old fashioned red laser.
If it's an annular or partial eclipse you'll have problems, but a total eclipse isn't all that dangerous. A peak at a UV image of the sun reveals that the UV is limited to the lowermost corona and photosphere. Also the cornea and lens of your eye absorb most of the UV. It's the infrared radiation that's going to burn your retina. Cataracts aren't any funner than a burnt retina.
Also, your power arrives at the battery in one pulse. Batteries don't just instantaneously absorb energy, they take time. A battery theoretically capable of storing as much energy as you're suggesting would explode if it actually absorbed that all at once. So you'd have to make your already gargantuan battery even more oversized.
Not to mention the fact that you'd have civilization dependent on an energy source (flares) that we can't even predict with any accuracy. Or the energy it would take to create this fantastic energy net in the first place. If your idea is so great, prove it with numbers.