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Dr. Clayton Forrester's Science Roundup

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Re: Dr. Clayton Forrester's Science Roundup

St. Clown said:
How much movement do you think happens within a mountain on a year-to-year basis? How much movement can happen in a single fault line event (AKA: earthquake) in an area like the San Andreas Fault? Everest grows a couple inches in any given year (5cm, technically); engineers can account for that in their construction designs. Meanwhile, the 1989 earthquake that hit during the World Series was so great, moved so much land so violently at a single time, accounting for an event like that would be a much greater challenge.
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Guess we'll find out with the 7.9 quake in Nepal. I would guess that would discourage cutting through the Himalayas, unless you build a massive shock absorber around the entire tunnel. That's a lot of $$$.
 
Re: Dr. Clayton Forrester's Science Roundup

Nova was spectacular again this week. This week was the Hubble Telescope. Some of the most beautiful imagery mankind has ever seen.

Very moving episode. Makes you feel very small yet big at the same time. We're one of 2x10^22 star systems yet we as humans were smart enough to figure that out.
 
Re: Dr. Clayton Forrester's Science Roundup

joecct said:
Guess we'll find out with the 7.9 quake in Nepal. I would guess that would discourage cutting through the Himalayas, unless you build a massive shock absorber around the entire tunnel. That's a lot of $$$.
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they reported avalanches on Mount Everest. took out about 8 climbers they are reporting. could end up being more there just on the Mountain.
 
Re: Dr. Clayton Forrester's Science Roundup

joecct said:
Guess we'll find out with the 7.9 quake in Nepal. I would guess that would discourage cutting through the Himalayas, unless you build a massive shock absorber around the entire tunnel. That's a lot of $$$.
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Yeah, likely you're right.

dxmnkd316 said:
Nova was spectacular again this week. This week was the Hubble Telescope. Some of the most beautiful imagery mankind has ever seen.

Very moving episode. Makes you feel very small yet big at the same time. We're one of 2x10^22 star systems yet we as humans were smart enough to figure that out.
Click to expand...
It's 25 years of Hubble this month. I'm seeing a lot of stuff around the web and TV for its anniversary.
 
Re: Dr. Clayton Forrester's Science Roundup

St. Clown said:
How much movement do you think happens within a mountain on a year-to-year basis? How much movement can happen in a single fault line event (AKA: earthquake) in an area like the San Andreas Fault? Everest grows a couple inches in any given year (5cm, technically); engineers can account for that in their construction designs. Meanwhile, the 1989 earthquake that hit during the World Series was so great, moved so much land so violently at a single time, accounting for an event like that would be a much greater challenge.
Click to expand...

It's my understanding that rigid tectonic plates "float" on top of a viscous liquid magma. That means that while the bottom is moving "continuously", the top only moves in fits and starts. Sort of like tension builds up in a rubber band, then it snaps into a new position along the fault line all at once, relieving the tension temporarily, at which time the entire process starts all over again.

In other words, while designing an earthquake-resistant structure that is entirely on one side of the fault line might be feasible, anything solid that crosses over the fault line will eventually be ripped into two parts. I wonder if they could put a tunnel or a road on rollers along each edge of the fault line, with a tear-away strip in the middle??
 
Re: Dr. Clayton Forrester's Science Roundup

FreshFish said:
It's my understanding that rigid tectonic plates "float" on top of a viscous liquid magma. That means that while the bottom is moving "continuously", the top only moves in fits and starts. Sort of like tension builds up in a rubber band, then it snaps into a new position along the fault line all at once, relieving the tension temporarily, at which time the entire process starts all over again.

In other words, while designing an earthquake-resistant structure that is entirely on one side of the fault line might be feasible, anything solid that crosses over the fault line will eventually be ripped into two parts. I wonder if they could put a tunnel or a road on rollers along each edge of the fault line, with a tear-away strip in the middle??
Click to expand...

That would be fine if it was a longitudinal movement along the highway where the plates either separated or collided with each other. Typically during an earthquake, it generally moves in a shearing motion either vertically or laterally along the fault line. Tunneling through a mountain with a fault line, you would need a MASSIVE hole carved through just to have the smaller pipeline (or trans-Himalayan Highway) resting on shocks and struts inside of the outer tube.

In Alaska, the Trans-Alaskan Pipeline crosses over the Denali fault line. In 2002, the pipeline's earthquake readiness was tested:
http://www.amusingplanet.com/2014/08/how-trans-alaska-pipeline-survived-2002.html

On November 3, 2002, the Denali Fault ruptured over a distance of 336 km, producing the largest earthquake from a continental strike-slip fault in North America since the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Measuring 7.9 in magnitude, the earthquake caused ground to shift beneath the pipeline 14 feet horizontally and 2.5 feet vertically. The violent shaking damaged a few of the pipeline's supports near the fault, but the pipeline itself did not break. It was the first significant quake to test the pipeline's mettle.
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The Tok Cut-Off highway was offset 23 feet (7 m) by the earthquake.
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Richardson Highway offset 8.5 feet in right-lateral sense. This location is near where supports to the Trans Alaska Pipeline [supports] sustained damage.
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Re: Dr. Clayton Forrester's Science Roundup

Heathens! The ground shook in Nepal because God was angry.
 
Re: Dr. Clayton Forrester's Science Roundup

Um...

A group at NASA’s Johnson Space Center has successfully tested an electromagnetic (EM) propulsion drive in a vacuum – a major breakthrough for a multi-year international effort comprising several competing research teams. Thrust measurements of the EM Drive defy classical physics’ expectations that such a closed (microwave) cavity should be unusable for space propulsion because of the law of conservation of momentum.
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Re: Dr. Clayton Forrester's Science Roundup

Kepler said:
Um...
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I heard rumblings about this a few months back. If I were a betting man (which I am), I would think it is a victim of a difficult to detect methodological flaw like the faster than light neutrino. Otherwise, sounds pretty cool and should be an interesting development as it is further investigated.
 
Re: Dr. Clayton Forrester's Science Roundup

WisconsinWildcard said:
a victim of a difficult to detect methodological flaw like the faster than light neutrino
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That was the one they shot under the Alps, right? Has that been definitively ruled out? I remember reading that they hadn't been able to reproduce it, but I didn't know whether they had delivered the final rain on the parade.

I am also guessing, purely as a layman, that basing your propulsion system on the effective equivalent of a perpetual motion machine is slightly less likely to work than an Improbability Drive.
 
Re: Dr. Clayton Forrester's Science Roundup

I have no idea what you're talking about...

<img src ="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_nHkHmJl7K88/SW8_CJHIiEI/AAAAAAAADjQ/oP2kz0e6CGM/s320/palinpancakes.jpeg.jpg"></img>

So here's an idiot with pancakes on her head.


In all seriousness, I see Kep mentioned that facility "under the Alps". A guy I graduated high school with (who is, naturally, far smarter than any of our valedictorians were) went on to get his PhD in Physics, and is living/working there, doing research I'll never understand.
 
Re: Dr. Clayton Forrester's Science Roundup

Kepler said:
That was the one they shot under the Alps, right? Has that been definitively ruled out? I remember reading that they hadn't been able to reproduce it, but I didn't know whether they had delivered the final rain on the parade.

I am also guessing, purely as a layman, that basing your propulsion system on the effective equivalent of a perpetual motion machine is slightly less likely to work than an Improbability Drive.
Click to expand...

This is what I found that I remembered. Kind of a half-assed search but I will post again if it strikes me to put more effort in.
First
http://news.sciencemag.org/2012/02/...-neutrino-results?ref=hp#.T0U_N0pYVRc.twitter

Update
http://news.sciencemag.org/2012/02/...aves-warp-drive-fans-shred-hope—barely?ref=hp

Wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster-than-light_neutrino_anomaly

Edit:
And more about the EM drive:
Wired
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-07/31/nasa-validates-impossible-space-drive

And Dr. Novella skepticism
http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/nasa-tests-em-drive/
 
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Re: Dr. Clayton Forrester's Science Roundup

WisconsinWildcard said:
This is what I found that I remembered. Kind of a half-assed search but I will post again if it strikes me to put more effort in.
First
http://news.sciencemag.org/2012/02/...-neutrino-results?ref=hp#.T0U_N0pYVRc.twitter

Update
http://news.sciencemag.org/2012/02/...aves-warp-drive-fans-shred-hope—barely?ref=hp

Wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster-than-light_neutrino_anomaly

Edit:
And more about the EM drive:
Wired
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-07/31/nasa-validates-impossible-space-drive

And Dr. Novella skepticism
http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/nasa-tests-em-drive/
Click to expand...
My wife was working at CERN when that all went down - she was even working on the actual accelerator (the PS2) that provided the proton beam to the OPERA experiment. According to her, the "announcement" was actually supposed to just be an internal plea for help - the scientists on the experiment couldn't figure out what was wrong with it, so they sent around a memo asking if there were anyone with expertise who could help explain the anomaly. They never thought for a second that the particles had actually gone faster than light. Unfortunately, the memo was widely distributed enough, and described the anomaly in enough detail that when someone leaked it to the press, the rest was history.
 
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