TIZER'S SCIENCE NEWS

[Tizer]

News that another burst of gravitational waves has been detected.... LINK

The story quotes Professor Bernard Schutz of Cardiff University saying: "It shows that the Universe is filled with black holes spiralling in together and merging and giving off these huge bursts of gravitational waves quite regularly." I've one quibble with that statement - it should be: "It shows that the Universe was filled with black holes...". The events were over a billion light years away and the waves travel at the speed of light, so we are seeing what happened more than a billion years in the past. It doesn't show what is happening now.

[plaques]

Gravity is for me one of the most difficult of the atomic forces to get my mind round. These 'waves' appear to be fluctuations in the gravity intensity, if I may call it that. The background gravity is always there so the gravity waves are like ripples on a pond moving along the surface at the speed of light so to claim that gravity itself moves at the speed of light still leaves me baffled.

[Stanley]

I only vaguely understand it too P but they say that Einstein would have been delighted so that will do for me.....

[Tizer]

Plaques, as far as I can understand it, gravity doesn't travel at all. It's gravitational waves that do the travelling, at the speed of light. We can make an analogy with ocean waves. The ocean isn't travelling anywhere, but we can see waves in the ocean travelling across its surface. The molecules of water under an ocean wave don't travel with the wave they simply go up and down as the wave passes (that's a simplification - if you could look at a side view of an ocean wave they actually describe a circle rather than a simple up/down movement, but they end up in the same place). Think of gravity as being like the ocean.

Another analogy is the famous `ball on a rubber sheet' where you stretch out the rubber sheet horizontally and place, say, a billiard ball on it. The ball (a planet) depresses the sheet and that depression represents gravity. If you move the ball (planet) the depression (gravity) moves with it. If you disturbed the sheet to send a wave across it that would be equivalent to a gravitational wave.

Gravitational waves have extremely long wavelength and very low amplitude which is why they are so hard for us to detect. I guess we are like a man sitting in a dinghy in the middle of the Pacific on a very calm day trying to detect the very long wavelength, low amplitude ocean waves that are invisible to the unaided eye.

[plaques]

Thanks Tizer, that was the whole point I was trying to make. It has been suggested that gravity may be due to the 'graviton' as part of an atom. Gravito. It may even have quantum elements to it. So getting back to the first point, if you create an atom you have created gravity of unlimited dimension. Does it follow that the field expands at the speed of light or is it instantaneous so that it is everywhere all at once. Reaction at a distance and all that spooky sort of thing. Makes a good talking point after a few glasses of wine.

[Tizer]

I hope it's a rhetorical question because I don't know the answer! I'm flummoxed when physicists start talking about how a change in an atom here on Earth can be linked to a change in an atom on the other side of the universe at exactly the same time. It's a bit lot beyond my brain (especially without the glasses of wine).

[Stanley]

This discussion is on a par with my bafflement when I think of tiny particles coming in from space passing through me and the earth like very small bullets and leaving us unharmed..... Please do not attempt to explain this, Ignorance is Bliss!!

[Tripps]

This is interesting. Two reports of the same 'research'.
No prizes for guessing which side I tend to.

Cranberry research Daily Mail


The truth.

[Tizer]

As well as the cranberry companies, promotion of the fruit is supported strongly by the American Cranberry Growers Association and further Cranberry Growers Associations in individual states. Loads of money pours into promotion of these claims in the US. It's the same with soybeans, walnuts etc.

[Whyperion]

This discussion is on a par with my bafflement when I think of tiny particles coming in from space passing through me and the earth like very small bullets and leaving us unharmed..... Please do not attempt to explain this, Ignorance is Bliss!!

Presumably these particles fit through the gaps

[Tizer]

Maz mentioned somebody having to climb a ladder in a thunderstorm and that reminded me of something I read from a `weather man'. He was relating the sad story of people being killed recently by lightning on clear sunny days. He said that sometimes lightning shoots out sideways and can travel 10 kilometres or more before hitting the ground. Also, ball lightning can `bounce' across water. Another unexpected type of lightning is when positive charge builds up after a thunderstorm, hangs around and then earths itself long afterwards when you don't expect it. So watch out!

[Stanley]

I've seen Ball Lightning, multiple strikes just North of Long Preston.... very peculiar stuff! The resulting blue balls rolled round in the fields before vanishing with a loud crack. I was once talking to an expert on lightning and he was so envious. He has been studying it for years and never seen it.

[Tizer]

Eight northern British universities, Liverpool, Manchester, Lancaster, Leeds, Sheffield, York, Durham and Newcastle, have joined forces to form a scientific powerhouse at the launch of an international food research programme. The N8 AgriFood partnership will be centred on three themes: sustainable production; strengthening supply chains; and improving health. It is hoped that the five-year partnership will contribute to a "paradigm shift" in the UK food system. LINK

[Stanley]

Without EU funding?
Good move and I wish them well.

[Tizer]

British universities are already seeing the adverse effects of the referendum decision on our scientific research...

`Universities take a knock post-Brexit' LINK
"European academic bodies are pulling back from research collaboration with UK academics, amid post-Brexit uncertainty about the future of UK higher education. While post-Brexit Britain might remain inside the European research funding system, academics in other countries are nervous about collaborating with UK institutions. UK-based academics are being asked to withdraw their applications for future funding by European partners. BBC Newsnight is aware of concerns raised by academics at Bristol, Oxford, Cambridge, Exeter and Durham."

[Stanley]

What a mess..... I thought I'd seen everything but I couldn't have been more wrong.,......
One bright spot is the NASA mission to Jupiter. Mind boggling what they have managed so far which is a triumph in itself. I look forward to what they discover.....

[Tizer]

This is good news...
`Technology push to get girls educated' LINK
"The UK's Department for International Development has announced £100m of funding to help 175,000 of the world's poorest girls get an education. The push will include smartcards that monitor attendance and offer incentives for families to send their daughters to school. It will also deploy satellite broadband to improve connectivity in rural areas. Putting girls through school is increasingly seen as one of the best long-term ways to end poverty. International Development Minister Nick Hurd said: "It is only through making use of the latest technological innovations that we will reach every girl. "Already in Kenya, thanks to UK-funded attendance monitoring software, satellite broadband connectivity and interactive learning platforms, we have seen attendance increase by 15% in schools we work with."...."Julia Gillard, chair of the charity Global Partnership for Education, said: "Investing in girls and women isn't just morally right, it is essential for the development of families, communities and countries. "When we educate girls, we see reduced child deaths, healthier children and mothers, fewer child marriages and faster economic growth." It is estimated that 63 million girls around the world are out of school, with over half of these in sub-Saharan Africa."

...but perhaps we need a Department for National Development to make sure children from poorer families in Britain get a better education!

[Stanley]

How true Tiz. One of the more damaging policies throughout the whole of my adult life has been the denial by successive governments that it is far more effective to pump funding into primary education than the top end of the universities. We can rant at the ignorance of the mass of the electorate and rail about 'sink estates' but the real source of the dearth of good education is the way we have neglected Primary Education.

[Tizer]

If we'd put more money into education of children we might not be where we are now with Brexit.

[Stanley]

That is almost certainly true.... Talk about the Law of Unintended Consequences.... Could be the worst example ever of neglect of kids.

[Tizer]

Here's some good news...
`Super-hard metal 'four times tougher than titanium''
"A super-hard metal has been made in the laboratory by melting together titanium and gold. The alloy is the hardest known metallic substance compatible with living tissues, say US physicists. The material is four times harder than pure titanium and has applications in making longer-lasting medical implants, they say."..."It may also have applications in the drilling industry, the sporting goods industry and many other potential fields". LINK

[Stanley]

That is good news for anyone who has an implant made from the material in future. Nice to hear of advances like that..... Keep 'em coming, we need all the good news we can get at the moment.....

[PanBiker]

Could go in What Attracted but as relevant here:

Philae Lander: Farewell messages to Philae as life support ends

Remarkable science.

[Tizer]

Yes, we learnt a lot about comets from that project, and knowing more about comets is relevant to how the solar system formed and how life originated.

In the meantime, we're learning more about Jupiter and, again, that relates to what we know about our own plant. The Great Red Spot on Jupiter is very hot compared with other parts of the planet's surface and scientists now think it might be due to energy from sound waves travelling up from the interior. They have evidence for something similar on Earth where the atmospheric temperature is higher over mountain ranges. Jupiter

[Stanley]

I heard a report about that. I like the fact that the mother ship is to be landed next to the original lander when its mission is finished so they can sit together for as long as the comet survives.....