Earth Science

Just read this article: http://www.newsweek.com/2011/03/13/when-will-we-learn.html Are our tsunami warning systems up to date? Do we need better ones? What's stopping people from making better ones? What does everyone think?

Hi. I was wondering if any of you are studying/doing research in seismology. What kinds of math are important in that field? Outside of calculus, I'd imagine partial differential equations, stats, and linear algebra, maybe some topics in real analysis. But undergrad math just gave me a brief overview of different branches of math. I'm wondering if there are specific topics/areas that seismologists find useful. Thanks.

So I was watching the youtube Discovery Channel Segment on the 'Mega-Tsunami' which scientists have predicted would travel over the entire Atlantic to devastate at least 12 miles inland of the entire eastern coast from New York to Miami. I'm not skeptical of this, not by a long shot especially considering that it has happened before and will happen again most likely, but the skepticism lies with my friends who believe that the attempt to say that a wave would travel over the entire Atlantic ocean is nearly impossible, and beyond that would kill basically all life on the planet due to the massive shift in the Eco System due to its major shift of water. So I was wondering w…

http://www.ahappydea...oduct_31869.htmThe Temple Mount of Jerusalem, a holy site for the three great monotheistic religions, is the largest man made platform of the ancient world. The trapezium shaped platform measures 488 m along the west, 470 m along the east, 315 m along the north and 280 m along the south, giving a total area of approximately 150,000 m2 (37 acres). This means over 5 times larger than the Acropolis of Athens and nearly 3 times the base of the great pyramid of Giza. What is perhaps less known is that the entire temple mount rests upong gigantic megalithic foundations. Some of the stones employed in its construction weight an impressive 100 to 150 t…

So, Im sitting in this bar eating my lunch when I started to feel disoriented. I look up and my eyes cant make sense of what was going on. My seat was rocking and it felt like I was on a boat. My first thought was holy cow something blew up outside! I look out the window and all I see is some guy casually getting off his motorcycle. The building was making creaking noises. Then it stopped. The motorcycle guy strolls in, has a beer, then leaves. He didn't mention anything about what just happened. The only other person in the bar was the waitress/cook and she was back in the kitchen and didn't say anything either. Was I going nutty? Stroking out maybe? My…

Greenopolis and Melissa are in Monterey Bay California for the World's Oceans Weekend Event at the Aquarium. Greenopolis has a Twitter contest going on and Ashok, a Greenopolis team member, tells people what's going on. The oceans affect all of us— plant, human, or animal, no matter where we are in the world. And even though Greenopolis is happy to be here standing in front of the Pacific Ocean, Greenopolis would want to hear from you on why should we care about our oceans. Tweet @greenopolis why you should care about your oceans. On Wednesday, World's Oceans Day, Greenopolis is going to pick someone to win a thousand Greenopolis points and everyone who participates …

I was trying to write a story and I was wondering on anyone's thought about the Earths Core being like a Van De Graaff-Generator. And all the week spots like Hawii and the fault lines get lightning. (like when one touches the outer glass generator spere) That heats up the surrounding rock and magma at random intervals which eventually explode into our atmosphere.

The topic of this was inspired by the thread on overpopulation but its content is overwhelmingly ethical/political in nature. The intent of this thread is to be based on hard science and thus research references must be cited, as befits this forum category, if requested and no ethical or political considerations are to be brought to this discussion. What effects, potential or actual, are we having on the Earth's natural mechanisms and resources?

I purchased the stone with a bunch of others at a garage sale, I posted it on a different website where I was told it can't be identified with the pictures I provided so I figured maybe someone here can ID it, here is a link with all the info on the rock including picture http://www.mineral-forum.com/message-board/viewtopic.php?t=1844

Very few, if present, chemical reactions that lead to store chemical reactions into compounds, like photosynthesis. Does this mean that chemical energy is to a vanish?

Within an ordinary gust of wind there can can be a certain wind speed. But the gust of wind itself (as a whole) moves forward at much lower speeds. How does that work? What puzzles me the most is that you have fast moving wind that moves into slower moving air in front of it. Where does it go? The air pressure isn't so different inside a wind gust that you can explain this by compression phenomena (I guess?). The only thing I can come up with is that it works like a traffic jam ( to illustrate)? But in that video, you can see a compression, which we don't observe in a wind gust (or do we?)? My back-of-the-envelope calculations (mass balances) seem to fail. …

Plasma Lighting can be a contributing factor in cutting the energy bill and creating a more sustainable form of lighting for the future. They say they can cut the ourdoor lighting bill by half. Currently the only company that makes plasma lights is Luxim which has a website at http://thelepexperience.com What are the drawbacks of using plasma lights, and will plasma lights be an effective solution to lighting in the future?

According to the National Geographic Channel documentary 24 Hours After Impact (DVD), the KT Impactor hit the ground, at an angle, of 30° above the horizon, from the south-east. It seems most likely, that the impactor moved towards the Earth, through the Ecliptic Plane of our Solar System. Thus, working out the angles, this seems much more consistent, with either (1) a (pre-)midnight strike during the Northern Hemisphere summer; (2) a (pre-)noonday strike during the Northern Hemisphere winter. Is there a scientific consensus, on what time of day & year, the impact happened ? Merged post follows: Consecutive posts mergedIf massive (metallic) …

Hi all, New to this site so wasn't sure where to post... anyway here we go.... I have a range of stable oxygen isotope values for a selection of diagenetic cements and assumed precipitation temperatures of Min 34degC, Max 56degC. What I need to do is calculate the oxygen isotopic composition of the parent waters using carbonate-water fractionation equations. Any ideas? Thanks.

http://tsunami-maps....=0&hgt=6&rng=50 Actually this is just a link for my new web site "tsunami-maps.com". It uses the google maps elevation service, the flood fill algorithm and lots of JavaScript to simulate tsunamis on your local beach. Its not 100% scientifically accurate but maybe entertain some people for 5 mins. Actually if someone has some ideas/links on how to improve the site's accuracy let me know (tsunami.maps@gmail.com).

so i was talking with my sis and mom the other day (who are WAY geekier than me ) and my sister asked my mom why all the continents looked like a triangle were the base is at the north pole(geographical terms). if you could answer this for me that would be great and sorry if this is unreadable.

The highest mountain in the world today, is of course Mt. Everest. This is a bit over 29,000 feet. I wonder whether in past ages, there were even higher mountains, and how high they were. The shape of continents which existed in the past, can be found out, and described to us, by modern geologists. Can geologists also ascertain what height mountains were in the past? Were there any "super-Everests"?

Hi All, I would like to assess the uncertainty of the subsurface. I have been interested in multiple-point geostatistical methods. For that, I read the following paper: http://www.springerl...77035k61724.pdf It has a very interesting and powerful idea. Do you guys know any other technique that can perform the same kind of stochastic simulations ? Best, Mike

Who is the world's top earth scientist and why ?

Hey guys! I'm currently working on writing a computer program that procedurally generates geographical features (i.e. landmasses, tectonic plates, bodies of water, etc.) and I'm looking to expand the program such that it determines, in a way that approximates reality, which regions ought to have which kind of climate (I've simplified climate as being a function of humidity and temperature). Absolute realism isn't the goal, but I'd like for the program to be reasonably realistic, at least to the eyes of non-specialists. The problem is, I've realized I actually don't know that much about why certain regions develop the climates they do. I used to believe that …

Gday This process supposedly started 650 million years ago when all the worlds' land masses were grouped together in a supercontinent positioned near the equator and runaway "weathering" took massive amounts of CO2 out of the atmosphere and hence lowered the earths' temperature so that massive ice sheets formed and extended from both poles towards the equator eventually covering the whole globe. Supposedly the earth was an ice covered snowball like this for another 25 million years until vulcanism eventually reversed this situation and the green house gases produced melted most of the ice and raised the earths' temperature again. I am assuming that vulca…

Gday Do the accuracy/relevance of these dating techniques ( C14/C12 one example) rest on some critical assumptions such as : 1. How much C14 originally present in sample. 2. No sources of contamination such as material leaching into samples. 3. decay rate has always been constant. It seems that if any of the above assumptions are false in any given case this could vastly affect any "accurate" result we are expecting. Our dating techniques may not be what they are cracked up to be. Interested in what others think.

Before 43 Mya, the Pacific oceanic plate was traveling northwards. Then, in a sudden shift, it began migrating northwestwards. This "jarring change in course" created a 'kink' in the Hawaii-Emperor volcanic island chain, erupted by the Hawaii Hot-Spot. Thus, before 43 Mya, only the Emperor islands existed; and, they 'trailed away', from the Hawaii Hot-Spot, in a northerly direction, at least as far as the Meiji sea-mount. And so, if, before 43 Mya, the Emperor islands extended even farther northwards, then the westerly motion, of the Pacific Plate, since that time, could have 'scraped off' those northern-most sea-mounts, onto the coast of Alaska, creating the Aleutian…

Hi guys!!! ive been wondering on this so im gonna ask here as well! what if the indian sub-continent did not drift from the position it had during Gondwanaland? what would it be like today? what would be its geology? i mean the Himalayas wouldn't have been uplifted etc!! thanks!

This concept has often been entertained in various works of fiction, but is it really a plausible concept, from a scientific standpoint? Think about it: Ice actually has more volume than water does. That's why it's able to float in water: It's the same mass as water, but greater volume, so the density is less. If the polar ice caps melt, it seems that the sea level might actually decrease, because the volume of the solid water will go down. It's the volume that counts, isn't it? Not the mass or density. Thoughts?