TIZER'S SCIENCE NEWS

[Tizer]

Nowt like a bit of healthy scepticism! And there's plenty on OG, and no signs of gullibility, thank goodness! It makes me think again and check my facts. I haven't forgotten the time when I did a typo and gave the correct figure for the speed of light but the wrong units - mph instead of miles per second. Panbiker corrected me at the speed of light!

[PanBiker]

In the true spirit of scepticism and non gullibility. I was thinking, the 4 km overall depth of the water would surely depend on the resultant mean diameter or radius from the core after all the mountains were "flattened out" so to say. The circumference would surely be a bit greater than it is currently, has this been factored into the equation and resultant calculations?

[plaques]

What an asset to the site this man is! I think he got you P!
I'm still not sure but Tizer's answer has really made me think. The trouble is being a bit of a thicky I get myself all confused thinking about ovoid shapes, tidal gravity effects and centrifugal forces. That being the case I tend to gravitate to my fall back position and go along with the tide and apply the old adage ' When you don't know what to do -act numb'

[Tizer]

I think Panbiker is making the assumption that the ocean floor is smooth (I'm trying to avoid the word `flat' here, otherwise S will say "I told you the Earth was flat!") and therefore spreading the continental mountain material would increase the diameter of the Earth. If anything it would have the opposite effect because the ocean floor has much wider variation in its surface than the continents. The Mariana Trench for example is 11km deep; the Mauna Kea volcano is over 10km high from its base to peak but is nevertheless fully submerged; and the average depth of the ocean is said to be about 2.5km. Also there is a lot more ocean area than continental area.

But I've got to come clean and admit that I didn't do the calculations myself and there are different figures available. As well as the 4km mentioned in my first post, I've seen the suspiciously precise figure of 2686 metres given. In practice, there are so many possible confounding factors that you'll always be given a range of values. Whatever the `correct' figure, the water would be very deep!

Plaques, I'm as much a thicky as anyone. I was a white-coat scientist once, then switched to publishing science books. I've never been the brightest of scientists but I like passing on scientific information. Then I can always blame the source!

[PanBiker]

An oversight on my part Tiz. Of course you could probably shovel Everest into a few of the deep trenches along with the rest of the Himalayas and still have room to spare. You would need a very big shovel though or a very long time and all against the clock as the tides rolled in!

[Stanley]

What a lovely, good tempered thread!
You could say that it was all pointless because it can never happen but it is blue sky debate like this that can often throw up surprising insights, it's called imaginative thinking.....

[Tizer]

A lovely example of the use of the latest scientific methods in archaeology and of collaboration between archaeologists and geologists has been published in the `Journal of Archaeological Science'. The work was done by people from the British Geological Survey and the University of Leicester using isotope analysis of samples of tooth and bone from the skeleton of Richard III. The results allow them to make deductions about where he lived and what he ate and how these changed during his lifetime. As the authors conclude, this provides an opportunity to use scientific methods to assess conflicting historical and literary descriptions of Richard's life. The authors' abstract to the published paper follows.

"The discovery of the mortal remains of King Richard III provide an opportunity to learn more about his lifestyle, including his origins and movements and his dietary history; particularly focussing on the changes that Kingship brought. We analysed bioapatite and collagen from sections of two teeth which formed during Richard's childhood and early adolescence, and from two bones: the femur (which averages long-term conditions), and the rib (which remodels faster and represents the last few years of life). We applied multi element isotope techniques to reconstruct a full life history. The isotopes initially concur with Richard's known origins in Northamptonshire but suggest that he had moved out of eastern England by age seven, and resided further west, possibly the Welsh Marches. In terms of his diet, there is a significant shift in the nitrogen, but not carbon isotope values, towards the end of his life, which we suggest could be explained by an increase in consumption of luxury items such as game birds and freshwater fish. His oxygen isotope values also rise towards the end of his life and as we know he did not relocate during this time, we suggest the changes could be brought about by increased wine consumption. This is the first suggestion of wine affecting the oxygen isotope composition of an individual and thus has wider implications for isotope-based palaeodietary and migration reconstructions."

The full paper can be read here: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar ... 0314002428

[David Whipp]

Fascinating stuff!

[Stanley]

Indeed. I liked the way they were able to reconstruct the circumstances of his death on the battlefield. It looks as though Shakespeare got it right, he lost his horse!

[Stanley]

Just been listening to 'The Life Scientific'. All about explosives. A wonderful woman who has the best job in the world as far as I'm concerned. Sniffer bees and making fireworks safer.... Lovely!

[Tizer]

We've listened to a recorded version and enjoyed it to. It's available here as a podcast, the 30th September one:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/tls
The podcast with Brian Cox is very good too, also on that page. Good promotion for Manchester!

[Bodger]

Life on other planets, we will soon know !

[PanBiker]

Excellent link Bodge.

[Tizer]

A very interesting web page Bodger and well presented. I have some doubt about the claim that oxygen can only be present due to the activity of living organisms. The author admits that it can be formed in other, non-organic, ways but claims that these wouldn't produce enough oxygen. We have to remember that over geological time we have millions of years and a very slow production of oxygen can accumulate to yield large amounts. If water breaks down slowly to hydrogen and oxygen the hydrogen disappears out into space quickly because it has a low density. Oxygen is heavier and remains behind longer.

On a different topic, here's some exciting news: "Satellites detect 'thousands' of new ocean-bottom mountains"
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-29465446
Remember we were recently discussing the smoothness of the Earth's surface? Well here's a new method showing it's even less smooth than we thought. This is going to lead some some very exciting developments.

[Stanley]

See this REPORT on BBC of a baby born to a woman who was born without a uterus. They transplanted the womb, implanted a fertilized egg and the baby was born in September by Caesarian section and is doing well.

[Bruff]

The 2014 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine has been announced and the winners are John O'Keefe and May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser, and yes the latter two are married. John O’Keefe is the Director of the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre in Neural Circuits and Behaviour at University College London. He holds US and British citizenship. May‐Britt Moser is a Norwegian citizen. She worked at UCL in the past but is now Director of the Centre for Neural Computation in Trondheim.
Edvard I Moser is also Norwegian. He was a postdoc with his wife, first at the University of Edinburgh and later a visiting scientist in John O’Keefe’s laboratory in London. In 1996 they moved to the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, where Edvard Moser became Professor in 1998. He is currently Director of the Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience in Trondheim.

Awarded for their work on positioning cells in the brain. Eh? Well, it's essentially your internal GPS system in that at point A, one part of your brain 'lights up' and at point B another 'lights up'. Thus it provides a cellular basis for the question how on earth are we able to get from A to B in what are, in most cases, really complex environments? Or, more generally, a cellular basis for high-level cognition.

A nice medal and a sum of £690,000 or the price of a 2-bed in one of London's middling areas or the sort of bonus that would get the bankers howling at the injustice of it all.

Richard Broughton

[Stanley]

I heard the report Richard and my mind immediately went to you, knowing your interest in the Nobels. A good bonus yes but a more worthy route to it than any banker's qualifications!

[Bruff]

And so today we move on to the Nobel Prize for Physics and the winners are Isamu Akasaki and Hiroshi Amano at Nagoya University, Japan and Shuji Nakamura, University of California at Santa Barbara.

Awarded for the invention of efficent blue light emitting diodes (LEDs). Why is this important? Well, without blue light, white light LED lamps can't be made and whilst the red and green light LEDs had been around for yonks, the blue was elusive. So thank them for all the low-energy and ultra long-lasting LEDs there are out there.

Richard Broughton

[Stanley]

Literary Nobels as well. See Bob's Bits.....

[Bruff]

A day late in my reporting here, but the Nobel Prize for Chemistry has been awarded to Stefan Hell at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Göttingen Germany; William Moerner at Stanford University in California, and Eric Betzig at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Virginia.

Awarded for their studies that laid the foundations for powerful new microscopes that are used to study for example tissues at the level of single molecules. For well over a 100 years, it was thought optical microscopes (that use visible light) could see no structure less than half the wavelength of visible light. These three decided to take this challenge on and using really clever techniques (seriously, they are really clever) overcame this. They also over came other microscopy challenges so that now we can see right down to the molecular level and see cell processes in real time so that we can for example see what is happening inside the nerve cell firings on say Huntingdon's sufferers.

Richard Broughton

[Stanley]

Just imagine what Robert Hooke's reaction would be if he could see that!

[Stanley]

See THIS for a report on the Italian experiment which has cooled a metre square block of copper to almost Absolute Zero and held it there. Fascinating and I am sure there is some point to it. AZ has always fascinated me because if I understand the gas laws correctly a gas cooled to AZ ceases to exist! Bit of a puzzle....

[Bodger]

"CUORE is located at Italy`s Gran Sasso mountain, the highest peak in the Apennines some 120 kilometres (70 miles) from Rom"
Apennines, any relation to our pennines ?

[Stanley]

Probably is Bodge, 'pen' is Celtic for peak and the Celts controlled the area around 400BC but nobody has ever found any proof of this. I'll go for it in the absence of any better explanation.

[Stanley]

Worth looking at Bob's Bits for an interesting sidelight on the effect of the atomic bombs on Japan at the end of WW2.