TIZER'S SCIENCE NEWS

[Tizer]

That's a good video and as it reaches the end it shows the waves crashing against the new rocks - and that's the cycle starting all over again. The volcanic rock is being eroded, will form sand and silt, then be compressed and heated to form new sedimentary rock which will eventually be subducted back down into Earth's mantle, become magma and pop up somewhere else - after some tens of millions of years!

[Stanley]

How long before it all cools down? It can't go on forever. Should we be worried about that as well as climate?

[Tizer]

It can go on for a very long time because the mantle contains radioactive elements that are continuously producing heat. They've been doing it for billions of years and still have a long way to go!

This is an interesting development and I can almost hear the Brexiteer climate deniers saying `See, it's good we got you out of Europe' - except they're wrong because we are still influenced by the European Court of Human Rights...
`European court rules human rights violated by climate inaction' LINK
It's good to see young Greta working with the older ladies!

[Stanley]

I heard that eport of the court's decision and couldn't quite believe that it would make a difference...

[Cathy]

Here’s one for you Tize…
Maz had some purple hand dishwashing liquid (Shine), poured in some green hand dishwashing liquid (Palmolive) over the Shine , shook the container.
The purple rose to the top. They don’t mix. How odd, any ideas why?

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[Tizer]

Interesting Cathy! I can only suggest that one was oil-based and the other water-based. Oil is light than water so when the mixture was left to settle the oil-based layer floated to the top. The purple dye must be oil-soluble and the green pigment water-soluble too.

[Cathy]

Yes interesting, thanks Tize

[Stanley]

It's observation of the world around us that quite often produces new lines of research. Well done Maz and Cathy!
I have a question of my own. Does liquid warmed in the microwave cool down more quickly that the same liquid heated in a pan?

[Tizer]

I think it would be difficult to make a comparison because you'd need to be able to determine the temperature of the liquids throughout the experiment, both heating and cooling. The distribution of heating is different in the two cases and the microwave can superheat due to the focusing of the energy in the centre. Also the two containers for the water would need to be the same..

[Stanley]

My feeling is that liquids in the microwave do cool slightly quicker than say those heated in a pan on the hob.

[PanBiker]

Depends on the size of the vessel and what it is made of, (which as Peter says should be identical for a true result) and any container in the microwave is likely to be much smaller and not made of metal like a pan on the hob. Sorry but a feeling is not good enough for a proper test.

[Stanley]

I never suggested it was, just reporting a suspicion doesn't require absolute proof.....

[Stanley]

I saw THIS BBC report and thought this could be the place for it.
Scientists have identified what was probably the largest marine reptile ever to swim in the seas - a creature longer than two, nose-to-nose buses. The creature lived around 202 million years ago alongside the dinosaurs. Its fossilised jawbone was found in 2016 by a fossil hunter on a beach in Somerset, UK. In 2020 a father and daughter found another similar jawbone. Experts now say the fossils are from two giant ichthyosaur reptiles, which could have been 25m long. That is bigger than a huge pliosaur whose skull was found embedded in Dorset cliffs and was in the David Attenborough documentary the Giant Sea Monster. "Based on the size of the jawbones - one of them over a meter long and the other two metres long - we can work out that the entire animal would have been about 25m long, about as long as a blue whale," according to Dr Dean Lomax, a palaeontologist at the University of Bristol, who wrote the scientific paper published on Wednesday. But he says more evidence, like a complete skull and skeleton, is needed to confirm the exact size of the creature because just a few fragments have been found so far.
The statement that it lived '202 million years ago' intrigues me. It seems a strangely precise number.......

[Tizer]

I'm gobsmacked! Scientists and technologists like myself around the world did all this in the 1980s and now it seems to have been forgotten...
`Scientists work to make healthier white bread' LINK

[Stanley]

That's what I thought as well when I heard the news item Peter....
I remember delivering 10 Tons of Limestone flour to an industrial bakery in Newcastle under Lyme in the 1960s. It never dawned on me that it was going in the bread!

[Cathy]

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Can anyone explain why Iron Cords are the way they are. They curl and just do their own thing basically, all very annoying when trying to control them and pack them away when storing.
Why aren’t they like ‘normal’ appliance cords ?

[PanBiker]

Braided cords are more flexible than other types and are very resilient if coiled and stored properly from new.

[Cathy]

Thanks Ian, I was thinking somewhat along those lines also to do with the Iron getting so hot.
But I do think it’s about time that they came up with a better cord.

[Stanley]

I saw THIS in the news this morning.
A remote cluster of Scottish islands could help solve one of our planet's greatest mysteries, scientists say. The Garvellach islands off the west coast of Scotland are the best record of Earth entering its biggest ever ice age around 720 million years ago, researchers have discovered. The big freeze, which covered nearly all the globe in two phases for 80 million years, is known as "Snowball Earth", after which the first animal life emerged. Clues hidden in rocks about the freeze have been wiped out everywhere - except in the Garvellachs. Researchers hope the islands will tell us why Earth went into such an extreme icy state for so long and why it was necessary for complex life to emerge.
Isn't it amazing how we keep on learning new things about Planet Earth!

[Tizer]

This appeared a couple of days ago...
`Famous Stonehenge stone came from Scotland not Wales' LINK
It's nothing to do with the bluestones that came from Wales. It's the Altar Stone made of a different type of rock which they say originally came from Scotland. Having read the original paper in Nature journal I'm OK with that identification and origin but this comment is not justified:
“It is phenomenal that the people of the time brought such a large stone all this way. They must have had a compelling reason to do it.
We know the rock's original location was Scotland but it could have been moved at least part of the way south during the Ice Ages by a glacier or by iceberg rafting (boulders frozen in the base of icebergs calved off glaciers). I look forward to seeing some critical assessment of the paper!

[Stanley]

That struck me also Peter when I heard the report. Geology 101 says that if you find an anomaly in the type of rock in a boulder it is almost certainly a glacial erratic.
(And |I know sod all about geology as you well know!)

[Tizer]

Glacial and ice-rafted erratics can travel a very long way. My favourite is the `Giant's Rock' stranded on a natural raised beach platform near Porthleven in Cornwall. It doesn't look very impressive in the photo but it's estimated to weigh around 50 tons. It's generally considered to be from outside the UK and one of the latest reports suggests it came from Greenland. I've added some text from a book below the photo.



`The Giant's Rock is the most impressive and intriguing of the large erratics found around the south and west coasts of Britain. Despite having attracted scientific interest for nearly a century, its exact origin and mode of emplacement are still unknown and it remains the subject of much controversy. Although some workers have maintained that the 50-ton erratic was emplaced directly by glacier ice, most believe that it was delivered to its present location on floating ice. One recent interpretation invokes Greenland as a possible source and a disintegrating Laurentide ice sheet as a transport mechanism.'

[Stanley]

disintegrating Laurentide ice sheet as a transport
What a lovely way of saying embedded in an ice berg!

[Stanley]

I often say the more we look, the more we find. Have a look at THIS BBC report which seems to bear my contention out.....
When 10-year-old Tegan went for a summer holiday beach stroll with her mum, she had no idea they would actually be walking in the footsteps of dinosaurs. The schoolgirl spotted five enormous footprints that dinosaur experts believe are the mark of a camelotia that was there more than 200 million years ago. Palaeontologists think the footprints, which are up to 75cm (30in) apart, were made by a huge herbivore from the late triassic period, and now there are efforts to get them verified. Tegan and mum Claire have been told by the National Museum Wales palaeontology curator that she is "fairly certain they are genuine dinosaur prints".
Lovely! That young lady will never forget that walk!

[Stanley]

I think this could be said to come under science news.....
See THIS BBC report....
Monday's full supermoon - also a blue moon - turned red in a dramatic way on Sunday night. The glowing sphere has been seen across the UK but there is still a chance to catch a glimpse in the coming days.Despite being called a blue moon, the moon doesn't actually turn blue. But, it did turn red on Sunday night because of North American wildfire smoke sitting in the atmosphere above the UK. Smoke particles mean that light passing through the atmosphere is scattered in such a way that the orange and red colours of the spectrum are more visible than usual. The smoke also meant skies were hazy and had an orange tinge over the weekend with an impressive sunset on Sunday night. Smoke particles will start to clear on Monday as cloud and rain moves in from the west.
Quite striking to realise that the wildfires in North America can have such a striking effect on conditions here.....