Geobulletin alpha

Kids Can Learn About Physics at This Block Party, Too! 

by Kavita Self The Houston Museum of Natural Science at Sugar Land’s summer special exhibit, Block Party, Too! opened Friday, June 3. At the End of School Festival the day before, patrons got an exclusive sneak peek at the summer fun, and … Continue reading

Geotech #10 - Semantics over physics 

In a courtroom, everything hinges on the turn of a phrase.  This is the theme over the last few years.  Whatever looks and sounds good.  So somewhere there is a law that says "You must install useless silt filters."  and this is what they are faithfully doing. Can't wait to see what they are going to so with the cloth.  Maybe throw it into the river.

USGS Joins the March to New-Science (Philosophy) 

The Big Gus has joined our favourite warmists, in fleeing physics.  Their new map is totally qualitative and can mean anything they want to mean, day to day.  Not a speck of physics. Ever since the warmists brought out their spurious correlation, this 'new-speak science' has become just too attractive to the PR departments that now run all universities and government institutions.  The

The efficiency of the Earth as a heat radiator - Part 1 

This is the inspiration. I've done this before, but I'll do it again.  This is about the physics of the earth, or geophysics, which our warmists never want to think about.  Not that I'm saying they are wrong, but they like to push out all the variables and uncertainties.  I'll never 'deny' what they believe in. If we look at the Earth for last billion years or so that we have a good

John McIntosh (1923-2015) 

 A Paleontologia de dinossauros perdeu um dos seus dóceis gigantes: John "Jack" McIntosh.A notícia é-nos dada por Dan Chure:Daniel Chure6 hrs · Vernal, UT, United States · PASSING OF JACK McINTOSH. It is with deep regret that I report that John S. McIntosh passed away this morning. He was 92 years old at the time of his death. Funeral arrangements have not been announced, He was well known, respected, and loved by many and over the years he helped innumerable [...]

How A Simple Truth Can Be A Most Effective Lie 

The Climate’s Always Changing This has to be the climate denier myth of the year, and it’s especially popular among politicians. I know of more than one climate expert, who upon hearing it from someone, likes to say:  “Really?? I had no idea!! All those courses, all that math! All that physics! No one ever said a thing about that! I should get my tuition back!”  The most effective propaganda,

Steven Vogel has died. 

Scientist Steven Vogel died today. In early 2007 I called Steven Vogel out of the blue -- we'd never met -- expecting a short, maybe even hostile response from such an important man.  We talked for over an hour that first time, and that hour profoundly influenced me and Little River Research.  I knew there was a need for a small turnkey teaching flume and hoped to answer it; he mentioned "swim tunnels" in his papers.He sent me a stack of notes, and many digital files and said "build [...]

Diesels and Nuclear Plants 

I see there has been a lot of activity looking up my old posts about the old company, and a certain eastern nuclear plant, that I drove by today, on the way back from the cottage. Then I thought about vw and their shitty diesels that everybody loved because they were cheap and peppy.  The physics would make all these things impossible and still pass the epa test.  They cheated the physics

Understanding Global Warming- Consensus Via Committees 

This is an important summary by Spencer Weart, historian emeritus at the American Institute of Physics, Maryland, on the growth of our understand of the risks posed by global warming. He does not point to any particular scientist or specific scientific papers that provided "breakthroughs" in our understanding of climate change and global warming. Instead, he says that the real actors

The Physics of Balancing Rocks 

I've read these papers for years.  It's amazing how people can study these without a speck of physics.  They tried to estimate PGA for gawd sake!  These things are sensitive to PGV, as are all structures.  The PGV is related to induced shear strain, which is just the thing to knock these over. Now what's the thing that reduces PGV to a very small value?  That's right, solid rock.

Research Summary: Classifying Lake Ecological States Using Satellite Remote Sensing For Flamingo Lakes In The East African Rift Valley 

1University of Leicester, Department of Physics & Astronomy, University Road, Leicester, LE1 7RH, UK 2University of Leicester, Centre for Landscape and Climate Research, University Road, Leicester, LE1 7RH, UK 3King’s[...] The post Research Summary: Classifying Lake Ecological States Using Satellite Remote Sensing For Flamingo Lakes In The East African Rift Valley appeared first on Lake

Physics Girl Talks Quarks 

THIS is cool science communication! I didn’t know that strange and charm quarks could be inside a Proton/Neutron.

Born This Day: Luis Alvarez 

Alverez (June 13, 1911 - Sept. 1, 1988) was an American experimental physicist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1968 for work that included the discovery of many resonance particles --subatomic particles having extremely short lifetimes and occurring only in high-energy nuclear collisions. In about 1980 Alvarez (left) helped his son, the geologist Walter Alvarez (right),

Physics - High Energy Part 3 

El Nino - the dam busts For recorded history, we've had a benign pattern.  That strong equatorial Pacific current goes slamming into the islands (Philippines, and such), jamming up warm water.  Then the Sun bakes this stagnant mass, and it becomes super hot.  After 7 years, it's had enough, and something triggers a water earthquake, perhaps we could call it a waterquake, but that's sounds

Physics - High Energy Part 2 

The highest energy thing we have going here is the rotation of the Earth, followed by the radiation heat deep in the Mantle.  I don't know how many atomic bombs they are, or how many seconds of the Sun, but it is huge.  Man isn't even the flea on these elephants.  The orbit of the Moon is somewhere there, and that controls the tides. For the rotation, two things leech off it - ocean

Physics - High Energy Part 1 

I'm going to visit my son in California and I have two things on my mind - earthquakes and drought.  Both are the result of high-energy processes in our good old Earth. The first is drought.  California has had a very long drought so far.  However, looking at tree rings and such, 100 year droughts are common, and very long droughts have wiped out ancient civilizations.  It is the natural

Physics Lecture - The Basic Rules of Physics - Tail and Dog Part 3 

So now we know the mass ratios of the dog and tail, it's time to look at the noise.  We are also working with heat energy, specific heat, and atmospheric infrared reflectance.  Is the dog active? Hear a fantastic Nasa simulation. At same time, we see the clouds following the same lines. In terms of heat effect, the ratio of ocean to cloud is the same as that of cloud to carbon -

Physics Lecture - The Basic Rules of Physics - Tail and Dog Part 2 

To continue, in the Earth, with regard to available heat energy, the oceans are the dog, and the atmosphere is the fluff on the end of the tail.  In the atmosphere, water vapour is the dog, and carbon is maybe one hair on the tail. It not enough to merely state the energy ratios, one must also make a statement on stability and sensitivity.  If Roxie stood super still, and on high alert, then

Physics Lecture - The Basic Rules of Physics - Tail and Dog Part 1 

Inspiration As I've said, all pithy comments now go in my g+ collections.  I can't help it if I'm the only one on this.  I've followed every Google Titanic to the bottom, and the same goes for this.  That's what happens when anti-social super-nerds try to take over the world. You can't do full articles on social media, so the blog has to stay for a while.  I throw these over the wall,

Star Wars teaser far too tame 

 The second biggest thing to hit the internet yesterday was the new Star Wars teaser. Like many, I clicked the link with interest.  But as a planetary scientist, I was disappointed from the first scene (via io9). This is a wrecked star destroyer, half buried in desert sand.  The obvious implication is that the spacecraft has left space and crashed.  Is this realistic?  luckily, physics,