I've moved !
Please update your links and bookmarks...this blog will remain active as an archive, but all new posts as of October 3rd will appear at:
www.wattsupwiththat.com or wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com
My new blog location will allow me to provide better service to my readers, and richer content of postings.
Thanks !
Anthony
You may recall that back in May I did a simple preliminary experiment to give me guidance on a hypothesis: That changes in paint on Stevenson Screens over time make a measurable difference on the temperatures recorded inside them. This stems from the fact that when the Weather Bureau commissioned the design in 1892, whitewash was specified. But whitewash is no longer commonly available, and the National Weather Service changed the specification in 1979 to be semi-gloss latex paint.
But, cured whitewash is composed of Calcium Carbonate, while latex paint uses Titanium Dioxide as a pigment. While they both appear "white" in visible light, they have vastly different properties in infrared.
My first simple experiment used thermistors in boreholes into 3 wood slats; 1 bare wood as a control, the other two painted with whitewash and latex, showed me that there was a measurable difference in the temperature of the wood by as much as 2-4 degrees at times. I needed to do that experiment before I embarked on the full scale test, since each of the Stevenson Screens you see here in the pictures cost me about $1000.00 Since I'm doing this out of pocket, with no funding or grants, I had to try a small scale test first.
The photos show 3 standard Stevenson Screens as used today in the United States. One is bare wood, unpainted, as a control, the middle one is latex, as sent from the supplier, and the third is painted with a historically accurate (for early 20th century) whitewash mixture that I obtained both materials and formula from the head chemist at the National Lime Company.
The device on the tripod is a stacked plate IR shield with a small fan to pull air through, commonly called an aspirated shield. It is the air temperature reference and placed at the same exposure height as the thermistiors in the screens. Also nearby but not shown is a pyranometer to measure solar insolation and wind speed/direction sensors that are being datalogged as well.
Each Stevenson Screen and the air temperature reference sensor are fitted with matched, calibrated thermistors, NIST traceable with certificates, that are connected to a calibrated data-logger, also with a certificate. The resolution is .01 degree Fahrenheit with an accuracy of +/- 0.1 degree over the range.
I expect that the air temperature differences inside the screens will be less than the 2-4 degrees I observed in the paint slat test. It's possible that there will be no significant difference at all. I won''t know until I run about a months worth of datalogging.
The site, while not ideal due to the trees, is the best I could get permission to use. Fortunately the trees do not directly shade the screens except for a short portion of the day. It's also out of the way, so vandalism will not be likely. Since it had to be an unwatered grass field, concerns over fire danger were raised from some I asked because of the electronics package, so I had limited choices. Perhaps later I'll be able to find a better site but for now it will have to do.
The whitewash on the third Stevenson Screen is still curing, as the chemical reaction is not yet complete to convert Calcium Hydroxide to Calcium Carbonate. In about a week, I'll make the data available via a web link in near real-time.
There is a war of words going on between two scientific blogs over my project at www.surfacestations.org. The RealClimate blog, operated by pro AGW global warming scientists Penn State's Dr. Michael Mann and NASA's Dr. Gavin Schmidt, and others, has posted a six point rebuttal to the effort saying that it is only marginally useful. It's called "No Man is an (Urban Heat) Island".
Dr. Roger Pielke, of the University of Colorado, runs a blog called Climate Science which looks at a wide variety of topics on climate change outside of the AGW mainstream, has posted his response to RealClimate's rebuttal in defense of the project saying its good science. The debate is intense, and some normally reserved scientists are letting the fur fly over the issue. There's sensible debate, science at high levels, diatribe, rhetoric, and even a "Tasker" like character who is a scientist for a major university that uses a doppelganger persona to attack ideas rather than risk his own credentials.
All because I want to take some pictures of weather stations and put them online in a publicly open database for the purpose of evaluating the weather station network and it's data integrity. Go figure.
I guess I should be flattered that people are fighting over my idea, but I'd really rather just get on with the project and see what comes out of it. I figure that the established science should be able to withstand the scrutiny of a former TV weatherman and some volunteers taking pictures. If not, there's something really wrong. I'm not getting involved in the bickering, I'm just keeping to the work I and the volunteers have started. We are almost up to 100 stations surveyed now.
But I did find a nugget of wisdom in this entry on Climate Science which clears the air rather nicely:
If a [weather station] site is initially chosen because it meets all the qualifications for observing temperature, there is little about the site that could change to develop a cool bias. Almost all the changes will result in a warming trend from the original, ideal setting.
Natural changes such as the growth of trees and shrubs, reduce the clear sky radiation, resulting in a warming trend. Man made changes, such as increased building and paving in and around the site, also results in a warming trend that is unrelated to any potential climate change. Finally, deterioration of the shelter housing the instruments also leads to an artificial warming.
Any correction of these potential warming factors simply returns the site to its initial, ideal state. The only way to get an artificial cooling is to start with a less than ideal setting for recording air temperature and improve it. While this may have happened in a few locations, it is obvious that the gradual degradation of recording sites is the norm.
The calculations of the temperature increase due to increasing CO2 are theory, which can only be verified with actual, accurate data. Those who claim that the accuracy of the data is not relevant are, in effect, defending a theory against reality, which is faith, not science.
I know that supporters of the AGW theory get very upset when they are accused of behaving in a religious fashion, instead of behaving like scientists. To avoid this, I suggest they start behaving like scientists and support the effort to obtain the best data possible.
Comment by Jim Clarke — July 4, 2007 @ 6:23 pm
Tonight I was watching a Science Channel TV show on the New Horizons spacecraft mission to Pluto, which just completed its Jupiter flyby in February of this year.
Its a spectacular mission, and it's got a one day window of opportunity when it does its encounter with Pluto, and its moons Charon, plus the two new ones recently discovered.
What struck me was the fact that when the spacecraft makes it's flyby of Pluto, it will take four and a half hours for the radio signal from earth to reach Pluto, and another four and a half hours for a response to come back again. Can you imagine having a conversation like this?
So, my previous entry talked about the Galactic perspective of size for Earth, our planets, our sun and solar system in comparison to other stars, such as the Red Giant known as Betelgeuse. Its about the size of the orbit of Mars in our solar system. It's huge. Yet there are even larger supergiant stars, such as Antares.
If light takes a little over 4.5 hours to reach from the surface of the sun to Pluto, think about the relative slowness of lightspeed, even at the speed of 185000 miles per second, which is incredibly fast by our experiences, its molasses slow in terms of the size of the universe. Consider, our closest star, Alpha Centauri, 4.5 light years away. It takes light 4.5 years to reach us. And there are things seen by the Hubble telescope that are billions of light years away.
The conclusion that this brings me to is that there must be something faster than light. For example, our galaxy, the milky way spins around like a whirlpool, but doesn't fly apart. Gravity keeps it together. Yet for gravity to be able to act over such long distances, it stands to reason that it has to be faster than light.
Yet experimental measurements in 2002 indicate the speed of gravity be between between .8 and 1.2 times the speed of light. Hmmm.
It would seem to me more likely that the speed of gravity is either static or nearly infinite, depending on how you look at it. Perhaps we'll find out that gravity is actually a quantum effect, which has been shown to act at tremendous speed. Gravity acts at tremendous distances as well as close distances, but for subatomic distances it appears to be so weak as to be suspended.
Some theories say we'll find a partcle someday called the gravitron.
There's a lot we don't know yet about our universe.
Often we lose sight of our place in the universe, some never knew at all just how miniscule we humans are compared to everything else. There's a tendency to view ourselves, our endeavors, and our accomplishments as the pinnacle. Yet, compared to what's in our solar system, whats in our galaxy, and whats in our universe, we are but a mere speck in the vastness of time, space, mass, and energy.
I have a new toy. Its one of the Global Climate Models that is being used to predict the future of Earth's climate and the effects of global warming.
Originally developed by NASA Goddard in New York its simply called "model E" Its the same GCM used to prepare the IPCC report. You can learn more about it yourself here.
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/modelE/
By today's computer standards, this program is rather crude, as it has a lineage that goes back almost 30 years. It was written in FORTRAN. But, despite the old school mainframe programming language, it does represent a mountain of work and knowledge.
My intent here is to learn as much as I can about it, so that I can more intelligently comment on climate change predictions. I also plan to try some baseline tests with it to see if it models true when known parameters are kept static. By doing this, I'll be able to see if the climate system calculations are bias free for a variety of parameters.
I've already done my first global climate change model run, and it took almost two days for the calculations to complete from years 1958 to 2058. So it will be slow going since I don't have a Cray supercomputer at my disposal.
I can tell you that I've already found one big surprise, the CO2 and solar insolation datasets inlcuded only go to 1998, but much has been made of the last 9 years of "record high" global temperature observations by global warming proponents. I am in contact with the authors to see if I can get the datasets updated.
I'll keep you updated on what I learn.
This Thursday, the Chico News and Review will be doing a story covering the pro and cons of the people that have been lobbying editor Evan Tuchinsky for more coverage of the alternate 9/11 theories that are being pushed around the country by conspiracy thinkers.
One of the central themes of the group 911Truth.org is that the World Trade Center was brought down with explosives, rather than the engineering failure reports which point to the fire caused by the jet fuel, shocked off fireproofing, and steel trusses that weakened and allowed for a domino effect implosion and collapse.
Of course some people think 911Truth.org is just part of the tinfoil hat crowd. But this past weekend the very same set of conditions that pitted fire against concrete and steel occurred at the gasoline tanker truck accident at the I880/580 interchange in Oakland creating an accidental laboratory to illustrate the proof that fire can indeed make steel and concrete structures fail.
For all those whom cling to the alternate fantasy belief that the World Trade Center towers could not have been brought down by burning jet fuel creating an inferno that melted steel, but rather, it was explosives planted by some conspiracy, the collapse of the I-880/580 Interchange in Oakland Sunday from a burning tanker truck should provide clear empirical proof that fire can easily take down steel and concrete structures.
Engineers estimated that the flames at the bridge reached close to 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Steel is known to lose half of its rigidity at 1,000 degrees F and begins to melt at 2,750 degrees F.
People may conjecture myriads of alternate theories, but the laws of physics are absolute, unless of course you wear a tinfoil hat, then anything is possible.
Molten lava: 3,140°
Iron melts: 2,797°
Steel melts: 2,750°
Gold melts: 1,947°
Silver melts: 1,763°
Steel loses half its rigidity: 1,000°
Lead melts: 622°
Water boils: 212°
Source: "Comparisons" by the Diagram Group and San Francisco Chronicle research
We had "yellow" level geomagnetic activity on the sun last night, and more may
come tonight and tomorrow night. Its coming from Sunspot 953, which is about 3 times the size of the Earth.
Sunspot 953 is crackling with mild
B-class solar flares. Credit: SOHO/MDI
Image of sunspot 953 taken today by Sebastien Kersten of Le Cocq, Belgium:
Here is the dispatch:
From: solarxactivity@bbso.njit.edu
Date: April 28, 2007 9:24:59 AM CDT
To: xxxx@rice.edu
Subject: BBSO Solar Activity Warning 28-APR-2007 14:19:18 UT
Region NOAA 10953 is currently beta-gamma magnetic class, and may increase in complexity.
The region is bright in H-alpha as well. This region has a chance of producing M-class
events.
NOAA 10953, S10 E41. Beta-gamma region. Position as of April 28, 2007 at 13:30 UT.
And this is in the middle of our solar minimum, indicating our sun still has a few belches to pass out before completely settling down.
One of the best tools we have is the ACE Spacecraft, which monitors the sun 24/7 and provides us with a plethora of real-time data, of the magnetic
field, the solar wind, and inter-galactic cosmic ray counts.
For the latest "dial" info (including our "space weather stoplight") go to
http://space.rice.edu/ISTP/dials.html
For the latest 10-minute averages of the Boyle Index from realtime ACE
spacecraft data, go to http://space.rice.edu/ISTP/wind.html
Some guides to interpret the gauges
If the hourly-average of the Boyle index exceeds 110, then Kp 4-6 storms
will likely occur within the next three hours
If the hourly average of the Boyle index exceeds 200, then major magnetic
storms will occur within the next three hours
If the hourly average of the Boyle index exceeds 250, major low-latitude
auroras will occur within the next three hours.
A magnetic storm generally occurs about an hour or two after the CME arrives at Earth, which is roughly 26-48 hours *after* a major solar flare. The Boyle Index is derived from real-time ACE spacecraft data, which gives about 45 minutes of warning before it hits the Earth.
About two weeks ago I published this story about the loony idea that was proposed by some researcher in Europe about "cell phone radiation may be killing bees". I pointed out that it was garbage then, as it is now. Here's a portion of the original post I made:
There's an article on UK's The Independent website about a most unusual scientific theory: "Cell Phones kill bees."
Well today in the LA Times, it seems that UC San Francisco researchers have uncovered what they believe to be the real cause, and its not loony ideas like cell phones. Its fungus.
From the article:
A fungus that caused widespread loss of bee colonies in Europe and Asia may be playing a crucial role in the mysterious phenomenon known as Colony Collapse Disorder that is wiping out bees across the United States, UC San Francisco researchers said Wednesday.
Researchers have been struggling for months to explain the disorder, and the new findings provide the first solid evidence pointing to a potential cause.
Other researchers said Wednesday that they too had found the fungus, a single-celled parasite called Nosema ceranae, in affected hives from around the country — as well as in some hives where bees had survived. Those researchers have also found two other fungi and half a dozen viruses in the dead bees.
The researchers caution that the results are preliminary, and data sampling represents just a fraction of hives, but they are encouraged by the findings. Hopefully they'll be able to come up with a solution.
Yet it appears that the "Cell Phones kill bees" lunacy has caught on, since there's a comment today in the ER's "Tell it to the ER" that furthers that nutball idea. What a public disservice that column is.
Thanks to Lon Glazner for the tip.
There's an article on UK's The Independent website about a most unusual scientific theory.
"Cell Phones kill bees."
From the article: Some scientists suggest that our love of the mobile phone could cause massive food shortages, as the world's harvests fail. They are putting forward the theory that radiation given off by mobile phones and other hi-tech gadgets is a possible answer to one of the more bizarre mysteries ever to happen in the natural world — the abrupt disappearance of the bees that pollinate crops. They say the cell phone emissions cause the bees internal navigation systems to go haywire and they can't find their way back to the hive.
Ok, just two problems; Bees navigate by the sun. You can watch a video of how this works here. And, we've had cell phones since the late 80's, microwave radiation of all kinds since the 40's, and worldwide radio emissions of all sorts and frequencies since about 1920. So why is this "problem" showing up just now?
More likely this has to do with the fact that domesticated honeybees, the kind we have in California are quite inbred compared to wild bees. Domesticated bees are being raised to survive a shorter off-season, to be ready to pollinate once the almond bloom begins in February. That has most likely lowered their immunity to disease and parasites. This can happen in any kind of biological population that is artificially isolated from natural selection, which allows the strong to survive and propagate. In the case of domesticated bees, they are packed together in boxed clusters, which makes disease and parasites spread very quickly. In nature, hives are well separated.
In fact, there are two types of parasitic mites, introduced into the USA in the 1980's which are believed to be responsible for this epidemic. Here's a letter to Congress from May R. Berenbaum, Head of the Department of Entomology, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign that describes the problem in-depth and concludes: "That honey bees are experiencing losses on an unprecedented scale, however, was essentially predicted by the report—over-reliance on one managed non-native species is inherently unstable."
In insects, which have short generation lifespans measured in days or weeks, dilution of strong traits to disease and parasite resistance can happen fairly quickly. What's needed is some new breeding programs and better isolation methods, not cell phone panic.
The offspring of the bees that survive this epidemic will do far better.
This seems reminiscent of the artificial worry about a cell phone tower at the Hooker Oak park. Some people just have to paint technology they don't understand as the boogieman. I can visualize some panic driven loony legislation about cell phones and bees to hit our state legislature soon.
But to point out just how silly this is, I work at radio station KPAY-AM 1290 which has its offices on Cramer Lane. Right next door, no more that 500 feet from the powerful 5000 watts radio transmitter is a man who keeps bees. Bee hives are scattered all over his property. I'd think that if there was a radio energy to bee death link, this fellow would have been pounding on our doors long ago.
The "research" that cell phones kill bees is just junk science. Next I expect we'll hear about cell phones and talk radio stations being linked to global warming for "heating up the atmosphere".
Thanks to my lovely wife Stacey, for helping me out with this article.
Picture: Get ready to Panic! Oroville, Willows, Marysville, and Sacramento will be underwater - the Sutter Buttes will be the only landmass in the very center of the valley.
"What If All the Ice Melts?" Myths and Realities is an article which features 3D computer generated images of what the globe would look like if all of the ice (both land and sea) on the planet melted, leading to a sealevel rise of around 66 meters.
The change shown in global dry land goes from about 132 million sq. kilometers to 128 million, and the analysis seems sound, making this article a sober and very useful counter to some of the more hysterical claims which has been circulated in relation to global warming.
Even if both the poles melted along with all the ice in Greenland, which is not likely to happen unless our orbit or sun changes dramatically, it would still take hundreds if not thousands of years for it to occur. That's plenty of time to adapt. Sure we'd lose Florida, parts of Californiua's Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys, Seattle, Portland, and Washington along with New York and Boston, but many new areas would now be habitable due to the change.
Here's what the Sacramento Valley would look like city-wise based on elevations:
| Some Valley Cities | and their elevations | compared to 66 meter sea level rise |
| Chico | 75 meters | waterfront property on the southwest side |
| Orland | 78 meters | waterfront property just south of town |
| Oroville | 58 meters | 8 meters underwater |
| Willows | 41 meters | 25 meters underwater |
| Red Bluff | 106 meters | 40 meters to go |
| Marysville | 34 meters | 32 meters underwater |
| Sacramento | 7 meters | 59 meters underwater |
Here's more inconvenient news from solar researchers. Even though our sun is quiet at the moment while we are in between peaks in the 11 year sunspot cycles, scientists based at the Institute for Astronomy in Zurich used ice cores from Greenland to construct a picture of our star's activity in the past.
Researchers extended the record into the past by measuring isotopes of Beryllium-10 (created by cosmic rays entering our upper atmosphere, which then drifts earthward and is trapped in the ice) in Greenland ice cores. Based on both observations and ice core records, we are now at a sunspot peak exceeding solar activity for any time in the past thousand years."
The number of cosmic rays entering our atmosphere is modulated by the suns magnetic and solar wind activity, which modulates earth's magnetic field, setting up conditions to either allow more or deflect more cosmic rays entering the upper atmosphere.
They say that over the last century the number of sunspots. which are a proxy indicator of solar magnetic activity, rose at the same time that the Earth's climate became steadily warmer. According to climate scientists, the Sun’s radiance has changed little during this period. But looking back over 1,150 years, Solanki found the Sun had never been as bright as in the past 60 years.
“The change in solar brightness over the past 20 years is not enough to cause the observed changes in our climate. But the indirect effects (such as the cosmic ray to cloud connection) may be larger, and the range of their influence is unclear, so more study is needed,” he added.
The The United Nations's IPCC Report comes out today so I thought I'd make a report too.
James Carville used to remind Clinton during the '92 campaign that “its the economy, stupid”.
I (and many others far smarter than I am) say that on the subject of Global Warming: “its the SUN, stupid”
Our earth is warmed by a gigantic nuclear fireball, millions of times the mass of earth and a mere 8.5 light-minutes away. One hundred and nine Earths would be required to fit across the Sun’s disk, and its interior could hold over 1.3 million Earths.
By the way, the sun has a total luminosity output of 386 YottaWatts thats 386,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 watts, but we only get a tiny portion of that.
You can’t just ignore that kind of power. Though it seems some prefer to, since it muddles the results they seek.
The total luminous energy output received by earth from the sun is 174 PETAWATTS (174,000,000,000,000,000) watts. Now lets just say the sun increases its output by 0.1% as its been measured to do. (And its gotten way more active this century.) That dumps an extra 174,000,000,000,000 watts into our atmosphere (174 trillion watts) 24/7.
Data source for graph: http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/climate_forcing/solar_variability/lean2000_irradiance.txt
Note: In the graph above, the low flatline from 1645-1715 is the Maunder Minimum, a period of virtually no sunspots, where the historical reports from the northern hemisphere tell a story of dramatic climate change: harsh winters, cools summers, crop failures, famine and disease.
From the abstract referenced above: "Estimated increases since 1675 are 0.7%, 0.2% and 0.07% in broad ultraviolet, visible/near infrared and infrared spectral bands, with a total irradiance increase of 0.2%. "
So its not just 0.1 %, it is 0.2% which translates to a 348 TeraWatts global irradiance increase.
Now lets put 348 trillion watts into perspective:
Hurricanes: the heat energy released by a hurricanes category 1-5 equals about 50 to 200 trillion watts or about the same amount of energy released by exploding a 10-megaton nuclear bomb every 20 minutes.
Katrina, released about 200 trillion watts over its life cycle.
Now imagine double that amount of extra energy being added to earth’s atmosphere every second by small increases in the suns output that have been documented to exist. Thats what the increase in solar irradiance is doing. Since 1675, after the depths of the Maunder Minimum, we've seen an increase in solar irradiance of about 2.5 watts per square meter.
Climate modelers say that the extra CO2 equates to a forcing of about 2 watts per square meter, which totals about 1.12 Petawatt (1,120,000,000,000,000 watts). The problem is, they can't always recreate that reliably between all of the different models out there, with the positive and negative feedback mechanisms, and other variables involved. There's disagreement on the total contribution. A lot of it. Nonetheless they seem all to agree that CO2 makes some contribution, and thats likely true. But compared to the sun, I beleive it's minimal.
Now lets look at us: 13.5 TeraWatts is the average total power consumption of the human world in 2001.
Do you think we could change the planets atmospheric energy balance with that if we squeezed all the power we made that year together and shot it into our atmosphere ?
Whats very clear though, when you look at history, and the graph above, is that our earths atmosphere and resulting climate is extremely sensitive to variations in solar output. The sweet center point seems to be about 1365 watts per square meter of irradiance...what we consider as "normal" climate. Take 1.5 watts/sq. meter away, and we get significant cooling, harsh winters, cool summers, and increases in ice and glaciers. Add 1.5 watts,/sq. meter and we get hotter summers, mild winters, and melting of ice and glaciers.
Now irradiance aside, as it's only one component, there's also the suns dynamic magnetic field and solar wind, which modulates earths magnetic field, which modulates the number of cosmic rays that enter our atmosphere, which modulates the number of clouds that form, hence changing the net surface irradiance. Plots of changes in the suns magnetic field line up very well with climate change.
There's growing sentiment that CO2 theory may very well be a red herring.
Yeah, its the sun, stupid.
Lon Glazner, a fellow blogger and local electronics engineer made some comments about my post on the NASA/CSU study on California temperatures. Well that got me started...so below are Lon's comments and my reply along with a fun technical challenge. For those of you that read this blog, but disagree with my views, I invite you to read this carefully.
Anthony,
You make a number of good points. Particularly in the fact that the writers may have applied changes in urban temperature measurements over large regions for graphical impact.
As someone who has designed and built electronic temperature sensors I have certain concerns about the data itself.
Unless temperature sensors are regularly calibrated I think it is unreasonable to expect accuracy of greater than a couple of degrees.
Even some that are calibrated may not have good accuracy. The LM34 which is a commonly used semiconductor for measuring temperature is +/-2 degrees F. This is pretty typical of analog or digital semconductor sensors. The temperature error for this part is also non-linear, and so it's not a simple offset that you have to account for during data collection. Furthermore, there are lots of additional errors that can creep into a temperature measuring device beyond the sensor itself.
http://www.national.com/pf/LM/LM34.html
One could argue that numerical analysis done on data points would tease out errors. But if a scientist doesn't know the exact accuracy of a temperature sensor then they couldn't account for errors in their system.
Some of the temperature sensing stations may be very accurate and regularly calibrated. But maybe they're not?
I have a hard time trusting that the data is accurate to the level of identifying 1 or 2 degree changes over decades. This is especially true since the techniques of making these measurements have changes over that time frame.
Lon
I'm innately familiar with National Semi's LM34 and it's accuracy problems. One of my early jobs at my university as a research assistant was to create remote electronic weather stations. I soon learned how inaccurate many electronic devices can be in temperature measurement.
The problem with the National Weather Service temperature data sets (and world data sets too) is that they are full of biases and errors that I'm not sure have been accurately accounted for. People such as Jim Price, from CSUC who is on the IPCC say they have been, yet nobody has shown me any hard evidence of such. I'd be a lot less skeptical if I could see how the IPCC accounted for temperature measurement biases. But they won't share.
In general, Hollywood filmmakers follow the laws of physics because they have no other choice. It’s just when they cheat with special effects that we seem to forget how the physical world really works.
When you’re watching an action flick, all it takes is a crash, or maybe a stream of leaky gasoline that acts like a fuse, and suddenly, bang! You see a terrific explosion that’s complete and violent. But gasoline doesn’t explode unless mixed with about 93% air. Gas-induced car explosions were discovered on film relatively recently (you don’t see them in the old black-and-white movies), and now audiences just take them for granted. In general, there’s no need to rush out of a crashed car, risking injury, because you fear an imminent explosion – it’s probably not gonna happen.
Continue reading "10 Laws of Physics That Don't Apply in Hollywood " »
The picture above shows space junk being tracked by NORAD radar
This is one of the most depressing pieces of news I've read in awhile. It means the beginning of the end for space travel, and possibly global cooling. The New York Times reports in an article on the amount of space junk in Earth Orbit that we may be past a point of no return.
According to NASA officials, the amount of discarded rocket and satellite debris we've put into Low Earth Orbit is at critical levels. Recently nearly 1000 new pieces resulting from testing the new Chinese anti-satellite weapon put the amount of space debris that is trackable, at over 10,000 pieces, and there may well be 100's of thousands of smaller bits. With that much space junk, its now only a matter of time before collisions between two large objects (like a couple of old rocket boosters) will start an uncontrollable cascade of new collisions.
The litter is now so bad that, even if space-faring nations refrained from further interference, collisions would continue to create more clutter just above our atmosphere. It is like a nuclear fission chain reaction, with each bit of junk crashing into another breaks off dozens more bits, which careen in new orbits, eventually becoming a cloud of metallic debris like a shell around earth. As the bits get pulverized to smaller and smaller pieces, it may also become dense enough to start blocking a significant amount of sunlight. I'm not joking when I say it will solve the global warming problem, but it could also create a whole other series of climate problems too that may take centuries to solve.
Space debris is a very difficult problem to deal with, and some say its impossible. It will likely hinder future space exploration. Your kids and grandkids may never know the wonder of space exploration or even space tourism. It means the International Space station may come down, and the shuttle may never fly again if the problem gets worse.
Here's some "inconvenient" news. According to a new theory proposed by renowned astrophysicist Robert Ehrlich of George Mason University, Ice ages are not caused by planet Earth’s orbital variations as once thought, but by a "dimmer switch" inside the sun that causes its brightness to rise and fall on timescales of around 100,000 years which is exactly the same period as between ice ages on Earth,
Ehrlich modeled the effect of temperature fluctuations in the sun's interior and showed that while the temperature of the sun's core is held constant by the opposing pressures of gravity and nuclear fusion, slight variations are possible.
His research builds upon the work of solar physicists Attila Grandpierre and Gábor ÿgoston who calculated that magnetic fields in the sun's core could produce small instabilities in the solar plasma inducing localized oscillations in temperature.
In an article appearing in the journal New Scientist, Ehrlich describes how some of these oscillations reinforce one another and become long lasting temperature variations, with the sun's core temperature to oscillating around its average temperature of 13.6 million kelvin in cycles lasting either 100,000 or 41,000 years.
Global Warming is a hot topic here on Earth, but it may be the issue will be settled not here on Earth, but on Mars. A study of the ice caps on Mars suggests it is also experiencing a warming trend. A story about new data from NASA cites a six year study by researchers at Duke University showing that Mars may also be seeing a Global Warming trend and that both the Earth and Mars are seeing changes related to solar output.