Earth Atmospherics, Tectonics, and Geology

[eyez4096]

i really really really want to find the guy who's working on this theory and talk with him... i suspect that he's 90% on the money.... but i question the idea that somehow the water just disappears back in time when it is supposed by biology that life began in the oceans a loooong time ago and took a looong time to move to land. this is perfectly accounted for if the volume of water remained near constant......

[jeremy6d]

this is an interesting theory that, of course, completely dovetails with the model david has constructed. however, if there is experimental data that proves it (rather than simply inferring from geological clues) that would be a great step forward!

[LightEye]

dear friends,

http://www.economist.com/science/dis...ory_id=9143913

be well, be love.

david

look down, look up, look out!
may 10th 2007 | kangerlussuaq, greenland
from the economist print edition

the weather in space is controlled by events at the centre of the earth. a pity, then, that the magnetic field generated there may be about to go into reverse


greenland was discovered without the use of magnetic compasses. the viking longboats that arrived here in 982 relied on the stars and the sun to maintain their orientation. but it was the compass (a chinese invention) that enabled later european navigators to bestride the world. it was the compass, too, which revealed that the earth itself has a magnetic field and thus led to the first serious question about the planet's internal structure: what is down there that generates this field?

such a question is not merely academic. besides directing compasses, the earth's magnetic field reaches out into space to direct the flow of the solar wind around the planet—forming a structure called the magnetosphere (depicted above). when the wind hits this field it creates a shock wave known as the bow shock. most of the protons and electrons of the wind go round this shock wave, and lots of dangerous radiation from the sun is thus diverted away from the earth.

there is, however, a growing body of evidence that the earth's magnetic field is about to disappear, at least for a while. the geological record shows that it flips from time to time, with the south pole becoming the north, and vice versa. on average, such reversals take place every 500,000 years, but there is no discernible pattern. flips have happened as close together as 50,000 years, though the last one was 780,000 years ago. but, as discussed at the greenland space science symposium, held in kangerlussuaq this week, the signs are that another flip is coming soon.

[LightEye]

dear friends,

this is from the guy who's responsible for the "expanding earth" video. you may have to copy and paste the links onto your browser to vies the videos...

be well, be love.

david

the expanding earth
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjgidaicoqi

moon
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbt8k...elated&search=

mars
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d44jj...elated&search=

mars ii
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeuezm7hsmy

europa
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hh_5s...elated&search=

ganymede

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fsg1...elated&search=

[LightEye]

dear friends,

here's additional videos.

http://www.nealadams.com/nmu.html

be well, be love.

david

[LightEye]

dear friends,

http://www.esa.int/esasc/sem3dcv681f_index_0.html

be well, be love.

david

cluster makes a shocking discovery
14 may 2007

esa’s cluster was in the right place and time to make a shocking discovery. the four spacecraft encountered a shock wave that kept breaking and reforming – predicted only in theory.

on 24 january 2001, cluster’s spacecraft observed shock reformation in the earth’s magnetosphere, predicted only in theory, over 20 years ago. cluster provided the first opportunity ever to observe such an event, the details of which have been published in a paper on 9 march this year.
the shock wave that sits above the earth’s surface is a natural phenomenon. it is located on the side facing the sun, at approximately one quarter of the distance to the moon, and is caused by the flow of electrically charged particles from the sun.

this flow of electrically charged particles known as solar wind is emitted in a gusty manner by the sun. when it collides with the earth’s magnetic field, it is abruptly slowed down and this causes a barrier of electrified gas, called the bow shock, to build up. it behaves in the same way as water being pushed out of the way by the front of a ship.

[soup]

i can imagine the earth as an oblate spheroid shaped balloon - as having plasma as component of its core which pressurizes or expands as it heats and becomes more energetic. another element of this seems that as it heats, more material melts or vaporizes which creates more pressurized plasma. floating in the center of the plasma seems a core. this core could have an element of angular momentum which causes it to spin faster as it is compressed to smaller size by the plasma (or gravitationally compressing), and as it spins faster it generates more friction which heats the plasma. another element with the core could be that it perturbable in ways that the crust is not - as say a magnetic rotor of a motor driven by influences outside of a permeable rotor housing. in any case, it seemed to me that if the earth is growing larger due to changes in the core, that surface percentage ice and water levels would be observed as changing which is difficult to tell by the video - it seems to depict the percentage of water surface area as expanding and this may be misleading, it may be shrinking - though another interpretation may be that the ice is melting over time.

[soup]

i was considering a theory of critical mass - the idea that when you get enough plutonium squished together in just the right way it forms a fusion bomb. okay so plutonium is a heavy element which in a fluidic state may gravitate to regions below that of elements having lower density. this seems as analogous to how denser water gravitates below lower density oil. so it seems conceivable that there is likewise such elementary separations occuring in regions of the earth's core and that there is naturally occuring episodes of fusion reactions which by its explosive nature perturbs things like the rotational dynamics of balanced magnetic rotor action that generate things like earth's magnetic field. that said, it may be that after such fusion reactions, it takes a while for the plutonium to settle back to such states of critical mass, it may take eons of time.

[soup]

there is that saying "as above, as below", and it may apply in some regard to the idea of nuclear reactions, that there are nuclear reactions occur in regions of the core. it's difficult for me to conceive of what the largest nuclear bomb can do, though its probably in the 100's of megatons. some say that there is so much potential energy in the form of nuclear bombs that it is simply a matter of time before one goes off.

so that makes me wonder about the core, if likewise something similar is true and yet uncontrolled by any political motives, just natural processes. the idea of some end of time event could conceivably happen right under our feet in the matter of milliseconds - without anyone pushing any button. it seems humbling to think about such events as that of a multi-megaton explosion detonating within proximity of the core in a way which perturbs the seemingly ever constant way of life we take for granted. i wonder if this is some mechanism by which very quick end of epoch turningpoints take place...

[daresh]

a new nasa satellite has recorded the first detailed images from space of a mysterious type of cloud called “night-shining” or “noctilucent."
the clouds are on the move, brightening and creeping out of polar regions, and researchers don't know why.
"it is clear that these clouds are changing, a sign that a part of our atmosphere is changing and we do not understand how, why or what it means," said atmospheric scientists james russell iii of hampton university in hampton, virginia. "these observations suggest a connection with global change in the lower atmosphere and could represent an early warning that our earth environment is being changed."

http://www.livescience.com/environme...ht_clouds.html

[note from moderator: spaceweather also has a great space pic of the clouds today on their site]