Odd Lots
- If you’re of the increasingly rare human subspecies called “morning people,” consider watching the predawn sky for the next few weeks. Once Mercury gets a little higher above the horizon at dawn, you’ll be able to see all five naked-eye planets in a line: Mercury, Venus, Saturn, Mars, and Jupiter.
- Here in Arizona, I don’t even have to get up early. I’ve been spotting planets at 7 AM, when we take the dogs out. (Sleeping until 7 is sleeping in for us.) No Mercury yet, but all the others are there, and easy. And here and there I see a meteor, which is yet another advantage to the contrarian morning-person position.
- Astronomers are looking at planetary perturbations again, and doing some math suggesting that a gas giant bigger than Neptune out beyond Pluto. My question: Wouldn’t anything that big have been spotted by now? It should be possible to calculate the range of visual magnitudes for a gas giant of typical composition at various distances from the Sun. Even if it’s as faint as Pluto, the Hubble could snag it with one secondary mirror tied behind its back.
- One downside to claiming that every summer hot spell means global warming is that the public then unrolls the syllogism and comes to believe that every winter cold spell means global cooling. Climate means trends that extend cross 30-50 years. Everything else is weather.
- A new model of the Sun’s internal mechanisms suggests that solar activity may fall as much as 60% by 2030. That number is misleading for a number of technnical reasons, but if the Sun is indeed the primary driver of climate, I’m glad I’m in Phoenix–and I’m staying here this time.
- If you haven’t reviewed it lately, it’s time to go and read ESR’s very cogent description of “kafkatrapping,” which is a common logical fallacy that cooks down to, “If you’re not willing to admit that you’re guilty of <whatever>ism, that proves that you’re guilty of <whatever>ism.” I see it all the time. I and many other people in my orbit consider kafkatrappers to be utter morons. We may not say it out loud, but we do. Don’t go there.
- Newspaper subscriber numbers are in freefall. I like newspapers, and once we’re really quite sincerely residents of Arizona, we’ll likely pick up the WSJ again. In the meantime, I think I’m doing what most other people have been doing for some time: picking up news on the Web.
- The appendix could be the body’s Federal Reserve Bank for gut bacteria. I’ve often wondered if overuse of antibiotics has contributed to the explosion of obesity cases since the 1970s, by narrowing the range of beneficial microbes in the lower tract. There are solutions, and although they may seem ukky, they do seem to work.
- Watch what happens when you pour molten aluminum onto dry ice, and (a little later) liquid nitrogen.
- And even though I vividly described what happens when you drop fifty pounds of of cesium into water in Drumlin Circus, if you don’t have a thingmaker to cough up a fifty-pound ball of cesium for you, here’s what happens when you drop 25 grams of cesium into water. Do the math.
- Finally, while we’re talking exotic metals, here are some cool videos of gallium doing freaky things.
Posted in: Odd Lots.
Tagged: astronomy · health · logic · media · science · weather
"
I used to happily sleep until near noon. Then I spent three months getting up before dawn when I had to do something that required it. After that, my internal clock somehow decided I should wake up at 0500, no matter if I went to sleep at 2000 or 0300. It’s still that way thirty years on.
The “going to sleep” part seems to be mostly independent of the “waking up” part…
I had a high school chemistry teacher who would drop a small piece of sodium in a large battery jar full of water at the back of the class room during exams. He did it until he used a piece a bit too large and the entire glass battery jar exploded and showered the class with water and glass fragments. Fortunately nobody was hurt. Who says high school science is not exiting. Oh, this was over 50 years ago so neither he nor anyone else got in trouble or even made much of a fuss.
Regarding your item “[a] new model … suggests that solar activity may fall as much as 60% by 2030” where you remark “t]hat number is misleading for a number of technnical reasons …”
Could you explicate some of the technical reasons or point us to (simple) explications?
It’s mostly misleading for people with only a casual interest in solar astronomy. Basically and from a height, “solar activity” is not the same as “solar output.” People who haven’t done much reading about the Sun often get them confused.
Solar output is extremely uniform, and from what I’ve read varies by only one part in about 1200. This is a damned good thing; otherwise, we’d by turns freeze or fry. Solar activity has to do with sunspots, flares, changing lengths of sunspot cycles, coronal holes, influence on solar wind, and so on. That stuff changes a lot over time. It’s difficult to hang a number on solar activity as a whole, and mostly we use sunspot counts as a proxy for overall solar activity. There’s good correlation down the centuries between global temperature and sunspot counts.
Causation is still a matter of enormous dispute, and the toxic politics of climate science makes it all but impossible to conduct research as science really should be conducted. The vast majority of climate research studies these days are done basically to provide a rationale for carbon taxes. Researchers who don’t parrot the government line tend not to get funding, and those who persist are demonized. It is to pewk.
Not so much carbon taxes, as subsidies and mandates for “green” power and associated manufacturing, and other wealth transfers.
A few years ago, European authorities busted a windpower scam run by the Sicilian Mafia, and seized over a billion euros in illicit profits. Tesla Motors scammed about $70 million in “carbon credits” from California by claiming (fraudulently) that their cars were “fast recharge”.
These are just some of the fraud pieces of the pie. Ex pede herculem, imagine the scale of the whole thing.
As is so often said, follow the money. Nobody gains directly from carbon taxes, but these deals all put money in pockets – lots of money.
This story reminded me of this,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HY7mTCMvpEM
I wish I could remember where I first saw this:
Climate is what you expect; weather is what you get.
Since you are here in Scottsdale here is an odd lot for you, a free and fun thing:
Science Fiction TV Dinner.
Comes from Arizona State University Center for Science and the Imagination. Yes, it comes with a free dinner. Your only cost is parking. It is an old scifi TV show followed by a panel discussion. Quality overall is about what you would expect at a scifi con.
Location varies around metro Phoenix, often at ASU.
Have a look at http://csi.asu.edu/