This is a guest blog from one of our regulars, the redoubtable A.E. Williams. All views are author's own and as ever, both entertaining and provocative!
Warning: May contain footnotes...
In
my ongoing efforts to educate others on why Science and the Scientific Method
are so important in understanding the workings of our Universe, I am time and
again confounded by how many people just do not seem to comprehend the vastness
of the scale involved.
I
guess it’s frightening, or maybe people just don’t care.
Maybe
the word math just makes them shit
their pants.
For
example, there are many celebrities who espouse opinions regarding all manner
of things, scientific or political, that are considered ‘experts’ because they
once played a doctor (or scientist, or super genius villain, etc.) in some
fictional tale meant to fire our imagination.
That
there may be some critical grain of accuracy in these fantasies does not detract from our understanding that they are
indeed fantastic.
Fantastic means, unreal; of
the realm of fantasy; imaginary.
A
perfect example of this is how many mythical qualities are ascribed to common,
ordinary bullets.
If
Hollywood were to be believed:
·
A bullet will explode the gas tank of almost any vehicle
that isn’t a tank.
·
A bullet can throw a man from his feet, and send his carcass
flying backwards upwards of twenty meters.
·
Sniper bullets either leave a perfect hole, right between
the unfortunate targets’ eyes, subsequently blowing their brains out the back
of their heads, or completely explode their target’s head into pink mush.
WARNING!
GRAPHIC MOVIE VIOLENCE!
·
Bullets always hit ONLY the targets at which they are aimed,
and not innocent bystanders, and hardly ever suffer from overpenetration.
Ok, to be fair, this one was
kind of satire…
·
A ‘hollow-point’ bullet is second only to nuclear bombs in
destructive force, having the ability to punch holes straight through police
body armor, blow wheels off armored cars, and explode propane tanks with one
well-placed shot.[1]
Some
other common fictional scenarios that defy real-world physics[2]:
·
Car doors make good shields.
·
Automobile windshield glass is pre-scribed to allow only
three bullets to hit the driver right in the face.
·
Desks, filing cabinets, and anything else that is correctly
termed ‘cover’ is also incorrectly portrayed as ‘bulletproof.’
·
Bullets fired by accident ALWAYS kill someone, usually an
inner-city child who was their family’s best hope.
·
A shotgun is the ultimate hand-carried weapon and turns its
wielder into an invincible Thunder God. (This one does have some basis in
fact!)
·
Constantly firing a machine gun has no actual effect on the
temperature of the working parts of said weapon. (Unless it is a minigun being
used by Arnold, then smoke is allowed, to show it’s finally – FINALLY – empty.
·
Ammunition is almost always endless.
·
Hosing down an army of bad guys is far more effective than
carefully aimed fire.
·
The bad guy will ALWAYS try to shoot the good guy, even if
the good guy just beat the ever-loving tar out of him, thus necessitating a
slow-motion sequence where the good guy (or guys) proceeds to gun down the bad
guy, hitting him multiple times while barely controlling the pistol. Usually, a
good guy will grab his partners’ spare gun (all partners have these surgically
attached!) and then flail about, waving the gun in the general direction of the
bad guy, while the partner takes a cool aim and plugs the bad guy right between
the eyes. (See above)
Remember,
this is entertainment, designed to provide some manner of exciting stimulation
to our visual and mental sensors.
Reality
and accuracy are secondary.
People
really seem to enjoy watching things go boom!
Another
misconception within Hollywood is the idea of a ‘tidal’ wave being an actual
‘wave,’ and not something resembling a storm surge.
Tsunami
are a series of real waves, and can be observed coming in from the ocean, in
any of a dozen convenient videos of this phenomena.
While
I personally adore watching this kind of thing, real-world rogue waves aren’t a
thousand feet tall.
Walls
of water are limited by physics, and they just do not work that way.
The
mass of the water, surface tension, and gravity do things to waves to prevent them
stacking up to much more than about one hundred feet or so.
Now,
an asteroid strike would vaporize the ocean’s water for miles around, creating
steam and a huge wall of mud and water that could reach the top of the
atmosphere, depending on the size of the impact.
Mud
from the ocean bottom would be thrown high into the air, and condense into hot
rain, and muddy hail.
The
hole left by the impact would fill in with ocean water relatively quickly
unless the asteroid were a hundred miles across.
In
that case, the volcanic activity would basically assure a new crater would be
formed, and the oceans would remain outside the rim.
*****
Hollywood
hires artists, and experts to simulate these kinds of things for our
entertainment.
And,
let’s face it, there really is nothing more entertaining than dams bursting, or
rivers overflowing, or a tsunami swallowing Mt. Everest.
It’s
fun to watch, even if we who possess some rudimentary scientific training know
it’s complete bullshit.
But,
there is a fantastic and interesting way that water in the oceans DOES perform,
and it is almost as fascinating and unbelievable as a mile-high tsunami!
And,
best of all, this is scientific fact!
Let
me introduce you to – The Gulf Stream.
*****
In
1992, I was enrolled in an oceanography course at Florida Atlantic University.
It
was being taught by the inestimable Dr. Ray McAllister, who was a
world-renowned oceanographer of the first regard.
Professor
McAllister was giving a presentation about littoral drift and got sidetracked
into a discussion about the Gulf Stream.
The Gulf Stream is a huge underwater river, part of the Atlantic Gyre.
It
flows from the Equator off the coast of Africa, West across the Atlantic Ocean,
travels North along the East coast of the United States, then back East across
the Atlantic Ocean along the Polar Region (up near Greenland and Iceland), and
back down South past England and Africa in a gigantic circuitous loop.
The interesting thing about the size of this ‘stream’
is that it dwarfs not just the flow of the Amazon, the Nile, the Yangtze, the
Ganges and the Mississippi, but of ALL of the rivers in the entire world.
Flow of ocean currents compared to major rivers. The numbers show maximum and minimum current flow in Sverdrup (SV). 1 Sv = 106 m3 s-1. Source: P. Cipollini, NOC. Transport by ocean currentsThe figure above shows the transport by the major current systems in the ocean, compared with the overall river discharge and the maximum flow from selected rivers. Minimum and maxium current flows are given in Sverdrups - a Sverdrup (Sv) is a million cubic metres per second.The flow of the largest ocean current, the Antarctic Circumpolar current is more than hundred times greater than the combined flow of all the world's rivers. This is why the inset showing river flow has to use a different scale.Clearly these volumes of water can make a huge difference. The Gulf Stream and its continuation in the North Atlantic Current transport a large amount of heat towards Western Europe - equal to a million nuclear power stations.[3]
To give us some semblance of the scale of this
river, Professor McAllister asked us to imagine ourselves standing on a jetty
off the point of Boca Raton[4], in
Florida.
He
said we were to pretend that there was a dump truck[5] sitting
in front of us, on the edge of the ocean, on the beach sand.
Then, he asked us to imagine that there was a
line of dump trucks parked next to each other, extending 5 miles out to sea.
So, assuming they didn’t sink, you would be imagining
a straight line of dump trucks side-by-side, 5 miles wide.
Then, he said, imagine the same line of dump
trucks, but now 3 miles high[6].
A huge wall of dump trucks!
Like This, Only More So…[7]
Some
rough calculations would show that the first dump truck would take
approximately six weeks to travel the route back to the same point off the
coast of Boca Raton.
He
then said “This happening all year long. Year after year, for decades. That
water circulates among the ocean for thousands of years, actually.”
Remember,
the Gulf Stream is only a smallish part of the Atlantic Ocean, and ALL the
world’s oceans are connected.
So,
over time, every drop of water could conceivably circumnavigate the globe,
eventually becoming frozen in an Artic or Antarctic glacier, or maybe in an
iceberg.
And that is pretty much a good representation
of the order of magnitude of size involved with just one of the many streams
that make up these undersea rivers in our oceans.
We
were dutifully impressed.[8]
*****
Imagine, on a hot,
summer’s day, the wonderful luxury of a nice dip in your average backyard
swimming pool.
Here
is a visual to prod your mind:
Now
I want you to imagine a can of oil and your backyard swimming pool.
+ 
=
Uh
Oh…
Let’s
pretend the neighbor’s bratty kid takes an eyedropper and puts one single
drop of oil into your swimming pool.[9]
While
that is rather rude, it really won’t make a gigantic difference in enjoying your
day off, as you sip a Mai Tai and sunbathe, right?[10]
You
can still swim in your pool, and you’d probably not get that drop of oil in
your eye, okay?
And,
if you did, it would be a minor annoyance - but nothing fatal.
If
that little stinker instead dumped the
entire can of oil into your swimming pool, then you have every expectation
that you would become quite irate at the resulting film of oil that would coat
its surface.
You’d
probably launch the little shit into the drink, and he would be coated all over
with scummy oil.
Again,
this would make a real mess, but, luckily for him, it’s not necessarily fatal.[11]
However,
even then the oil would just as
likely float on the surface.
The
sides might get a bit slick, and that would be that.
Eventually,
the 3,000 to 10,000 gallons of water in the average pool would absorb all the
oil, and even the filter may get clogged, but you’d be okay with the outcome.[12]
If
you had some goldfish in the pool, or perhaps some other types of small animals,
it
-might-
affect them adversely.
But,
in all likelihood, they would survive.[13]
Now
let’s revisit those dump trucks…
Instead
of putting the oil can in your pool, put it in the back of a dump truck in that
giant river of dump trucks.
Don’t
they look all happy and small? One of these kids probably dumped the oil in
your pool…
(The
dump bed of the truck is approximately the same size as your pool in case you
were wondering.)
So,
think about the effect that one can
of oil in one dump truck out of the
thousands and thousands of dump trucks just in the first row of dump trucks.
Do
you think that you would be able to even find a random can of oil in that
mountain of dump trucks?
Do
you think that a random distribution of those oil cans within 10 minutes worth
of dump trucks driving past is a significant risk for pollution?
Let's
assume you put a can of oil in every
dump truck.
Is
that a lot of oil?
You
bet it is!
Is
it enough to fill an oil tanker?
Probably.
This
is an important question because it helps us illustrate the idea of orders of
magnitude, which is a very important concept in mathematics and calculations.
To
continue with our example, imagine if there were an oil tanker sitting on that
first row of dump trucks.
Oil tankers are approximately 1500 ft long, so
let's call it a quarter of a mile.[14]
So,
that means that the first quarter-mile of the five miles stretching from the
beach out into the sea is all oil tanker.
And,
now, as that oil tanker is floating in the Gulf Stream, we imagine it drifting
along at 4 miles per hour.
About
six weeks later, it will float past us, again, having made a complete circuit
of the Atlantic Gyre.
Something
that big can be tracked, right?
But,
again, what type of effect would a single floating oil tanker have in
comparison to the immense amount of water represented by that wall of dump
trucks?
This
is a daily occurrence, and we don’t see newspapers or cable news shows
screaming about it, do we?
I
mean, there’s probably thousands of ships on the oceans at any given time,
drifting or sailing from port to port.
Even
cruise ships!
But,
as we are imagining terrible disasters here, let’s consider what may happen if
a supertanker ruptured, and spilled 1.5 million gallons of oil into the ocean?[15]
In
a short period of time, the Gulf Stream current and the volume of water therein
would cause the oil to dissipate and become totally insignificant, ecologically
speaking.
How
short a period?
How
about less than two decades?
Remember
the BP Oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, circa 2010?
Approximately
210 million gallons of oil were discharged between April through September of
2010.
What
has happened to all that oil?
A
quick perusal of the scientific studies and data show a marked decrease in the
amount of contamination found in the Gulf since that disaster.
Many
fishing areas have reopened, and much of the oil either sank or was dissolved
into a ‘dirty blizzard.’
The
health effects and long-term ecological effects have yet to be determined, but
less than a decade has elapsed.
A Coast Guard report released
on 17 December 2010, said that little oil remained on the sea floor except
within a mile and a half (2.5 km) of the well. The report said that since
3 August 2010, only 1% of
water and sediment samples had pollution above EPA-recommended limits. [16]
Can
you imagine!
Is
the occurrence of something like this unique in a very large system?
Is
there a given number of oil tankers that would make it a significant amount?
How
about 200 oil tankers?
That’s
how much oil was released by Deepwater
Horizon, after all.
*****
We
can liken this kind of event to pricking your finger with a needle.
Your
finger will bleed.
But,
you won't bleed to death.
Even
if you're a hemophiliac, you won't bleed to death, because you can just seal up
the hole.[17]
Here
is where we get into this problem of whether there is a reason to panic, or how
we should react to environmental disasters.
Absolutely,
these events are financial and ecological disasters, for a period of years.
However,
from a purely mathematical standpoint, it is evident that there is a pollution
problem locally, but not necessarily globally, right?
The
immense volume of the Deepwater Horizon
spill affected the entire Gulf of Mexico, right?
Well,
not exactly…
*****
In
trying to determine the actual scale of impact of things like this you need to
look at the numbers and understand orders of magnitude.
Is
it a problem if your finger gets pricked?
Probably
not.
If
you look at the size of the Gulf of Mexico in relation to the volume of all the
world's oceans you will see that, from a mathematical standpoint, it is not
very significant.
It’s
a finger prick, statistically speaking.[18]
Let's
try another mental exercise:
What
if all these dump trucks are carrying
cargo beds full of oil, and they're driving along, expelling even more foul
pollution?
They
are using oil, and burning gasoline, and carrying oil in the all the dump beds,
maybe even spilling some, and the drivers are probably farting up a storm to
make matters even worse.
This
is representative of the most extreme
type of pollution for this situation, wouldn’t you think?[19]
Taking
historical levels of production of oil globally into consideration, about five trillion gallons of oil has been
extracted in the entire history of humanity.
That’s
quite a lot of oil.
But,
consider this:
The
total volume of the oceans is on the order of 1,000 trillion gallons.
To
put this into perspective, all the oil EVER pumped by man from the bowels of
the Earth is only one-half of one percent,
by volume, in comparison.
For
ALL the OIL EVER!
0.5%
The
example here is that all the oil ever
produced still pales into insignificance compared to the Gulf Stream flowing
around the Atlantic Ocean every single day.
EVERY.
SINGLE.
DAY!
*****
Now,
let's look at another problem about
pollution, and our ‘supposed’ role in it.
We’ve
just created an imaginary river of dump trucks, which has got to be about the
worst example you can think of for people driving polluting vehicles.
Think
about the release of toxic gases from those dump trucks, right?
If
you gave everybody on the planet a
dump truck and let them drive around for an entire year you still would not had
that much effect on the global environment.
Even
after 200 years, you can see how much the actual pollution from petrochemicals that
we've put into the environment pales into nothing, mathematically speaking.
Compared
to the total volume of the atmosphere of the planet, it is insignificant.
The
math proves it out.
Dammit…
*****
Another
interesting factor is how much atmosphere and ocean do we have as compared to
the actual volume of planet Earth.
A
while back, “Bill Nye the Science Guy”
had a fantastic demonstration of just how fragile our ecosystems are.
For
his dramatic demonstration, he carefully placed a single drop of water on a
golf ball.
He
told his audience that this drop was representative of the volume of all the
oceans of the world, the lakes and rivers, and all our water, if it were to be spread out over the surface
of the golf ball.
He
mentioned how thin the layer of water was, compared to the surface of the golf
ball.
His
point was there was not a lot of water on our planet, comparatively.
And,
for the sake of the survival of humanity, we should be very careful in
polluting it![20]
However,
the far greater problem, for me, was that he completely negated to discuss the
amount of the volume of the golf ball
compared to the volume of the water layer.
This
is very crucial to understanding global environmental changes.
Here's
why that is important:
When
you consider thermal effects on bodies in a vacuum, (which is a common problem
in thermodynamics and physics), you must look at several factors.
One
of these is the composition of the base material.
The
amount of energy that is in the system at the initial state is also important.
The
amount of energy that is outside of the system is also important.
If
there is a difference between the system and its surroundings, then there will
be a flow of energy from greater to lesser.[21]
This
energy transfer will occur at some measurable rate.
Mathematics
can be used to determine how fast the cooling occurs, and how long until the
system reaches maximum entropy.
In
every physical system known, heat flows into a cold system, to increase the
overall entropy.
Since
planet Earth is flying through space in a vacuum, then it makes sense that we
are losing planetary heat to the cold of space.
In
other words, heat is radiating from our planet at some rate which we should be
able to measure.
We
are losing heat, on a planetary scale.
This
is not even arguable.
So,
then, the big question is:
Why
is the atmosphere heating up?
What
is really causing global warming?
If
the physics of every other closed system shows conclusively that heat flows
from a WARM body to the COLD surrounding it, how come the Earth’s average
global air temperature keeps increasing?
Energy
MUST be getting added to the system, correct?
So,
then the question becomes, from WHERE is all this energy coming?
If
you are lying in bed, and put a blanket over your body, and it is cold outside,
for how long will you stay warm?
Eventually,
you will freeze to death, because your body will stop radiating heat…unless you
either eat food, or exercise or put a heating pad under the blanket…because
ENERGY must be added to keep heat loss regulated.
Can
we look at the AGW situation and not realize that we are under a blanket (of
air)?
Perhaps
it is a radiative effect from the sun, (which is about 1000 times larger than
our planet)?
If
the heat is coming from the Sun, that would be like a heat lamp being shone on
the blanket.
Maybe
instead, it is the planet’s core heating up?
If
there are geothermal effects, this would be like having a heating pad
underneath the blanket.
Can
we really say it is us affecting the
atmosphere?
What
if the Earth is slowing down in its orbit, and therefore falling into the Sun,
i.e. getting closer?
This
is not as far-fetched as it sounds.
You
may be realizing by now that we really have some very interesting problems here
in physics.
The
large-scale universal and planetary celestial mechanics are telling us
something that is nearly unbelievable.
When
you think about this on a cosmic scale, you quickly realize that something
doesn't add up.
For
instance, if you take a ball or a marble and put it into a funnel at one of those
games that you see in museums and malls, you release the marble along the rim
of the funnel and it falls into the bottom.
The
ball spirals down at a predictable rate to the center of the funnel.
Now
we have been using for centuries various models of celestial mechanics.
These
provide for an understanding that all the planets orbit around the Sun.
And,
the solar system is orbiting the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way.
So,
the question now becomes:
How
can this be happening over billions
of years?
Think
about that for a moment, from an energy
perspective.
What
you're considering is a model of a system that has been able to have enough
energy imparted into it to continue a specific behavior over millions of years;
maybe even billions of years.
There
is a very real gravity cost.
Things
can be calculated to predict and extrapolate the coordinates in space-time very
accurately.
So,
why is all this energy not dissipating?
This
can be very easily extrapolated using mathematics.
What
we are doing is observing and applying a formula to something that now is true.
That
does not mean that it will remain true; and it also doesn't mean that things
haven't changed over the last several Millennium.
In
other words, just maybe, the Universe is expanding.
Maybe
it's contracting.
Either
of these might be a factor in global warming, as we really do not understand
the nature of ‘space.’
There
are many things that could account for the planet altering its trajectory
through space.
Perhaps
we hit a cloud of Interstellar dust and it's slowing the Earth down in its
various motions through space.
Maybe
our entire solar system has hit a cloud of Interstellar dust.
It
is realistic to assume we cannot detect it, depending on its size and makeup,
and the sensitivity of our instruments and other factors.
What
if this cloud is slowing us down significantly enough that we are getting
closer together?
All
the planets in the solar system would also be getting closer to the sun because
that's just conservation of momentum and conservation of energy?
These
are the simple physical rules as laid out by Galileo, Newton and Einstein.
If
this is indeed the case, then certainly it must be agreed that there's nothing
that can be done about it, since the Universe was operating with those
parameters far before man came along, right?
*****
Well,
now that you are suitably depressed, I would like to brighten your day by
giving you a brief glimpse at some of the coming subjects of this series of
articles.
If
nothing else, I hope you will smirk slightly as we consider the following possibilities
in our continuing series on SCIENCE and the SCIENTIFIC METHOD!
Thanks
for reading, and feel free to leave comments or email me at
Until
next time!
COMING SOON:
COW FARTS and COW BURPS – The REAL Causes of Global Warming
SCIENCE FICTION WEAPONRY – Zap! Pow! Bzzt! – Why Lightsabers Are Fantasy But Phasers Are Almost Here!
UNDERSEA CITIES – The Long Awaited Look at Living in a Reverse Fishbowl!
A.E. Williams
High Springs, Florida
July 07, 2018
About A.E. Williams:
A.E. Williams has a unique background of military experience, aerospace engineering and intelligence analysis.
Born near Pittsburgh, A.E. Williams is man of a mystery. As a young man, Williams served the United States government in various capacities, which he then followed with ten years as an outfitter. Williams finally retired and moved down to rural central Florida, where he ran a medium - sized tilapia farm. He did his writing at night, usually accompanied by a bottle of Maker's Mark bourbon and a large supply of Classic Dr. Pepper and ice.
A.E. Williams is the author of the exciting hard science fiction series Terminal Reset, which is about the effects of a mysterious force from billions of miles away from Earth that was formed millions of years ago. When The Wave strikes, everything changes!
[1] Hollow-points are banned by the Hague Convention, but many
countries are not signatories to it. Nuclear weapons are not ‘illegal,’ but
their use is strictly governed.
[6] The
average depth of the Gulf Stream from one end of the River, start-to-end, is
approximately 3 miles and the width at any given point is an average of 5
miles.
[8] Dr. McAllister had a bum leg, and often used a cane.
When asked, he would concoct some
outrageous story to explain his apparent disability on the spot.
My favorite was this tall tale:
“I was out with the Cousteau Society in the
South Pacific, off Hawaii. We were researching the mating habits of the humpback
whale. They were broaching and splashing all over the place! My job was to
affix a tracking device to the tail flukes, or one of the fins. You had to
basically shake hands with the little devils, to get them to hold still long
enough to attach them. They had a little hook, but it went into the blubber,
and none of the whales ever complained about them. Well, there I was, trying to
put one of these tags on a humpback whale, and I got my flippered foot stuck in
its blowhole. I tried to pull it out, and the flipper fell off, but my foot was
stuck in there real tight like. Then, as whales do, he dove for the bottom. I
almost drowned, because he closed up on my foot! A minute or two later, he
breached, and now I was flying through the air, like a trapeze artist! Luckily, I had been learning to sing ‘whale
songs.’ I politely sang to him to let my foot go. As you can see, he complied,
but not before he dove one more time, straight to the bottom! While I was down
there, I found a giant clam, and stuck my hand into it to retrieve the biggest
pearl I had ever seen. But, since I had to swim about eighty fathoms to the
surface, I had to let it drop, because I needed to be careful to breathe out
and not get the bends. That’s why we now have a hyperbaric chamber here at the
University, incidentally.”
Professors like that make learning
worthwhile and are as priceless as that mythical pearl!
[10] He already peed in it anyway, you most certainly realize…
[11] Lighting him on fire would probably be fatal…just saying.
[12] Especially if the brat’s
parents gave you a small bribe of Maker’s 46 or Gentleman Jack, or something
similar.
[14] Or, just check this out: http://www.vesseltracking.net/article/biggest-oil-tankers
[15] If you really want to get your ire up, check out this list of Oil
Spills:
[18] Again, this is not to say that these events do not have some
deleterious effects; it's just that the effects are very miniscule when
compared to the entire oceanic
system.
[20] We really don't want people
pissing in our punchbowl, whether that's the local aquifer or reservoir, now do
we?
No comments:
Post a Comment