NationStates Jolt Archive

Yesterday I stayed in bed most of the day. Some kind of virus knocked me out etc. and I had to spend the day watching tv. Afternoon tv really gets annyoing after a while. Talking cats (Sabrina) and old Simpsons you've seen and <snip>.

zap

:x zap

:( zap

"The earth's magnetic field" :o That sounded interesting! So I started to watch. Turns out that the earth's magnetic field is getting weaker. A lot weaker. The last 300 years or so the strength of the magnetic field has decreased by 10%.

So what? you might think. Well, look what happened to Mars after it lost it's magnetic field. Hardly no atmosphere anymore. The magnetic field shields the earth from lots of radiation (mainly from the sun). But a bit comforting is that the earth's magnetic field won't go away although it's decreasing in strength, it'll just reverse it's polarity as it happens to do every now and then. The magnetic north of today will become the magnetic south. Problem is that this won't happen instantly. It might take 3000 years before the new polarity is stable. What effects will that have? I don't know, but I suspect that the pigeons will get confused and that mankind will get cancer. Hoorah. :(

Next zap session etc.

"Super volcanos" Great! No more "Charmed"! Never heard of a super volcano before! This will be interesting! The last one on earth errupted somewhere in Malaysia I think it was, 74.000 years ago, leaving a lake with the size 600x1000 km in it's crater.

This happened to occur at the same time as the human race nearly got extincted. Some other scientist had looked at our genes and found that all the human beings today have a very similar DNA, too similar infact. They based their result on studying the mutaion rate over generations and their conclusion is that only a few % of mankind survived something 70.000-80.000 years ago, but they didn't know what killed the rest. Some volcano guy heard about it and gave them the answer.

Back to the volcanos. When the last great volcano (Pinatubo (sp?) 1992) errupted, the global mean temperature fell 0.5C under one year. When a super volcano errupts, the decrease mean temperature will fall with about 5C... and here's the bad news: The entire yellow stone national park in alaska is an active super volcano. The last time it errupted was 600.000 years ago. Before that 1.200.000 years ago and before that 1.800.000, which means that if it's on time, well, perhaps tomorrow? Instantly it would mean bye bye north america and then the rest of us will have a looong winter. Great.

Isn't learning fun, BMV?

Aww. I just wrote out a long and kickass response. But I lost it.
I really should get a keylogger because of this damn Forum.

And It just happened again.

You might like a look at this (http://www.xs4all.nl/~mke/exitmundi.htm) for a myriad of end-of-world scenarios.

Isn't learning fun, BMV?

Sure it is, but learning about the destruction of the world as we know at the same time as you're sick as a dog... :lol:

Aww. I just wrote out a long and kickass response. But I lost it.
I really should get a keylogger because of this damn Forum.

And It just happened again.

That was the first thing I learned about NS fora: Save your posts somewhere or be sorry. That goes for all fora really...

You might like a look at this (http://www.xs4all.nl/~mke/exitmundi.htm) for a myriad of end-of-world scenarios.

I found this:

http://www.xs4all.nl/~mke/qurankopplat.jpg

Doesn't sound too bad if you're not a muslim with a heavy homophobia. :wink:

Good thing I'm insured. ;)

I'm worried that the store will run out of Ben & Jerry's before I get there after work. :oops:

The entire yellow stone national park in alaska is an active super volcano. The last time it errupted was 600.000 years ago. Before that 1.200.000 years ago and before that 1.800.000, which means that if it's on time, well, perhaps tomorrow? Instantly it would mean bye bye north america and then the rest of us will have a looong winter. Great.

its in wyoming actually (and part of idaho and montana).

but more importantly, they are pretty sure that its gonna erupt sometime relatively soon for reasons beyond it being overdue for an eruption (though relatively could mean centuries in this case). for example, it's bulging right now - the lake is shifting because the one side is being pushed higher. always a bad sign. and the temperatures of the streams are rising and killing off the fish. they were actually doing a bunch of tests on the water when i was there.

personally i think it would be cool to watch it erupt... from space.

The entire yellow stone national park in alaska is an active super volcano. The last time it errupted was 600.000 years ago. Before that 1.200.000 years ago and before that 1.800.000, which means that if it's on time, well, perhaps tomorrow? Instantly it would mean bye bye north america and then the rest of us will have a looong winter. Great.

its in wyoming actually (and part of idaho and montana).

It is? :oops: My bad. Why did I think of alaska? Because of the bears?

but more importantly, they are pretty sure that its gonna erupt sometime relatively soon for reasons beyond it being overdue for an eruption (though relatively could mean centuries in this case). for example, it's bulging right now - the lake is shifting because the one side is being pushed higher. always a bad sign. and the temperatures of the streams are rising and killing off the fish. they were actually doing a bunch of tests on the water when i was there.

personally i think it would be cool to watch it erupt... from space.

Yeah, from some space station it would be pretty cool to see. I can't deny that.

its in wyoming actually (and part of idaho and montana).

It is? :oops: My bad. Why did I think of alaska? Because of the bears?

perhaps because it is huge and almost completely empty of humans, except for a few small but densley packed tourist stops?

its in wyoming actually (and part of idaho and montana).

It is? :oops: My bad. Why did I think of alaska? Because of the bears?

perhaps because it is huge and almost completely empty of humans, except for a few small but densley packed tourist stops?

Where the bears eat everything the tourists bring along? Yeah, that could be it. :wink:

There are bears there, right?

"The earth's magnetic field" :o That sounded interesting! So I started to watch. Turns out that the earth's magnetic field is getting weaker. A lot weaker. The last 300 years or so the strength of the magnetic field has decreased by 10%.

So what? you might think. Well, look what happened to Mars after it lost it's magnetic field. Hardly no atmosphere anymore. The magnetic field shields the earth from lots of radiation (mainly from the sun). But a bit comforting is that the earth's magnetic field won't go away although it's decreasing in strength, it'll just reverse it's polarity as it happens to do every now and then. The magnetic north of today will become the magnetic south. Problem is that this won't happen instantly. It might take 3000 years before the new polarity is stable. What effects will that have? I don't know, but I suspect that the pigeons will get confused and that mankind will get cancer. Hoorah. :(

Well, the first problem when dealing with the Earth's Magnetic Fields is that we don't really understand them. What produces them? What are the dynamics of that production and where does it come from? Obviously something is generating it and there do seem to be fluxes, but we have no idea as to what that is. Without this basic knowledge, any speculation as to how the Earth's magnetic fields function over time is just that, complete speculation. Second, the reversals that have occured in the past are estimated to take nearly a 1000 years to complete, with specific fluxuations during that period unknown. Also, the last potential culpret occured nearly 800,000 years ago whereas all other potential flux reversals happened on 200,000 year intervals (which, incidentally, we survived as a species with far more primitive technology than we have now). This unusually large gap argues that, again, we have very little understanding of the mechanics behind the magnetic fields and predicting a flip is not only dangerously speculative, but most likely wrong. Third, there is no knowing if this 10% dip represents a true polar reversal or simply the standard fluxuation in the magnetic fields. One researcher recently provided evidence that these polar flips take half as long to happen at lower lattitudes as in mid to high lattitudes (Brad Clement working through funding by the National Science Foundation).

Finally, these polar flips do not indicate an extinction level event because they are not instantaneous. According to some research, they may last either 1,000 years or over 7,000. Either way, any possible flip that might be occuring is not imminent in the scale of the human lifespan (even if it's almost instantaneous by geological time).

"
Next zap session etc.

"Super volcanos" Great! No more "Charmed"! Never heard of a super volcano before! This will be interesting! The last one on earth errupted somewhere in Malaysia I think it was, 74.000 years ago, leaving a lake with the size 600x1000 km in it's crater.

This happened to occur at the same time as the human race nearly got extincted. Some other scientist had looked at our genes and found that all the human beings today have a very similar DNA, too similar infact. They based their result on studying the mutaion rate over generations and their conclusion is that only a few % of mankind survived something 70.000-80.000 years ago, but they didn't know what killed the rest. Some volcano guy heard about it and gave them the answer.

Do you know which researchers published this finding? I've never heard of it before.

"
Back to the volcanos. When the last great volcano (Pinatubo (sp?) 1992) errupted, the global mean temperature fell 0.5C under one year. When a super volcano errupts, the decrease mean temperature will fall with about 5C... and here's the bad news: The entire yellow stone national park in alaska is an active super volcano. The last time it errupted was 600.000 years ago. Before that 1.200.000 years ago and before that 1.800.000, which means that if it's on time, well, perhaps tomorrow? Instantly it would mean bye bye north america and then the rest of us will have a looong winter. Great.

Well, first of all, Yellowstone is in Wyoming, not Alaska. As for those numbers, there has been a lot of debate concerning them. First of all, we only have have three possible erruptions with two intervals in between them, hardly enough to extrapolate any sort of functional time line on a geographic scale. Secondly, there is no way of telling how severe an erruption it would be. It might mean the entire North American continent is covered in lava 5 cm think or it might simply be an effect similar to Mount Saint Helen's in Washington. There's no way to tell. Third, there are no indications of any unusual pressure buildup in the area and it's business as usual at the geographic watch station assigned to monitor volcanic activity in the park. In fact, between 1985 and 1992, the land near the center of the Yellowstone caldera actually subsided by more than 6 inches, which argues that there is no undue pressure buildup. The land is no longer bulging (although there was a period of expansion in the caldera prior to 1985) in the Weasle Creek/Storm Point Vent System as of the summer of 2003, the one time a year where such data is recorded. The supposed cause of this bulging, a magma pocket deep below the surface, has just come to light. Some claim this means it has been recently pushed up through the lower levels of the Earth's crust. However, a more likely argument is that it has just never been noticed before as there does not seem to be any change in it's position. So, according to the scientists who actually monitor Yellowstone (the USGS Yellowston project, this magma pocket may have been there for thousands of years and we just noticed it and there is no current change in it's position.

There were rumored to be mass animal die-offs in certain areas of the park. This was later proved to be untrue and toxic emissions were no worse than usual at one of the most active sources of deep geology on the planet. That's what people tend to forget about Yellowstone, it is a dynamic location with all sorts of different things happening all the time. There are a myriad number of reasons for differences in topology and surface temperature that have nothing to do with an imminent volcano explosion. Certain features in the park exhibt a higher output while other features lower theirs. It is a dynamic, geological feature which we are still collecting baseline information about.

Is it possible? Sure, but so is an undetected space rock slamming into the Earth tomorrow and they're just about as likely. It's more likely that tomorrow you'll walk out side of your house and be run over by a cross town bus. Besides, with our present technology, there's nothing we can do about it if it does decide to go, so it's pointless worrying about it. Also worth noting, the volcanic activity at Yellowstone is not an all or nothing process. Since the last purposed superexplosion 640,000 years ago, there have been 30 eruptions at Yellowstone of significantly lesser stature. Therefore, if an eruption is to occur, it is much more likely that it will be a lesser one which will have very little effect outside the park itself.

Ah well. We're all screwed.

There are bears there, right?

yeah, there's bears. and bison. and signs that say "do not molest the animals"

Next zap session etc.

"Super volcanos" Great! No more "Charmed"! Never heard of a super volcano before! This will be interesting! The last one on earth errupted somewhere in Malaysia I think it was, 74.000 years ago, leaving a lake with the size 600x1000 km in it's crater.

This happened to occur at the same time as the human race nearly got extincted. Some other scientist had looked at our genes and found that all the human beings today have a very similar DNA, too similar infact. They based their result on studying the mutaion rate over generations and their conclusion is that only a few % of mankind survived something 70.000-80.000 years ago, but they didn't know what killed the rest. Some volcano guy heard about it and gave them the answer.

Do you know which researchers published this finding? I've never heard of it before.


No, sorry. It was in the same program as the super volcanoes. I had never heard of any of it before.

You mean we have to worry about Bush anyway? :) :( :)

There's also the volcano Cumbre Vieja on La Palma. Next time it explodes, the western half of the island could slide into the Atlantic, generating a mega-tsunami which would cross the ocean in 8 hours and scour the entire US Eastern seaboard down to the bedrock for several kilometres inland. Prime place for terrorists to place a nuke, I reckon. Wouldn't necessarily work, but it wouldn't half make people sh*t themselves.

mega-tsunami

and this is what happens when we get scientists who grew up in the 80s. mega-tsunamis and super volcanos.

"and we call this the cowabunga machine..."