Philosophia Naturalis #

Posted on April 3, 2007 by Chris Rowan

Technical mishaps delayed the publication of the latest edition of the physical sciences blog carnival over at {metadata}; technical problems have also delayed my plugging of it (my internet connection is currently flickering on and off like a faulty streetlamp). Nonetheless, despite his rather bizarre notion that geophysics is “a field of inquiry that some would consider unconventional’, Sujit has an interesting collection of links for your perusal, my personal favorite being a debate about whether the brain is a quantum computer. Entertaining, even if you’d think if that were the case we wouldn’t have so much trouble understanding, or even believing, quantum physics.

Categories: links

Spring Science Showdown: the “lets show the ex-colonials what they’re missing” round.

Posted on March 30, 2007 by Chris Rowan

The Spring Science Showdown is gearing up for the ‘Sweet Sixteen’ phase, and Highly Allochthonous is hosting the eagerly anticipated match-up between F=ma and Particles. It’s no surprise that these two heavyweights of the Orbit bracket have made it this far (see how here and here) – but only one can progress to the final eight.

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And, just to make things even more exciting, I can confirm that this is going to be a match-up with a twist*. Particles have been battling against the iron grip of Newton’s Second Law ever since the publication of Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica in 1687, a rivalry which predates not only the invention of basketball, but the United States of America itself. To celebrate the 420th year of this ancient sporting contest, team captains Isaac Newton and John Dalton have decided to re-enact the days when they contested their supremacy on the grass of an English cricket pitch, rather than the basketball court. The added bonus being that these two great cornerstones of Physics get to show these upstart North Americans the skill and excitement of a proper sport.

So, to add to the tension of this already finely balanced contest, we have to ask: who will cope best with the transition from the realm of hoops, rebounds and three-point plays to that of yorkers, cover drives and silly mid-offs? Speculation will no doubt be rife…

*I was going to make it a surprise, but Janet has let the cat out of the bag – thanks to Bob for the suggestion.

Categories: bloggery

Geological Basics: the difference between chronology and stratigraphy

Posted on March 29, 2007 by Chris Rowan

When geologists talk about how old a rock or a fossil is, or when a particular tectonic event happened, they don’t usually just give an age in millions or billions of years – they also state its location within a hierarchy of Eons (Phanerozoic, Proterozoic), Eras (Mesozoic, Cenozoic), and Series (Jurassic, Neogene) that make up the geological timescale.

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Categories: basics, geology

Ch-ch-ch-changes (measured and projected)

Posted on March 28, 2007 by Chris Rowan

I’d like to call your attention to a couple of interesting images that I’ve come across in the past couple of days. The first is from a study by Berthier et al., who used remote sensing techniques to analyse changes in the extent of Himalayan glaciers in response to climate change. It seems that the dynamics of the Himalayan ice sheet are rather poorly known, due to the difficulties of actually getting out and doing a proper survey. Berthier et al. compared satellite altimetry data from two surveys of the area shown on the left below, in February 2000 and November 2004. The image on the right shows the differences in measured elevation between these two surveys, presumed to be the result of ice loss or accumulation. Large losses from the main glaciers, particularly at lower altitudes, are clearly evident; higher up, there are patches of increase and decrease. In total, the 915 km2 of glaciers surveyed (3% of the 33,000 km2 in the Himalayas as a whole) are calculated to have lost 3.9 km3 in the 5 years between the measurements.

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Categories: climate science

Is Planet Earth too dumbed down to be interesting?

Posted on March 28, 2007 by Chris Rowan

There’s been some rather ambivalent first reactions to Planet Earth, the epic nature documentary which has just started to be broadcast over in the US by the Discovery Channel (I’ve already seen the whole series on the BBC when it was broadcast over in the UK last year). The meat of the complaints seems to be that firstly, the scientific treatment of all that spectacular footage seems somewhat superficial, with lots of short sequences showing charismatic megafauna chasing down their prey, but little on the underlying ecosystem that supports them; and secondly that the narration, by Sigourney Weaver, veers jarringly between excessive self-congratulation (‘captured on film for the first time ever!”) and earth-mother woo (‘nature is a cruel mistress’).
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Categories: public science