Saturday - May 31, 2008
Goose-stepping into gorebull warming?
From the Middlebury Community Network comes this lengthy (I ‘printed’ it as a 26-page pdf file) gem that early on links goose-stepping and gorebull global warming. It starts off with an ‘editorial introductory note’:
Our planet has been slowly warming since last emerging from the “Little Ice Age” of the 17th century…
I have to interrupt here. More like the 13th century. My source is the book “The Little Ice Age” which I read earlier this year. Even their source (Wikipedia) says the 14th century. Could be a typo. We continue:
...often associated with the Maunder Minimum. Before that came the “Medieval Warm Period”, in which temperatures were about the same as they are today.
Another interruption. Sorry. Temps were higher then, as proved the fact that the Vikings colonized Greenland at the time.
Both of these climate phenomena are known to have occurred in the Northern Hemisphere, but several hundred years prior to the present, the majority of the Southern Hemisphere was primarily populated by indigenous peoples, where science and scientific observation was limited to non-existent. Thus we can not say that these periods were necessarily “global”.
However, “Global Warming” in recent historical times has been an undisputable fact, and no one can reasonably deny that.
Actually, I can reasonably deny it. Anyone who peruses the actual temperature graphs can’t help but notice that little statistical phenomena called the margin-of-error, which is usually left out of graphs shown on the news. Indeed it is not even mentioned.
But we’re hearing far too often that the “science” is “settled”, and that it is mankind’s contribution to the natural CO2 in the atmosphere has been the principal cause of an increasing “Greenhouse Effect”, which is the root “cause” of global warming. We’re also hearing that “all the world’s scientists now agree on this settled science”, and it is now time to quickly and most radically alter our culture, and prevent a looming global catastrophe. And last, but not least, we’re seeing a sort of mass hysteria sweeping our culture which is really quite disturbing. Historians ponder how the entire nation of Germany could possibly have goose-stepped into place in such a short time, and we have similar unrest. Have we become a nation of overnight loonies?
In a word, Yes. At this point the narrative breaks to show several pictures of loonies protesting. I’m particularly bemused by the last one on the right. The sign says ‘Global Warming Costs Lives’. As indeed it will, if the loonies’ ‘fixes’ are actually put into effect.
Posted by Christopher
on 05/31/2008 at 09:32 PM
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Permalink • Saturday - May 17, 2008
I think they should name it the “G Whiz” system
Where do fighter pilots traveling faster than the speed of sound go when they really need to “go”? Until recently, the answer has been: into a bag.
But it’s not a great solution. “Piddle packs”—heavy-duty bags containing absorbent sponges—have been blamed for at least two crashes over the years, and they’re not always tidy.
A few years ago, after enduring years of complaints from pilots, the Air Force let it be known that it was looking for an answer.
A small medical equipment development company in Milton, Vermont answered the call.
“The DoD put out a list of projects they needed solutions for,” said Mark Harvie, president of Omni Medical Solutions. “Bladder relief for pilots was one of the items on the list and we were looking for a new project,” he said.
...
That project turned into the Advanced Mission Extender Device, known in military jargon as the AMXD.After four years of testing by the Vermont Air National Guard and the Air Force and about $5 million in government and private funds, AMXD is spelling relief for pilots aloft.
...
The Air Force recently bought its first 300 systems for U.S. pilots around the world at $2,000 each.
Cost of Advanced Fighter Aircraft: $45,000,000
Gotta Pee R&D: $5,000,000
Taking a whiz at 1200 mph: Priceless
My name is better. Otherwise these pilots are going to take an awful lot of ribbing. “Hey Maverick, you got your Extender Device strapped on?”
Posted by Drew458
on 05/17/2008 at 09:55 AM
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Permalink • Monday - April 14, 2008
A Crude Posting
Sorry folks, I’ve got stuff to do today. I guess we could have one of those Open Thread things that all the cool blogs have when they run of idea to post about.
I’ll tell you what I’d like to post about, if I had the time. That USGS survey released last week about all the oil hiding in the Bakken Formation up in North Dakota. A few weeks ago this was all wild speculation, though oilmen have known there is oil there since the 1950s. Now the report has come out (with wild rumors that it was actually done several years ago, but got sat on because the author died before he got proper peer review), and the conservative estimate is that there are BILLIONS of barrels of oil there. Recoverable ones, not just calculated quantities. The problem is that the oil is deep, 10,000 feet down and more. But angular or horizontal drilling could get to it. Or could it? Will they even be allowed to drill? Will the enviro-idiots have a fit? Will Native Americans try and claim the whole pie since the oil is under “Ancestral Lands”?
“Technology continues to advance”, Dorgan said Monday. “This is not going to be a red light or green light about oil development in the Bakken—clearly there already is a big green light there. But I think the question is pretty clear: How much of that oil is recoverable using today’s technology?”
A new black gold rush is under way, this time in North Dakota. The potential payoff is huge—up to 100 billion barrels of oil. That’s twice the size of Alaska’s reserves and potentially enough to meet all U.S. oil needs for two decades.
Until now, the obstacles to production seemed overwhelming. The crude oil is locked away in rocks that are buried miles underground in the Bakken Play, a field that stretches into Montana and Saskatchewan, Canada.
But times have changed. High oil prices and new technology make it worth the effort. Computer analysis and remote sensing systems, plus smart drills that can probe horizontally or snake left and right, vastly improve the odds of locating new pools and
The government estimated Thursday that up to 4.3 billion barrels of oil can be recovered from the Bakken shale formation in North Dakota and Montana, using current technology. The U.S. Geological Survey called it the largest continuous oil accumulation it has ever assessed.
The Bakken Formation encompasses some 25,000 square miles in North Dakota, Montana, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. About two-thirds of the acreage is in western North Dakota, where the oil is trapped in a thin layer of dense rock nearly two miles beneath the surface. Companies use pressurized fluid and sand to break pores in the rock and prop them open to recover the oil.
So, what do you think is going to happen? Will someone finally get their butt off the pot and get something done? We’ll need a local refinery or two for this field. Build it. We’ll need quite a lot of pipeline. Build them. I’ve been listening to the hot air coming out of government for almost 40 years about our “energy policy”. Alternate fuels, alternate sources, clean coal, hydrogen power, advancing technology through research, blah blah blah blah BLAH. Times up. FORTY YEARS worth of expensive research. Well, here’s a liquid goldmine, hiding under some of the roughest and least inhabited parts of our nation. GET TO WORK. Take two weeks of spending away from the “War on Terror”, the “War on Drugs”, and “No Child Left Behind” and you’ll have plenty of money to spend on it. I’m all for private business, but maybe, just maybe, “energy” is something that ought to be nationalized? Sound off folks!
Posted by Drew458
on 04/14/2008 at 08:05 AM
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Permalink • Sunday - April 06, 2008
Tire company develops retractable studs
Studded tires work best on snowy and icy roads across the nation’s snowbelt, but highway officials wince at the damage they cause when roads are dry. Promoters of a new type of winter tire believe they’ve solved the problem with some James Bond-style gadgetry.
Q Tires feature retractable studs that emerge when the driver flicks a switch inside the car. When the snow and ice melt, all it takes is another flip of the switch — and voila — the studs hide back under the treads and the tires are transformed again.
Q Tires are installed and balanced just like conventional tires, but a wireless signal is used to activate an air chamber inside the tire that causes the studs to appear. Like conventional tires, they can be repaired with a plug or patch at any tire dealer, the company said.
The tires do lose a small amount of pressure when the studs are retracted, so motorists using the Q Celsius will have to pay closer attention to tire pressure. But Starr said the motorist can retract the studs 30 times before there’s a significant loss of pressure in the tire.
Um, neat. Great I guess. Except that Speed Racer had them on the Powerful Mach 5 40 years ago!!
Posted by Drew458
on 04/06/2008 at 09:24 PM
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Permalink • Tuesday - April 01, 2008
Airmen shot down, families sue?
I’m not sure if I’m reading between the lines of this story correctly, but when I read “But lawyers for the relatives of the 10 men are expected to demand answers” that’s what I think it implies. Otherwise why would they need lawyers to represent them at a military inquiry?
A HERCULES plane carrying 10 military personnel, including an Australian airman, was not fitted with safety foam that could have prevented it being shot down in Iraq, an inquest has been told.
Flight Lieutenant Paul Pardoel, 35, died three years ago when the RAF transport plane he was travelling on with eight British airmen and a soldier was shot down by insurgents north of Baghdad.
An inquest began yesterday in southwest England, with coroner David Masters expected to examine why the plane was without a key safety device which could have prevented the crash.
Previous inquiries held by Britain’s Ministry of Defence have found the Hercules C-130 crashed after bullets pierced one of the aircraft’s fuel tanks, which exploded and blew off one of its wings.
The Australian Defence Force fitted its Hercules planes with the safety foam well before the 2005 crash which claimed the life of Flt-Lt Pardoel, who spent several years with the RAAF before transferring in 2002 to the RAF.
A Ministry of Defence lawyer, Jonathan Glasson, told the inquest that a program to fit all British Hercules C-130’s routinely deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan was completed last December.
But lawyers for the relatives of the 10 men are expected to demand answers from defence officials giving evidence at the inquest about why the aircraft shot down was not fitted with the safety foam and why not all Hercules used by British forces had ESF.
John Cooper, a barrister representing two of the British airmen, told the inquest that relatives of the servicemen had been led to believe all British Hercules would be fitted with the foam.
...
“We want to examine whether the lack of foam in this case was a matter of negligence.”
There’s that lawyer word. Negligence. So I’m wondering. I hope I’m wrong. But if I’m right, then this might be a legal first.
Donald Rumsfeld’s famous quote “You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have” seems to apply here. But the thing about this fuel tank foam is that it isn’t new technology. The US has been using it since the end of the Vietnam war. 
The Austalian forces upgraded their airplanes years ago. But England and Canada are more than a bit behind the maintainence curve it seems.
Let’s hope that they’ve both made the fix by now for all their aircraft, because this quote(as of 2006) The Canadian military has 29 Hercules in operation. They are commonly used in Afghanistan. Although the American and Australian Hercules have a safety foam device, the Canadian Hercules do not. “If there is such a foam, it’d be a good thing, but this is the first I’ve ever heard of it,” said Defence Minister Gordon O’Connor.
still sounds a bit weasley. What about the aircraft that are only deployed there on occassion? What about the ones that never go there at all? Sure, it’s an expensive fix, but it’s a whole lot cheaper than a new airplane. Or a new aircrew.A Ministry of Defence lawyer Jonathan Glasson told the inquest’s first day of hearings that a program to fit all British Hercules C-130’s “that are routinely deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan” had been completed last December.
Posted by Drew458
on 04/01/2008 at 11:42 AM
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Permalink • Monday - March 31, 2008
This I Just Had to Post About.
Over at her blog Zoe Brain writes about Feminism getting piled higher and deeper. The post is about women in science, and how certain parties get the reason why women are disproportionately represented in certain field so wrong. Zoe is commenting on Math is Hard by Jonathan Kulick. As part of the article Mr. Kulick presents the following quotation.
The privileging of solid over fluid mechanics, and indeed the inability of science to deal with turbulent flow at all, she attributes to the association of fluidity with femininity. Whereas men have sex organs that protrude and become rigid, women have openings that leak menstrual blood and vaginal fluids. Although men, too, flow on occasion—when semen is emitted, for example—this aspect of their sexuality is not emphasized. It is the rigidity of the male organ that counts, not its complicity in fluid flow. These idealizations are reinscribed in mathematics, which conceives of fluids as laminated planes and other modified solid forms. In the same way that women are erased within masculinist theories and language, existing only as not-men, so fluids have been erased from science, existing only as not-solids. From this perspective it is no wonder that science has not been able to arrive at a successful model for turbulence. The problem of turbulent flow cannot be solved because the conceptions of fluids (and of women) have been formulated so as necessarily to leave unarticulated remainders.
(Hayles, N. K. (1992) “Gender encoding in fluid mechanics: masculine channels and feminine flows,” Differences: A Journal Of Feminist Cultural Studies, 4(2):16–44.)
As so many have so aptly observed, the stupid, it burns.
Posted by mythusmage
on 03/31/2008 at 03:44 AM
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Permalink • Friday - March 28, 2008
Researchers Play Tune Recorded Before Edison : WELL YEAH BUT …..
Yes I know ... my source is the NY Times. Well, sort of. A friend in Belgium who shares Jazz (early pre WW2) and sound stuff, sent me the story.
I think it’s amazing. There’s even a drawing of the machine from the period.
However ..... I strongly believe that Edison did more then merely “improve” on an 1860 invention that WAS NOT intended to playback sound.
Edison planned a device that would record and playback and he achieved that. I also doubt he was even aware of this other machine because it did not playback.
Never the less .... this really is an interesting story, with sound btw. But that sound was only brought about due to being extracted by modern technology. Which takes nothing away from the original invention, in France.
The 19th-century phonautograph, which captured sounds visually but did not play them back, has yielded a discovery with help from modern technology.
By JODY ROSEN
Published: March 27, 2008For more than a century, since he captured the spoken words “Mary had a little lamb” on a sheet of tinfoil, Thomas Edison has been considered the father of recorded sound. But researchers say they have unearthed a recording of the human voice, made by a little-known Frenchman, that predates Edison’s invention of the phonograph by nearly two decades.
The 10-second recording of a singer crooning the folk song “Au Clair de la Lune” was discovered earlier this month in an archive in Paris by a group of American audio historians. It was made, the researchers say, on April 9, 1860, on a phonautograph, a machine designed to record sounds visually, not to play them back. But the phonautograph recording, or phonautogram, was made playable — converted from squiggles on paper to sound — by scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif.
“This is a historic find, the earliest known recording of sound,” said Samuel Brylawski, the former head of the recorded-sound division of the Library of Congress, who is not affiliated with the research group but who was familiar with its findings. The audio excavation could give a new primacy to the phonautograph, once considered a curio, and its inventor, Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville, a Parisian typesetter and tinkerer who went to his grave convinced that credit for his breakthroughs had been improperly bestowed on Edison.
Scott’s device had a barrel-shaped horn attached to a stylus, which etched sound waves onto sheets of paper blackened by smoke from an oil lamp. The recordings were not intended for listening; the idea of audio playback had not been conceived. Rather, Scott sought to create a paper record of human speech that could later be deciphered.
But the Lawrence Berkeley scientists used optical imaging and a “virtual stylus” on high-resolution scans of the phonautogram, deploying modern technology to extract sound from patterns inscribed on the soot-blackened paper almost a century and a half ago. The scientists belong to an informal collaborative called First Sounds that also includes audio historians and sound engineers.
A LOT MORE HERE > http://tinyurl.com/yv8sha including sound from 1860 ... astounding!
Posted by Drew458
on 03/28/2008 at 07:59 AM
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Permalink • Tuesday - March 25, 2008
Must Have Been All That Hot Air
Ok, where’s Al Gore this week? Anybody know? It’s not my turn to watch him. I’m wondering if he’s been waaay down South, lecturing to all those stupid migrating penguins. Because
Ach, crivens, aren’t we done with this crapparoo yet? And didn’t this reporter get the word that it’s now Climate Changetm so the greenies can still have their pet issue whether things get warmer or colder? Gawd, like get with times already. Making no mention whatsoever that the ice sheets in Antarctica have been at record levels this past year, we get another go at scare-mongering from CNN, the world leader in biased reporting. Amazingly, they couldn’t find some way to blame it on Bush. Hold your noses folks, here we go again:
Massive ice shelf on verge of breakup
(CNN)—Some 220 square miles of ice has collapsed in Antarctica and an ice shelf about the size of Connecticut is “hanging by a thread,” the British Antarctic Survey said Tuesday, blaming global warming.
“We are in for a lot more events like this,” said professor Ted Scambos, a glaciologist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Scambos alerted the British Antarctic Survey after he noticed part of the Wilkins ice shelf disintegrating on February 28, when he was looking at NASA satellite images.
Late February marks the end of summer at the South Pole and is the time when such events are most likely, he said.
Hold it right there buddy. First off, it’s nearly the end of March. Got an update for us? Has it broken off yet? What, no? You mean you waited almost 4 weeks to run a story about impending disaster and it hasn’t impended yet? Kinda makes me wonder. Secondly, we all noticed that last line. What passes for heat down in the land of the never ending ice cube has had all summer to work its magic, and now is the time for the ice sheets to break up. A little. As usual. Of course, fall and winter follow quickly on the heels of summer, so if this thing hasn’t broken off yet it’s probably refreezing as I write this. It’s starting to look like this is a story of desperation, your very last chance to cause a panic by pointing out a looming disaster that hasn’t happened, even though it’s perfectly normal for this kind of thing to happen right about now, so this non-event is neither looming nor a disaster. Pwned. Alarmist Ice-hole.
“As of mid-March, only a narrow strip of shelf ice was protecting several thousand kilometers of potential further breakup,” the group said.
Oh, the poor brave ice. Putting its freeziness on the line to save Mother Gaia.
Scambos’ center put the size of the threatened shelf at about 5,282 square miles, comparable to the state of Connecticut, or about half the area of Scotland.
That’s a lot of ice. Somebody better tell Tony Sinclair to get down there with an entire armada of tanker ships filled with Tanqueray Gin, ASAP! But it’s just a tiny little piece of the whole. Hardly a fingernail pairing’s worth, compared to the whole works. And that’s the “threatened” part. 220 square miles worth is what actually broke. Nada. PS - I never realized Scotland was that small. I’ve never been there, but the Scots always seem a bit larger than life, so I guess I just assumed their country was a bit larger too.
But with Antarctica’s summer ending, Scambos said the “unusual show is over for this season.”
So what’s the point of this story then, other than to try and scare us? We’ve all seen those Calving Glacier films on National Geographic. Impressive, stupendous, but in the overall scheme of things, who gives a rat’s ass?
Scambos said the ice shelf is not currently on the path of the increasingly popular tourist ships that travel from South America to Antarctica. But some plants and animals may have to adapt to the collapse.
“Wildlife will be impacted, but they are pretty adept at dealing with a topsy-turvy world,” he said. “The ecosystem is pretty resilient.”
Crivens, squared! The guy even admits it. It’s not happening, it’s not a threat, and the one or two fish that might get bonked on the head by passing icebergs can deal with it. Shut up already!
CNN. The first name in agenda driven news, even when it isn’t really news.
Posted by Drew458
on 03/25/2008 at 10:56 PM
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Permalink • Monday - March 24, 2008
Let’s Hope There’s a 3rd Company In Start-UpDATE
The DOJ has given satellite radio companies XM and Sirius approval to merge, more than a year after asked for permission. This means the Department Of Justice has looked at the satellite radio market, and determined that the only two companies that exist can now merge and form a monopoly. And that merger doesn’t the old Sherman Anti-Trust Act, or show itself to be anti-competitive. Nope, before we had two companies, competing a new and fairly expensive luxury market, where consumers had to buy expensive special tuners just to listen, and then they had to pay monthly membership fees. Now we’re going to have one company owning the entire market, no competition, and who can say what will happen to the prices. And DOJ says this is a good thing. Gosh, YOU MORONS, no it ain’t!
I hope some other companies are about to get into this game, or else the customers are about to get the shaft. It doesn’t matter if most of them already have plenty of money to spend, nobody is supposed to be able to sew up an entire market in this country. Nor does it matter if both of them have enormous operating costs, and have to merge just to stay alive. Which I haven’t heard, but I wouldn’t believe if I did hear it, considering what one of these companies is paying Howard Stern for his worn out old schtick.
Ah ha, here’s the con:
In its decision, the Department of Justice had to determine whether an XM-Sirius merger was anti-competitive, or if other media companies such as Clear Channel (CCU, Fortune 500), CBS (CBS, Fortune 500), or even Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500) with its iTunes software and iPod music player served as alternate options for music and media customers.
So it’s pretty obvious we have some Luddites at DOJ, who let a bunch of lawyers convince them that one means of musical playback equates to all the others. Yes, Clear Channel owns damn near every radio station around the world. But none of them are digital satellite broadcasters. Oh wait, not true. Clear Channel owns a dozen or so of the stations that broadcast through XM. Sure, you can buy a tune for you iPod and carry it with you. Hey, you can put a CD in your car’s player too, or just roll up the windows and sing yourself happy. Apples and Oranges, people, apples and oranges. This is a little chip at our freedom, and it doesn’t taste good to me.
UPDATE: Brietbart says Sirius is buying XM for $5 billion. Stocks of both companies have risen. This is going to suck for half the merged customer base, because Sirius and XM use totally different receivers.
Posted by Drew458
on 03/24/2008 at 04:15 PM
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Permalink • Saturday - January 19, 2008
The Consensus of Experts
Found over at Watt’s Up With That?
There’s an article in the New York Times pushing a something called “the five stages of climate grief” done by a professor at the University of Montana. This got me to thinking about the regular disaster forecasting that we see published in the media about what will happen due to climate change.
We’ve seen this sort of angst broadcast before, and it occurred to me that through history, a lot of ”predictions of certainty” with roots in scientifically based forecasts have not come true. That being the case, here is the list I’ve compiled of famous quotes and consensus from “experts”.
Top Ten Science based predictions that didn’t come true:
10. “The earth’s crust does not move”- 19th through early 20th century accepted geological science. See Plate Tectonics
9. “The bomb will never go off. I speak as an expert in explosives.” — Admiral William Leahy, U.S. Atomic Bomb Project
8. “That virus is a pussycat.” — Dr. Peter Duesberg, molecular-biology professor at U.C. Berkeley, on HIV, 1988
7. “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” — Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943
6. “Radio has no future. Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible. X-rays will prove to be a hoax.” — William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, British scientist, 1899.
5. “There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will.” — Albert Einstein, 1932
4. “Space travel is bunk.” — Sir Harold Spencer Jones, Astronomer Royal of the UK, 1957 (two weeks later Sputnik orbited the Earth).
3. “If I had thought about it, I wouldn’t have done the experiment. The literature was full of examples that said you can’t do this.” — Spencer Silver on the work that led to the unique adhesives for 3-M “Post-It” Notepads.
2. “Stomach ulcers are caused by stress” — accepted medical diagnosis, until Dr. Marshall proved that H. pylori caused gastric inflammation by deliberately infecting himself with the bacterium.
1. “Telltale signs are everywhere —from the unexpected persistence and thickness of pack ice in the waters around Iceland to the southward migration of a warmth-loving creature like the armadillo from the Midwest. Since the 1940s the mean global temperature has dropped about 2.7° F.” — Climatologist George J. Kukla of Columbia University in Time Magazine’s June 24th, 1975 article Another Ice Age?
So the next time you hear about worldwide crop failure, rising sea levels, species extinction, or “climate grief” you might want to remember that just being an expert, or even having a consensus of experts, doesn’t necessarily mean that a claim is true.
A friend told me one time that if you are travelling with the majority, its a good bet to turn around and go the other way.
Go Fred!
Posted by Drew458
on 01/19/2008 at 08:15 AM
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Permalink • Thursday - November 15, 2007
Bush’s fault or your SUV? which to blame?
excellent chart to explain our weather trends and history
http://www.longrangeweather.com/Long-Range-Weather-Trends.htm
Posted by Rancino
on 11/15/2007 at 04:02 PM
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Permalink • Sunday - November 11, 2007
The Time Bomb Below America…. Yellowstone
Yellowstone: the time bomb under America
Deep beneath Yellowstone National Park lies a vast super-volcano which, if it blew up, could devastate much of the US. Recently, it’s been a bit too restless for comfort. David Usborne reports
Published: 10 November 2007Visitors to Yellowstone National Park in the north-western United States know not to be careless about the bears that roam its pines or the many hissing and sizzling geysers that dot its magnificent landscape. Few ever worry about being blown into space, though.
Startling new geological data published yesterday in the journal Science suggests that it might be a good idea for most of us – and certainly those living in the region – to be aware that there is more to Yellowstone than grand vistas and abundant wildlife. The hot springs are a clue to what lies beneath: seething layers of molten magma, super-heated gases and hydrothermal liquids.
Yellowstone straddles one of Earth’s most studied “hot-spots”, where fissures in the crust, created by volcanic eruptions of eons past, have allowed giant streams of molten rock, or magma, to push closer than normal to the planet’s surface. In recent years something intriguing – if not to say thoroughly nerve-rattling – has been going on. The magma is on the move. And so is Yellowstone.
Over the past three years, according to the report, the ground in the volcanic caldera that spans about 925 square miles and accounts for much of the park’s terrain has been rising towards the sky at the rate of almost three inches per year. That is three times faster than has ever been observed before. It raises the obvious question: what is happening under the park? And what might be about to happen?
The study’s authors are aware, of course, that the notion of Yellowstone being some kind of humming volcanic time-bomb is not something that tourism officials will want to advertise. And, indeed, any kind of panic because of the new data, remarkable though it is, would be entirely misplaced, they insist. “There is no evidence of an imminent volcanic eruption or hydrothermal explosion. That’s the bottom line,” insists Robert Smith, a professor of geophysics at the University of Utah and the lead researcher in this study. “A lot of calderas worldwide go up and down over decades without erupting.”
It may also be reassuring to know that no very big bangs have happened at Yellowstone for a very long time. The caldera, the walls of which are easily discernible from some vantage points in the park, was formed by some massive eruption past when a more classic-looking volcanic cone was probably obliterated. And while the park is still technically a “super-volcano” , it is estimated that it has not blown its top for 640,000 years. If you are planning to be in the park on a Thursday next March, therefore, the chances of it detonating that particular afternoon are surely slim.
No one is about to take their eyes off the park, however, not least because of these unusual new findings that suggest at least that pressures beneath the ground are rising. Moreover, geologists are well aware that were a major eruption indeed to happen, the impact would rival any natural disaster the world has ever seen. Remember the destruction when Mount St Helens flipped her lid in 1980, turning 240 square miles into a wasteland? The energy released at Yellowstone would be many hundreds of times greater.
Moreover, Yellowstone may be due a massive release. Geologists believe that the super-volcano beneath the park has undergone major eruptions at roughly 650,000-year intervals. There have been about 140 such events over 16 million years. Because the last serious explosion is believed to have taken place 640,000 years ago – although there was a minor flare-up 70,000 years ago – who is to say, really, that another one is indeed not imminent? Scientists have been observing the rising and falling of the ground at Yellowstone since 1923. The last most rapid period of upward movement occurred between 1976 and 1985, but only at a rate of about one inch a year. Professor Smith and his assistants began taking their readings in 2004 with instruments aided by satellite tracking placed at numerous spots across the caldera. They have even observed undulations in the caldera’s surface, with some spots rising faster than others one year and then slowing down again while different areas catch up.
In the study, Accelerated Uplift and Magmatic Intrusion of the Yellowstone Caldera, 2004 to 2006, the authors note that while most of the magma remains about 400 miles below the surface, a significant plume rises to about 30 miles deep, where it spreads out horizontally like a pancake that is larger than Los Angeles. It seems likely that the pancake is expanding and causing the floor of the caldera suddenly to rise.
“Our best evidence is that the crustal magma chamber is filling with molten rock,” Professor Smith explained. “But we have no idea how long this process goes on before there either is an eruption or the inflow of molten rock stops and the caldera deflates again.” In other words, something is afoot, but no techniques exist to forecast what comes next. The prediction is easier for single-channel, cone volcanoes. At a caldera such as Yellowstone, the magma could suddenly blow through at any number of locations. “We use the term ‘restless’ to describe these systems,” Professor Smith said.
And what if the ground at Yellowstone does not start to go down? Well, these calderas, he admits, “occasionally they burp”. Let’s hope the park’s belly-ache resolves itself – such a “burp” would shake half of the planet.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article3146417.ece
Interesting… have seen the documentaries on it. the lava dome has recently been rising..
prediciton is that if it were to erupt it would affect the entire world..
SourceA super-eruption has the potential to cover the United States in 3 feet of ash from a plume. Pyroclastic flow would engulf the greater part of three states, and there is evidence that the last major ‘super’ eruption plunged the world into a freezing, volcanic winter that lasted a decade. An eruption would devastate world agriculture, severely effect the distribution of food and cause mass famine.
Posted by Infinity
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Permalink • Tuesday - October 02, 2007
Coolest Model Rocket Evah!
Andy Woerner and his crazy rocketeer friends have built a 21-foot long X-Wing model that can actually fly. Yes, this is a real X-Wing powered by four solid-fuel rocket engines complete with radio-controlled moving wings. It blasts off in California next week, and we talked with Andy about the project, and how they expect it will do.
For the most impressive part of the project to work, not only does the axis have to be strong enough to support the stress of the launch but also it has to allow the wings to change position from folded to open while in flight—or, in the words of Red Leader, putting them in attack position, the X that gives the Rebel aircraft its name.
The wings, including the root sections and the outer panels are about 8’ long and weigh 60 pounds a piece, including the motors. The motion mechanism had to be able to move all four of these simultaneously, while keeping them in position relative to each other. Additionally, the motion hardware had to be strong enough to keep the wings in position once they were at the extents of their travel.
They used an electric motor from a RC helicopter, reducing its 40,000 revolutions per minute to generate enough torque to move those massive wings. Still, the wings will take 35 seconds to travel from open to closed. Hopefully, they will be able to change before the flight ends, so they can get the full effect in the air.
The wings also hold the engines. Andy told us they are using “four solid rocket motors which are Class M, the kind that produce a red flame"—which as you probably know, it’s also the same color of the X-Wing engines’ glow.
They launch on October 10th. Man, to be there and watch this thing fly.
Posted by Drew458
on 10/02/2007 at 04:25 PM
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Permalink • Wednesday - September 05, 2007
VYGER
30 years ago today, the Voyager 1 spacecraft was launched. The craft is now 13 light-minuteshours away from earth and still sending back images.
Wired Magazine has compiled a set of pictures from the craft’s extensive trip.
Posted by Drew458
on 09/05/2007 at 08:34 AM
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Oh, and here's some kind of visitor flag counter thingy. Hey, all the cool blogs have one, so I should too. The Visitors Online thingy up at the top doesn't count anything, but it looks neat. It had better, since I paid actual money for it.
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