Tag Archives: Earth

Scientists to announce discovery of new Earth-like planet

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That’s the story.  Apparently it’s pretty close to us, AND, it has a red dwarf sun ( that’s what we got ).  In other words, it could be just like Earth in all the ways it takes to support human-like life.  That’s the good news.  The chances of that happening, in my opinion, are about 100% eventually.  We just don’t have the technology right now to do it reasonably.  We can guess with as much supporting information as we can get.  But, we won’t know for sure for a while.  This video explains the chances pretty good.  It’s a cool video.

The bad news is IF it’s this place:

The planet being Alpha Centauri Bb, it would be JUST 4.3 light years away.  That would mean once we get a telescope powerful enough to zoom in on that planet, what we would see would be stuff occurring 4.3 years ago.  Not too bad folks.  Not too bad.  So, if we sent a microwave transmission to them, it would take about 8.6 years to get an answer.  If, there was anyone there at all.  That’s doable I suppose.  Then, the problem gets a little more complicated.  IF we did find someone was there and intelligent enough to understand what we sent them and we wanted to visit, we’d have to travel a lot slower.  At this time, Voyager I should be traveling at about 39,000 mph.  That’s pretty dang fast.  At that rate, it took it about 18 years to exit our solar system.  At that same rate, it would take about 661,538,461.5 years.

That’s just to get there.

And, this story comes from articles written by space.com.  NASA released a report today that studied the temperature of rooftops in cities.  We’ll never get anywhere soon.

Solar Cycle and global warming?

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The entire time I’ve been blogging here, which is about five years now, I’ve had a prevailing question, how much does the solar cycle affect Earth’s climate?  Although a lot of scientists have sort of equivocated on the issue, saying it could, but not much, they eventually, when pressed, get a little more succinct:

For some reason, people want to blame the Sun for global warming.

This, despite there being no evidence for it, and plenty of evidence against it.

Now, the problem with this line of questioning is both sides leave no room at all for the issue I have had for a long time.  It’s quite simple.  We don’t know man’s impact on global warming, and, we don’t know the sun’s impact on global warming.  The degree difference is huge.  In order for man to stick his thumb in the dyke and stop global warming requires a world-wide effort that countries like China and India have no interest whatsoever in pursuing at this time.  As far as the major economies go, it’s pretty much the US alone.  I live in the US.  The economic impact of doing what the rest of the world refuses to do is overwhleming.  And, quite frankly, the assured technology to do this has sucked so far.  One of the big ideas to green the planet was light bulbs.  Now, not only have I had to endure this repeatedly:

green light bulbs 

But, I recently had one explode.  That’s right, mercury was sprayed all over a bathroom.  The EPA, if they had known, would have sealed off my house because it instantly became a health hazard.  So, I’ve not been convinced to date that man has all the answers to solve a problem when they will attest they don’t even understand the factors affecting the problem.  Now, for the duration of this blog, I have stuck my butt out on the line.  I was curious how the sun would affect a mild tropical disturbance called Katrina.  I was told there was no way.  Being as such, I pondered solar activity on the 2008-2009 winter.  I guessed it would be colder.  Turned out the Farmer’s Almanac forecast a cold winter based on, you guessed it, solar activity.  We were right, the NOAA and others were wrong.  I forecast a mild hurricane season last year based on the same evidence, it was practically non-existant.  So, it became obvious to me there was some connection.  Not the single driving force the global warming activists try to pin the discussion to, but definitely something there.  In the meantime, the learned educators and scientists kept making the same claim:

People who try to tie global warming to the Sun are in for a losing fight, it seems, though in many cases this just makes them scream all the louder. But they have very very spotty (har har) evidence, and what they do have does not come close to explaining the rise in temperature we see on Earth.

I mean, this same guy previously had stated:

Of course it’s possible. There are links to the Sun’s behavior and Earth’s climate (look up the Maunder minimum for some interesting reading), and it would be foolish to simply deny this. However, this is a vastly complex and difficult system to understand, and simply claiming “Yes it’s due to the Sun” or “No it’s not due to the Sun” is certainly naive.

But, the caveat always is when asking if the sun could have an impact on climate, they answer is “possibly” or “probably”, there is evidence to support it.  However, if the assertion is how much does the sun affect climate change, ie global warming, the answer then becomes “no way, denier!”, and I’m taunted for shouting loudly that the world is flat and Apollo never occured.

Well, imagine my curiosity when I saw this headline today:

Sun’s Cycle Alters Earth’s Climate

Weather patterns across the globe are partly affected by connections between the 11-year solar cycle of activity, Earth’s stratosphere and the tropical Pacific Ocean, a new study finds.

 The study could help scientists get an edge on eventually predicting the intensity of certain climate phenomena, such as the Indian monsoon and tropical Pacific rainfall, years in advance.

 The sun is the ultimate source of all the energy on Earth; its rays heat the planet and drive the churning motions of its atmosphere……

……But the Indian monsoon, Pacific sea surface temperatures and precipitation, and other regional climate patterns are largely driven by rising and sinking air in Earth’s tropics and subtropics. The new study could help scientists use solar-cycle predictions to estimate how that circulation, and the regional climate patterns related to it, might vary over the next decade or two.

What this does to me is scream a huge, huge, FAIL for those who deny the solar cycle has any impact on global warming, global climate change, or whatever you wish to call it this week. 

The question has never been whether the sun affects Earth’s climate.  The question has always been how much it affects Earth’s climate.  The Farmer’s Almanac swears by it.  I swear by it.  What I also swear by is the fact that Earth’s climate is affected by a LOT more than mankind.  And, man has no clue right now where it’s heading, why it’s heading there, what his impact on it is, or even what the climate is supposed to be.  But, the global warming community is more than ready to attack anyone who asks those questions.

Now, what the hell do I do with about fifty of those damned spring bulbs that are failing and exploding and jeapordizing the health of all living things on this planet?  And, for the record, I predicted a cooler summer.  We’re shooting for record lows here this weekend.

New planets and old questions

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I was reading in Livescience and other places about scientists finding another new planet.  No big deal any more, they’re apparently all over the place.  However, this one was spotted because of its proximity to a white dwarf.  Now, white dwarfs are when a star is dieing.  When our existance on Earth will cease is when our sun turns into one of these white dwarfs.  The article goes on to say we have nothing really to worry about since our Sun will not become a white dwarf for about a billion years or so.

I gotta wonder tho, how do the really know this?  I mean, really?  If they’re happening right now to other suns, then it’s obviously an option.  I know it has to do with mass and helium and stuff like that, but what is the magic bullet that turns our rather convenient sun into a degenerative white dwarf that gobbles up planets and makes our life unberable?  Let’s spend some time seeing if we can figure out how to keep that from happening so that IF the math used to figure a billion years or so is along the lines of the math they used to send a lander directly six feet under the surface of Mars, we do have a backup plan?

Flux Transfer Events

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Scientists have more or less discovered something that is kind of new.  Sorta. 

During the time it takes you to read this article, something will happen high overhead that until recently many scientists didn’t believe in. A magnetic portal will open, linking Earth to the sun 93 million miles away. Tons of high-energy particles may flow through the opening before it closes again, around the time you reach the end of the page.

They even drew a picture of what it looks like:

Courtesy NASA

Courtesy NASA

Now, I’m no scientist, so I don’t really understand what this means.  The assumption made based on observations so far, which are extremely limited, is that these portals form every eight minutes.  Now, I am curious, I wonder if this is regular or erratic?  Do they ebb and flow?  Are there sometimes more, and sometimes less?  Most importanly, if their frequency does change, how would this affect the Earth?  For every action there is a reaction, what is the reaction?  SOME scientists are quite certain there is no connection between the sun and Earth’s climate, which is impossible to believe, how do these Events affect Earth’s climate?  If we didn’t know they existed before now, we certainly have no clue at this time what their impact on climate is, if any.  I’ll be keeping an eye on Flux Transfer Events.  If for no other reason, the coolness of their description fascinates me.

Drake’s theory and why man may never be the aliens on another planet

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Dang, that long title is guaranteed to screw up some formatting.  But, it addresses a whole bunch of my posts very well.  What got this post going was a recently released article written by Ian O’Neill for Universe Today.  In it, he cites scientists who conclude:

It is highly improbable that humans will ever explore beyond the Solar System. This downbeat opinion comes from the Joint Propulsion Conference in Hartford, Connecticut, where future space propulsion challenges were discussed and debated. It is widely acknowledged that any form of interstellar travel would require huge advances in technology, but it would seem that the advances required are in the realms of science fiction and are not feasible. Using current technology would take tens of thousands of years, and even advanced concepts could take hundreds. But above all else, there is the question of fuel: How could a trip to Proxima Centauri be achieved if we’d need 100 times more energy than the entire planet currently generates?

Now, I have breeched that topic here before.  Namely, the technology involved to travel with ease to other planets is profound by our standards today.  These scientists put it in even simpler context by basically saying it’s not there.  That no matter how powerful we make our thrust, it will still take hundreds, if not thousands of years to get there.  That’s been my point regarding UFO’s.  Why would they sacrifice the resources necessary, and the lives, to travel thousands of years to gut cows and taunt people in small towns? There’s just not been a logical argument to date made for UFO’s.

However, the assumption has always been made that the technology we need, as well as the aliens piloting UFO’s effortlessly throught the universe, is just not here yet.  We have the concepts down, we jsut haven’t mastered the technology.  One guy on the Universe Today post even puts the math there to assert it is feasible:

Essel Says:
August 20th, 2008 at 4:22 am

Very poorly researched article.

“According to Brice N. Cassenti, an associate professor with the Department of Engineering and Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, at least 100 times the total energy output of the entire world would be required for the voyage”

Assuming a cruising speed of c/10, the enregy required to reach that speed would be 1/2 mv^2, a payload of 10 tonnes would need an energy of 1/2 X (10,000) x (3 X 10^8/10)^2 = 4.5 X 10^18 Joules. Earth consumes more than 6 X 10^20 Joules every year. That is 1/133 rd of energy consumption p.a.

Considering a total roundtrip of 85 years and two accelration and deaccelration phases. The eneregy required would be 4 X 4.5 X 10^18 joules over 85 years that would be 1/2833 times the consumption of earth energy during comparable time.
If we send a compact probe of 100 Kgs the requirement would come down by 100 times……

Simple huh?  I don’t have a clue about math at that level, so I’ll just take his word for it.  All he’s proving is the energy required is actually available, maybe.  Problem is, we have never figured a way to generate that much energy in a concentrated situation.  When, and if, we do, all our energy issues will have been solved.  Then, once we’ve solved all our energy issues, the issue of time has to be addressed.  The most popular theory is some type of warp drive.  In essence, shortening the distance between to points.  That comes from Star Trek.  It makes too much sense to ignore.  Only problem is no one has a clue, mechanically, how to make it happen.  The laws of physics simply prevent it from happening as we understand them now.  The problem, as I see it, is if you reach the speed of light, you become light.  Your atoms spray all over the place and your energy goes flying in all directions.   Just doesn’t sound too good to me.  So, we have to get around that pesky issue.  However, since the fastest we’re going now is about 50,000 mph, and light, in regards to warping, travels at 670,616,629 mph, we’ve got a long ways to go before we have to worry about that.  And when we do get to that point, it would only take about 4.2 years traveling at the speed of light.  And, if you got there without hitting anything at all, not even a grain of dust, at over 670 million miles per hour, you probably see something like this:

And nothing else.  We’ve been pointing our telescopes at Proxima for a long time.  If that trip proves fruitless, then the trip starts getting a lot longer real quick:

Proxima Centauri 4.2
Rigil Kentaurus 4.3
Barnard’s Star 6
Wolf 359 7.7
Luyten 726-8A 8.4
Luyten 726-8B 8.4
Sirius A 8.6
Sirius B 8.6
Ross 154 9.4
Ross 248 10.4
Ross 128 10.9
Luyten 789-6 11.2
Procyon A 11.4
Procyon B 11.4

Once you get past the closest 15, it starts jumping pretty dang quick.  Within a very brief span, you’ll easily be past 100 light years.  In a not too lengthy list, you’re past 1,000.  So even if you’re travelling at warp 10, you’re still talking, as I understand warping, decades, if not centuries at the speed of light.  My main issue with warping tho is what do you do with all the stuff between point A and point B?  Dodging comets and asteroids at fifty times the speed of light just sounds real dicey to me.

OK, so now you’ve figured how to get more energy than mankind has ever generated, you’ve figured out how to bend matter, you’ve figured out how to travel faster than mass is known to exist, and you’ve figured out how to dodge stuff while traveling billions of miles an hour.  The question then becomes, why would you even want to?  The plausible explanations have always been that Earth was dying and man would be looking for new places to live.  That seems plausible enough other than if Earth were truly in that dire a situation, I doubt the technology would be available to do it.  In simpler terms, that technology would be used to fix the problems here on Earth.  If you can do all that, you can fix the planet.  Or, man’s curiosity just keeps expanding and the desire to explore strange new worlds kicks in.  That would be about the only one I would buy off-hand, but the technology would have to be there and ready to use before man could put the concept to practice.  In other words, why would a person be interested, and willing to finance the development of the technology involved in inter-stellar travel other than to do inter-stellar travel?  We developed rockets not for space travel, but to bomb other countries.  Once the tchnology was developed to destroy ourselves, we put men on them and went to the moon.  Even after fifty years, most rockets are still intended to do others harm.  If someone developed the technology necessary to generate the energy necessary to travel at warp speed, who’s to say it wouldn’t be used for destructive purposes initially?  And, if it is, man won’t have the resources to use it for much else.  So, to say the least, man, with the mindset man has right now, isn’t mature enough to deal with the power necessary for inter-stellar travel.  When man does develop that maturity, we won’t be the same animal we are now.

A lot of sci-fi movies have pondered alternative means of transportation.  I think my personal favorite has to be from the movie Contact:

contact

You got this huge magnetosphere and you drop someone into it while the turbines are spinning incredibly rapidly.  At that point, the pod is magically transported exactly where it was intended to go.  You never really know where it is she is, but she’s there.  Since it apparently distorts time as well, no one ever knows she was even gone.  Pretty cool huh?  All problems solved.  Distance becomes a non-issue entirely.  However, we’re not certain what exactly she goes to.  Even though she travels great distances, when she’s there she has no pod.  So, I’m too sure this concept is too well thought out.  I’m not sure I want to get somewhere and have nothing when I get there.  So, as neat as this concept is, it’s not terribly useful.  Other than Concept, most sci-fi just ignores all the issues of physics and just gives us inter-stellar travel with ease.

Bottom line, I tend to agree with the scientists who are skeptical of inter-stellar travel in man’s distant fufure.  Sure, technology has exploded in the last century, but it’s still bound by the very simple laws of physics.  None of those laws have been broken in any way.  They haven’t even changed.  The “next level” for science will be changing and breaking the current understanding of physics.  And, given man’s current fear, nay paranioa, over things he doesn’t understand, I don’t expect those laws of physics to be changed any time soon.

Flippin polarities and the ozone hole

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Now, my biggest problem in life, but something that gives me great amusement and mental stimulation, is I just don’t take anything hardly as black and white when it comes to the big pictures.  If I’m told something, I just store it.  If it later is contradicted and just left taken for granted, I have issues with it.  That’s the main reason I blog in sciences, I’d like to get some answers to those contradictions.  The hole in the ozone layer panic of the 70′s and 80′s is one of those contradictions that are just left taken for granted that science is absolute in its knowledge and we should all jump when they change their minds without questioning the ramifications.

Some background here I would assume is in order.

SImply for illustrating what I am referring to, I reference theozonehole.com.  These peeps are dedicated to preserving life as we know it on Earth by assuring people are aware of the dangers of destroying the ozone layer by using chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and halons.  Starting in the late 1970′s, we started learning about the ozone layer and how man’s use of CFC’s was destroying it so rapidly that life would end as we knew it pretty much right about now.  The entire ozone would be gone within thirty years and we would all die of UV exposure.  So, some countries decided they didn’t want to die of skin cancer and banned most CFCs ( most didn’t ).  Before too long, things seemed to level off if you watched things like satellite images.  However, according to those who study such things, the picture was not so rosy:

They come to this conclusion by assuming the Dobson units were substantially higher before they started recording it scientifically.  According to this assumption, we’re still in trouble.  And, given the fact we’ve supposedly banned most CFC’s, the fact the ozone hole is still much, much larger than it was pre-1975, we’re gonna die anyway.

But, what they have never addressed, that I am aware of, is the effect of some things on the ozone layer itself.  Now, they have addressed things like solar flares blowing away some of it occasionally.  But, what if there was a much more regular mundane affector on the ozone layer?

This is where this post jumps the shark, if you will:

….the researchers describe how they used high-brilliance, circularly-polarized X-ray beams at the Advanced Photon Source to probe the magnetism of gadolinium and germanium ions as the material underwent its bond-breaking magneto-structural transition.

In simpler terms, they are using magnetism to affect gases.  By applying a heavy dose of magnetism it breaks the atomic bonds that hold those gases together.  They then turn into something else.

Who’s to say the magnetic poles of the Earth don’t do the same thing?  Has anyone researched that possibility?  If so, then the news of this week means something a lot bigger than it’s been given credit so far:

Something beneath the surface is changing Earth’s protective magnetic field, which may leave satellites and other space assets vulnerable to high-energy radiation.
The gradual weakening of the overall magnetic field can take hundreds and even thousands of years. But smaller, more rapid fluctuations within months may leave satellites unprotected and catch scientists off guard, new research finds.

A new model uses satellite data from the past nine years to show how sudden fluid motions within the Earth’s core can alter the magnetic envelope around our planet. This represents the first time that researchers have been able to detect such rapid magnetic field changes taking place over just a few months.

That is an interesting article, you need to read it all.  The underlying assumption is made that the Earh’s magnetic core is not stable, but fluid.  In the past, about 750,000 years ago, it flipped polarities due to this fluidity.  They’re not sure why it flipped tho.  But, I’ve not seen where the comparison of Earth’s climate has been compared to the events of the flipping magnetic field of circa 750,000 BC.  The reason I ask this is because I had always been led to believe that the flipping was somewhat instantly in time.  However, what if it was over decades, if not centuries?  What would the climate have experienced during that flip?

The ozone hole, coincidentally or not, hangs over the positive pole of the Earth.  Now, adding the two theories together, you get a “coincedence” ( or not ), that as the magnetic field has weakened over the last decade, the ozone hole has shrunk.   Simultaneously, the climate at the Antarctic has warmed.  Some theorists conclude that the shrinking ozone hole is the primary culprit to this warming.  The assumption that the “flip” is preceded by a weakening magnetic field means that over a period of time, if these two theories are connected at all, is that the polar caps would warm.  That is what’s happening right now.  Then, over a period of time, as the Earth’s core continues to slow down and the magnetic field weakens even more, then the Earth over-all will start to warm up as the ozone layer allows UV rays to enter farther into our stratosphere.  That is what’s happening right now.  Weird huh?

Then, over time, the core will slow down and the magnetic field will do it’s flip and the Earth will get warmer.  Then as the core speeds back up, the magnetic fields will increase, causing larger ozone holes over the North Pole, and a thinner ozone layer world-wide.  This would cause a cooling Earth climate and lead to the next ice age.

Simple huh?

And all Livescience was concerned with was the affect on communications satellites.

And Al Gore thinks carbon credits will stop all that.

The Lucifer Project

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The Lucifer Project is a conspiracy theory I can not believe has eluded me for some time.  Now, it’s hard to find decent graphics to illustrate what this has mind, so you have to start with this:
jupiter from 2010

Now, the concept in 2010 was the aliens that controllled the obelisks decided Man wasn’t doing such a good job with the intelligence he had given and decided to start afresh.  They didn’t go too far away, jsut a few planets over in the same solar system.  The added mass to Jupiter which caused it to explode into a small star that not only eliminated nighttime on Earth, it provided the heat and ingredients to create life on Europa. 

All These Planets Are Yours Except Europa, Attempt No Landing There…
…Use Them Together, Use Them In peace

Man immediately disobeyed the prime directive.

So, using Arthur Clarke as their motivation, some immediately began wondering what would happen if you just simply dropped a large nuclear bomb on Jupiter.  Well, we did that in 1994.  A little cloud appeared briefly on Jupiter.  That folks, gave birth to the Lucifer Project Conspiracy.  At the end of the Galileo Jupiter probe’s mission, NASA decided to simply crash Galileo into Jupiter.  Now, some think it was to save Europa, some think it was an accident.  And, some think it was to ignite Jupiter thereby creating a new sun, killing off most of humanity, and creating a new garden of Eden for those who survived.  The people who espouse the Lucifer Project believe the non-reporting about the little dark spot on Jupiter is evidence supporting NASA’s secret mission.  And, that apparently all publicly and privately funded astronomers were in on it too.  That would make them a part of the Illuminati I suppose.

Well, since there are no more nuclear bombs destined for Jupiter any time soon, The Lucifer Project had to adjust their plan to accomodate the “end is near” philosophy that makes any conspiracy theory feel important.  The adjusted plan uses the Cassini probe igniting Saturn.  They have lots of science to support their theory.

Only one problem, Saturn doesn’t have the mass to support itself even if “lit”.  Neither does Jupiter.  That’s why Arthur Clarke was so brilliant, he adds MASS to create the ignition, not fire.

So, if Cassini does finish its life by crashing into Saturn.  Most likely, we’ll get a dark spot on Saturn for a few days and every astronomer will know why it’s there.  More likely, we won’t get anything.

But, we’ll have to wait a while.  Cassini’s mission has been extended a couple more years already.

Global Cooling is back?

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Watch out peeps, things might get cooler before it gets hotter.  According to Dr. Oleg Sorokhtin, Merited Scientist of Russia and fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, and a staff researcher of the Oceanology Institute, the Earth is entering a cyclical cooling phase.  Researchers are already saying 2008 could be cooler than normal due to the effects of La Nina.  In addition, we are entering the new seven year solar cycle as well as the 200 year solar cycle as well.  Oleg goes a lot deeper than just solar cycles, just have to read it all. 

So, I’ve presented two arguments here.  Both quantified.  Al Gore and his bunch say the Earth will continue to get hotter regardless of what nature would have dictated.  And now, I’ve got Oleg and his thinkers who think the Earth will cool itself off regardless of what Man does ( which I imagine is limited to man’s normal activities within reason ).

I guess we’ll just see who’s more right.

Personally, I’m betting on Oleg.