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Cosmology
January 25, 2014
12:42 pm
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lunazure
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Something interesting from Stephen Hawking. Did I say my son got to meet him? Says he's a really nice guy, and they got to share that they had the same names. :)

I've always been a little skeptical of Black Holes as "common theory" holds they must be. This expands on it.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sci.....holes.html

January 25, 2014
8:33 pm
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leslee
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Having been in the field, I heard about 20 years ago that Hawking said he wasn't serious when he proposed them. Once again, I have no use for cosmologies. They're like trying to solve one equation in six billion unknowns. I don't have a problem if people do it for kicks, though. It is healthier than many habits.

January 26, 2014
12:52 pm
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lunazure
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Totally agree. One of my friends was spun up about a debate between Bill Nye (who is a very fun scientist dude) and some Christian bent on proving there is a God. (She's anti church and very progressive) I reminded her of *Sigmund Freud's Last Debate* in which the only two characters are Freud and CS Lewis, and they're waiting for a German air raid. Quite good, and funny too.

What most bull dog determined secularists don't understand is, the more you dig into a situation (cosmology, or microbiology, or the interior of an atom) the more questions you answer, the more questions arise. Where does it end?

To say any one theory or paradigm is the SOLUTION is just really shallow thinking.

The questions are always much more fun than the answers!!! Laugh

January 26, 2014
8:21 pm
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leslee
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Gutfeld made a funny comment about people who spew interesting cosmologies, but I can't even allude to the fact that I cannot share it here. Ooh. Ow. Tee hee.

January 27, 2014
12:23 am
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lunazure
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Gutfeld makes me howl. Beck used to make me howl too.... I don't know how Fox can blend news, politics and humor, but they are marvelous at it, Sheer genius. Go read my email....

I just thought we should have a category for those space like posts and things. For those nights when you look out and the stars seem to be twinkling just a little more sharply and brightly than normal. I mean, is the Earth's magnetic field wobbling? A cold front coming through? Seriously, they were really really twinkling last night.... flaming almost. It was marvelous. I was cold sober too. Ook. Too cold to walk tonight, fog, and this cough won't STOP....

January 27, 2014
10:29 am
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leslee
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lunazure said

I mean, is the Earth's magnetic field wobbling? A cold front coming through? Seriously, they were really really twinkling last night.... flaming almost. It was marvelous.

I think they like you.

January 27, 2014
10:37 am
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lunazure
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Winken and Blinken and Nod one night sailed off in a wooden shoe........ still foggy this morning. Guess I had better leave early, might be slow going.

February 20, 2014
11:05 am
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lunazure
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Found some physics reading for you, leslee

http://www.foxnews.com/science.....p=features

February 20, 2014
1:09 pm
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leslee
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I hate pop science. They don't even give their new number or their methods. I still don't know if they have determined what we call charge to be totally independent of mass, in terms of what our instrumentation can measure. Since it's coming from Fox News, I can only assume the article is a smokescreen to throw the Democrats off track as they try to develop their death ray.

February 21, 2014
9:02 pm
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lunazure
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heheeh you're probably right. I did think it had sorta interesting implications for all physics. I'm sure there's more legitimate pubs out there with the same story. The "pop science" folks get their info from somewhere, and boil it down to a thin gruel for the rest of us dummies ;)

I guess physicists are just as full of it as earth science and biology types are.... sure, let's see the numbers before gloating! :)

February 22, 2014
7:51 am
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leslee
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The pop sci get their info from the scientists or the university press releases, and then they have to turn it into something that sells glossies. In my now-defunct dream job of fifteen years, rescuing the story from leads in the pop-sci magazines was part of what I did. The real story was always much more satisfying.

I was really impressed with the space weather folks. They were a different breed. Mathematicians and physicists have a way of yelling at everybody and telling them their questions are sophomoric. This was back in what I call the golden age of the Internet - when you could search technical terms and not wind up with "Gloria's Psychic Aura of Solar Corona" kinds of stuff topping your list of results. Those amazing space weather guys would talk all day with little old me on the phone, fax me illustrations, give me information they had not yet even shared with their peers. They understood their stuff and were great at articulating it. Ah, the memories . . .

I could name a handful of physicists who agree with me - er, aren't full of themselves. The greatest of them is unemployed. Another left the art to pursue politics. The engineering types are more grounded than the theoreticians. A lot of good physicists are no longer with us, Newton being my fave.

February 22, 2014
1:17 pm
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lunazure
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Yep............... the real thinkers wind up teaching in Middle Schools, which is better than starving, but has to be one of the first circles of Hades.

Space weather is really neat stuff. Ok I'll set your Spider sense tingling (listen to the howls) what did you think of the theory behind the movie 2012? The claim was that a massive spike in neutrinos from the Sun would heat the Mohorovicic Discontinuity (they didn't use that term in the movie, because no one could say it, but I read Charles Hapgood long ago) and cause the Earth's crust to shift.

Pop Science would tell us (or so most assume) that molten lava shoots up from the Earth's core, and everyone thinks there's a big ball of lava at the center of the Earth. No not at all, heated rock is usually heated in pockets under the surface, possibly from the Mohorovicic Discontinuity.

Wow. Mohorovicic was actually in the spell checker. Imagine that. At least I THINK that's how you spell it, and I'm too lazy to look it up.

Project Moho lives!!! Smile

February 22, 2014
7:55 pm
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leslee
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lunazure said

what did you think of the theory behind the movie 2012? The claim was that a massive spike in neutrinos from the Sun would heat the Mohorovicic Discontinuity (they didn't use that term in the movie, because no one could say it, but I read Charles Hapgood long ago) and cause the Earth's crust to shift.
Smile

You are implying that I can think. First of all, this is out of my field, so I can only give you stupid answers, but because it sounds fun, I welcome the invitation. Thanks for a good question.

First of all, the Moho is a discontinuity, the boundary between two surfaces. It does not make sense to heat the boundary because temperature is the average kinetic energy of molecules, and there are zero molecules in the in-between. Speaking in the royal plural, we must therefore consider what the author, or the one who interpreted the script, was trying to say. Perhaps most logically would be the guess that he was trying to say the two surfaces would heat differentially.

The next question, after granting the assumption that neutrinos are more than the effect of staring into a particle collider to long, is whether or not the neutrinos are capable of heating the earth. The earth is already supposedly bombarded by them, and their impact is purportedly moot. It is claimed they move through matter, for all practical purposes, unimpeded. The next question is how it would be possible to cluster so many neutrinos into such a teeny space as to create an observable effect, let alone an earth-heating one. That question could only be resolved by defining parameters, but chances are something traumatic would happen before the merry scrunch bunch of neutrinos made it to Earth. If the neutrinos don't interact with matter, then the gravitational forces anywhere should not cause them to settle in one place. I assume they would go in one side and out the other.

The word "shift" is ambiguous. Do they mean the geographical crust would change orientation with respect to the magnetic pole, under the assumption that currents in the magma core are responsible for creating Earth's magnetic field? For one thing, I suspect the jaggedness of the Moho would anchor any displacement between the crust and a solid mantle under considerable additional forces. Everything has its breaking point, but the question in speculations of huge force is whether or not the whole thing would blow up before your item under study does. The mantle, however, is supposed to be viscous, in which case I'm not seeing how to define relative displacement. If it is viscous and flowing, then the crust is already detached.

Well, there's a shot. Good question. You should ask this at the next Storytellers.

February 22, 2014
11:32 pm
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lunazure
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AHAHAHAHAHHAAHAHAHHH

very fun!!! :)

OK as soon as I stop screaming................... you really should look up the Hapgood books.... he was a real "on the edge" thinker, a true spook. The book was written back in the early 50s when they had barely nailed continental drift. His proposal was, that in light of the wandering magnetic poles (which you obviously know about from your writing, yes they do wander) Hapgood claimed that the entire crust periodically shifted (violently and suddenly) on the Earth's mantle, along a presumably viscous Mohorovicic Discontinuity. I don't know if Project Moho ever REACHED the discontinuity, they were drilling off the coast of Chili for it in the 60s. By reading P and S waves, this discontinuity had been discovered. No one knew what it was when he wrote the book.

Hapgood was a cartographer by trade, and naturally had spotted the business with Africa and South America fitting so nicely together, and was part of the discussion around the developing continental drift theories. The slipping crust was his solution. I DO like the idea of the differentiation in the materials, it would explain much. Yes I know about the convection effect of the mantle, said currents bubble up at the mid oceanic ridges (ie Iceland). Allegedly the center core of the Earth is some heavy metal mass, like iron or nickel. But the crust DOES move over something beneath. The Hawaiian Islands, the Galapagos, and Yellowstone are all examples of "hot spots" in the crust where stuff from below is leaking up. And the crust moves slowly over those spots.... thus forming the island chains etc etc.........

I suspect if you stare at anything long enough, its reality will be altered.... and you'll see dragons and neutrinos where there were none before. God does play dice with the Universe Wink

No one seems to have correlated the shift of the magnetic poles, and the shift of hot spots, so I have to conclude it's not a "move in mass" shift of the crust. I'll go on hoping it's just slow shifting and not a rapid sudden one. Ugh what a thought. But it would explain periodic world wide massive extinctions in the fossil records. A meteor strike (current popular theory for that sort of thing) is equally unsettling.

It isn't my area of expertise either, but I seem to know more about it than movie writers do.... which is a scary thought.

2012 is a really fun movie, I picked it up for 10 bucks the other day. In addition to some of the most hair raising special effects ever (I scream through it all, very fun and totally unrealistic) some of the characters are hilarious. This family of five (the wife has two husbands) falls in with a bunch of Russians, two of which are the "twins from Hades" little mean cherubs.... all the Russian adults die heroic deaths, and are quite edgy, rude fun humor. There's a nut similar to Art Bell in an RV camped in Yellowstone, waiting for The End (Yellowstone blows and takes him with it) I won't spoil it for you, but its something I'd love to see in 3D. So long as you swallow Hapgood's premise hook line and sinker, it's a great movie. If you accept that it's a fantasy, it's very entertaining.

February 23, 2014
8:16 pm
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leslee
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I am aware of continental drift and pole shifts. Surprise. The poles drift continually. You can get maps tracking the position. I really need to get you a copy of the special Space Weather Edition of ESJ. As in any area of geomorphology, you have the gradualists and catastrophists. I believe Earth's history is a mixture, but the magnetization of magma from the ocean floor, I am told, denotes rapid change. That is, north is up and then it is down, it is not like north follows a gradual continuum from 0 to 180 degrees.

I must admit I wasn't thinking of continental drift when you mentioned a shift in the Earth's crust. I was thinking of the whole crust moving relative to the mantle or something. Otay. My bad. Tectonic plates drift all the time, and you could probably find something that tracks that, too. I suppose their motions are a combination of gradualness and catastrophe. Even so, I continue not to understand the meaning of heating an interface. We are probably talking about some kind of skin-deep phenomenon. I would think you could do more damage by heating the mantle, but what do I know?

I think most astronomers would be more inclined to attribute some kind of cracking up of the planet's integrity to gravitational forces than the heat of an infinitude of neutrinos. My former boss believed earthquakes were caused by electrodynamic resonance patterns established by the relative positions of the planets. He assigned me to look for patterns, and I could find nothing of the sort - but then I tend to be blind.

Thanks for pointing out that One-Mug and I do agree on something; viz., disagreeing with you about Herr Gott, unless I misinterpreted that wink.

That bit about an Art Bell type living in a trailer in Yellowstone, however, sounds very real.

February 23, 2014
9:00 pm
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leslee
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I must say, I like how Justin answered Question #2 posted today.

February 24, 2014
10:10 am
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lunazure
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#2 was good indeed.... why DO people always ask him that? Musicians are so "by the seat of the pants" the good ones anyway. Which is why the trade is so attractive.

I agree, planetary alignments have nothing to do with anything.... the gravitational pull must be very slight in realistic terms. I'm more inclined to believe the "currents of space" theories, and I'll refer you to Asimov for that one. (I have to get to work, and it's long and drawn out.... Asimov was so good at explaining stuff)

It's a very fun movie.... very hair raising. I recommend it. A scientific wreck but fun anyway. LA drops into the sea!!!! LaughLaughLaugh

There's plenty of evidence of "catastrophic" events here on the west coast.... I personally live on high ground due to tsunami evidence around Puget Sound. I guess you're right, there are naturally two camps. One little ol' fault line can do plenty of damage without it being a "catastrophic disaster".... seen that personally.

There's a lot of Flat Earthers out there who don't grok Continental Drift.... my 6th grade teacher was one of them.... anyway I'm no expert, just a geek who enjoys reading that sort of thing. I don't think anyone knows what the heck the Mojo Discontinuity is.... I should research it...

gotta run to work! Bye! (be good now)

February 24, 2014
1:45 pm
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leslee
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1. I disagree. You really, really need to get a copy of the special ESJ edition. Pester those folks for a back issue. I sure hope they didn't burn everything. I used to be a fan of Asimov, but stopped. Gravity (mass) holds the planets in their orbits; electric charge wafts around up there. You never hear of a solar flare altering orbits; you do hear such things for mass interactions; particularly collisions.

2. Fading musicians do enjoy collaboration for cash flow. I'm glad Jus isn't there, yet.

3. I prefer to listen to music than to watch movies. I have neither the time nor the patience. I can, sometimes, work with one earbud plugged into the puter. That said, I think I'll listen to Steely Dan for an artistic interpretation of California tumbling into the sea - which, as you surely know was never any geologists' prediction but a pop-sci sensationalization of the sliding fault line. Then again, my teeny-weeny knowledge of geology consists only of undergraduate oversimplifications. I never actually studied the fault lines like somebody who is probably reading this and can and will use everything against me.

4. The first time I heard of Al Gore was at an environmental conference in Chattanooga. He said the guy who first speculated about continental drift saw a map of the Atlantic coastlines and told his teacher about the similarities on the east and west. His teacher shamed him for thinking outside the box, and he turned to a life of drug abuse. Years later . . . Think what you will of Mr. Gore, it was a funny story told well.

February 26, 2014
12:52 am
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lunazure
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My 6th grade teacher got fired for yelling at another kid (friend of mine) and I'm still here teaching, so karma does even things out. OOoo wasn't she a nasty one...

I ignored a lot of other teachers too.... honestly I never have figured out hiring criteria. Man some of them are DUMB... and some are very cool indeed.

I was just watching the Buddy Holly story.... nice collaboration at the end with the Big Bopper, Holly and Richie. Music is music, and musicians WILL jam... fading fame perhaps, but never musical skill. For any of them.

Planets exist in gravity wells, silly girl, while time and space bend around them. Then again, Hawkins just changed his theories on black holes, so who knows where that leaves us with gravity and physics. (Like I could do the math......... not). Here, take a gander at this.......... click on it to expand, grab to move around.........

http://earth.nullschool.net/

fun hunh? Whatever zoo of particles the sun coughs out in flares is naturally polarized and attracted to the poles.... of all planets.... I'd love to know more about Jupiter's weather when solar flares hit it. But looking at that wind map... and thinking of how clouds rub around and create all that static discharge. Well, there's bound to be some wild weather up there somewhere, sprites, nymphs and all that. Solar particles hitting it only adds to the fun I suspect. How could you track so many variables? For odd lightning effects, much less predicting global temp changes longitudinally?

Asimov talked about the currents of space as something outside the solar system, that our entire system passes through cyclically as a function of our general movement around the galactic center. I thought it was a cool concept, have no data to back it up of course. Other than we know the Sun orbits around that center of the galaxy.

February 26, 2014
11:11 am
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leslee
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That is no way to talk to a dissident physicist. You must first explain to me how space, which is nothing, bends; and how time, which is a human construct, does the same. When I see you next time, I will be happy to go over some math and show how all macro physics known to man can be explained solely in terms of axiomatic charge and mass. (Subatomic physics, chemistry, biology, and religion are other animals.) We will review the Michelson-Morley experiment in the context of what physicists have learned since One-Mug postulated. I will field any question you pose pertaining to geometrical optics. I will laugh at you as you attempt to present something so eloquent to explain what you have written. The realm of advanced physics is a mystic cult where the initiation requires you to forsake your own reason and conscience to flock with your superiors. Bla ha ha ha ha. This is gonna be fun.

I liked your wind current map, but I was wondering if it represented general currents or something in a limited time frame. What is that red spot around Iceland? I need to get you a space weather issue, although you will probably learn everything in it by the time I get around to doing so. Maybe you could edit it as well as my papers on Newton's and Coulomb's laws - but it had better be good. Bla ha ha ha ha.

At least you and Justin have a knack for being interested in the same things at the same time. I seldom get into sweet and gentle music, although I can appreciate it. I'm more into chording that makes me stand up and say, "Wow!"

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