WAG

You all know what that means...

This is from way out in foul ball territory. Here goes:

The Hawaiian eruption gets caused by a failure of the crust around the main crater. That causes a small leak of the magma reservoir. That leaves even more of the crust unsupported. More cracks occur along an eon-old fault, long hidden. What shows is our current situation, as a vicious cycle. Eventually, the southeastern tip of the island breaks off and heads away, propelled by magma eruption.

Now, there is a cosmically unlikely connection between Hawaii and Guatemala's eruption. There are a couple possible reasons, but they're irrelevant at the moment. We're not done yet. Perhaps it's that little chunk of island being pushed towards the Ring of Fire...

Here we go again- Yellowstone's Steamboat Springs shows a sudden major bump in activity. It destabilizes the Yellowstone hotspot and...

Gives one pause, even if it IS a WAG.

Crib notes or Why Einstein Was A Smart Dude As Far As He Went

This is going to fairly quick. As time has passed, I find working on a phone screen keyboard less and less exciting, no matter the screen size.

Einstein had his theory of a space-time full of dents of various degrees and used that to demonstrate the effects of gravity. Despite the fact that nobody has been able to detect gravity by any means other than "Hey look! We're floating (or screaming) towards that big thing over there!". His model was a rubber sheet with dents: the more massive an object, the bigger the dent. And this presents a BIG problem - what happens when you try to deal with 3D objects in a 2D model?

Generally, it goes flooey. Example: things in orbit around Earth. Ask any high-school kid and he'll say that gravity (i.e. the dent) forces the object to follow the contour of the dent. Let me ask this: WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE OBJECT IS IN AN ORBIT 90 DEGREES PERPENDICULAR TO ANOTHER OBJECT IN ORBIT?

Did we just create another sheet of space at 90 degrees to the original orbital ecliptic? Did we just invent another 3 dimensions? I'd really like to know.

In the meantime, perhaps we'd better call it Einstein's Special Limited View Gravity Theory.

More when I get so upset I ignore the keyboard.

News Flash!

Here's a simple opinion expressed in a heretical way:

Anything we know about Physics that includes a Fudge Factor (yes, I'm pointing your way Plancke!) is ipso facto bullshit.

If it has a fufac('), it really means we're missing something and we're expressing our ignorance in numeric form. That's it. If we can't accurately describe something in terms that can predict reality, then like dark energy, it's worse than useless... it's wasting our time when we could be moving on to new ideas.

Let's look at "dark matter". Instead of that phrase meaning simply 'matter we can't see', it's been morphed into an entity that seems like The Monster Under The Bed. You can't see it, you can't detect it, but it must be there because it'll leave a gaping hole in reality if it goes missing. Or so the gospel Math proclaims.

Honestly, every time one of these theorems appears I spend otherwise useful time wondering where the hell they came up with such nonsense.

Am I crazy, or...?

Yes, I have to wonder. As, I guess, we all do who contemplate any kind of physics and the way the universe works.

What I've been struggling with lately is the whole dark matter/energy war. I call it a war instead of a bar fight simply because of the scale of the fight going on. Everyone is trying to figure out why the universe as observed doesn't seem to show enough mass or energy to fill out what they have decided should be there. This has me wondering if these people are smart enough to balance their checkbooks every month.

Look at what they are up against:

First off, how do they decide how much matter there should be? If they're honest, they should admit that they have no idea if they could see all the matter in the universe. Ditto on detecting all normal energy. That's got to be the biggest boast in the history of our race. If any dictionary needs a definition of hubris, this is an easy shot. Consider this minor example- a star 50 lightyears away goes ultinova. It explodes with such violence that what is left inplodes and goes dark. This happened 500 years ago and the shockwave passed us 450 years ago. Now, how exactly will we know this happened? No-one noticed it, among the dozen (maybe) astronomers on Earth. They were all asleep at the time and there were no cameras. So, the blast wave and anything visible is 450 years in our past, along with the only chance to add the matter and energy to our supposed total. Multiply this by a few billion. Now tell me how you figure an accurate total.

Like I said, the very claim that that there can be an accurate guess, much less factual total, is suitable for fertilizing gardens much more than discussing in a serious setting. Then we get into 'dark matter' and 'dark energy'. I wouldn't try to get that into a comic book.

Well, let's get back to some serious science stuff. The most recent word is that Space-X will go for Mars by 2020. That is one to watch for. I have to support any attempts at planting extra-planetary bases. There is entirely too much crap zipping around out there of a size to make those who know lose sleep. Sometimes the only thing you can do about giant meteor impacts is not be home when it happens. Consider how much evidence has been left on the surface of every planet and moon we can see. It's like being in the infantry in a war- at some point your number is gonna come up. One of those bullets is going to end up in the same space you occupy at the same time. Only a fool counts on dodging all of them.

I actually feel the same way about ufo sightings. You can take any view you please about the existence of other life, but numbers don't lie. There are entirely too many planets out there to get odds on there NOT being other species with spaceflight. The only thing I am willing to bet on is that the half dozen or so that that have been observed are probably from within 50 or 100 lightyears. There are plenty of planets in that range and it ups the odds that we might be picked as a place to visit.

To finish up, I hope I will live to see a base on Mars and the moon. I will feel better about humanity's future.

Microbursts

of thought,  actually...

A lot of things about our little piece of creation are pretty clear at this point.  It's certain that our solar system is a lot bigger place than they lead us to believe back in school.  That's ok,  they didn't have the data that we do.  It does point up one thing,  of course - Don't refuse to change your outlook when those nasty old facts make your opinions obsolete.

That new data makes it clear that our solar system stretches a significant way towards the next nearest one. That and there are many Big Objects out in the Kuyper Belt.  Some really would be classified as planets,  based on size.  And they follow 'rude' orbits. That's one of the things that got Pluto kicked out of the Major Planet Club. The latest I heard, they've found some 4,000+ bodies in that belt. Some are bigger than Earth. They noticed that there was a peculiar empty(ish) region out where the edge of the solar system was thought to be and have got wondering why. They're looking for Planet X and I sincerely hope they find it! The alternative, to my mind, is that there is a black hole orbiting out there perturbing asteroid orbits and eating various trash to boot. So let's hope for a rogue planet.

So many things have been happening in the odd corners of science. Some good, some rather disappointing. One of the cruddy ones: waiting until 2032 before NASA launches a Mars mission, at the earliest. And have you seen the capsule? Not even a proper ship! It's designed to carry 3 people on the 3 year trip. And that in a space about twice the size of an Apollo capsule. What they have NOT mentioned is how they plan on keeping them sane. Cooped up in a small box with zero room for exercise and no mental input, they may last a few weeks. It should give Vegas bookies income, though: do they just go crazy or will one kill the others and then themselves? Maybe the design will change before then...

One bright spot, I think, is that they have found that the moon Ganymede is an onion-like thing made of layers of ice and water. Who could guess?

I've been puzzled, lately. I'm seeing a lot of airtime spent on the origin and ultimate fate of the universe. And I'm wondering why. Are people afraid it'll happen next Thursday? Are they afraid they'll miss it? I don't know. Ask me again in about 20 billion years...

I love that astronomers are now discovering so many exo-planets. They are finding that there are far weirder ones out there than anyone ever imagined. A planet that orbits its sun in less than a day? Outrageous!

Umm. We've been told that the most massive things around are black holes. Also, that there must be 'dark matter' in order for the universe to add up to the right amount of mass. Did they add in the super-massive black hole at the center of every galaxy? Who knows? And with all the new planets they're discovering every day in our galaxy alone... At least it will keep the people who love big numbers happy.

On another note, I will try to post at a reasonable rate. I know I've been slack, but typing things on a phone screen isn't fun. I've had to put the replacement computer off another year. Losing both the desktop and the laptop to catastrophic hardware failure in one year is hard to work around.

Brrrrrr

The old year is gone away.  The new one has actually brought something interesting about a subject that has had me wondering for a long time: the most recent ice age.

We all know that it was not a major ice event.  think those are reserved for ones lasting a million years or something. Still,  it must have seemed like a curse from the gods to our ancestors- glaciers, low average temps,  and the misery that accompanies that. Then it went away.

Now let me hand you a theorem based on new info coming in.  That new info is evidence of a major ELE comet strike.  It happened...  taDA!  circa 11,000bce. The evidence is strikingly similar to The Dinosaur Killer. There's the same layer of e.t. materials visible in the rocks,  but there are some BIG surprises.

For one thing,  this material layer exists ONLY on the north American continent.  They estimate the comet at 3 miles diameter, yet there is no impact crater.  None. Remember,  this was a mere 13,000 years ago.  Surely there would have been one helluva big hole and we'd all know about it. Trust me. The other thing about the deposition layer provides the answer,  and it's one we had best pay attention to- the layer (inches - thick) is dosed liberally with soot. Soot is super-fine particles of carbon produced by combustion. An inch or so of soot. Quite a few teensy particles means LOTS of combustion.  Of what? Pretty much everything burnable over an entire continent.  So we now get to the final key. They say the strike was an airburst!

We know what a small airburst did in Russia. Something tells me that a 3 mile hot fudge sundae would cause a real problem.

Now we're headed for the tall weeds. I'll list things that ocurred to me and you can see if they create the same picture to you that they do for me.

The Biblical flood
The Grand Canyon
(and several other canyons,  including Death Valley)
Yosemite valley -  before and after
The extinction of all North American megafauna
Same for the Clovis culture
Huge ice dam rupture at the end of the last ice age.

Still checking for other goodies to add...  the loss of megalithic monument builders of the past ("the Elder Gods").

Let us begin painting the picture.

Yosemite Valley
Created in the last ice age and may not last until the next.  The rock type that makes up the valley walls crumbles quickly under the climate there. So?  It's not an ancient feature. My timeline? Created 13,000 years ago.

The Biblical flood
While we don't actually know how far back the story originated,  we know that it's at least 4,500 years old.  At least that's the first written record.  We won't ever know exactly how old it really is. There is that site in southeast Turkey that's about 10,000 years old (or is 13,000 a better guess?).  We know that such a site would be buried in sand by a flood.  We've seen a mere hurricane Sandy bury things in sand... Finally,  every surviving record,  verbal and written from every civilization and culture, includes a flood story.

The Grand Canyon
Everyone knows that it exposes millions of years of geologic rock.  Then everyone's head goes off the rails and leaves them with the lasting impression that the canyon took millions of years to form. I don't think so.

Megafauna extinction
Well,  given enough heat,  anything burns...

Clovis people
Burn at least as quickly as your average giant ground sloth.

Here is how my picture looks now:

Scenario- typical ice age -  glaciers,  ice,  snow,  cold

BOOM

3 mile comet comes calling

EVERYTHING burns...  roast camel and North American elephant/mastodon and Clovis people.  Guess we know why so much evidence of paleo-humans appears in caves.

HUGE heat pulse transfers to ice, with predictable results- ice melts over a period of days or weeks

Any ice dams in existence at that point are likely to break as they are overwhelmed by trillions of gallons of hot water. This carves lots of canyons downstream in a short time, I would think.

The resulting mass of water would have no problem creating a worldwide flood, wiping out many people worldwide,  and leaving us their view of the cause of the event.  The only people who could give us the real story were dead. The soot layer is only in North America,  which localizes the direct effects of the disaster, but the flood and the megatsunami know no boundaries.

As I said,  a Really Bad day for planet Earth.

This, of course, is just a theorem.  It requires chucking out any number of currently popular ideas,  but that's science for you. The thing that suffers most is peoples' timeline.  My theorem requires things that we assume took years or centuries to have actually happened  overnight. It does I'd be happy to hear discussion on this.

The next issue of Galactic Surplus covers interesting news from the other side of our galactic backyard.

Wrapup

Well, we're near the end of another year. All good little geeks are snuggled up warm in their beds while visions of Intel unlocked cpu's dance in their heads. Thanks to the digital revolution, the week of Thanksgiving is now the new Christmas week. Presents will arrive by drone, instead of reindeer...

Let us give thanks for a wide world of Internet. It's become an entire virtual universe to many of us. It certainly has put the resources of many libraries of info in our hands and given us access to nearly every genius on the planet. That alone is worth the price. And there is a price. The Internet has magnified us. That includes the good and the bad.

Last of all, I am thankful for the ability to tell the difference. So many out there don't seem to have made that connection.

Another thing waning with the year is the meteor shower count. I can see why ancient 'wise' men hung out on mountain tops. If they had lived near me, they would still have been wondering what everyone was talking about.

I can't help wondering if Mankind will spread out from this rock in time. We will soon be one year closer to a serious mission to Mars, but it's still years away. Even then, it's years beyond that to any kind of large colony. The moon looks like a smart base, but nobody seems to care and I can't figure out why! I know that we no longer have billions to toss around, but if it makes it more likely that we will survive, well, what is the survival of the Human race worth? The moon is a week away even at the cruddy speeds we can manage. Let's start pushing for moon colonization before we all start pushing up daisies...