It is difficult to imagine the power of a volcanic eruption. They can emit lava for years or they can explode with the energy of thousands of atomic bombs.
The volcano in Iceland exploded due to a change in the silica level in its lava. More silica makes the lava more viscous, which slows the flow causing an increase in pressure. A rapid increase in pressure can cause the volcano to explode.
See video coverage by The Guardian newspaper.
By an interesting coincidence, we are coming up on the 30th anniversary of the last major volcanic eruption in the US: Mount St Helens. I was in high school when it exploded. In 1995, Ms. Newhart and I camped near there and visited it. Wow. No pictures can replace the experience of seeing the destructive aftermath firsthand.
I highly recommend a visit to the Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument in Washington state.
Neither did I.
The 40 inches of snow rumor originated with Lester Moyer, a resident of Reading, PA. He publishes an almanac (see below to order yours) which, according to the Reading Eagle newspaper, came somewhat close to predicting the two February snowstorms.
Actually, Lester predicted bad weather Feb 4-5 (we got snow on the 5th), and he predicted “something wicked this way cometh” Feb 8-11 (We got snow on Feb 10, but he misquoted Shakespeare’s “something wicked this way comes” from Macbeth)
Lester uses a mix of the moon phases, wind direction and his intuition, according to the article linked below in the Reading Eagle.
Weather is notoriously difficult to predict, but I’ll take the National Weather Service’s forecast based on satellite data and computer analysis over Lester’s method any day. While it is true that in times past, people were more in touch with the natural world and its signals, history is replete with stories of ancient people being surprised by storms and changes in the weather.
Storms may deviate from their predicted track, but in an age of weather satellites, we are never taken by surprise by storms anymore.
- Here is an article from the Reading Eagle on Lester: http://readingeagle.com/article.aspx?id=195835&obref=obinsite
- Here is an NBC Philadelphia story about him which includes a video interview: http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/weather/stories/Rumor-Control-Were-Not-Gettin
- If you would like a copy of Lester Moyer’s almanac, just send $5 and an additional $2 for shipping to Moyer at: 135 Wegman Road, Reading, PA 19606
Or you could go to www.weather.gov for free.
Some have predicted the end of the world in 2012 based on the ancient and now gone Mayan civilization.
First, according to scholars, the Mayan calendar does not end in 2012, it just turns over to a new number, much like the change from 1999 to 2000 – See the wikipedia article.
But personally, I have a problem with believing the predictions of a people who could not foresee that their civilization would collapse due to local climate change, and that it was at least partly due to their own cutting down of all the trees.
More info from National Geographic:
More info from NASA:
YouTube: Sylvia on Montel telling Shawn Hornbeck’s parents that he’s dead (he was later found alive)
YouTube: Sylvia on Montel in 2006 making predictions for 2007 that were mostly wrong.
Sylvia’s website where you can spend $850 for 20 to 30 minutes on the phone with her. Have your information-packed questions ready!
Wikipedia: article on Cold Reading, the technique of throwing out information and following up on hits.
How much would you pay for two 3-foot speaker cables? How about $2,750?
That’s how much Pear Cable charges for their “Anjou” cables.
James Randi challenged them to a double blind test, but they refused. I wonder why? Here’s the article in Wired about it.
Interesting site suggested by George M…
CLEVERBOT
Have a conversation with a real Artificial Intelligence.
Chronic Fatigue has been a tricky problem. Because there is no known cause, there is no way to effectively diagnose it or treat it. It may even be that it is really a misdiagnosis of some other known illness, or possibly nonexistent.
Back in October, research published in Science seemed to point to a virus as the cause of Chronic Fatigue. Another lab tried to reproduce their results, but could not, throwing the first study into question.
We now wonder which lab had the better controls in place. Meanwhile, more labs are due to publish their results soon, hopefully clarifying whether this virus is linked to Chronic Fatigue or not.
The news article about it from Science is linked here.
It looks like the rape case against David Copperfield has been dropped. The woman who accused him was found to be lying in another case in which she was involved against a local businessman.
Read more:
http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20336452,00.html
http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory?id=9545353
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2010781919_webcopperfield13m.html
Levitating a ping pong ball with a blow dryer
The Virgin Airlines subsidiary Virgin Galactic is testing a new craft to take passengers into space.
How hard are those hits in football??
According to an article in Popular Mechanics, pretty darn hard! What do you think – 200 pounds of force? 300 pounds? It’s more! Check out the article to find out exactly how much.
It makes you wonder whether school age kids should be playing football at all. Can their bodies take hits like that?
The original article is posted here.
Picture credit: Wikimedia Commons Jacksonville Naval Air Station Football
The most remote and alien region of the Earth may be the bottom of the ocean.
CNN has an interesting video of what’s down there.
Thanks to CJ for this one.
We humans move a lot of rock around, but sometimes the rock moves when we don’t want it to.
Two recent incidents illustrate both sides of the coin:
1. A recent rockslide near the North Carolina, Tennessee border has I-40 closed since late October. That section of the roadway was cut through a hill.
Cutting away part of a hill is always a gamble: one depends on Normal Forces and Friction to hold the rocks in place, but those forces are sometimes not enough.
Here are links to more pix of the slide: WBIR Knoxville & The Charlotte Observer. You can also listen to an NPR radio piece about the incident.
2. Recent research has shown that a nearby dam and reservoir may have triggered the 2008 Sichuan earthquake in China. Calculations show that it is possible that water from the reservoir seeped into the fault line reducing friction, allowing the fault to slip. It is also possible that the pressure of the water changed the Normal Forces in the fault line.
You can read about it in Science, or see a more recent article at ScienceNow
Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed holding an underwater cabinet meeting to make a point about climate change and its future impact on his island nation. No part of the Maldives is more than 2 meters above sea level.
In November 2009, the Maldives hosted a meeting of countries that consider themselves most threatened by climate change – mainly islands and low-lying coastal countries.
Another organization concerned with sea level rise due to climate change is the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), whose countries total half a million people that will potentially be displaced as the waters rise. The AOSIS met back in September 2009 in NYC and formulated a declaration on climate change.
Not always, according to a recent study of over 5,000 adults.
The study noted that about half of the overweight people were metabolically healthy, while about one quarter of normal-weight people were not metabolically healthy.
Metabolic health means good levels of blood pressure, blood sugar, triglycerides, cholesterol, etc.
If you are concerned about your metabolic health, get a referral from your doctor to get a simple blood test to check your own blood pressure, blood sugar, triglycerides, cholesterol, etc.
Do you spend all your downtime watching a screen? You might want to just let your mind wander.
Letting your mind wander may be the key to creativity and problem-solving. Click below for more info from a Wired Magazine article:
Remember the rocket that we crashed into the Moon? Well, NASA has analyzed the data and it’s official: there’s water in the Lunar soil.
Click below to go to NASA’s news item about it:
The first news items appeared just over two years ago… first, Copperfield was accused of something ugly. Then there was an FBI raid on his warehouse in which $2 million in cash and various items were taken.
Then there were the details that I found most surprising… I had been assuming all this time that his people contacted acting agencies to contract for the girls that he pulls out of the audience. But if you read the news items carefully, you’ll see that I was very wrong. It’s all quite creepy.
After about a month the news items stopped… nothing more. It’s been about two years now, and I’ve yet to see anything come to trial. What do you think that means?
Here’s the news items I saved, or afterwards found, thanks to our library’s Ebscohost:
What do you think?
Many of you asked about this – I hope it satisfies your physiological curiosity!
NASA’s current system is described in this video from NASA’s series called Brain Bites.
Apparently, NASA’s current system is not all that… convenient… and some UC San Diego students are trying to come up with something better (picture at right). Here’s a description of their research from the journal Science.
I love it when Art and Science meet and enrich each other.
So often in science, we publish 2-D pictures of things like microorganisms which don’t really do justice to the original.
Now, British sculptor Luke Jerram has created a series of glass sculptures of the tiny little organisms that cause us so much misery, like E. Coli and H1N1.
Go to Luke’s website to see the little beasties beautifully rendered in 3-D glass. Luke enjoys capturing science in his art, and has worked with scientists more than once to ensure the accuracy of his work.
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