See amazing NASA photo...
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap050401.html
Unbelievable!!!
Showing posts with label Science. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Science. Show all posts
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Fighting MRSA -- Again
.
A few people have asked me to re-publish my MRSA advice. Here it is...
Please pardon the extremely personal details, here. The disease MRSA unfortunately gets into our most personal nooks and crannies. To fight it successfully, we have to "get personal." Sorry.
About 8 years ago, my wife worked in a privately-owned parolee supervision facility in Camden, New Jersey. She shook hands with a parolee fresh out of Camden County Jail, she scratched an itch on her hand, and within 48 hours she had a MRSA infection.
We did not understand MRSA well, then. The disease quickly spread to our 3 sons, probably via sweat left behind on the toilet seat.
About a year later, I finally got the disease, and I got it big time. It just about killed me.
We have learned a lot. Here is what we learned.
The disease has one great goal -- to eat the iron molecule in your hemoglobin. Its processes, in doing so, dissolve flesh. So, MRSA boils tend to bleed like crazy when they pop -- like giant bullet wounds. If one pops, try to get it to pop in the bathtub. You will understand why when it happens. There will be blood everywhere.
Doctors tell you, "Don't try to pop them!" They are afraid that if you squeeze, they will break on the underside -- into your flesh. This causes a very fast moving, extremely dangerous infection called "cellulitis." If you don't stop it, you will die. (Once I came with about 24 hours of dying. A neighbor of ours -- who did not get it from me -- did die.)
MRSA kills. The variety I had had a 15% death rate -- 1 out of 6 people. Years ago, a client died after I caught it and I sent her a letter without realizing how dangerous it was and how easily it spread. I always wondered, Did I cause that, though the mail?
When, after I, myself, nearly died of cellulitis, I sat down with an infectious disease specialist. He explained that my skin was probably infected with huge invisible patches of MRSA bacteria which were 90% washed off every day I took a shower, but which rejuvenated themselves during the day every day so that by night I had fully reconstituted patches of MRSA all over my body, ready to infect me through a break in the skin, or to similarly infect others. He recommended that I shower 2 to 3 times a day, every day for a year. He prescribed pHisohex as a shower soap.
At first I showered thrice daily with pHisohex, but I started getting sick, and I realized that I was poisoning myself with the pHisohex. 3 times a day is too much. So, I switched to the cheapest soap on the shelf -- Ivory. Every day, three times a day, I soaped myself head-to-toe with Ivory -- scalp, hair, skin. The "dark places" were critical -- armpits, crotch, scrotum and anal area. Complete soaping and rinsing was absolutely necessary.
It worked. After I became "the world's cleanest human being," I clearly became non-communicable.
Except in two ways: Sex and potty.
At one point the MRSA entered and attacked a testicle. The doctor said, "IMPOSSIBLE! THE pH IS WRONG!!!" But then he saw my swollen testicle, fell quiet, and asked me if I would agree to castration, to save my life!!!!!!!!!!
It was at that point, in my raw desperation to save my masculinity, that I discovered, on my own, the most effective treatment of MRSA -- POWER WALKING.
At that time, I was deeply, deeply, deeply depressed. So, I forced myself to walk at a forced march rate -- 4 mph -- 9 miles a day, 6 in the early morning, 3 at night, with hard breathing, to work on the depression.
Immediately -- and I mean "immediately," within 24 hours -- the terrifying MRSA infection in the one testicle began to clear up. I thought to myself, "That's too fast a result for the walking to be strengthening my immune system." My theory is that MRSA invades my corpuscles through the same oxygen receptor point on my hemoglobin that oxygen uses in the lungs, in effect lodging a kind of "molecular fat man" in the doorway to the kitchen, literally starving the MRSA to death.
MRSA's average life span is 20 minutes. In a random colony there's going to be substantial front-end and back-end generational overlap. So, to effectively attack the MRSA, the power walking probably has to be a full hour at a bite, at least, to cover "grandparents," "parents" and "kids."
My family doctor, DO Leonard Kabel ("Mr. Castration") was amazed at the results of just walking every day for a week. After 7 days, my giant inflamed testicle had shrunk to below normal size. (Damage. The testicle has taken about 5 years to go back up to normal size.)
Word spread. A pediatrician called me and asked what I had done. He almost cried as he told me about infants in his practice that had died. I told him about the showers and forced march walking, and suggested hyperbaric oxygen for invalids and babies.
So, I had two weapons now -- Ivory soap showers, and a forced-march walk to super-oxygenate the blood. (My fingertips turned bright red after each walk, due to the super-oxygenation.)
Problem solved? No. I could tell, from break-outs after sex, even when sex immediately followed a very, very thorough shower, that I carried MRSA (despite the bad pH) somewhere in my reproductive tract -- probably in the undoubtedly-internally-severely-scarred testicle.
We thought that condoms might help. (My wife is no longer ovulating. So, no life-interest was invaded by condom use, while I protected what Catholic theology calls the "unitive interest.") But, surprisingly, condoms made little difference! I thought, "What??????!!!!"And then I realized that the MRSA bacteria were in my sexual sweat.
I also read that MRSA tends to be enteric -- in the feces in the bowels. What a perfect hiding place!, I thought.
But then I had an idea: Tums. Those disgusting little MRSAs could take testicular pH, and urinary tract pH -- but could they take a cloudburst of Tums?
So, secretly, I decided to risk calcium poisoning.
I bought a large bottle of Tums (I weighed 222 pounds) and, on a Friday (so that I could afford to get very, very sick) I ate 1 Tum every half hour, from sun-up to bedtime. (About 6 a.m. to midnight -- over 30 Tums!!!) I ate plenty of well-masticated food and drank plenty of water mixed with psyllium fiber -- Metamucil -- all day, to drag the Tums into every dark corner of my bowels. (The psyllium fiber kept the calcium from giving me terminal constipation.)
And I got very, very, very sick that night -- the mother of all bellyaches. I was in agony for hours, bent-over double in g-i tract pain.
I recovered by morning, and forced myself to do a power walk, to top it off with a good heavy load of O2. Gradually, we dispensed with the condoms. I even got Rise's permission to dispense with showers before sex, as an experiment. Nothing. So far, so good -- until last week. Pop. One popped-up on my thigh.
But then I saw that one son had an outbreak on his neck. Did I get reinfected by him, or did he get reinfected from me?I don't know. The jury is still out.
Are your boils MRSA? Test: MRSA has a distinctive smell -- a very sweet smell in your armpits and in the crevices to the left and right of your crotch. If it smells wonderful there, in those places, while you are suffering from really nasty boils, in my opinion you've got MRSA.
Another test: Sit in the bathtub, with water pretty hot (and a quarter of a cup of bleach in the bath water). The hot water immediately drives the MRSA out of your skin into the form of little teeny whiteheads. These are incipient MRSA boils. If your bathwater is hot, and if it has the one quarter cup of bleach in it, take a raspy sponge, and dipped it in bleach, and very gently rubbed the whiteheads open. Gently. Gently. (Otherwise, you'll just reinject yourself.) Rinse the sponge like crazy in the bleachy water after each opening.
In any event, 3 Ivory Soap showers a day, being careful to get those dark places.
And walk, walk, walk, walk, like a crazy person, for an hour at a stretch.
With those weapons, you can control it -- if you're lucky, until your immune system finally overwhelms it.
It occurred to me that if your skin can't take the beating of 3 soapy showers per day, there's always the cancer-causing tanning booth.
I'll risk cancer to fight flesh-eating MRSA any day of the week.
No matter what, I've described a personal odyssey, here, some of it pretty darn foolish.
If you have MRSA, print this piece and take it to your doctor, and ask him what his opinion is, before you do anything. Please. That Tums thing was really dangerous!
.
A few people have asked me to re-publish my MRSA advice. Here it is...
Please pardon the extremely personal details, here. The disease MRSA unfortunately gets into our most personal nooks and crannies. To fight it successfully, we have to "get personal." Sorry.
About 8 years ago, my wife worked in a privately-owned parolee supervision facility in Camden, New Jersey. She shook hands with a parolee fresh out of Camden County Jail, she scratched an itch on her hand, and within 48 hours she had a MRSA infection.
We did not understand MRSA well, then. The disease quickly spread to our 3 sons, probably via sweat left behind on the toilet seat.
About a year later, I finally got the disease, and I got it big time. It just about killed me.
We have learned a lot. Here is what we learned.
The disease has one great goal -- to eat the iron molecule in your hemoglobin. Its processes, in doing so, dissolve flesh. So, MRSA boils tend to bleed like crazy when they pop -- like giant bullet wounds. If one pops, try to get it to pop in the bathtub. You will understand why when it happens. There will be blood everywhere.
Doctors tell you, "Don't try to pop them!" They are afraid that if you squeeze, they will break on the underside -- into your flesh. This causes a very fast moving, extremely dangerous infection called "cellulitis." If you don't stop it, you will die. (Once I came with about 24 hours of dying. A neighbor of ours -- who did not get it from me -- did die.)
MRSA kills. The variety I had had a 15% death rate -- 1 out of 6 people. Years ago, a client died after I caught it and I sent her a letter without realizing how dangerous it was and how easily it spread. I always wondered, Did I cause that, though the mail?
When, after I, myself, nearly died of cellulitis, I sat down with an infectious disease specialist. He explained that my skin was probably infected with huge invisible patches of MRSA bacteria which were 90% washed off every day I took a shower, but which rejuvenated themselves during the day every day so that by night I had fully reconstituted patches of MRSA all over my body, ready to infect me through a break in the skin, or to similarly infect others. He recommended that I shower 2 to 3 times a day, every day for a year. He prescribed pHisohex as a shower soap.
At first I showered thrice daily with pHisohex, but I started getting sick, and I realized that I was poisoning myself with the pHisohex. 3 times a day is too much. So, I switched to the cheapest soap on the shelf -- Ivory. Every day, three times a day, I soaped myself head-to-toe with Ivory -- scalp, hair, skin. The "dark places" were critical -- armpits, crotch, scrotum and anal area. Complete soaping and rinsing was absolutely necessary.
It worked. After I became "the world's cleanest human being," I clearly became non-communicable.
Except in two ways: Sex and potty.
At one point the MRSA entered and attacked a testicle. The doctor said, "IMPOSSIBLE! THE pH IS WRONG!!!" But then he saw my swollen testicle, fell quiet, and asked me if I would agree to castration, to save my life!!!!!!!!!!
It was at that point, in my raw desperation to save my masculinity, that I discovered, on my own, the most effective treatment of MRSA -- POWER WALKING.
At that time, I was deeply, deeply, deeply depressed. So, I forced myself to walk at a forced march rate -- 4 mph -- 9 miles a day, 6 in the early morning, 3 at night, with hard breathing, to work on the depression.
Immediately -- and I mean "immediately," within 24 hours -- the terrifying MRSA infection in the one testicle began to clear up. I thought to myself, "That's too fast a result for the walking to be strengthening my immune system." My theory is that MRSA invades my corpuscles through the same oxygen receptor point on my hemoglobin that oxygen uses in the lungs, in effect lodging a kind of "molecular fat man" in the doorway to the kitchen, literally starving the MRSA to death.
MRSA's average life span is 20 minutes. In a random colony there's going to be substantial front-end and back-end generational overlap. So, to effectively attack the MRSA, the power walking probably has to be a full hour at a bite, at least, to cover "grandparents," "parents" and "kids."
My family doctor, DO Leonard Kabel ("Mr. Castration") was amazed at the results of just walking every day for a week. After 7 days, my giant inflamed testicle had shrunk to below normal size. (Damage. The testicle has taken about 5 years to go back up to normal size.)
Word spread. A pediatrician called me and asked what I had done. He almost cried as he told me about infants in his practice that had died. I told him about the showers and forced march walking, and suggested hyperbaric oxygen for invalids and babies.
So, I had two weapons now -- Ivory soap showers, and a forced-march walk to super-oxygenate the blood. (My fingertips turned bright red after each walk, due to the super-oxygenation.)
Problem solved? No. I could tell, from break-outs after sex, even when sex immediately followed a very, very thorough shower, that I carried MRSA (despite the bad pH) somewhere in my reproductive tract -- probably in the undoubtedly-internally-severely-scarred testicle.
We thought that condoms might help. (My wife is no longer ovulating. So, no life-interest was invaded by condom use, while I protected what Catholic theology calls the "unitive interest.") But, surprisingly, condoms made little difference! I thought, "What??????!!!!"And then I realized that the MRSA bacteria were in my sexual sweat.
I also read that MRSA tends to be enteric -- in the feces in the bowels. What a perfect hiding place!, I thought.
But then I had an idea: Tums. Those disgusting little MRSAs could take testicular pH, and urinary tract pH -- but could they take a cloudburst of Tums?
So, secretly, I decided to risk calcium poisoning.
I bought a large bottle of Tums (I weighed 222 pounds) and, on a Friday (so that I could afford to get very, very sick) I ate 1 Tum every half hour, from sun-up to bedtime. (About 6 a.m. to midnight -- over 30 Tums!!!) I ate plenty of well-masticated food and drank plenty of water mixed with psyllium fiber -- Metamucil -- all day, to drag the Tums into every dark corner of my bowels. (The psyllium fiber kept the calcium from giving me terminal constipation.)
And I got very, very, very sick that night -- the mother of all bellyaches. I was in agony for hours, bent-over double in g-i tract pain.
I recovered by morning, and forced myself to do a power walk, to top it off with a good heavy load of O2. Gradually, we dispensed with the condoms. I even got Rise's permission to dispense with showers before sex, as an experiment. Nothing. So far, so good -- until last week. Pop. One popped-up on my thigh.
But then I saw that one son had an outbreak on his neck. Did I get reinfected by him, or did he get reinfected from me?I don't know. The jury is still out.
Are your boils MRSA? Test: MRSA has a distinctive smell -- a very sweet smell in your armpits and in the crevices to the left and right of your crotch. If it smells wonderful there, in those places, while you are suffering from really nasty boils, in my opinion you've got MRSA.
Another test: Sit in the bathtub, with water pretty hot (and a quarter of a cup of bleach in the bath water). The hot water immediately drives the MRSA out of your skin into the form of little teeny whiteheads. These are incipient MRSA boils. If your bathwater is hot, and if it has the one quarter cup of bleach in it, take a raspy sponge, and dipped it in bleach, and very gently rubbed the whiteheads open. Gently. Gently. (Otherwise, you'll just reinject yourself.) Rinse the sponge like crazy in the bleachy water after each opening.
In any event, 3 Ivory Soap showers a day, being careful to get those dark places.
And walk, walk, walk, walk, like a crazy person, for an hour at a stretch.
With those weapons, you can control it -- if you're lucky, until your immune system finally overwhelms it.
It occurred to me that if your skin can't take the beating of 3 soapy showers per day, there's always the cancer-causing tanning booth.
I'll risk cancer to fight flesh-eating MRSA any day of the week.
No matter what, I've described a personal odyssey, here, some of it pretty darn foolish.
If you have MRSA, print this piece and take it to your doctor, and ask him what his opinion is, before you do anything. Please. That Tums thing was really dangerous!
.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Oldest Living Thing
Most people know that the giant redwood trees are no longer among the "oldest living things." The bristlecone pine, at 4,700 years, learly has the redwoods beat.
Some folks bet on the creosote bush in the Mojave Desert, which seems to be 11,000 years old.
But even the creosote bush is overwhelmed by a peculiar biological fluke. Near Carlsbad, New Mexico there is a salty lake containing bacteria in the spore state which are about 250 million years of age. The bacteria, dubbed "B. permians,' can be reanimated, making them the oldest living things on Earth at the moment of reanimation.
Some folks bet on the creosote bush in the Mojave Desert, which seems to be 11,000 years old.
But even the creosote bush is overwhelmed by a peculiar biological fluke. Near Carlsbad, New Mexico there is a salty lake containing bacteria in the spore state which are about 250 million years of age. The bacteria, dubbed "B. permians,' can be reanimated, making them the oldest living things on Earth at the moment of reanimation.
The Chess Game Rice Wager Story
In a prior post I told the story of the Thousand Year Trusts of the Middle Ages, where rich merchants would purchase 1,000 year certificates of deposit for their remote descendants, at 3% interest compounded annually.
$1,000 held for 1,000 years at 3% compounded annually = $1,000 x (1.03 to the 999th power) = 6.67 QUINTILLION dollars.
As related, the European courts later struck the notes down essentially for bestowing unlawful amounts of economic power to individuals.
My other favorite story of the same sort, exhibiting the power of geometric progression, is that of the two men playing chess. One says to the other, "If I win, I want you to pay me one grain of rice on the first square of the chess board, two grains on the second square, four on the third square, eight on the fourth, and so on, doubling the number of grains to the 64th square of the chess board."
The other man idly agrees, and loses, and has his servants bring a basket of rice to begin paying-off the wager.
The numbers of grains of rice mount in this fashion
1+
2+
4+
8+
16+
32+
64+
128+
256+
512+
1024+
2048+
4096+
8192+
16384+
32768+
65536+
131072+
262144+
524288+...
You can see what is happening. We are less than one-third of the way through the 64 square board, and the numbers are getting huge.
Years ago I read that by the time we get to the 64th square, the accumulation of rice is equal to about 9 cubic miles.
$1,000 held for 1,000 years at 3% compounded annually = $1,000 x (1.03 to the 999th power) = 6.67 QUINTILLION dollars.
As related, the European courts later struck the notes down essentially for bestowing unlawful amounts of economic power to individuals.
My other favorite story of the same sort, exhibiting the power of geometric progression, is that of the two men playing chess. One says to the other, "If I win, I want you to pay me one grain of rice on the first square of the chess board, two grains on the second square, four on the third square, eight on the fourth, and so on, doubling the number of grains to the 64th square of the chess board."
The other man idly agrees, and loses, and has his servants bring a basket of rice to begin paying-off the wager.
The numbers of grains of rice mount in this fashion
1+
2+
4+
8+
16+
32+
64+
128+
256+
512+
1024+
2048+
4096+
8192+
16384+
32768+
65536+
131072+
262144+
524288+...
You can see what is happening. We are less than one-third of the way through the 64 square board, and the numbers are getting huge.
Years ago I read that by the time we get to the 64th square, the accumulation of rice is equal to about 9 cubic miles.
Sunday, May 2, 2010
I Am Pro-Environmentalist, But...
.
...But sometimes they make me crazy.
As the Gulf well leaches oil onto beaches and wetlands, wiping-out life, Envoronmentalists exhibit rage, screaming, "WE TOLD YOU SO!!!"
But, at the same time, they are fiercely opposed to the Cape Cod wind turbines, intent on making such oil drilling less necessary.
There Oughta Be a Law (TOBAL): Any environmentalist who says both is prohibited from turning on the lights or driving a car.
.
...But sometimes they make me crazy.
As the Gulf well leaches oil onto beaches and wetlands, wiping-out life, Envoronmentalists exhibit rage, screaming, "WE TOLD YOU SO!!!"
But, at the same time, they are fiercely opposed to the Cape Cod wind turbines, intent on making such oil drilling less necessary.
There Oughta Be a Law (TOBAL): Any environmentalist who says both is prohibited from turning on the lights or driving a car.
.
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Current Earthquakes and the Iceland Volcano -- Evidence of a Geological Tipping Point?
In Haiti, Chile, Baja, Sumatra -- 4 Big Earthquakes , at http://pjdsharing.blogspot.com/2010/04/haiti-chile-baja-sumatra-4-big.html, I suggested that global warming might be the cause of the series of earthquakes afflicting various nations this year so far.
Now we have to add to that list last week's 6.9 magnitude Tibetan earthquake, and Iceland's volcano!
Six (6) huge geological events in just a few months!
Suggestion: Is it possible that just as there are "tipping points" in the environment -- where, when some of the ice starts melting, ALL of the ice starts melting, for example -- there might be "tipping points" in the geology of the Earth?
In other words, if the glacier-to-Equator flow of water from global warming reaches a rate of "X tons per minute," the braking upon Earth's rotation generated by the redistribution of tonnage to the Equator might be a tipping point where we see a constant stream of earthquakes and volcanoes, worldwide, due to the innate mechanical limits of crustal integrity and viscosity of the underlying magma.
If this is so, are we accelerating the emergence of the super-volcano in Yellowstone?
I'd be interested in what the Yellowstone tiltmeters have to tell us, these days.
Now we have to add to that list last week's 6.9 magnitude Tibetan earthquake, and Iceland's volcano!
Six (6) huge geological events in just a few months!
Suggestion: Is it possible that just as there are "tipping points" in the environment -- where, when some of the ice starts melting, ALL of the ice starts melting, for example -- there might be "tipping points" in the geology of the Earth?
In other words, if the glacier-to-Equator flow of water from global warming reaches a rate of "X tons per minute," the braking upon Earth's rotation generated by the redistribution of tonnage to the Equator might be a tipping point where we see a constant stream of earthquakes and volcanoes, worldwide, due to the innate mechanical limits of crustal integrity and viscosity of the underlying magma.
If this is so, are we accelerating the emergence of the super-volcano in Yellowstone?
I'd be interested in what the Yellowstone tiltmeters have to tell us, these days.
Mysterious Globular Clusters
Globular clusters -- huge, ball-shaped clusters of stars -- are some of the most beautiful objects in the astronomers' telescopes.
There are about 200 of them positioned around the core of our galaxy.
But, after that, they don't make much sense.
Astronomers maintain that our galaxy is a gravitational thing -- that the gravity generated by the whole of the galaxy upon the stars within it keeps the stars in place, here, where our galaxy is, in space.
Yet, astronomers say that the evidence within the globular clusters is that the stars they are by-and-large made-of are very, very, old, suggesting that the clusters have an age of around 12 billion years. If they are that old and have been hanging around our galaxy for that long a time, why haven't they been pulled into the galaxy? Why hasn't gravity pulled each cluster and the galaxy together?
And if each globular cluster is itself a gravitational object, why hasn't gravity caused each globular cluster to collapse in upon itself, at the point of its own core?
Our astronomers answer, "Orbiting. Within each globular cluster, the stars orbit around a common center, perhaps around a black hole. And each globular cluster, as a unit, doesn't fall into the core of our galaxy, because each orbits around the core of our galaxy, in-and-out of the plate of our galaxy."
But each of those answers generates questions of its own.
If each globular cluster is orbiting the center of our galaxy, how come the globulat clusters are each so wonderfully organized? They are balls of stars, for heaven's sake. If one spiral galaxy passes through another, mutual gravitational attraction causes them to self-destruct. It's a mess!
There are about 200 of them positioned around the core of our galaxy.
But, after that, they don't make much sense.
Astronomers maintain that our galaxy is a gravitational thing -- that the gravity generated by the whole of the galaxy upon the stars within it keeps the stars in place, here, where our galaxy is, in space.
Yet, astronomers say that the evidence within the globular clusters is that the stars they are by-and-large made-of are very, very, old, suggesting that the clusters have an age of around 12 billion years. If they are that old and have been hanging around our galaxy for that long a time, why haven't they been pulled into the galaxy? Why hasn't gravity pulled each cluster and the galaxy together?
And if each globular cluster is itself a gravitational object, why hasn't gravity caused each globular cluster to collapse in upon itself, at the point of its own core?
Our astronomers answer, "Orbiting. Within each globular cluster, the stars orbit around a common center, perhaps around a black hole. And each globular cluster, as a unit, doesn't fall into the core of our galaxy, because each orbits around the core of our galaxy, in-and-out of the plate of our galaxy."
But each of those answers generates questions of its own.
If each globular cluster is orbiting the center of our galaxy, how come the globulat clusters are each so wonderfully organized? They are balls of stars, for heaven's sake. If one spiral galaxy passes through another, mutual gravitational attraction causes them to self-destruct. It's a mess!
Globular clusters in cluster/spiral galaxy collisions are subject to the exact same gravitational forces. If each globular cluster splashes through the galactic plate about once every 125 million years -- that's about 100 "splashes" altogether since each cluster came into existence -- shouldn't each cluster give some evidence of this, in the telescope -- at least a few of them should have been visibly elongated by the encounter!
But, no, there are no misshapen globular clusters -- not even among the ones a short distance from the galactic plate.
And if each globular cluster does not collapse in upon itself, because each cluster's stars are all orbiting around each cluster's own core, then why haven't the clusters each formed itself into a mini-spiral galaxy. Billions of years of close passes between member stars within each cluster quickly "shakes out" any wonderful ball shape and organizes the batch of stars into a happy spiral shape, reflecting the plane accidentally having the "predominating" mass, rotating around the core.
Yet there is not any organization of the internal motion at all!
Each cluster is perfect!
And, if any of the clusters have a black hole at its core, then shouldn't there be reports of high-speed stars visibly orbiting the black hole core at fantastic rates of speed.
When astronomers aimed their telescopes at the incipient black hole at our galaxy's center, they were astonished when they realized that they could actually see stars in the act of orbiting at absurdly high rates of speed.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
The Mentos-Generated Diet Coke Volcano
Okay, it was inevitable. I had to get to this subject eventually.
Yes, it works wonderfully.
Take a 3 litre plastic bottle of Diet Coke outside. It's very, very important that you do this outside. And you use a diet soda to avoid attracting ants.
Pour-off the soda carefully, without shaking, until the top of the soda in the bottle is below the narrower part of the bottle. You don't shake the bottle to avoid losing fizz. And you lower the level of the liquid in the bottle because we are going to be dropping in multiple Mentos, and having the soda a little bit below the neck minimizes the odds that any of the Mentos will be fired-out of the bottle.
Put the bottle in the middle of the lawn, away from people, away from the house. You put it on the lawn so that the ground will absord the fountain, and away from the house that that you won't discolor anyone's property, and away from people so that they won't be wet, or hurt by the fountain. (I doubt that soda in the eyes is a good thing.)
Make sure your hands are very dry. Take 5 Mentos out of the package, and stack them carefully between your thumb and index finger. You make sure that your hands are dry, so that the Mentos won't stick to your skin. You stack them carefully so that yon can make all 5 fall at the same moment into the soda.
Position the stack of Mentos over the bottle opening, drop them all in at once, and run.
WHOOOOOOOSH!
The soda will come surging-up out of the bottle and shoot about 12 feet into the air.
The reason why this works seems to be that calcium "pills" like Mentos are covered with "zillions" of microscopic nooks and crannies called "nucleation sites" which form "nucleuses" or center points for gas trapped in the soda to begin escaping and forming bubbles.
Yes, it works wonderfully.
Take a 3 litre plastic bottle of Diet Coke outside. It's very, very important that you do this outside. And you use a diet soda to avoid attracting ants.
Pour-off the soda carefully, without shaking, until the top of the soda in the bottle is below the narrower part of the bottle. You don't shake the bottle to avoid losing fizz. And you lower the level of the liquid in the bottle because we are going to be dropping in multiple Mentos, and having the soda a little bit below the neck minimizes the odds that any of the Mentos will be fired-out of the bottle.
Put the bottle in the middle of the lawn, away from people, away from the house. You put it on the lawn so that the ground will absord the fountain, and away from the house that that you won't discolor anyone's property, and away from people so that they won't be wet, or hurt by the fountain. (I doubt that soda in the eyes is a good thing.)
Make sure your hands are very dry. Take 5 Mentos out of the package, and stack them carefully between your thumb and index finger. You make sure that your hands are dry, so that the Mentos won't stick to your skin. You stack them carefully so that yon can make all 5 fall at the same moment into the soda.
Position the stack of Mentos over the bottle opening, drop them all in at once, and run.
WHOOOOOOOSH!
The soda will come surging-up out of the bottle and shoot about 12 feet into the air.
The reason why this works seems to be that calcium "pills" like Mentos are covered with "zillions" of microscopic nooks and crannies called "nucleation sites" which form "nucleuses" or center points for gas trapped in the soda to begin escaping and forming bubbles.
Monday, April 12, 2010
Why Do Rockets Go Up?
The title to this article seems simple enough. And everyone gives the same answer: Because of the fire which comes out of the bottom of the rocket.
But if they are asked the next question -- "Why does the fire coming out of the bottom make the rocket go up?" -- most people draw a blank, or they have an odd misconception that the fire coming out of the bottom pushes against the ground to make the rocket go up.
But if you address the "pushing against the ground or pushing against the air" idea by asking, "Oh, so in space where there is no ground or air to push against rockets have no effect?," suddenly they are very puzzled because it dawns on them that they have no idea why rockets go up.
In fact, it's not the fire pushing down which makes the rocket go up, but rather the fire pushing up against the rocket which makes the rocket go up. The fire pushes up against the rocket at two places -- inside the combustion chamber, where the fuel explodes, and the explosion of the fuel pushes up against the top of the inside of the combustion chamber.
And the exploding fuel molecules coming out of the bottom of the rocket push up against the exhaust cone.
The idea is this: When the rocket fuel explodes, explodes, explodes in a constant stream of activity, the molecules in the explosion bounce around inside that combustion chamber with extraordinary violence. They bounce against the left side of the combustion chamber -- but because they bounce against the right side, too, those bounces cancel each other out and have no impact of rocket motion.
The firey, bouncing molecules also bounce against the TOP of the inside of the combustion chamber, very hard, and they would bounce against the bottom and cancel-out the bouncing against the top -- except that there is no bottom -- there is a hole, there. As a consequence, the upward push of the bouncing fuel explosion molecules is unopposed, and not canceled-out, and so those molecules succeed in pushing the rocket up.
The same hot molecules get to push the rocket up a second time, when they bounce against the sides of the rocket exhaust cone. When they pound sideways against the cone, because the cone is angled the molecules bounce down off the cone sides, pushing the rocket up again.
So, those two surface -- the top of the inside of the combustion chamber, and the angled sides of the exhaust cone -- are the two places whwere the rocket's fiery exhaust, even though it is coming DOWN out of the rocket, pushes UP.
What the firey exhaust "hits" outside the rocket does not affect rocket motion.
But if they are asked the next question -- "Why does the fire coming out of the bottom make the rocket go up?" -- most people draw a blank, or they have an odd misconception that the fire coming out of the bottom pushes against the ground to make the rocket go up.
But if you address the "pushing against the ground or pushing against the air" idea by asking, "Oh, so in space where there is no ground or air to push against rockets have no effect?," suddenly they are very puzzled because it dawns on them that they have no idea why rockets go up.
In fact, it's not the fire pushing down which makes the rocket go up, but rather the fire pushing up against the rocket which makes the rocket go up. The fire pushes up against the rocket at two places -- inside the combustion chamber, where the fuel explodes, and the explosion of the fuel pushes up against the top of the inside of the combustion chamber.
And the exploding fuel molecules coming out of the bottom of the rocket push up against the exhaust cone.
The idea is this: When the rocket fuel explodes, explodes, explodes in a constant stream of activity, the molecules in the explosion bounce around inside that combustion chamber with extraordinary violence. They bounce against the left side of the combustion chamber -- but because they bounce against the right side, too, those bounces cancel each other out and have no impact of rocket motion.
The firey, bouncing molecules also bounce against the TOP of the inside of the combustion chamber, very hard, and they would bounce against the bottom and cancel-out the bouncing against the top -- except that there is no bottom -- there is a hole, there. As a consequence, the upward push of the bouncing fuel explosion molecules is unopposed, and not canceled-out, and so those molecules succeed in pushing the rocket up.
The same hot molecules get to push the rocket up a second time, when they bounce against the sides of the rocket exhaust cone. When they pound sideways against the cone, because the cone is angled the molecules bounce down off the cone sides, pushing the rocket up again.
So, those two surface -- the top of the inside of the combustion chamber, and the angled sides of the exhaust cone -- are the two places whwere the rocket's fiery exhaust, even though it is coming DOWN out of the rocket, pushes UP.
What the firey exhaust "hits" outside the rocket does not affect rocket motion.
Friday, April 9, 2010
...But, Sometimes, It Is Just the Weather and People's Imagination
In Conisholme, Lincolnshire, England last year, witnesses reported seeing a brilliantly-lighted UFO attacking a wind turbine farm with tentacles, causing a turbine to lose a blade which was dropped to the ground.
Here are some eyewitness reports...
1. County councilor for the area Robert Palmer said he had seen a “round, white light that seemed to be hovering”. Mr Palmer said: “I actually saw a white light – a round, white light that seemed to be hovering. “That is the only way I can explain it – it wasn’t a flare-like light – it was just round, white light with a slight red edge to it that seemed to be over the wind turbines.”
2. John Harrison, a local witness, described how he looked out of his landing window and saw a massive ball of light with tentacles going right down to the ground over the wind farm. He said: "It was huge. With the tentacles it looked just like an octopus."
3. Witness named as ‘Shelia’ commented, ‘I’m a very light sleeper and I didn’t hear or see a thing on Sunday night,’ said the 67 year old householder, ‘I hope that one day we will see aliens, but I doubt it will happen in that field. I’ve lived here for 20 years and nothing interesting has ever happened here. Except them building the wind farm, of course.’
4. Dorothy Willows, who lives a mile and a half from the crash site, commented: “The lights were moving across the sky towards the wind farm. Then I saw a low flying object. It was skimming across the sky towards the turbines.”
5. John Harrison, a local resident described looking at the farm out of his window and seeing “a massive ball of light with tentacles going right down to the ground”.
I should add this interesting detail...
6. Ecotricity, the Stroud, England-based power provider has recovered substantial wreckage from the site including the missing turbine blade (contrary to earlier reports of it being ‘missing’ from the site) and smaller fragments.
The following was my analysis, a version of which I e-mailed to the insurance carrier for the wind farm...
When we sit in our little homes in our little towns surround by trees and fences and so forth, we have one view of the environment and weather. We think, "That's what the weather is like," and we make a second mental jump: "That's what the weather is like in all environments."
But it doesn't really work that way.
When you have a 200 foot high structure isolated on a flat ocean or flat plain, we find that things are different. Isolated high objects can generate lightning in clear weather -- even under cloudless skies!
What is happening is that when air moves the air molecules rubbing against one another "steal" one another's electrons. Imbalances in the molecules in the air masses -- weight differences, differences in "shaking" speed, or Brownian motion velocity, cause imbalances in the mass which tend to feed on themselves -- heavier molecules which have had their electrons "stolen" from them end up on the bottoms of air masses, while lighter ones with too many electrons end up on top of the air mass.
So, the bottoms of turbulent air masses tend to be "electron deprived" and therefore electron hungry.
Normally, cities full of structures making the surface irregular bleed-off these electrical differences into the air constantly, so that in cities the imbalance is chronically addressed, so that city people don't get the chance to see lightning out of a clear sky because the electricity never has a chance to build up.
But out in the country or on the sea, things are different. If we sail a 100 foot high "tall ship" out into the sea, or put a 200 foot high wind turbine out on a flat plain, we have functionally erected an enormous lightning rod.
When we do that, the static charge of air masses and the difference between them and the ground suddenly become relevant, and people begin to see a phenomenon that they never knew existed.
St. Elmo's fire -- slow static build-up in a ship out on the sea, as the ship acts like a giant lightning rod, easily visible at night; and lightning without storm clouds overhead.
I think that that is what happened at the Conisholme Wind Farm.
Weather conditions and humidity were just right, one night. The air mass above the wind turbines began to slowly develop a charge different from that of the ground, as lighter molecules bumped against and stole electrons from heavier molecules in the air mass, and then zipped-up to the top of the air mass, leaving the bottom of the mass electron hungry.
Electrons in the ground beneath the turbines, attracted by the electron-hungry air mass above them, "rushed to the rescue" They gathered in the ground beneath the turbines, and rush up the turbine towers, through the hub, into the slowly-rotating blade which happened at that moment to be highest, and therefore closest to the electrically charged air mass.
As the turbine blades turned, tens of thousands of volts of static electricity rushed out of the blades turning down, and into the blades going up.
This happens again and again and again and again. The blades get hotter and hotter where they are narrowest -- at the neck near the hub.
Inside the blades, the air is also getting hotter and hotter -- and compressed.
As the electricity builds, the towers began to glow with St. Elmo's fire. The highest blade began to develop ball lightning. Voila -- a UFO -- the ball lightning -- with "tentacles," the surrounding towers glowing with St. Elmo's fire.
The UFO looked like it was moving as the blades move slowly.
Suddenly, BOOM! -- the super-heated neck of one of the fiberglass blades couldn't take the heat anymore, and split. Superheated compressed air in the blade rushed out, launching the blade like a rocket. WHOOSH! The blade rocketed from the wind farm at hundreds of miles per hour, glowing as it flew from heat of the electricity that had passed through it, and St. Elmo's fire.
The next morning, onlookers couldn't find the missing blade -- it was in someone's back yard, a mile away. So, initial reports were that the blade was missing.
Utility workers flying a helicopter spot the blade from the air. The utility did not want the public to know that their turbines can launch turbine blades like rockets at nearby homes, so they kept it hush-hush, and dispatched a truck in the wee hours of the morning to quietly retrieve that blade and drop it off at the bottom of the tower.
The utility, happy that the public is distracted by the UFO speculation, laughed at UFO reports in the press but actually included that as a possible cause in their subsaequent public analyses.
That analysis explains it all -- the UFO, the "tentacles," the UFO seen "skimming across the sky" toward the turbines -- it was actually the missing blade flying from the destroyed turbine -- and why the blade was first reported missing, but subsequently seen in plain sight at the bottom of the tower.
Here are some eyewitness reports...
1. County councilor for the area Robert Palmer said he had seen a “round, white light that seemed to be hovering”. Mr Palmer said: “I actually saw a white light – a round, white light that seemed to be hovering. “That is the only way I can explain it – it wasn’t a flare-like light – it was just round, white light with a slight red edge to it that seemed to be over the wind turbines.”
2. John Harrison, a local witness, described how he looked out of his landing window and saw a massive ball of light with tentacles going right down to the ground over the wind farm. He said: "It was huge. With the tentacles it looked just like an octopus."
3. Witness named as ‘Shelia’ commented, ‘I’m a very light sleeper and I didn’t hear or see a thing on Sunday night,’ said the 67 year old householder, ‘I hope that one day we will see aliens, but I doubt it will happen in that field. I’ve lived here for 20 years and nothing interesting has ever happened here. Except them building the wind farm, of course.’
4. Dorothy Willows, who lives a mile and a half from the crash site, commented: “The lights were moving across the sky towards the wind farm. Then I saw a low flying object. It was skimming across the sky towards the turbines.”
5. John Harrison, a local resident described looking at the farm out of his window and seeing “a massive ball of light with tentacles going right down to the ground”.
I should add this interesting detail...
6. Ecotricity, the Stroud, England-based power provider has recovered substantial wreckage from the site including the missing turbine blade (contrary to earlier reports of it being ‘missing’ from the site) and smaller fragments.
The following was my analysis, a version of which I e-mailed to the insurance carrier for the wind farm...
When we sit in our little homes in our little towns surround by trees and fences and so forth, we have one view of the environment and weather. We think, "That's what the weather is like," and we make a second mental jump: "That's what the weather is like in all environments."
But it doesn't really work that way.
When you have a 200 foot high structure isolated on a flat ocean or flat plain, we find that things are different. Isolated high objects can generate lightning in clear weather -- even under cloudless skies!
What is happening is that when air moves the air molecules rubbing against one another "steal" one another's electrons. Imbalances in the molecules in the air masses -- weight differences, differences in "shaking" speed, or Brownian motion velocity, cause imbalances in the mass which tend to feed on themselves -- heavier molecules which have had their electrons "stolen" from them end up on the bottoms of air masses, while lighter ones with too many electrons end up on top of the air mass.
So, the bottoms of turbulent air masses tend to be "electron deprived" and therefore electron hungry.
Normally, cities full of structures making the surface irregular bleed-off these electrical differences into the air constantly, so that in cities the imbalance is chronically addressed, so that city people don't get the chance to see lightning out of a clear sky because the electricity never has a chance to build up.
But out in the country or on the sea, things are different. If we sail a 100 foot high "tall ship" out into the sea, or put a 200 foot high wind turbine out on a flat plain, we have functionally erected an enormous lightning rod.
When we do that, the static charge of air masses and the difference between them and the ground suddenly become relevant, and people begin to see a phenomenon that they never knew existed.
St. Elmo's fire -- slow static build-up in a ship out on the sea, as the ship acts like a giant lightning rod, easily visible at night; and lightning without storm clouds overhead.
I think that that is what happened at the Conisholme Wind Farm.
Weather conditions and humidity were just right, one night. The air mass above the wind turbines began to slowly develop a charge different from that of the ground, as lighter molecules bumped against and stole electrons from heavier molecules in the air mass, and then zipped-up to the top of the air mass, leaving the bottom of the mass electron hungry.
Electrons in the ground beneath the turbines, attracted by the electron-hungry air mass above them, "rushed to the rescue" They gathered in the ground beneath the turbines, and rush up the turbine towers, through the hub, into the slowly-rotating blade which happened at that moment to be highest, and therefore closest to the electrically charged air mass.
As the turbine blades turned, tens of thousands of volts of static electricity rushed out of the blades turning down, and into the blades going up.
This happens again and again and again and again. The blades get hotter and hotter where they are narrowest -- at the neck near the hub.
Inside the blades, the air is also getting hotter and hotter -- and compressed.
As the electricity builds, the towers began to glow with St. Elmo's fire. The highest blade began to develop ball lightning. Voila -- a UFO -- the ball lightning -- with "tentacles," the surrounding towers glowing with St. Elmo's fire.
The UFO looked like it was moving as the blades move slowly.
Suddenly, BOOM! -- the super-heated neck of one of the fiberglass blades couldn't take the heat anymore, and split. Superheated compressed air in the blade rushed out, launching the blade like a rocket. WHOOSH! The blade rocketed from the wind farm at hundreds of miles per hour, glowing as it flew from heat of the electricity that had passed through it, and St. Elmo's fire.
The next morning, onlookers couldn't find the missing blade -- it was in someone's back yard, a mile away. So, initial reports were that the blade was missing.
Utility workers flying a helicopter spot the blade from the air. The utility did not want the public to know that their turbines can launch turbine blades like rockets at nearby homes, so they kept it hush-hush, and dispatched a truck in the wee hours of the morning to quietly retrieve that blade and drop it off at the bottom of the tower.
The utility, happy that the public is distracted by the UFO speculation, laughed at UFO reports in the press but actually included that as a possible cause in their subsaequent public analyses.
That analysis explains it all -- the UFO, the "tentacles," the UFO seen "skimming across the sky" toward the turbines -- it was actually the missing blade flying from the destroyed turbine -- and why the blade was first reported missing, but subsequently seen in plain sight at the bottom of the tower.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Haiti, Chile, Baja, Sumatra -- 4 Big Earthquakes
The 01/12/10 earthquake in Haiti was 7.0 on the Richter scale.
The 02/27/10 earthquake in Chile was 8.8 on the similar Moment/Magnitude scale.
The 04/04/10 earthquake in Baja was 7.2 on the Richter scale.
The 04/07/10 earthquake in Sumatra was 7.7 on the Richter scale.
What's going on?
Simple proposed answer: Global warming.
As CO2 and other greenhouse gasses -- especially methane -- build-up in the atmosphere, they trap heat from sunlight, the average world temp goes up, until it reaches a "tipping point" -- the point at which, on the average, a lot of frozen water, sitting on land, begins to melt.
The ice melts, rivers dump more ice into the oceans, and global rotation generating centrifugal force throws a lot of the new water weight to the Equator.
This is the global equivalent of a figure skater, doing a pirouette, spreading her harms to slow herself down. The increase in mass at the perimeter of a rotating object causes the object's motion to compensate by slowing down.
I.e., the increase in tonnage at the Equator causes the Equator to "put on the brakes" on global spin.
This sets the slowing crust at war with the inside of the Earth, which wants to continue rotating at the previous rate.
That war generates earthquakes and volcanoes worldwide.
The 02/27/10 earthquake in Chile was 8.8 on the similar Moment/Magnitude scale.
The 04/04/10 earthquake in Baja was 7.2 on the Richter scale.
The 04/07/10 earthquake in Sumatra was 7.7 on the Richter scale.
What's going on?
Simple proposed answer: Global warming.
As CO2 and other greenhouse gasses -- especially methane -- build-up in the atmosphere, they trap heat from sunlight, the average world temp goes up, until it reaches a "tipping point" -- the point at which, on the average, a lot of frozen water, sitting on land, begins to melt.
The ice melts, rivers dump more ice into the oceans, and global rotation generating centrifugal force throws a lot of the new water weight to the Equator.
This is the global equivalent of a figure skater, doing a pirouette, spreading her harms to slow herself down. The increase in mass at the perimeter of a rotating object causes the object's motion to compensate by slowing down.
I.e., the increase in tonnage at the Equator causes the Equator to "put on the brakes" on global spin.
This sets the slowing crust at war with the inside of the Earth, which wants to continue rotating at the previous rate.
That war generates earthquakes and volcanoes worldwide.
Friday, March 19, 2010
Another Zero-Investment Science Experiment for the Kids!
For most of us, "sunglasses" are just "sunglasses." Whether or not they are "polarized" only tells us whether they are more expensive or less expensive. ("Polarized" is more expensive.)
But, when you buy polarized sunglasses, you are buying science. If you already have a pair of polarized sunglasses, you can do an interesting science experiment with them.
Most cell phone screens are also polarized. So, if you hold the cell phone in your right hand with the screen illuminated, and hold the polarized sunglasses in your left hand over the screen, looking through a polarized sunglasses lens at the screen, and rotate the lens clockwise or counterclockwise as you look through it, you will see the cell phone screen begin to vanish!
Next, find a calculator in the house with one of those LCD readouts -- one of those gold/beige/gray-colored screens with the not-very-easy-to-see black numbers composed of pieces of the number "8." After turning on the LCD screen, rotate the sunglasses over that. It vanishes!
Finally, if you have a flat-screen computer screen, rotate your polarized sunglasses in front of that.
It, too, vanishes.
But, when you buy polarized sunglasses, you are buying science. If you already have a pair of polarized sunglasses, you can do an interesting science experiment with them.
Most cell phone screens are also polarized. So, if you hold the cell phone in your right hand with the screen illuminated, and hold the polarized sunglasses in your left hand over the screen, looking through a polarized sunglasses lens at the screen, and rotate the lens clockwise or counterclockwise as you look through it, you will see the cell phone screen begin to vanish!
Next, find a calculator in the house with one of those LCD readouts -- one of those gold/beige/gray-colored screens with the not-very-easy-to-see black numbers composed of pieces of the number "8." After turning on the LCD screen, rotate the sunglasses over that. It vanishes!
Finally, if you have a flat-screen computer screen, rotate your polarized sunglasses in front of that.
It, too, vanishes.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Math Trick to Teach the Kids
12,345,678,987,654,321 ("12 quadrillion, 345 trillion, 678 billion, 987 million, 654 thousand, 321") = 111,111,111 x 111,111,111
Monday, March 15, 2010
Time Travel
Things like the time machine in the movie Time Machine are impossible, right?
Well, in a sense, no time machine is needed for time travel because, in a sense, time travel occurs constantly without the assistance of a machine.
This assumes that time, like the number line, is infinitely divisible into smaller and smaller parts.
There is a concept called Planck Time -- which says that the time light takes to travel the shortest measurable distance, 5.391 × 10−44 seconds, is the smallest unit of time measurable -- but that is a Heisenberg-type limit, an innate measuring tool limitation, and does not necessarily reflect anything fundamental about time.
If we make that assumption -- namely, that time is infinitely divisible -- then because under Einstein’s theories velocity relative to surroundings slows down time relative to surroundings, it is safe to say that every time someone moves relative to the world around him or her, then that moving person's time slows down ever so slightly, an extremely teeny tiny amount, relative to the rest of the world -- a variety of journey into the past relative to the world around him or her. So, by getting off your tail and taking a walk, you become a kind of "time machine."
Years ago physicists proved that the effect just described, called relativistic time dilation, occurs by taking two identical, precisely-calibrated atomic clocks. They kept one on the ground, and loaded the other onto a Boeing 727, which was flown around the world several times. When the 727 finally ended its journey, the two atomic clocks were compared, and the airborne one was slower by the amount predicted by Einstein.
Between 1977 and 1981, a machine called a pi-meson gun in Los Alamos, New Mexico, made use of time dilation to aim subatomic particles called pi-mesons at otherwise inoperable cancer patients.
By speeding-up or slowing down the particles in the particle beam emitted by the gun, the operators could precisely control when and where the particles "died" and "exploded" into their component particle parts. The operators would carefully immobilize the body part containing the inoperable cancer -- for example, the head -- and fire the pi meson gun at it. By carefully regulating speed, the gun operators changed the time of the particles in the beam, making them last exactly long enough to reach the tumor inside the afflicted person's brain. After passing harmlessly through healthy tissue and entering the tumor, the pi mesons being controlled by time dilation would break down into their component subatomic particles in a kind of tiny fission explosion, destroying a tiny bit of the tumor. By doing this slowly (to keep the brain from getting hot) scientists were able to destroy the tumor tissue.
Time travel amounting to more than dilation slowing time down -- in other words, time stopping and even time reversal -- may be occurring in our Universe.
Every time astronomers say, "We have found another nebula characterized by a high-energy jet...
...being fired out of the accretion disk around a black hole," they don't literally mean that there "is" a black hole, there, at the location being talked about.
What they mean is that a black hole is in the process of forming, there, relative to us -- but it never finishes forming, relative to us, looking at it.
Black holes experience a kind of dual reality each of which is "really real" and neither of which is an illusion.
Relative to us, there is no such thing as a "black hole." Why? Because time itself slows down in the presence extreme gravitational pull, just as it slows down in the presence of movement as discussed above, and as the object in space becoming a black hole gets closer and closer to having the gravitational pull needed to even pull light into itself, relative to distant observers like us the time slows down so much it almost stops. So, relative to distant observers like us no black hole ever finishes forming. Ergo, relative to us, there is no such thing as a black hole.
However, relative to themselves black holes finish forming very quickly. Slap your hands together. That’s how quickly they form, if you are there, at the forming black hole, because at the black hole, time seems normal.
Neither situation is an illusion. Infernally slow time for observers distant from the forming black hole, and unbelievably fast time at the black hole, are two completely different realities, each of which is "really real" -- not an illusion.
If we had a much more powerful telescope than we have today, and were to focus upon the black hole forming at the base of jets in space, what we would see, from our place and time on Earth, are objects frozen in time, moving unbelievably slowly toward the forming black hole, like a school child during recess always walking half of the remaining distance to the school wall, never actually reaching it.
Functionally, we would see time almost stopped.
For objects at the black hole, something entirely different occurs. Objects in space get pulled into a swirling tornado of matter call an "accretion disk"...
What they mean is that a black hole is in the process of forming, there, relative to us -- but it never finishes forming, relative to us, looking at it.
Black holes experience a kind of dual reality each of which is "really real" and neither of which is an illusion.
Relative to us, there is no such thing as a "black hole." Why? Because time itself slows down in the presence extreme gravitational pull, just as it slows down in the presence of movement as discussed above, and as the object in space becoming a black hole gets closer and closer to having the gravitational pull needed to even pull light into itself, relative to distant observers like us the time slows down so much it almost stops. So, relative to distant observers like us no black hole ever finishes forming. Ergo, relative to us, there is no such thing as a black hole.
However, relative to themselves black holes finish forming very quickly. Slap your hands together. That’s how quickly they form, if you are there, at the forming black hole, because at the black hole, time seems normal.
Neither situation is an illusion. Infernally slow time for observers distant from the forming black hole, and unbelievably fast time at the black hole, are two completely different realities, each of which is "really real" -- not an illusion.
If we had a much more powerful telescope than we have today, and were to focus upon the black hole forming at the base of jets in space, what we would see, from our place and time on Earth, are objects frozen in time, moving unbelievably slowly toward the forming black hole, like a school child during recess always walking half of the remaining distance to the school wall, never actually reaching it.
Functionally, we would see time almost stopped.
For objects at the black hole, something entirely different occurs. Objects in space get pulled into a swirling tornado of matter call an "accretion disk"...
...where they are ripped apart and -- pfffffffftttttt!!!!! -- sucked-in by immense gravity.
Once they pass through the boundary called the "event horizon," they enter a world where the escape velocity necessary to get away from the immense gravity is more than the speed of light.
Since time stops at the speed of light, some have asked if, just possibly, time reversal occurs inside a black hole relative to us distant observers outside of it. This concept was broadened by some Russians into the black hole / wormhole / white hole theory, where matter captured by black holes might be thrown back in time through a naturally-occurring tunnel through time into the past, called a wormhole, and then get squirted-out of space in the distant past through an opening in the fabric of reality in the past called a "white hole." Objects in our telescopes called "quasars" -- non-star pinpoints in space emitting ridiculous amounts of energy -- have been offered as possible white holes squirting out the contents of worm holes receiving matter from black holes.
What this theory does is connect our future to our past, so that reality does not have a true beginning and end in time, but is circular.
Thus, according to the theory, what looks to us like background radiation from a Big Bang could actually be energy squirted-out of a quasar at some point in our past.
And, in such a scenario, it is conceivable that we are made of particulate matter seemingly trapped on our side of of some local black hole, by time-slowing time dilation, but somehow captured and squirted-out into our past, "back there" where our astronomers see in their telescopes light being emitted from a quasar.
"Our stuff" -- the matter we are made of -- might be in our Universe twice!
I am bothered by a lot of the material in this analysis. But, there it is, for you to chew on.
Once they pass through the boundary called the "event horizon," they enter a world where the escape velocity necessary to get away from the immense gravity is more than the speed of light.
Since time stops at the speed of light, some have asked if, just possibly, time reversal occurs inside a black hole relative to us distant observers outside of it. This concept was broadened by some Russians into the black hole / wormhole / white hole theory, where matter captured by black holes might be thrown back in time through a naturally-occurring tunnel through time into the past, called a wormhole, and then get squirted-out of space in the distant past through an opening in the fabric of reality in the past called a "white hole." Objects in our telescopes called "quasars" -- non-star pinpoints in space emitting ridiculous amounts of energy -- have been offered as possible white holes squirting out the contents of worm holes receiving matter from black holes.
What this theory does is connect our future to our past, so that reality does not have a true beginning and end in time, but is circular.
Thus, according to the theory, what looks to us like background radiation from a Big Bang could actually be energy squirted-out of a quasar at some point in our past.
And, in such a scenario, it is conceivable that we are made of particulate matter seemingly trapped on our side of of some local black hole, by time-slowing time dilation, but somehow captured and squirted-out into our past, "back there" where our astronomers see in their telescopes light being emitted from a quasar.
"Our stuff" -- the matter we are made of -- might be in our Universe twice!
I am bothered by a lot of the material in this analysis. But, there it is, for you to chew on.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Kid Experiment: Finding Meteorite Dust with Magnets
Adults will be amazed at this experiment, too.
Two of the major components of asteroid-pieces-become-meteorites are iron and nickel, both magnetic metals.
These asteroid pieces crash into Earth all of the time -- thousands every day.
As they crash into Earth's atmosphere, they heat-up, melt and vaporize.
Years ago, as I was lying on my lawn late at night, stargazing through my binoculars, I accidentally caught one of these in my lens perfectly, directly above me. I saw it light up, leave a trail of sparks, and I even heard it go "phzzzzzzzzzzzt," a second or two later (indicating a terminal altitude of only 1,000 to 2,000 feet).
When the asteroid-pieces-become-meteorites vaporize, the hot iron gas or hot nickel gas quickly cools, and recondenses into little spheres, or "spherules," of each metal.
These metal spherules are so tiny that they float in the air, like dust. We are constantly subject to a rain of these particles, and even breathe them in, so that our lung tissues are very lightly coated in them.
Because the asteroid metal spherules are constantly raining down everywhere, our gardens outside are dusted with them.
The spherules can easily be recovered and "collected" as follows...
Materials: A white paper plate, a small but powerful magnet, a clear plastic bag fitting easily over the entire hand, access to a garden with dry ground.
Directions: Grasp the magnet between the thumb and index finger, and pull the plastic bag over that hand so that the entire hand is covered up to the wrist. Go outside and, without digging-up or disturbing the dry soil of the garden in any way, gently dab the dry soil with the part of the plastic bag covering the magnet. You will see odd-shaped chunks of debris adhering to the bag, as well as a fine dust. Much of the dust is comprised of iron and nickel spherules.
Hold the debris-and-dust-coated section of the plastic bag directly over the paper plate, debris side down, and without removing the plastic bag from the hand carefully pull the plastic bag away from the magnet inside the plastic bag so that the debris and dust shower onto the paper plate.
Repeat this process again and again, until there is a respectable collection of debris and dust on the plate.
If you move the magnet under the plate you can separate the magnetic debris and dust from the dirt.
If you look closely, you can watch the spherules roll down the plate when it is tilted.
If you have access to a microscope, you can actually see the meteorite spherules which you have gathered up close.
Two of the major components of asteroid-pieces-become-meteorites are iron and nickel, both magnetic metals.
These asteroid pieces crash into Earth all of the time -- thousands every day.
As they crash into Earth's atmosphere, they heat-up, melt and vaporize.
Years ago, as I was lying on my lawn late at night, stargazing through my binoculars, I accidentally caught one of these in my lens perfectly, directly above me. I saw it light up, leave a trail of sparks, and I even heard it go "phzzzzzzzzzzzt," a second or two later (indicating a terminal altitude of only 1,000 to 2,000 feet).
When the asteroid-pieces-become-meteorites vaporize, the hot iron gas or hot nickel gas quickly cools, and recondenses into little spheres, or "spherules," of each metal.
These metal spherules are so tiny that they float in the air, like dust. We are constantly subject to a rain of these particles, and even breathe them in, so that our lung tissues are very lightly coated in them.
Because the asteroid metal spherules are constantly raining down everywhere, our gardens outside are dusted with them.
The spherules can easily be recovered and "collected" as follows...
Materials: A white paper plate, a small but powerful magnet, a clear plastic bag fitting easily over the entire hand, access to a garden with dry ground.
Directions: Grasp the magnet between the thumb and index finger, and pull the plastic bag over that hand so that the entire hand is covered up to the wrist. Go outside and, without digging-up or disturbing the dry soil of the garden in any way, gently dab the dry soil with the part of the plastic bag covering the magnet. You will see odd-shaped chunks of debris adhering to the bag, as well as a fine dust. Much of the dust is comprised of iron and nickel spherules.
Hold the debris-and-dust-coated section of the plastic bag directly over the paper plate, debris side down, and without removing the plastic bag from the hand carefully pull the plastic bag away from the magnet inside the plastic bag so that the debris and dust shower onto the paper plate.
Repeat this process again and again, until there is a respectable collection of debris and dust on the plate.
If you move the magnet under the plate you can separate the magnetic debris and dust from the dirt.
If you look closely, you can watch the spherules roll down the plate when it is tilted.
If you have access to a microscope, you can actually see the meteorite spherules which you have gathered up close.
Saturday, March 13, 2010
"...where the deer and the WHAT play??????????"
"Home, home on the range, where the deer and the antelope play."
No antelope ever lived in the wild in North America. Some have been imported into zoos, here. That's it.
An animal called a pronghorn is native to America, but it is called "pronghorn" to focus-in on the characteristic which distinguishes them from antelope -- prongs, or branches, on the horns.
So, the song got it wrong.
No antelope ever lived in the wild in North America. Some have been imported into zoos, here. That's it.
An animal called a pronghorn is native to America, but it is called "pronghorn" to focus-in on the characteristic which distinguishes them from antelope -- prongs, or branches, on the horns.
So, the song got it wrong.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Impact Craters on Earth
Most people think that that meteor crater in Arizona, Barringer Crater, is a "one time thing," though that is not ay all the case.
In a sense, the answer to the question, "Has the Earth been hit with meteors frequently?" is in the sky, above your head, on the surface of the Moon.
Essentially, the Earth would have been bombarded with the same array of "cosmic cannon fire" -- meteorites, asteroids, and comets -- as the Moon.
There would be some difference because of the atmosphere. Meteorites smaller than a certain size frequently don't make it down to ground level, in Earth's case, because unlike the Moon the Earth has an atmosphere, and friction, when they slam into the atmosphere, heats them, melts them and vaporizes them.
But there would also be a difference arising from the fact that the Earth is much larger than the Moon. Our gravity, about 6 times that of the Moon, attracts a lot more naturally-occurring "space junk," and therefore many more impacts.
The main reason why the Earth does not look like the Moon is because our atmosphere and the life forms it supports quickly fills in craters with deposits which masks their existence. Earth would look like the Moon were it not for our atmosphere.
Despite the healing effects of Earth's atmosphere, many impact craters are still visible all over the Earth.
Before Barringer Crater was formed by a 20 megaton impact about 49,000 years ago, a meterorite slammed into Wolf Creek, Australia, around 300,000 B.C.
A large piece of rock slammed into Bosumtwi, Ghana, around 1,000,000 years ago with an enormous impact of 7,000 megatons.
The Manicougan, Quebec crater, generated by an impact about 214,ooo,ooo years ago, has a substantial deposit of rebound material in the center of it, after the meteorite slammed into the Earth and buried itself there.
The Brent, Ontaria crater was genetated by a 250 megaton impact about 400,000,000 years ago.
Many other impact craters on Earth have been photographed from space.
In a sense, the answer to the question, "Has the Earth been hit with meteors frequently?" is in the sky, above your head, on the surface of the Moon.
Essentially, the Earth would have been bombarded with the same array of "cosmic cannon fire" -- meteorites, asteroids, and comets -- as the Moon.
There would be some difference because of the atmosphere. Meteorites smaller than a certain size frequently don't make it down to ground level, in Earth's case, because unlike the Moon the Earth has an atmosphere, and friction, when they slam into the atmosphere, heats them, melts them and vaporizes them.
But there would also be a difference arising from the fact that the Earth is much larger than the Moon. Our gravity, about 6 times that of the Moon, attracts a lot more naturally-occurring "space junk," and therefore many more impacts.
The main reason why the Earth does not look like the Moon is because our atmosphere and the life forms it supports quickly fills in craters with deposits which masks their existence. Earth would look like the Moon were it not for our atmosphere.
Despite the healing effects of Earth's atmosphere, many impact craters are still visible all over the Earth.
Before Barringer Crater was formed by a 20 megaton impact about 49,000 years ago, a meterorite slammed into Wolf Creek, Australia, around 300,000 B.C.
A large piece of rock slammed into Bosumtwi, Ghana, around 1,000,000 years ago with an enormous impact of 7,000 megatons.
The Manicougan, Quebec crater, generated by an impact about 214,ooo,ooo years ago, has a substantial deposit of rebound material in the center of it, after the meteorite slammed into the Earth and buried itself there.
The Brent, Ontaria crater was genetated by a 250 megaton impact about 400,000,000 years ago.
Many other impact craters on Earth have been photographed from space.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
The Madness of Psychiatry
Psychiatric problems exist. I'm not denying that. I have had several brain-physiology-based psychiatric cases as clients over the years. The two profoundly schizophrenic cases stand out in my mind.
In one case, the client used to march around his parents' back yard at night, waving a butcher knife in the air at God, screaming at God that God should not be asking him to stab his family! The newest medication worked wonders on him: He became so normal that today he can laugh at some of the goofy things he would say and do.
In another case, a minister friend's sister was the schizophrenic. She loved it when I paid a visit to their household to talk about her case. No medication worked for her at all. She was "as crazy as a bug in the rug." I used to tease her about God talking to her. She loved, and was greatly amused by, my teasing. What amused her so much was that I believed that her voices were fake. Profound belief in the reality of the voices is one of the hallmarks of schizophrenia. I have read that some suspect that the reason why schizophrenics can't be shook from their belief in the reality of the voices is that the real disease of schizophrenia is runaway feelings of fear arising from bad brain chemistry or wiring, and that the schizophrenics, being otherwise rational, cause the voices in their heads by a mighty internal effort, to rationalize the crazy levels of otherwise groundless fear filling their heads.
A wonderful, wonderful Vietnamese girl I used to babysit, little Nhu, heard me mention once to her mom, who wished to major in child psychology, that there was a fascinating group of portraits of cats by artist Louis Wain which, when arranged in the order of their production, reflected the artist's journey into insanity. The little girl pushed me for years to find the series. Here it is...
Though psychiatric problems are real, one has to be very, very, very, very cautious about our psychiatric diagnostic and treatment system. I can't say "very" enough times. Our father used to tell us, when we were kids, "Beware of friends who say, 'I want to be a psychiatrist when I grow up.' In almost every case, they want to do that because they have psychological problems needing to be solved."
Our father's prejudice was too broad a brush. Nonetheless, they reflect the profound skepticism one must have toward the psychiatric diagnosis and treatment system. It is so dangerous and twisted.
The 2008 movie The Changeling, based on a true story, was about a woman in 1928 whose child disappears, who is later replaced by an impostor by police. The impostor is too short, and circumcised. When the mother contests the child's identity, she is committed to an insane asylum by police as "delusional." The insane asylum refuses to let her out unless she admits that she is crazy!
Well, the system really is like that, to this day. In 1973, in the famous Rosenhan Experiment, a psychologist tested the competence of the system. He dispatched people with zero psychological deficit and no psychiatric treatment history at all to 12 different psychiatric hospitals, where each complained of having heard voices once, but otherwise acted perfectly normal and happy.
In all 12 instances the people were diagnosed as psychotic. All were described as suffering from ongoing symptoms of psychological illness. All were prescribed psychotropic drugs. None were allowed to be released unless they admitted that they were mentally ill and agreed to continue taking antipsychotic medication. Some took months to get out -- even after Rosenhan visited the institutions and verified the existence of his study!
Interestingly, in several of the cases the genuinely crazy patients committed with Rosenhan's fakes could tell that the fakes weren't really crazy.
The psychiatrists could not, in any case.
Rosenhan did a flip-side experiment. He told a well-known teaching hospital that he had sent several fakes into the wards, and challenged them to distill the fakes from the mentally ill patients.
In reality, there were none.
The hospital selected 41 out of 193 as eligible for the diagnosis of "normal."
I think that psychiaty is extremely prone to error, for a variety of reasons. (1) The psychiatrist's personal pride (-- "How dare you imply that you are competent enough to think that my diagnosis might be mistasken!!!") (2) Money. I have seen my share of reports finding psych patients eligible for release just as the coverage ran out! (3) The innate "softness" of the evidence of psychic dysfunction.
In one case, the client used to march around his parents' back yard at night, waving a butcher knife in the air at God, screaming at God that God should not be asking him to stab his family! The newest medication worked wonders on him: He became so normal that today he can laugh at some of the goofy things he would say and do.
In another case, a minister friend's sister was the schizophrenic. She loved it when I paid a visit to their household to talk about her case. No medication worked for her at all. She was "as crazy as a bug in the rug." I used to tease her about God talking to her. She loved, and was greatly amused by, my teasing. What amused her so much was that I believed that her voices were fake. Profound belief in the reality of the voices is one of the hallmarks of schizophrenia. I have read that some suspect that the reason why schizophrenics can't be shook from their belief in the reality of the voices is that the real disease of schizophrenia is runaway feelings of fear arising from bad brain chemistry or wiring, and that the schizophrenics, being otherwise rational, cause the voices in their heads by a mighty internal effort, to rationalize the crazy levels of otherwise groundless fear filling their heads.
A wonderful, wonderful Vietnamese girl I used to babysit, little Nhu, heard me mention once to her mom, who wished to major in child psychology, that there was a fascinating group of portraits of cats by artist Louis Wain which, when arranged in the order of their production, reflected the artist's journey into insanity. The little girl pushed me for years to find the series. Here it is...
Though psychiatric problems are real, one has to be very, very, very, very cautious about our psychiatric diagnostic and treatment system. I can't say "very" enough times. Our father used to tell us, when we were kids, "Beware of friends who say, 'I want to be a psychiatrist when I grow up.' In almost every case, they want to do that because they have psychological problems needing to be solved."
Our father's prejudice was too broad a brush. Nonetheless, they reflect the profound skepticism one must have toward the psychiatric diagnosis and treatment system. It is so dangerous and twisted.
The 2008 movie The Changeling, based on a true story, was about a woman in 1928 whose child disappears, who is later replaced by an impostor by police. The impostor is too short, and circumcised. When the mother contests the child's identity, she is committed to an insane asylum by police as "delusional." The insane asylum refuses to let her out unless she admits that she is crazy!
Well, the system really is like that, to this day. In 1973, in the famous Rosenhan Experiment, a psychologist tested the competence of the system. He dispatched people with zero psychological deficit and no psychiatric treatment history at all to 12 different psychiatric hospitals, where each complained of having heard voices once, but otherwise acted perfectly normal and happy.
In all 12 instances the people were diagnosed as psychotic. All were described as suffering from ongoing symptoms of psychological illness. All were prescribed psychotropic drugs. None were allowed to be released unless they admitted that they were mentally ill and agreed to continue taking antipsychotic medication. Some took months to get out -- even after Rosenhan visited the institutions and verified the existence of his study!
Interestingly, in several of the cases the genuinely crazy patients committed with Rosenhan's fakes could tell that the fakes weren't really crazy.
The psychiatrists could not, in any case.
Rosenhan did a flip-side experiment. He told a well-known teaching hospital that he had sent several fakes into the wards, and challenged them to distill the fakes from the mentally ill patients.
In reality, there were none.
The hospital selected 41 out of 193 as eligible for the diagnosis of "normal."
I think that psychiaty is extremely prone to error, for a variety of reasons. (1) The psychiatrist's personal pride (-- "How dare you imply that you are competent enough to think that my diagnosis might be mistasken!!!") (2) Money. I have seen my share of reports finding psych patients eligible for release just as the coverage ran out! (3) The innate "softness" of the evidence of psychic dysfunction.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
The Nemesis Theory
The Nemesis Theory is one of the great ideas in the history of the world. It really is.
It's like this...
A paleontologist sifting through layers of fossil beds noticed that every so often the layers of fossils were topped-off by a bizarre layer of a substance called Iridium.
Iridium is one of the rarest elements on Earth. Yet here it was, in layers, topping off strata, or layers, in fossil beds all over the world.
Careful measurement of the age of the amount of time passing between the Iridium layers yield a modal average of about 62,000,000 years.
So, there was an appearance that once every 62,000,000 years, something was causing a layer of one of the world's rarest element to be spread like icing on a cake all over the world.
While it is very rare on Earth (except between fossil layers), Iridium is a common component in asteroids. So, the researchers thought, "Assuming asteroids pulverizing themselves into dust by smashing into the Earth once every 62,000,000 years is the reason for the Iridium and the regular mass extinctions generating so many fossils, what mechanism would cause asteroids to target Earth once every 62,000,000 years?"
And then somebody had a wonderful idea, again maybe the best idea anyone in science has ever had.
If we look skyward through our telescopes, we see that, surprisingly, most stars in our galaxy are binary or triplex star systems -- 1 of 2 or 3 stars orbiting one another.
Frequently, orbits of anything around something else in space are extremely elongated -- much longer than wider. If the Earth is part of a binary star system, and if the Earth's partner in that binary star system is a relatively small, almost invisible brown star companion, then that brown star companion might have one of those elongated orbits, 62,000,000 years in length, so that, once every 62,000,000 years, the brown star companion punches through the cloud of ice and rock around the Sun, beyond Pluto's orbit, called the Oort Cloud, and drags millions of asteroids and comets in with it by its own gravity.
These asteroids and comets become bullets in a shooting gallery, smashing into the planets for tens of thousands of years, until the supply of bullets is exhausted, and the planets thereafter enjoy millions of years of relative peace until the brown star companion punches its next hole through the Oort Cloud. Before that period of peace, Earth endures a mass extinction as it is bombarded with the brown star's asteroid and comet “artillery,” and is once again powdered with Iridium dust.
Scientists named the theoretical brown star companion of Earth "Nemesis" -- enemy.
Currently, some astronomers are engaged in a search for Nemesis, through the Oort Cloud, a difficult endeavor. Nemesis, if it exists, is believer to be about 1 to 1.5 light years away right now, racing for the highpoint of its orbit.
No, we don't expect another visit soon.
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Which Way Is North?
Just because I'm including a piece here on that subject, most would say that north is not where the compass points, and that would be correct.
If you follow your compass, you will end up in the Arctic Ocean, west of the northern tip of Greenland and Ellesmere Island, about 300 miles south of the North Pole.
You will have to run fast to keep up with magnetic north. It jiggles back and forth about 40 miles a day, and the oval within which it jiggles is currently moving toward Russia at about 40 miles a year -- about a 1/10th of a mile a day.
If you follow your compass, you will end up in the Arctic Ocean, west of the northern tip of Greenland and Ellesmere Island, about 300 miles south of the North Pole.
You will have to run fast to keep up with magnetic north. It jiggles back and forth about 40 miles a day, and the oval within which it jiggles is currently moving toward Russia at about 40 miles a year -- about a 1/10th of a mile a day.
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