Most Viewed Science Blogs (319)

In studying a book on volcanoes in a university library, I found the book also contained information on what caused the ice age. A team of scientists around the world studied deep core samples taken from the earth, tree ring studies around the world, ocean current studies, and input from volcano experts and agreed on the sequence of events that caused the ice age.

Each volcano emits a unique chemical composition in its lava, and one volcano expert couldn’t understand why he had collected identical lava samples from a wide ranging area where no volcano peak or caldera was apparent. After viewing satellite photos of the area he realized the samples were from such a huge caldera that was so wide and the slope so gradual it wasn’t discernable from the ground. Other data they studied included some ancient writings that said the earth had been 30 days in cold darkness without sunlight and people were starving to death.

The scientists concluded the sequence of events causing the ice age were:
There was a period of global warming.
The ice caps melted.
Chunks of ice floated into the warm gulf stream currents.
This messed up the well balanced current flow in all the worlds oceans.
This caused the tectonic plates to shift slightly.
This resulted in increased earthquakes and volcanoes.
A large enough volcano erupted that its ash blocked the sun and cooled the earth and caused the ice age.

Does this sequence of events sound familiar??? Could Yellowstone erupt and cause the next ice age???

I have long understood that the maths in calculations were reversible.
When it was implied if not stated out loud that the physics the maths represent was also reversible, my intuition rebelled against this notion but I could never account for a reason it could not be so.
NOW I understand why it cannot be. Entropy, It must increase.
We might reverse Time itself, but Entropy will still have to increase.
Locally entropy may be reversed, but universally entropy will still increase.

Do you like sunny weather or rainy weather sunshine feels great so can rain when you want to cool off on a hot summer day

i was having a dream about my teeth falling out.
a noise at my front door woke me up.
then voices.
footsteps in my hall & back room.
someone shouted "Hello".
"Hello?!" i shouted in a "wtf?" kinda way
i got up.
opened my living room/bedroom door to having a torch shone in my face.
it was the cops.
apparently when i came back from the store earlier i hadn't closed my front door properly.
it musta just swung open while i was asleep & i guess one of the neighbours called the cops thinking my place had been broken into. i think the cop said that they'd tried shouting in & got no reply. f*ck what a mess my place is.
great.
now these cops'll tell 2 friends...

(another story)
http://www.connectingsingles.com/blog_67958_1/these_kinds_of_people_part_1.htm

Who believes there is other life in our universe?

Conversely - Post-Glacial Rebound due to melting Greenland & Antarctic icecaps may cause Earthquakes -

* Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology

Today is the 10,483rd anniversary of the invention of the wheel. It's creator, Ug was born in the village of Grot (population 15) and was orphaned at a young age when his hunter/gatherer parents were eaten by a giant carnivorous chipmunk (now extinct).

Some of Ug's early inventions included the stick, and the sharpened stick. It was obvious to anyone who knew Ug that he was destined for greatness.

Ug moved to the big city (population 27) to carve his niche as a...niche carver and during the course of his endeavors, Ug serendipitously realized that large stones could be rolled if he chipped away the jagged edges.

Ug was working on a particularly large stone when he decided to rest and have a beer... or five. As Ug later tried to push the stone up a hill, he inadvertently discovered potential energy when he stumbled and lost his footing. He apparently had one too many before getting behind the wheel.


This day in history also marks the 10,483rd anniversary of the first road kill.
..................................................................
*This is a slightly altered version of something I posted years ago.

So if by compressing an electron ring I generate fusion heat, what happeens if my device enlarges the orbit of an electron?

If motion causes gravity and mass, if a massive object is placed at rest to the Universe, does it disappear?

If we smooth out the peaks and valleys over a portion of the fabric of space time, will the effect be local or will it spread?

I fear both the USSR and the US made a grievous ill considered decision in 1975 when those external govt.s decided in encourage the civil war in Lebanon for their own political agendas. Although some back then forecast the introduction of chaos to a stable system the outside countries saw no downside in that. Perhaps because their leaders then lacked the IQ to understand the math they were being warned of.

Chaos Theory predicts if there is an element of chaos, then it will spread. The growth rate can be mathematically predicted by fractal analysis.

In the 40 years since the beginning of the Lebanese Civil War we have seen many groups with elements of behavioral similarity come and go or change name. Intitially when it was just Lebanon the number was small as fractal growth would predict. There is a paradigm called the percolation threshold. As a structure changes from many disconnected parts into one, we say that percolation has occurred. There is a threshold value at which disconnected elements begin to merge together. Civilization may not be a natural structure and Chaos may much prefer anarchy.

In the 40 years one country after another has been destabilized by one outside government or another with though only to short term needs of the disrupter. Congo, Syria, Irag, Afghanistan, etc.

This has created many areas of land mass where nothing rules and the stage is set for what is called the Forest Fire Model of fractal growth. The more densely the cities are packed the more fuel to burn.

Comparing the emergence and spread of violent radical groups over 40 years in the areas destabilized very scarily gives almost identical results to running a fractal generation program in Forest Fire Mode.

The mathematical modeling of the growth of new terrorist members can be predicted using the fundamental concepts of the Brownian Motion (a predictive study for the movement of solid molecules in a liquid environment). The fractals will grow dendrites and new fractals will coerce at the end of the dendrites. Perhaps the Dendrites are analogous to social media and other communication methods? In any case once the process begins in a percolated area, very soon the screen turns black.

When a given percolated area has turned black, the production of fractals does not necessarily stop. We come to a mathematical Chaos Theory called Strange Attractor and some new things called insect fractals and animal fractals. Where they differ from normal fractals is they do not require percolated areas to appear and grow. They may grow in areas where nothing else is found, for our purposes villages without education or jobs.

Like all fractals these multiply too until the area around them is solid. They will be very similar in form to triangle and other types of fractals growing around them and dendrites may soon stretch between them.

Why I say we all messed up is when I run some of the models in simulations of the mideast, middle to North Africa, and Southern Europe, a few hours after begining, everything turns black.

You can bomb a square to try to keep it white, but the instant you stop, those little black dots begin to appear and grow. Anarchists and Chaos Theory love each other.

The only solutions for a change of outcome I see is to reinstall governments and robust infrastructure in the areas previously intentionally destabilized. Yes, who bells the cat?

Still the concept is to block the black fractals by already having nice stable, blue or green or yellow fractals of our own there already. Yes, the black will try to circle and smother, but our own fractals will be doing the same. The secret is to recognize the problem and plant blue and yellow beacons of hope where there today is only white space.