I don't know if you did the same as me last Tuesday and thought that day seemed to fly past but you would be correct because literally the day was shorter because the Earth span just a bit faster on July 29.
The Earth generally rotates at a speed of 460 meters per second, approximately 1,000 miles per hour but Scientists have noticed that since 2020, our Planet has been rotating faster than usual speed and has registered the shortest day on several occasions with July 29 recorded the shortest day ever, a full 1.59 milliseconds less than it's standard rotation.
Nobody has yet been able to pinpoint the reasons behind it but the melting of the poles, a shift in the planet’s inner molten core or increased seismic activity have all been put forward as theories but what they do all agree on is that the faster spin means that the Earth gets the same position a little earlier than the previous day, approximately 30 inches or 75cm which plays havoc with GPS Systems, atomic clocks and IT systems.
The Scientists are not overly concerned for human life, they calculate that it would need to increase massively to have any effect on us or our weather patterns but the faster the Earth spins, the shorter our days would become so a 1 mph speed increase, the day would only get about a minute and a half shorter, an increase of 100 mph would make a day about 22 hours long and increase the Coriolis effect which would make weather systems more unpredictable and increase winds and hurricane but if it revved up by 1,000 mph then all the planets water would gather in the equatorial region and flood every nation between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn but if the Planet span at 17,641 mph faster than we would all be flung off into space.
With our current increase of its only the satellites set to geosynchronous orbit flying around our planet at a speed that matches the Earth’s rotation with a problem as they have to be sped up to stay positioned over the same spot all the time but us humans have an ingenuous way of making time stand still and make minutes seem like hours, it's called watching Golf although by the end of it you could very well be wishing you would be flung off the planet.
Showing posts with label Earth. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Earth. Show all posts
Monday, 1 August 2022
Hold Tight As Planet Speeds Up
Sunday, 21 April 2019
Some Moments That Shaped Our World Today
The British Council have a document that sets out the 80 moments that shaped our world and generally i would go along with most of them, their top moments of the creation of the World Wide Web and penicillin have had a profound effect on how we live today but i can't help feel that they have missed a few breakthrough moments which have led us to where we are today.
I would turn towards other events, in chronological order, that have had seismic effects which have led us to where we are today.
With 84% of the world population having faith in one Religion or another, it has shaped nations over thousands of years while being responsible for more deaths than any other cause in that time. It still dominates some laws and has been used, and is still used, by the different faiths to oppress, invade and murder 'others' to this day.
The Printing Press bought books and newspapers to the people, leading them to educate and learn to read for themselves.
It is hard to consider a book that had wider implications than Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto. The 20th Century saw Communism and it's smaller brother Socialism sweep around half the World and then retract back again. It led to the Cold War and competition between two competing ideologies which saw two other massive leaps for mankind, one great and one not so much.
Television not only changed home entertainment but the ways family interact and made the World smaller, showing viewers at home parts of the World they had only heard about. It also had the effect of showing the sometimes catastrophic things going on around the earth, both natural and man-made, making a bigger impact than reading about it in the press.
WW1 and WW2 which broke up the order of nations, led to the death of tens of millions and the Holocaust which in turn led to the birth of Israel and the consequences of that decision on the Middle East today and the rest of the World.
The invention of the atomic bomb and the explosion of atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki which saw the devastating potential of these new weapons and led to the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) which kept in check the Cold War and dominated the World for half a century.
The invention of the female contraceptive pill in the mid 50's which enabled women and men to control their reproductive health and put contraception in the hands of the woman and changing the dynamic of the family.
The second offspring from the competing ideology is the Space Race which saw man take huge strides and led to the satellite technology we make such use of today for our entertainment, communications, mobile phones and navigation as well as dragging us towards expanding out into Space and other Worlds as well as learning the origins of our own Planet.
The terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 on the World Trade Centre set off a chain of events which led to the emergence of terrorism as a major international phenomenon and awful wars and conflicts which has killed hundreds of thousands and reverberated around the world and still continues today.
Once the global awareness of the importance of the environmental damage we were causing was met with a shrug but now 'green' initiatives abound with the rise of renewable resources and a new World urgency that we have to do something as sea levels rise and the madness of the destruction of our planet becomes obvious.
I would turn towards other events, in chronological order, that have had seismic effects which have led us to where we are today.
With 84% of the world population having faith in one Religion or another, it has shaped nations over thousands of years while being responsible for more deaths than any other cause in that time. It still dominates some laws and has been used, and is still used, by the different faiths to oppress, invade and murder 'others' to this day.
The Printing Press bought books and newspapers to the people, leading them to educate and learn to read for themselves.
It is hard to consider a book that had wider implications than Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto. The 20th Century saw Communism and it's smaller brother Socialism sweep around half the World and then retract back again. It led to the Cold War and competition between two competing ideologies which saw two other massive leaps for mankind, one great and one not so much.
Television not only changed home entertainment but the ways family interact and made the World smaller, showing viewers at home parts of the World they had only heard about. It also had the effect of showing the sometimes catastrophic things going on around the earth, both natural and man-made, making a bigger impact than reading about it in the press.
WW1 and WW2 which broke up the order of nations, led to the death of tens of millions and the Holocaust which in turn led to the birth of Israel and the consequences of that decision on the Middle East today and the rest of the World.
The invention of the atomic bomb and the explosion of atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki which saw the devastating potential of these new weapons and led to the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) which kept in check the Cold War and dominated the World for half a century.
The invention of the female contraceptive pill in the mid 50's which enabled women and men to control their reproductive health and put contraception in the hands of the woman and changing the dynamic of the family.
The second offspring from the competing ideology is the Space Race which saw man take huge strides and led to the satellite technology we make such use of today for our entertainment, communications, mobile phones and navigation as well as dragging us towards expanding out into Space and other Worlds as well as learning the origins of our own Planet.
The terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 on the World Trade Centre set off a chain of events which led to the emergence of terrorism as a major international phenomenon and awful wars and conflicts which has killed hundreds of thousands and reverberated around the world and still continues today.
Once the global awareness of the importance of the environmental damage we were causing was met with a shrug but now 'green' initiatives abound with the rise of renewable resources and a new World urgency that we have to do something as sea levels rise and the madness of the destruction of our planet becomes obvious.
Saturday, 7 October 2017
What Did Mexico Do?
Some nations just don't seem to have much luck and it is usually the Japanese who are on the end of human misadventure and mother nature throwing a hissy fit but now it seems she has given Japan a break and is having a pop at Mexico instead.
It isn't enough that it shares a border with an America under the control of the mentally disturbed Donald Trump but in the last few months it has suffered several major earthquakes and hurricanes and now a volcano is sputtering back into life.
It never rains but it pours as the saying goes but what is raining down is volcanic material as Popocatepetl spews out ash and lava which the experts put down to the recent seismic activity.
CENAPRED, the official disaster monitoring agency in Mexico, reports that a total of four major explosions were registered at the volcano, throwing volcanic material 1.2 miles into the air and forcing the Government to declare an eight mile exclusion zone around the volcano citing 'ballistic volcanic debris'.
A Phase 2 Yellow warning has been declared indicating mild to intermediate strength explosive activity at the volcano for the foreseeable future so Mexico must be wondering what it has done to attract the wrath of Mother Nature who seems determined to continue to smack it around for some reason.
It isn't enough that it shares a border with an America under the control of the mentally disturbed Donald Trump but in the last few months it has suffered several major earthquakes and hurricanes and now a volcano is sputtering back into life.
It never rains but it pours as the saying goes but what is raining down is volcanic material as Popocatepetl spews out ash and lava which the experts put down to the recent seismic activity.
CENAPRED, the official disaster monitoring agency in Mexico, reports that a total of four major explosions were registered at the volcano, throwing volcanic material 1.2 miles into the air and forcing the Government to declare an eight mile exclusion zone around the volcano citing 'ballistic volcanic debris'.
A Phase 2 Yellow warning has been declared indicating mild to intermediate strength explosive activity at the volcano for the foreseeable future so Mexico must be wondering what it has done to attract the wrath of Mother Nature who seems determined to continue to smack it around for some reason.
Tuesday, 16 August 2016
Conspiracy Theory: Flat Earth
A famous saying is that it is always better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are an imbecile than to open your mouth and confirm it which could be a lesson for the Flat Earth Conspiracy Theorists.
Around 600 BC, the Greek philosopher Pythagoras started telling people that the Earth was a sphere. His fellow Greeks may have been slow to believe him but by the Middle Ages, it was an accepted fact that the earth was a ball even if the likes of Galileo had a harder time making people believe that the Earth wasn't at the centre of the universe.
If seems that after 2600 years we have been wrong all along and the Earth is actually flat, that is according to the Flat Earth conspiracy theory.
Space Images? Faked.
International Space Station footage? Shot In A Zero-G Plane.
Gravity? Doesn't exist.
That last one may be a shock if they dropped a bowling ball on their foot but they say that it isn't things dropping towards Earth but the flat disc constantly accelerating upward, so you stood on the Earth are actually rising up to meet the bowling ball. You get a sore toe either way.
They also say that the Sun is really only 3,000 miles away, and it’s only 32 miles wide and is like a giant light-bulb that moves in a circle and shines on the flat surface of the world like a lighthouse.
Finally, they believe that the sky and everything in it are fake. What you’re actually seeing is a dome that serves to hide whatever is up there such as God or even aliens, they haven't worked that bit out yet.
Around 600 BC, the Greek philosopher Pythagoras started telling people that the Earth was a sphere. His fellow Greeks may have been slow to believe him but by the Middle Ages, it was an accepted fact that the earth was a ball even if the likes of Galileo had a harder time making people believe that the Earth wasn't at the centre of the universe.
If seems that after 2600 years we have been wrong all along and the Earth is actually flat, that is according to the Flat Earth conspiracy theory.
Space Images? Faked.
International Space Station footage? Shot In A Zero-G Plane.
Gravity? Doesn't exist.
That last one may be a shock if they dropped a bowling ball on their foot but they say that it isn't things dropping towards Earth but the flat disc constantly accelerating upward, so you stood on the Earth are actually rising up to meet the bowling ball. You get a sore toe either way.
They also say that the Sun is really only 3,000 miles away, and it’s only 32 miles wide and is like a giant light-bulb that moves in a circle and shines on the flat surface of the world like a lighthouse.
Finally, they believe that the sky and everything in it are fake. What you’re actually seeing is a dome that serves to hide whatever is up there such as God or even aliens, they haven't worked that bit out yet.
Monday, 8 August 2016
All Earthly Things Must Come To An End
Some people are quite blase about these things but the single thing that is absolutely certain is the Earth will end one day but we have had a good run of it.
In the 200,000 years since Homo Sapiens began roaming the land we've built cities, created complex languages and sent robotic scouts to other planets. It's difficult to imagine it all coming to an end. Yet 99 percent of all species that ever lived have gone extinct, including every one of our hominid ancestors who came down from the trees with us.
In 1983, British cosmologist Brandon Carter framed the "Doomsday argument," a statistical way to judge when we might join them but as human activity is messing with the atmosphere and severely disrupting almost all life on the planet, the calculations could be out.
The correct answer to how long us humans have left is of course unknown, but two new studies suggest a collision with Mercury or Mars could doom life long before the Sun swells into a red giant and bakes the planet to a crisp in about 5 billion years.
Astronomers have known for years that our Milky Way and its closest neighbour, the Andromeda galaxy, (a.k.a M31) are being pulled together in a gravitational dance, but no one was sure whether the galaxies would collide head-on or glide past one another. Precise measurements from the Hubble Space Telescope have now confirmed that the two galaxies are indeed on a collision course, headed straight for a colossal cosmic collision.
No need to panic for the moment, as this is not going to happen for another four billion years.
An asteroid five miles wide would cause major extinctions, like the one that may have marked the end of the age of dinosaurs. For a real chill, look to the Kuiper belt, a zone just beyond Neptune that contains roughly 100,000 ice-balls more than 50 miles in diameter. The Kuiper belt sends a steady rain of small comets earthward. If one of the big ones headed right for us, that would be it for pretty much all higher forms of life, even cockroaches.
Every few hundred thousand years Earth's magnetic field dwindles almost to nothing for perhaps a century, then gradually reappears with the north and south poles flipped. The last such reversal was 780,000 years ago, so we may be overdue.
Worse, the strength of our magnetic field has decreased about 5 percent in the past century.
The magnetic field deflects particle storms and cosmic rays from the sun, as well as even more energetic subatomic particles from deep space. Without magnetic protection, these particles would strike Earth's atmosphere, eroding the already beleaguered ozone layer which we have carelessly made as holey as Swiss cheese.
Finally, the studies show that by 2040, machines will match human intelligence, and perhaps human consciousness. Then they'll only get even better and become more autonomous and become more powerful and us puny humans will be no match if they decide they should be the ones running the show.
It may be a gloomy outlook for us humans but its something our future ancestors will hopefully sort out, probably by shifting themselves to another planet.
In the 200,000 years since Homo Sapiens began roaming the land we've built cities, created complex languages and sent robotic scouts to other planets. It's difficult to imagine it all coming to an end. Yet 99 percent of all species that ever lived have gone extinct, including every one of our hominid ancestors who came down from the trees with us.
In 1983, British cosmologist Brandon Carter framed the "Doomsday argument," a statistical way to judge when we might join them but as human activity is messing with the atmosphere and severely disrupting almost all life on the planet, the calculations could be out.
The correct answer to how long us humans have left is of course unknown, but two new studies suggest a collision with Mercury or Mars could doom life long before the Sun swells into a red giant and bakes the planet to a crisp in about 5 billion years.
Astronomers have known for years that our Milky Way and its closest neighbour, the Andromeda galaxy, (a.k.a M31) are being pulled together in a gravitational dance, but no one was sure whether the galaxies would collide head-on or glide past one another. Precise measurements from the Hubble Space Telescope have now confirmed that the two galaxies are indeed on a collision course, headed straight for a colossal cosmic collision.
No need to panic for the moment, as this is not going to happen for another four billion years.
An asteroid five miles wide would cause major extinctions, like the one that may have marked the end of the age of dinosaurs. For a real chill, look to the Kuiper belt, a zone just beyond Neptune that contains roughly 100,000 ice-balls more than 50 miles in diameter. The Kuiper belt sends a steady rain of small comets earthward. If one of the big ones headed right for us, that would be it for pretty much all higher forms of life, even cockroaches.
Every few hundred thousand years Earth's magnetic field dwindles almost to nothing for perhaps a century, then gradually reappears with the north and south poles flipped. The last such reversal was 780,000 years ago, so we may be overdue.
Worse, the strength of our magnetic field has decreased about 5 percent in the past century.
The magnetic field deflects particle storms and cosmic rays from the sun, as well as even more energetic subatomic particles from deep space. Without magnetic protection, these particles would strike Earth's atmosphere, eroding the already beleaguered ozone layer which we have carelessly made as holey as Swiss cheese.
Finally, the studies show that by 2040, machines will match human intelligence, and perhaps human consciousness. Then they'll only get even better and become more autonomous and become more powerful and us puny humans will be no match if they decide they should be the ones running the show.
It may be a gloomy outlook for us humans but its something our future ancestors will hopefully sort out, probably by shifting themselves to another planet.
Friday, 13 May 2016
The Flat Earth Society
Just when you thought that people who deny climate change, those that pray to a man who lives in the clouds and people who reply to emails from Nigerians was the height of window shaking stupidity, along comes the Flat Earth Society to show that just when we think we have reached the bottom, there is always further below it to explore.
There are people out there who believe the notion of a globe-shaped world orbiting the sun is a myth and it's all a conspiracy aimed at covering up the concept of space travel which is an even larger hoax.
So if our brains were to fall out of our ears and we were to not just dismiss the cranks as people who should not be left in charge of small children or animals, what can we expect from the movement trying to to save us all from the delusion that our world is a globe?
Handily, the Flat Earthers have a wiki page which explains it all as follows:
'How do you know the Earth is a globe? Only because you were told so by your teacher, who was told by someone else, who was told by someone else, who was told by someone else, who was told by some “authority” or “expert”. Somewhere along the way as a child, you were probably shown some books with photographs, but as has been well exposed, space photos and videos are easily faked, as NASA knows very well.
The flat earth model contends that the Earth exists on a giant, flat plane, with the Arctic (or North Pole) at the center, and a giant wall of ice (the Antarctic) surrounding the entire disc and forming the circumference. The implication of this is that we live in a giant dome, that “space” as we know it does not exist, and that all the planets and stars we see at night are like projections on the ceiling of a planetarium.
The science bit is that photographs of the earth show it as not curving the way it should if the planet was really round and that gravity doesn't exist but i could feel my brain cells committing suicide in protest as i read so i decided to cut my loses and leave but although it won't be easy overturning all the evidence that points that a round earth but i wish them luck in unravelling the true mysteries of the universe and demonstrating that the earth is flat and that Round Earth doctrine is little more than an elaborate hoax.
There are people out there who believe the notion of a globe-shaped world orbiting the sun is a myth and it's all a conspiracy aimed at covering up the concept of space travel which is an even larger hoax.
So if our brains were to fall out of our ears and we were to not just dismiss the cranks as people who should not be left in charge of small children or animals, what can we expect from the movement trying to to save us all from the delusion that our world is a globe?
Handily, the Flat Earthers have a wiki page which explains it all as follows:
'How do you know the Earth is a globe? Only because you were told so by your teacher, who was told by someone else, who was told by someone else, who was told by someone else, who was told by some “authority” or “expert”. Somewhere along the way as a child, you were probably shown some books with photographs, but as has been well exposed, space photos and videos are easily faked, as NASA knows very well.
The flat earth model contends that the Earth exists on a giant, flat plane, with the Arctic (or North Pole) at the center, and a giant wall of ice (the Antarctic) surrounding the entire disc and forming the circumference. The implication of this is that we live in a giant dome, that “space” as we know it does not exist, and that all the planets and stars we see at night are like projections on the ceiling of a planetarium.
The science bit is that photographs of the earth show it as not curving the way it should if the planet was really round and that gravity doesn't exist but i could feel my brain cells committing suicide in protest as i read so i decided to cut my loses and leave but although it won't be easy overturning all the evidence that points that a round earth but i wish them luck in unravelling the true mysteries of the universe and demonstrating that the earth is flat and that Round Earth doctrine is little more than an elaborate hoax.
Saturday, 9 April 2016
Earth Throwing A Wobbly
Jelly, weebles and my Uncle Fred after a night in the Nags Head are all things that wobble but we can
also include the earth which wobbles on its axis although thanks to Global warming the Earth's wobble is changing.
Melting ice sheets, especially in Greenland, are changing the distribution of weight on Earth which has caused the wobble to change course, according to a new NASA study.
Scientists have been measuring the wobble since 1899 and for almost the entire 20th century it migrated a bit toward Canada but that has changed and now it’s moving toward England.
'The recent shift from the 20th-century direction is very dramatic' said a NASA spokesman before saying the shift is harmless but 'highlights how real and profoundly large an impact humans are having on the planet'.
'Since 2003, Greenland has lost on average more than 272 trillion kilograms of ice a year, and that affects the way the Earth wobbles in a manner similar to a figure skater lifting one leg while spinning, said Nasa scientist Eirk Ivins, the study’s co-author.
'On top of that, West Antarctica loses 124 trillion kgs of ice and East Antarctica gains about 74 trillion kgs of ice yearly, helping tilt the wobble further' Ivins said.
What they don't explain is what it means for Canada who no longer have the direction of wobble and England who now has it but i do expect to see a raise in wobble deniers, people who refuse to accept that the Earth is wobbling at all although i think m Uncle Fred may have just found the perfect excuse why he leans to one side on a Saturday night.
also include the earth which wobbles on its axis although thanks to Global warming the Earth's wobble is changing.
Melting ice sheets, especially in Greenland, are changing the distribution of weight on Earth which has caused the wobble to change course, according to a new NASA study.
Scientists have been measuring the wobble since 1899 and for almost the entire 20th century it migrated a bit toward Canada but that has changed and now it’s moving toward England.
'The recent shift from the 20th-century direction is very dramatic' said a NASA spokesman before saying the shift is harmless but 'highlights how real and profoundly large an impact humans are having on the planet'.
'Since 2003, Greenland has lost on average more than 272 trillion kilograms of ice a year, and that affects the way the Earth wobbles in a manner similar to a figure skater lifting one leg while spinning, said Nasa scientist Eirk Ivins, the study’s co-author.
'On top of that, West Antarctica loses 124 trillion kgs of ice and East Antarctica gains about 74 trillion kgs of ice yearly, helping tilt the wobble further' Ivins said.
What they don't explain is what it means for Canada who no longer have the direction of wobble and England who now has it but i do expect to see a raise in wobble deniers, people who refuse to accept that the Earth is wobbling at all although i think m Uncle Fred may have just found the perfect excuse why he leans to one side on a Saturday night.
Tuesday, 10 November 2015
Building Another Earth
NASA have an ambitious plan to capture an asteroid and put it in orbit around the moon which will be exciting enough if they can achieve it but it does make me wonder about how we can reshape our Solar System.
Each 365 days the Earth orbits the Sun traveling 940 million kilometers or 584 million miles around our star and it doesn't return to that place in its orbit for another year so that space is for all intent and purposes empty.
Jupiter meanwhile shares its orbit with a whole bunch of asteroids which move around the Sun with the planet, one group ahead of Jupiter and another other group behind in its orbit.
As this shows that planets or planet-like objects can be in the same orbit, i do wonder what it would be possible to manoeuver into the Earths Orbit.
Venus is almost the same size and density as the Earth and would be ideal as a second Earth but somehow dragging it 23 million miles to our orbit may be too much and i couldn't even begin to imagine either how we could drag a planet out of its orbit and into ours or what knock-on effect it would have on other things.
The alternative would be to guide as large as possible an asteroid into place and then build it up as necessary.
The Earths orbit is in the Goldilocks Zone, we know that at an orbit of 93 million miles from the Sun we can have liquid water and if we can't get the size of planet the same as Earth, we could get the mass using heavier material to terraform our new orbital partner.
With our best brains working on the details such as the required mass to create to enable it to hold onto its atmosphere and where in the orbit to place it in relation to the Earth, we could 'build' a second home orbiting our Sun exactly where we want it knowing it could sustain life.
While a spare Earth would solve many problems, i don't know what effect if any it would have on Earth so might be better to stick with Plan A and just build on the Moon for now and leave the planet creation for future generations and more advanced technology.
Each 365 days the Earth orbits the Sun traveling 940 million kilometers or 584 million miles around our star and it doesn't return to that place in its orbit for another year so that space is for all intent and purposes empty.
Jupiter meanwhile shares its orbit with a whole bunch of asteroids which move around the Sun with the planet, one group ahead of Jupiter and another other group behind in its orbit.
As this shows that planets or planet-like objects can be in the same orbit, i do wonder what it would be possible to manoeuver into the Earths Orbit.
Venus is almost the same size and density as the Earth and would be ideal as a second Earth but somehow dragging it 23 million miles to our orbit may be too much and i couldn't even begin to imagine either how we could drag a planet out of its orbit and into ours or what knock-on effect it would have on other things.
The alternative would be to guide as large as possible an asteroid into place and then build it up as necessary.
The Earths orbit is in the Goldilocks Zone, we know that at an orbit of 93 million miles from the Sun we can have liquid water and if we can't get the size of planet the same as Earth, we could get the mass using heavier material to terraform our new orbital partner.
With our best brains working on the details such as the required mass to create to enable it to hold onto its atmosphere and where in the orbit to place it in relation to the Earth, we could 'build' a second home orbiting our Sun exactly where we want it knowing it could sustain life.
While a spare Earth would solve many problems, i don't know what effect if any it would have on Earth so might be better to stick with Plan A and just build on the Moon for now and leave the planet creation for future generations and more advanced technology.
Tuesday, 19 May 2015
Our Pale Blue Dot
I have though, previously seen the famous Pale Blue Dot image of the Earth taken by the Voyager 1 space probe from 3.7 billion miles away where our planet appears as a tiny dot in the vastness of space.
Amazing picture and perfectly complimented by one of the most thought provoking passages written where Sagan contemplates that on that dot in the picture: 'everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.'
'Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark' he muses before explaining that this is the only home we have ever known and we have nowhere else to go and how we should: 'deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot'.
Powerful stuff but still we go on polluting the planet, stuffing poisons into the atmosphere, shoving toxic waste into the ground and generally vandalising the only place that we have to live on.
What the image also drives home as we look at that tiny pinprick of light in the vast blackness of space is how we are just a tiny, infinitesimal part of the universe.
It shows how we are not at the centre of things as we maintained for centuries, that we are not even at the centre of our own solar system which is just one of tens of billions of solar systems in our galaxy alone, a galaxy which is in turn amongst hundreds of billions of galaxies in the Universe.
Whilst we could quite easily make excuses for our less knowledgeable predecessors that the Sun and the Planets went around us and that the Earth and everything around, above and below it was created for our delectation, to maintain that idea today that a God created something 13.8 billion light years across just for the inhabitants of an insignificant, rocky planet situated out in the sticks on the arm of a far flung Galaxy is the height of arrogance or ignorance.
The image should make us feel very humble and shows our place in the great scheme of things which is an inconsequential dot in the immense vastness of space and alarmingly, the only place we have to live so we should be taking better care of it because once we have wrecked this planet, we don't have anywhere else to go.
Friday, 17 October 2014
Flippen Hell
Around 800,000 years ago the North was in the South and the South was in the North but the Earth's Poles flipped and caused a huge headache for compass makers of the day and they may be set to be left with boxes of stock which point the wrong way as the Earths magnetic field is preparing to flip all over again.
The Earth's magnetic field is in a weakening stage right now and will continue until it weakens sufficiently that it flips itself and the Geochronology Center at the University of California, Berkeley are saying that another flip is due soon.
'It's impossible to say whether we're just seeing the first of possibly several slight movements or a true reversal' said one geologist unhelpfully but did say that they have combed the geological time line and they do not have any evidence of catastrophes that might be related to a magnetic flip.
However, if the magnetic field weakens enough or temporarily disappears during the flip, then the Earth could be hit with dangerous amounts of solar radiation and cosmic rays which is not a good thing.
Probably not a good idea to start up a compass making business anytime soon.
The Earth's magnetic field is in a weakening stage right now and will continue until it weakens sufficiently that it flips itself and the Geochronology Center at the University of California, Berkeley are saying that another flip is due soon.
'It's impossible to say whether we're just seeing the first of possibly several slight movements or a true reversal' said one geologist unhelpfully but did say that they have combed the geological time line and they do not have any evidence of catastrophes that might be related to a magnetic flip.
However, if the magnetic field weakens enough or temporarily disappears during the flip, then the Earth could be hit with dangerous amounts of solar radiation and cosmic rays which is not a good thing.
Probably not a good idea to start up a compass making business anytime soon.
Saturday, 19 July 2014
Revisiting The Floating Island Idea
I have never seen the need for mountains, they just get in the way and the only use they serve is for a few people to climb up them and stick a flag in the summit but of course we can't do much about them as they are thousands of miles up it the air which is a lot of rock to find a use for.I did ponder here if we couldn't chop the tops off some mountains and make some more islands in the 71% of the planet that is water as way of accommodating the 7 billion and growing population of the planet but the UN never returned my phone calls and the owner of the Ben Nevis Mountainside Cafe threatened to sue me so the idea was quietly dropped.
On further reflection we may not need to go sawing mountains in half after all because a new island has appeared in the mid-Pacific made from plastic and other rubbish approximately the size of France caught between the ocean currents.
If we can get our best minds finding a way to somehow secure it together and pour some kind of sealant over it so it's a solid lump and take the top off a mountain somewhere (not Ben Nevis) and we could actually make a floating Island out of it.
Even if it isn't safe for humans, not sure about the toxicity of all that plastic but if people can't use it at least the wildlife could.
As it seems it isn't going to be cleaned up and is just going to be left there anyway, seems sense to make some use of it even if it's just for nesting birds or homeless Polar bears paddling around looking for an iceberg to cling to.
Friday, 18 July 2014
NOAA Report Not Good Reading For Earth
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) annual State of the Climate report compiles climate and weather data from around the world and is reviewed by 425 climate scientists from 57 countries and the 2013 report shows that global temperatures continued their long-term rising trend last year .
The checkup results show the planet ranged well outside of normal levels in 2013, hitting new records for greenhouse gases, Arctic heat, warm ocean temperatures and rising sea levels.
'The climate is changing more rapidly in today's world than at any time in modern civilization' said Thomas Karl, director of NOAA who blamed rising levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere for the planet's changing climate.
Most parts of the planet experienced above-average annual temperatures in 2013, NOAA officials said with Australia experiencing its warmest year on record, while there was even a new high-temperature record set at the South Pole.
The report also found that Sea levels rose by 0.15 inches, the Arctic sea ice continued in line with its projected 14% decline per decade while temperatures over land are rising faster in the Arctic than in other regions of the planet.
Typhoon Haiyan had the highest wind speed ever recorded for a tropical cyclone, 196mph, and sea surface temperatures in the Pacific hit a record high in 2013.
Climate change isn't going to be pretty and you can thank all those who dragged their heels and argue it isn't happening instead of doing something about it when we still had a chance to limit its severity.
The checkup results show the planet ranged well outside of normal levels in 2013, hitting new records for greenhouse gases, Arctic heat, warm ocean temperatures and rising sea levels.
'The climate is changing more rapidly in today's world than at any time in modern civilization' said Thomas Karl, director of NOAA who blamed rising levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere for the planet's changing climate.
Most parts of the planet experienced above-average annual temperatures in 2013, NOAA officials said with Australia experiencing its warmest year on record, while there was even a new high-temperature record set at the South Pole.
The report also found that Sea levels rose by 0.15 inches, the Arctic sea ice continued in line with its projected 14% decline per decade while temperatures over land are rising faster in the Arctic than in other regions of the planet.
Typhoon Haiyan had the highest wind speed ever recorded for a tropical cyclone, 196mph, and sea surface temperatures in the Pacific hit a record high in 2013.
Climate change isn't going to be pretty and you can thank all those who dragged their heels and argue it isn't happening instead of doing something about it when we still had a chance to limit its severity.
Friday, 11 April 2014
Global Dimming
Who would have thought that two centuries of filling the atmosphere with pollutants would have a negative effect on us down here on the ground but it seems that as well as more extreme weather its also getting darker.
Scientists looking at five decades of sunlight measurements have concluded that air pollutants caused by burning fossil fuels are reflecting sunlight back into space, preventing it reaching the surface meaning the earth has been made slightly darker.
Comparing light records from all around the world, scientists and found that some places dimmed more than others but on average the amount of sunlight that bathed the Earth has dimmed by 1-2% globally per decade between the 1950s and the 1990s.
Named 'Global Dimming' it does come with the rather dulled silver lining that as the Earth warms up and weather becomes more extreme, we won't be able to see our houses being blown away or our furniture bobbing off along the flooded streets.
Scientists looking at five decades of sunlight measurements have concluded that air pollutants caused by burning fossil fuels are reflecting sunlight back into space, preventing it reaching the surface meaning the earth has been made slightly darker.
Comparing light records from all around the world, scientists and found that some places dimmed more than others but on average the amount of sunlight that bathed the Earth has dimmed by 1-2% globally per decade between the 1950s and the 1990s.
Named 'Global Dimming' it does come with the rather dulled silver lining that as the Earth warms up and weather becomes more extreme, we won't be able to see our houses being blown away or our furniture bobbing off along the flooded streets.
Thursday, 3 April 2014
Ring Of Fire
As Johnny Cash once warned, the Ring of Fire is not to be
messed with and he should know as he fell into it, possibly whilst stoned and
drunk, and as he said it burned, burned, burned.
Fifty years after Cash warned about it, burns units around the countries of the Pacific basin could be getting busy as the real Ring of Fire is waking up following a string of earthquakes in the region.
About 90% of the world's earthquakes occur along the Ring of Fire and a rash of earthquakes within the last week along a section of the Earth infamous for seismic activity is causing concern that more tremors will occur soon.
Seismologists say that recent activity within this region doesn't necessarily mean that other tectonic plates will now adjust their position but warned that Tuesday’s 8.2 magnitude quake in Chile was preceded by a magnitude 6.7 tremor two weeks earlier.
'One of the possible scenarios that we're monitoring right now is that it is still possible that this earthquake is actually a foreshock to a much bigger earthquake. For the sake of our Chilean friends, we hope that it doesn't happen'.
And we all thought that country music was just men in cowboy hats singing miserable songs about their wives leaving them and their dogs dying.
Fifty years after Cash warned about it, burns units around the countries of the Pacific basin could be getting busy as the real Ring of Fire is waking up following a string of earthquakes in the region.
About 90% of the world's earthquakes occur along the Ring of Fire and a rash of earthquakes within the last week along a section of the Earth infamous for seismic activity is causing concern that more tremors will occur soon.
Seismologists say that recent activity within this region doesn't necessarily mean that other tectonic plates will now adjust their position but warned that Tuesday’s 8.2 magnitude quake in Chile was preceded by a magnitude 6.7 tremor two weeks earlier.
'One of the possible scenarios that we're monitoring right now is that it is still possible that this earthquake is actually a foreshock to a much bigger earthquake. For the sake of our Chilean friends, we hope that it doesn't happen'.
And we all thought that country music was just men in cowboy hats singing miserable songs about their wives leaving them and their dogs dying.
Sunday, 17 November 2013
Solar Flip Coming
Run for hills, man the lifeboats and stockpile tins of food because the Sun is about to flip it's magnetic poles!!
Blimey, sounds bad but NASA have to go and ruin a perfectly good 'WE'RE ALL DOOMED' story with the less than alarming facts that the pole reversal is a slow, gradual process that has already begun.
The Director of NASA said: 'This change will have ripple effects throughout the solar system leading to some turbulent space weather' .
So death and destruction of all life on the planet then? Nope, a cool northern lights show.
Apparently the Sun’s flips its magnetic poles on average every 11 years and is a regular part of the solar cycle meaning most of us have already lived through at least one of them previously.
The last time a magnetic flip of this sort occurred was in February of 2001. During that time, nothing really happened that can be directly contributed to the solar pole shift. Scientists are expecting much of the same from this shift.
It seems that it is highly probable that the solar magnetic flip will come and go with us hardly noticing but there is a chance that it may have an adverse effect on TV satellites but 'WE MAY MISS X-FACTOR FINAL' doesn't really have the same ring to it.
Blimey, sounds bad but NASA have to go and ruin a perfectly good 'WE'RE ALL DOOMED' story with the less than alarming facts that the pole reversal is a slow, gradual process that has already begun.
The Director of NASA said: 'This change will have ripple effects throughout the solar system leading to some turbulent space weather' .
So death and destruction of all life on the planet then? Nope, a cool northern lights show.
Apparently the Sun’s flips its magnetic poles on average every 11 years and is a regular part of the solar cycle meaning most of us have already lived through at least one of them previously.
The last time a magnetic flip of this sort occurred was in February of 2001. During that time, nothing really happened that can be directly contributed to the solar pole shift. Scientists are expecting much of the same from this shift.
It seems that it is highly probable that the solar magnetic flip will come and go with us hardly noticing but there is a chance that it may have an adverse effect on TV satellites but 'WE MAY MISS X-FACTOR FINAL' doesn't really have the same ring to it.
Saturday, 28 September 2013
Earth Flag
I did find that there is an 'Outer Space Treaty' which says nobody can lay claim to it as it is for all of mankind and nobody is allowed to put any weapons on it or testing weapons of any kind, conduct military manoeuvres or establish a military base on it or any other celestial body either.
There are a few American flags on it but as the Moon is 'for mankind', why didn't the Americans use something more representative of our planet and then i realised we don't have an Earth flag.
Does seem a bit of a oversight, especially as we are starting to creep outside of our own sphere and onto other planets and sticking flags in things is what we humans have always done.
Apparently there have been a few moves to agree to a 'Earth Flag' but none have really gained any traction so we are still flagless.
The obvious choice would be the Olympic or UN flag's but there are a few others that have gained recognition but my favourite would be the effort by James W. Cadle who designed the above in 1970. The blue circle representing Earth in the centre with a segment of a large yellow circle representing the sun and a small white circle for the moon, all on a black background has been adopted by SETI and is as close as we have to a 'Earth Flag'.
Maybe next time when China. America or the Russians land on the Moon or Mars or some other rock outside our atmosphere, we can plant the Earth Flag and not the flag of any individual country.
Sunday, 21 April 2013
Predicting Earthquakes
A strong earthquake measured at 7.1 that struck the southwestern Chinese province of Sichuan this weekend killed over 200 people, and injured over 11,500 Chinese television is reporting.
While nobody has managed to come up with a fool-proof way of predicting when and where an earthquake will occur, there are signs as i found out when writing about the HAARP conspiracy theory the other week.
When the huge earthquake struck in Japan in 2011, the ionosphere was warmed for 3 days prior to the quake due to radon and other gases escaping which has the effect of electrifying the atmosphere directly above the fault.
There was similar ionospheric warming 10 days before the 8.8 Chile earthquake in 2010 which killed 550.
According to the 2004 book, Ionospheric Precursors to Earthquakes, this is a well known effect so why are we not able to spot when the atmosphere is being heated and make the connection that a earthquake may be on the way, especially if the area being heated is above an earthquake hotspot?
The HAARP program in Alaska is an Ionosphere Research Instrument and observes the variations of Alaska's ionosphere and there are similar ionosphere measuring programs in Norway, Russia, Peru, Ukraine and Tadzhikistan so why, if the changing ionosphere is a well known precursor to earthquakes, are countries in earthquake zones not building their own programs?
Not being a scientist, i am sure i am missing something because looking for any heating in the atmosphere above fault lines just sounds too simple to act as a predictive tool.
While nobody has managed to come up with a fool-proof way of predicting when and where an earthquake will occur, there are signs as i found out when writing about the HAARP conspiracy theory the other week.
When the huge earthquake struck in Japan in 2011, the ionosphere was warmed for 3 days prior to the quake due to radon and other gases escaping which has the effect of electrifying the atmosphere directly above the fault.
There was similar ionospheric warming 10 days before the 8.8 Chile earthquake in 2010 which killed 550.
According to the 2004 book, Ionospheric Precursors to Earthquakes, this is a well known effect so why are we not able to spot when the atmosphere is being heated and make the connection that a earthquake may be on the way, especially if the area being heated is above an earthquake hotspot?
The HAARP program in Alaska is an Ionosphere Research Instrument and observes the variations of Alaska's ionosphere and there are similar ionosphere measuring programs in Norway, Russia, Peru, Ukraine and Tadzhikistan so why, if the changing ionosphere is a well known precursor to earthquakes, are countries in earthquake zones not building their own programs?
Not being a scientist, i am sure i am missing something because looking for any heating in the atmosphere above fault lines just sounds too simple to act as a predictive tool.
Saturday, 9 February 2013
Gonna Need A New Clock
Sometimes, in those boring moments when i am sat in traffic or in the adverts breaks of , I do wonder what would happen if for some inexplicable reason the Earth began to spin around the other way. Obviously in the bit where it slowed down and stopped before spinning again the other way we would all be flung off into space but what effect would it have on those of us who had held on to something during the transition.
Then, being a girly, i think of shopping and buying new shoes and the Earth spinning thought goes away but as i cannot think of anything that could happen to make the Earth change its spinning pattern, i don't worry about it but then along comes science and tells us that the earth spinning could be speeding up due to the warming seas.
Felix Landerer of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, Germany have said that as the temperature of the oceans rises, the resulting changes in density and circulation would cause a net transfer of mass to the higher latitudes closer to Earth's axis of rotation.
Nope, i didn't understand it either so he dumbed it down for us a tad, 'Think of an ice skater who is spinning. When you stretch your arms out you slow down, and when you bring your arms closer to your body you spin faster. Earth, it seems, will hug itself a little bit tighter because of global warming'.
So what will a more rapidly spinning Earth mean?
Shorter flights is my first thought, followed by that chic black dress i saw in Debenham's this morning (damn this female brain) and then how the clocks would need to change as the 24 hour day would be out the window, then how it would need to be a silver wall clock to go with the decor in the front room and they had some nice ones in Argos, then we would age quicker because shorter days would mean our birthdays would come around quicker unless we added some more days to the year which would mean new calendars.
We would probably weigh less but we would have to balance that with increased earthquake and volcanic activity due to internal heat generation but most importantly, the one crucial and critical thing that should not be overlooked is if i changed the curtains, i may be able to get one of those retro clocks with the wooden surrounds from Next.
Then, being a girly, i think of shopping and buying new shoes and the Earth spinning thought goes away but as i cannot think of anything that could happen to make the Earth change its spinning pattern, i don't worry about it but then along comes science and tells us that the earth spinning could be speeding up due to the warming seas.
Felix Landerer of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, Germany have said that as the temperature of the oceans rises, the resulting changes in density and circulation would cause a net transfer of mass to the higher latitudes closer to Earth's axis of rotation.
Nope, i didn't understand it either so he dumbed it down for us a tad, 'Think of an ice skater who is spinning. When you stretch your arms out you slow down, and when you bring your arms closer to your body you spin faster. Earth, it seems, will hug itself a little bit tighter because of global warming'.
So what will a more rapidly spinning Earth mean?
Shorter flights is my first thought, followed by that chic black dress i saw in Debenham's this morning (damn this female brain) and then how the clocks would need to change as the 24 hour day would be out the window, then how it would need to be a silver wall clock to go with the decor in the front room and they had some nice ones in Argos, then we would age quicker because shorter days would mean our birthdays would come around quicker unless we added some more days to the year which would mean new calendars.
We would probably weigh less but we would have to balance that with increased earthquake and volcanic activity due to internal heat generation but most importantly, the one crucial and critical thing that should not be overlooked is if i changed the curtains, i may be able to get one of those retro clocks with the wooden surrounds from Next.
Friday, 9 November 2012
Life On An Ocean Wave
We have a few options such as using the space above our head or the ground beneath our feet but building massive space stations are beyond us and living underground has the obvious problems of lack of sunlight and ventilation so the only option left is to build in the sea.
We are already building structures in the oceans such as oil rigs, forts and tunnels and there are several man-made islands off the coast of Dubai so we have the technology and we have the sea so why are we not doing it?
The Pacific Ocean is 65 million square miles which is equivalent to nine Russia's. We could build three islands the size of the three largest countries slap bang in the middle of the 30 million square mile Atlantic Ocean and still have over 17 million square miles of Atlantic left for the fish to do there thing.
A new Britain could be piled up on the other side of Ireland and as the old one holds over 65 million people that would relieve all of the overcrowding we face here in our cities.
The obvious problems would be material and the expense but a bit of levelling of the landscape would provide the material but coming up with the money might be a bit tricky and the last thing the world needs is a new country that is privately owned by a company.
It's a thought though and as more and more people are forced to live on areas that were previously deemed undesirable through lack of space, it might become something that we have to consider because we can't go up or down, only out.
Saturday, 3 November 2012
End Of The World 2012: Option Two
Of course there is always the outside chance that an ancient Mayan God won't descend to Earth to wipe us out with great vengeance and furious anger so my back up to avoiding that awkward explanation to Uncle Ernie after the Queen's Speech that i didn't get him a bottle of Whiskey this year as i presumed we would all be dead is The Web Bot Project which also says that we won't be here for turkey and brussel sprouts this year.
It is predicting a cataclysmic event that will devastate the planet in December, probably a reversing of Earth's magnetic poles. Phew, I may have dodged the bullet there then.
The Web Bot Project, refers to a computer program that is claimed to be able to predict future events by tracking keywords on the Internet and claims to have predicted several events prior to them occurring, most notably the September 11 attacks, the Northeastern United States blackout, the Colombia Space Shuttle disaster, the Indian Ocean Tsunami, Hurricane Katrina and even Dick Cheney blasting his friend in the face while out hunting so it has some decent form.
So if the magnetic fields are going to reverse in mid-December, what should we expect as a way of going to meet our maker en mass?
Just like any child of Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne, it was never going to be pretty but the university of North Carolina physics department has a handy online guide to effects of Geomagnetic Reversal on humans and it seems we will go due to deadly cosmic rays killing most, if not all, living creatures on the Earth's surface. Only those living in deep caves would be safe.
It also notes that recently it was noticed that the strength of the Earth’s magnetic field has declined by about 10% over the course of the 160 years that records have been kept.
On the bright side disruption of Earth’s magnetic field would also result in auroras being visible over much of the planet rather than just at the poles as they are now so that's a bonus, a nice view as our innards fry in unmentionable agony as well as not having to suffer the embarrassment of having to ask the shop assistant in the record shop if they have a copy of 'The Greatest Hits of Phil Collins' that Auntie Gladys had been hinting at.
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