I think I may have posted this in another thread awhile ago, but kw & I were talking about it the other night, and it came up in another thread today, and I know it's interesting to others so, I'm posting it again...so cool.
I think I may have posted this in another thread awhile ago, but kw & I were talking about it the other night, and it came up in another thread today, and I know it's interesting to others so, I'm posting it again...so cool.
Hey science people... where does water (or sweat) go with those wicking shirts? Is it really disappearing, or is it going straight through the shirt to drip on the floor? I know I could google it, but you guys are more fun.
Hey science people... where does water (or sweat) go with those wicking shirts? Is it really disappearing, or is it going straight through the shirt to drip on the floor? I know I could google it, but you guys are more fun.
I think it pulls it off the body & causes it to evaporate... Which is why it's better than a cotton shirt (which just absorbs the sweat). That's my guess at any rate!
Imagine the world waking up one morning to discover that all compasses pointed south instead of north. It's not as bizarre as it sounds. Earth's magnetic field has flipped -- though not overnight -- many times throughout the planet's history. Its dipole magnetic field, like that of a bar magnet, remains about the same intensity for thousands to millions of years, but for incompletely known reasons it occasionally weakens and, presumably over a few thousand years, reverses direction.
Now, a new study by a team of scientists from Italy, France, Columbia University and the University of California, Berkeley, demonstrates that the last magnetic reversal 786,000 years ago actually happened very quickly, in less than 100 years -- roughly a human lifetime.
"It's amazing how rapidly we see that reversal," said UC Berkeley graduate student Courtney Sprain. "The paleomagnetic data are very well done. This is one of the best records we have so far of what happens during a reversal and how quickly these reversals can happen."
Sprain and Paul Renne, director of the Berkeley Geochronology Center and a UC Berkeley professor-in- residence of earth and planetary science, are coauthors of the study, which will be published in the November issue of Geophysical Journal International and is now available online.
The discovery comes as new evidence indicates that the intensity of Earth's magnetic field is decreasing 10 times faster than normal, leading some geophysicists to predict a reversal within a few thousand years.
Though a magnetic reversal is a major planet-wide event driven by convection in Earth's iron core, there are no documented catastrophes associated with past reversals, despite much searching in the geologic and biologic record. Today, however, such a reversal could potentially wreak havoc with our electrical grid, generating currents that might take it down.
And since Earth's magnetic field protects life from energetic particles from the sun and cosmic rays, both of which can cause genetic mutations, a weakening or temporary loss of the field before a permanent reversal could increase cancer rates. The danger to life would be even greater if flips were preceded by long periods of unstable magnetic behavior.
"We should be thinking more about what the biologic effects would be," Renne said.
The new finding is based on measurements of the magnetic field alignment in layers of ancient lake sediments now exposed in the Sulmona basin of the Apennine Mountains east of Rome, Italy. The lake sediments are interbedded with ash layers erupted from the Roman volcanic province, a large area of volcanoes upwind of the former lake that includes periodically erupting volcanoes near Sabatini, Vesuvius and the Alban Hills.
Italian researchers led by Leonardo Sagnotti of Rome's National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology measured the magnetic field directions frozen into the sediments as they accumulated at the bottom of the ancient lake.
Sprain and Renne used argon-argon dating, a method widely used to determine the ages of rocks, whether they're thousands or billions of years old, to determine the age of ash layers above and below the sediment layer recording the last reversal. These dates were confirmed by their colleague and former UC Berkeley postdoctoral fellow Sebastien Nomade of the Laboratory of Environmental and Climate Sciences in Gif-Sur-Yvette, France.
Because the lake sediments were deposited at a high and steady rate over a 10,000-year period, the team was able to interpolate the date of the layer showing the magnetic reversal, called the Matuyama-Brunhes transition, at approximately 786,000 years ago. This date is far more precise than that from previous studies, which placed the reversal between 770,000 and 795,000 years ago.
"What's incredible is that you go from reverse polarity to a field that is normal with essentially nothing in between, which means it had to have happened very quickly, probably in less than 100 years," said Renne. "We don't know whether the next reversal will occur as suddenly as this one did, but we also don't know that it won't."
Whether or not the new finding spells trouble for modern civilization, it likely will help researchers understand how and why Earth's magnetic field episodically reverses polarity, Renne said.
The magnetic record the Italian-led team obtained shows that the sudden 180-degree flip of the field was preceded by a period of instability that spanned more than 6,000 years. The instability included two intervals of low magnetic field strength that lasted about 2,000 years each. Rapid changes in field orientations may have occurred within the first interval of low strength. The full magnetic polarity reversal -- that is, the final and very rapid flip to what the field is today -- happened toward the end of the most recent interval of low field strength.
Renne is continuing his collaboration with the Italian-French team to correlate the lake record with past climate change.
Renne and Sprain's work at the Berkeley Geochronology Center was supported by the Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation.
Gravitational waves detected for 1st time, 'opens a brand new window on the universe' Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity proven right 100 years later
Comments
Researcher Controls Colleague's Motions in First Human Brain-To-Brain Interface. :shock:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 122713.htm
So if i put that on my Wife, i could control her? :shock: :twisted:
I was thinking the same thing! not your wife, but mine... wait, if I was thinking the same thing, maybe you were controlling my brain? :wtf: :crazy:
Either or, as long as i get to watch.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efAUCG9oTb8
http://science.howstuffworks.com/zoolog ... ion643.htm
Too cool. I wish I could do this at work...wait, maybe I do already
http://communications.uwo.ca/media/rele ... ccine.html
I think it pulls it off the body & causes it to evaporate... Which is why it's better than a cotton shirt (which just absorbs the sweat). That's my guess at any rate!
"Let's check Idaho."
That's so awesome.
And thanks KW. It's a weird mystery for me, but I'll just accept that it works.
http://www.salon.com/2013/09/10/study_y ... testicles/
"Let's check Idaho."
The hell kind of a study is that?
That's fantastic!
"Let's check Idaho."
Well, then. I'm glad that mystery is solved!
"Let's check Idaho."
Story: wired.com/2014/03/gravitational-waves-b-mode-inflation/
So totally epic.
"Let's check Idaho."
"Let's check Idaho."
"Let's check Idaho."
Avoid Arthritis -- Drink Beer!
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/art.38634/abstract?dmmsmid=84508&dmmspid=22624861&dmmsuid=2233918
Now that's a slogan we can all get behind ...
"Let's check Idaho."
"Let's check Idaho."
"Let's check Idaho."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/10/141014170841.htm
Imagine the world waking up one morning to discover that all compasses pointed south instead of north.
It's not as bizarre as it sounds. Earth's magnetic field has flipped -- though not overnight -- many times throughout the planet's history. Its dipole magnetic field, like that of a bar magnet, remains about the same intensity for thousands to millions of years, but for incompletely known reasons it occasionally weakens and, presumably over a few thousand years, reverses direction.
Now, a new study by a team of scientists from Italy, France, Columbia University and the University of California, Berkeley, demonstrates that the last magnetic reversal 786,000 years ago actually happened very quickly, in less than 100 years -- roughly a human lifetime.
"It's amazing how rapidly we see that reversal," said UC Berkeley graduate student Courtney Sprain. "The paleomagnetic data are very well done. This is one of the best records we have so far of what happens during a reversal and how quickly these reversals can happen."
Sprain and Paul Renne, director of the Berkeley Geochronology Center and a UC Berkeley professor-in- residence of earth and planetary science, are coauthors of the study, which will be published in the November issue of Geophysical Journal International and is now available online.
The discovery comes as new evidence indicates that the intensity of Earth's magnetic field is decreasing 10 times faster than normal, leading some geophysicists to predict a reversal within a few thousand years.
Though a magnetic reversal is a major planet-wide event driven by convection in Earth's iron core, there are no documented catastrophes associated with past reversals, despite much searching in the geologic and biologic record. Today, however, such a reversal could potentially wreak havoc with our electrical grid, generating currents that might take it down.
And since Earth's magnetic field protects life from energetic particles from the sun and cosmic rays, both of which can cause genetic mutations, a weakening or temporary loss of the field before a permanent reversal could increase cancer rates. The danger to life would be even greater if flips were preceded by long periods of unstable magnetic behavior.
"We should be thinking more about what the biologic effects would be," Renne said.
The new finding is based on measurements of the magnetic field alignment in layers of ancient lake sediments now exposed in the Sulmona basin of the Apennine Mountains east of Rome, Italy. The lake sediments are interbedded with ash layers erupted from the Roman volcanic province, a large area of volcanoes upwind of the former lake that includes periodically erupting volcanoes near Sabatini, Vesuvius and the Alban Hills.
Italian researchers led by Leonardo Sagnotti of Rome's National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology measured the magnetic field directions frozen into the sediments as they accumulated at the bottom of the ancient lake.
Sprain and Renne used argon-argon dating, a method widely used to determine the ages of rocks, whether they're thousands or billions of years old, to determine the age of ash layers above and below the sediment layer recording the last reversal. These dates were confirmed by their colleague and former UC Berkeley postdoctoral fellow Sebastien Nomade of the Laboratory of Environmental and Climate Sciences in Gif-Sur-Yvette, France.
Because the lake sediments were deposited at a high and steady rate over a 10,000-year period, the team was able to interpolate the date of the layer showing the magnetic reversal, called the Matuyama-Brunhes transition, at approximately 786,000 years ago. This date is far more precise than that from previous studies, which placed the reversal between 770,000 and 795,000 years ago.
"What's incredible is that you go from reverse polarity to a field that is normal with essentially nothing in between, which means it had to have happened very quickly, probably in less than 100 years," said Renne. "We don't know whether the next reversal will occur as suddenly as this one did, but we also don't know that it won't."
Whether or not the new finding spells trouble for modern civilization, it likely will help researchers understand how and why Earth's magnetic field episodically reverses polarity, Renne said.
The magnetic record the Italian-led team obtained shows that the sudden 180-degree flip of the field was preceded by a period of instability that spanned more than 6,000 years. The instability included two intervals of low magnetic field strength that lasted about 2,000 years each. Rapid changes in field orientations may have occurred within the first interval of low strength. The full magnetic polarity reversal -- that is, the final and very rapid flip to what the field is today -- happened toward the end of the most recent interval of low field strength.
Renne is continuing his collaboration with the Italian-French team to correlate the lake record with past climate change.
Renne and Sprain's work at the Berkeley Geochronology Center was supported by the Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation.
Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity proven right 100 years later
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/ligo-gravitational-wave-1.3443697?cid=