TIZER'S SCIENCE NEWS

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Re: TIZER'S SCIENCE NEWS

Post by Stanley »

Like the shock horror report in the 1980s that there was a world shortage of silicon which is vital for making computer chips....
Calm down lads, it's sand and there is plenty of it.
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Re: TIZER'S SCIENCE NEWS

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Most people have a passing interest in 'The Big Bang' the start of the universe. The usual convention is to think of it a highly concentrated point of 'nothing' which exploded into our existing universe and will eventually decay back to 'nothing'. Confused? join the club. Roger Penrose has come up with a variation of what happens at the death of the universe in a new paper that's been released. Big Bang Basically he is saying that at a point in its decay and at the size it has achieved without collapsing it starts allover again and again etc: This idea does away with the fuzzy logic of inflation that a big bang currently requires. Always been a fan of Roger Penrose but being honest I don't understand it.
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Re: TIZER'S SCIENCE NEWS

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I can't access the Independent page but here's an article from Physics World last year..
`New evidence for cyclic universe claimed by Roger Penrose and colleagues' LINK

I take the easy way out and leave them to argue amongst themselves! :smile:
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Re: TIZER'S SCIENCE NEWS

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I have the same attitude Tiz. I'd rather spend my time on tangible things like writing or making steam engines.
I once read a short story that has always stuck in my mind. It concerned a group of scientists trying to identify what happened to common chemicals in a very high vacuum. They noticed that after a while the atoms and molecules started to organise themselves and group in patterns reminiscent of our universe and solar system. When they had finished their data gathering they ended the experiment, shutting down all the support systems and as they left one of the group wondered whether they had just destroyed a viable entity like our system but on a much faster and smaller scale.....
Could we just be an experiment in some vast and unknown laboratory?
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Re: TIZER'S SCIENCE NEWS

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You should read the `Science of Discworld' series of books by Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen. LINK
The promo blurb for Volume 1:
`When a wizardly experiment goes adrift, the wizards of Unseen University find themselves with a pocket universe on their hands: Roundworld, where neither magic nor common sense seems to stand a chance against logic. The Universe, of course, is our own. And Roundworld is Earth. As the wizards watch their accidental creation grow, we follow the story of our universe from the primal singularity of the Big Bang to the Internet and beyond. Through this original Terry Pratchett story (with intervening chapters from Cohen and Stewart) we discover how puny and insignificant individual lives are against a cosmic backdrop of creation and disaster. Yet, paradoxically, we see how the richness of a universe based on rules, has led to a complex world and at least one species that tried to get a grip of what was going on.'
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Re: TIZER'S SCIENCE NEWS

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Stanley wrote: 23 Aug 2019, 03:42 Could we just be an experiment in some vast and unknown laboratory?
I have been known to amuse myself by imagining that on an enormously different size and time scale, the whole known 'universe' is just someone striking a match, and lighting a cigarette.

As Ken Dodd said "they can't touch you for it" :laugh5:
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Re: TIZER'S SCIENCE NEWS

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Nice to know I am not alone... I like the match and the cigarette David.
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Re: TIZER'S SCIENCE NEWS

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Last week I heard a news report that a fracking company in the UK had to stop its operations because a seismic shock had been detected that was above the regulated maximum. I'm not going to give any opinions on the rights and wrongs of fracking but I'd like to see more explanation of whether the public should be concerned about possible earthquakes being triggered. I noted that the regulatory maximum is 0.5 on the Richter scale which is extremely low but this fact seems to get ignored.

I did a search to find, for comparison, the seismic effect of other activities such as blasting in quarries and mines because I expect these to be well above the 0.5 figure. I found this paper from 2014 by two engineers at Glasgow University and it gives a useful perspective on whether we need be worried by such low seismic events. LINK It reminds me of how when I moved to Somerset I experienced the rattling effects of the Concorde's sonic shock wave over the Bristol Channel every afternoon at about 4.15! :smile:
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Re: TIZER'S SCIENCE NEWS

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Quadrilla have been ordered to stop all operations at the Preston New Road site following a 2.9ML event felt around the Preston area:

26 August 2019 - Announcement Hydraulic fracturing at Preston New Road suspended
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Re: TIZER'S SCIENCE NEWS

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Back in the days when we had a mining industry, similar tremors were caused on a regular basis by mining operations and nobody batted an eyelid. I doubt any one in say San Francisco would care unless it was above about 6.0 .
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Re: TIZER'S SCIENCE NEWS

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It's only a matter of time before another major event will decimate San Francisco. They rebuilt the town after the last big one in exactly the same place, right across the San Andreas fault. The city is a lot bigger now than it was in 1906. No accounting for man's stupidity sometimes. Having said that this is the very same nation that thinks chucking nukes at hurricanes would be a good idea as well :sad:
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Re: TIZER'S SCIENCE NEWS

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A 2.9 event is still in the lower part of the `minor' scale.
I was interested by that statement from the Glasgow engineers: `From the knowledge we’ve gained from tens of thousands of fracking operations elsewhere in the world that by far the biggest cause of serious seismic incidents isn’t the drilling or the fracking process itself. Instead, it’s the practice of disposing of waste water back into the borehole once the process is finished. This washes away particles of sand holding open the fractures created during the process, which can cause earthquakes.'

It makes you wonder how much seismic activity is caused by all the other stuff that humans shove into the deep Earth to dispose of it. And all those proposals to trap CO2 as limestone and shove that deep in the ground as well.
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Re: TIZER'S SCIENCE NEWS

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Maybe but it is well outside the acceptable limits set.
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PanBiker wrote: 26 Aug 2019, 16:10 Maybe but it is well outside the acceptable limits set.
'acceptable' to those who wish the project to fail?

Verging on ridiculous to those who want it to succeed. :smile:
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Re: TIZER'S SCIENCE NEWS

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No just the official levels set by government advisor's. This one today was 6 times the limit apparently.
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Re: TIZER'S SCIENCE NEWS

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Have you read Tizer's link? Here are the first couple of lines -

Leading energy engineers are suggesting that UK regulations on the surface vibrations caused by shale gas fracking are unnecessarily restrictive.

University of Glasgow academics state in a new paper that widely applying restrictions similar to those currently in force on fracking would require a ban on heavy vehicles from passing houses or walking on wooden floors. They also state that the threat of serious earthquakes caused by fracking activity is considerably lower than commonly feared.
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Re: TIZER'S SCIENCE NEWS

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PanBiker wrote: 26 Aug 2019, 17:58 No just the official levels set by government advisor's. This one today was 6 times the limit apparently.
The Richter Scale being a log scale is a bit confusing to ordinary mortals. Each increase on 'one' unit' ie: from 1 to 2 is ten times bigger. and 3 is ten times bigger than 2 etc: so moving from 0.5 to 3 is hundreds of times the intensity of the very small 0.5. equivalent of moving from a hand grenade to a blockbuster bomb. 3.5 would be a chernobyl type explosion.
Richter Scale.
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Re: TIZER'S SCIENCE NEWS

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Like Tiz, I keep away from discussions of the pros and cons of fracking beyond noting that it is still exploitation of fossil fuels and Earth Resources. One of these days we'll drill a hole and find that the cupboard is bare...... We never learn do we.....
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Re: TIZER'S SCIENCE NEWS

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Re: TIZER'S SCIENCE NEWS

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A good application of scientific analysis...
`Detecting a lethal poison in drinking water' LINK
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Re: TIZER'S SCIENCE NEWS

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Stanley wrote: 27 Aug 2019, 03:06 Like Tiz, I keep away from discussions of the pros and cons of fracking beyond noting that it is still exploitation of fossil fuels and Earth Resources. One of these days we'll drill a hole and find that the cupboard is bare...... We never learn do we.....
Personally I believe that if there is a viable, long term, supply of shale gas we should exploit it. From what I've seen on news reports the 'disturbances' have been very minor and have only been picked up on Caudrilla's own monitoring equipment, I'm sure naturally occurring earth movement has more of an impact...
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Re: TIZER'S SCIENCE NEWS

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You could be right Kev. I'm not arguing against reality. We might be glad of indigenous gas shortly when the money tree withers!
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Re: TIZER'S SCIENCE NEWS

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This is the latest from a big study of the Gulf of Mexico site where an asteroid impact is aid to have brought the era of the big dinosaurs to an end. The two startling numbers are: 1) the asteroid hit with the equivalent power of 10 billion atomic bombs of the size used in World War II, and 2) they estimate that at least 325 billion tonnes of sulphur would have been released by the impact, equivalent to 10,000 times the amount from the 1883 Krakatoa eruption. No wonder the dinosaurs snuffed it!
`Rocks at asteroid impact site record first day of dinosaur extinction' LINK
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That event is unimaginable.
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Re: TIZER'S SCIENCE NEWS

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It was difficult enough packing up my rock collection and shifting it when we moved house and I'm glad I don't have this one to deal with! :surprised:
`Cambridge museum's 150-tonne rock collection moves to new home' LINK
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