Potential Theory Actually

My attention was recently drawn to this video created by Terje Sorgjerd of the Aurora Borealis or the Northern Lights (not to be confused with the Aurora Australis or Southern Lights, of course.)

My own back ground in geophysics has been to specialize in the potential fields of the Earth. These are the heat (steady-state), electrical, magnetic and gravity fields generated by the Earth and which follow a simple equation which we call Laplace's Equation:

 ∇²φ=0

which simply says that a potential field is one of which the Laplacian in free space is equal to zero. This simply means these fields are always spread out smoothly and continuously, looking like the hillsides in the background of a Teletubbies episode. 

There. Now you know as much about geophysics as I do. 

And in this video, you can SEE as much geophysics as I do. The aurorae are the effect of ionized particles, blown off by the Sun, delicately impinging on the magnetic field surrounding the Earth. Being electrically charged and moving, they are compelled to line up along the magnetic field lines. Once hooked on these field lines. they are compelled to spin around them. As they move closer in to a magnetic pole of the field, where the magnetic field lines converge, they spin faster and faster, gaining energy, energy which they release as light.

For me, it is exciting to actually SEE these field lines normally invisible to us and to witness them following what the Laplacian describes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know I've built a life around believing in the validity of such equations as these anyway but actual seeing that the equations actually WORK is a treat.

チキン・リトル CHICKIN RITORU

Someone directed my attention to this article about the nuclear reactor accident in Sendai, Japan. (ref)  I have since seen the article reproduced in several forms and I regret to see the harm that this alarmist nonsense is causing. The dramatic graphics and the breathless updating themselves every hour or so only fakes the appearance of events too fast to handle. The extensive use of the verbs “would” and “might” and the capital "IF" in the title all serve to indicate the deep level of speculation in the article. 

One of the advantages of coming here from the 20^th century is that I seem to remember a lot of crap that many people in this century don’t know or have forgotten. The story of Chicken Little seems to have gone by the wayside. For those of you who want to brush up on the reference, Wikipedia continues to be the collective memory which I use. Wiki’s entry pretty much sums up my attitude toward the present reporting on the situation in Japan:


"The names of the main characters in the fable - Chicken Little/Chicken Licken and Henny Penny - and the fable's central phrase - The sky is falling! - have been applied to people accused of being unreasonably afraid, or those trying to incite an unreasonable fear in those around them. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary records the first application of the name Chicken Little to 'one who warns of or predicts calamity, especially without justification’ as dating from 1895,^[2] although idiomatic use of the name significantly predates that attestation.^[3] Because of this association, the tale has become politicized.


Fear mongering - whether justified or not - can sometimes elicit a societal response called Chicken Little syndrome, described as 'inferring catastrophic conclusions possibly resulting in paralysis.' ^[4] It has also been defined as 'a sense of despair or passivity which blocks the audience from actions.' ^[5] The term began appearing in the 1950s^[6]and the phenomenon has been noted in many different societal contexts." (ref)

Googling it, I did find one person who recognized the reference…immediately dismissing it and continuing to squawk about the immanent fall of the sky (ref). Note that this is the same article that links to “Nuclear Apocalypse in Japan”(ref). Oy.

Before I marshal my points, let me ask you to review the articles you’ve been seeing and think how you would feel about the reporting style if this were an official release from the government or the mainstream media: the breathless style, the references to people lying to us, and the need for us to panic. We’d immediately accuse the government of propaganda and manipulation. Yet when some blogger we’ve never met uses the same tactics, we think that they may be right? Comment back, “Get over yourself."

1) First of all, it is not a nuclear bomb. Explosions there are largely steam explosions of the plant itself. The mechanisms of a meltdown are well understood and have nothing to do with a nuclear explosion (ref) 

2) This animation showing streaming gobs of radiation crossing the Pacific to reach us is getting a lot of play. But it is only a simulation of the path that something MIGHT take if it came our way (ref) . In fact, the scale on it, in "arbitrary units” still only shows levels at tenths and hundredths of one percent. Their own arbitrary scale still can’t even show anything significant. The heavier elements and ash from fires and explosions at the plant will stay close to the ground, the lighter elements will disperse in the winds and even more so by the jet stream.

3) The amount of radiation that MIGHT reach this far is going to be too small and too diffuse to be of much significance especially compared to our daily dose. According to Otis Brawley of the American Cancer Society, “ ‘As for radiation drifting through the air across the ocean, it will be too diluted to cause harm,’ Brawley said. ‘For those in the U.S., a typical day of sunbathing would probably result in more radiation exposure than the Japanese accident, he said.’” (ref).  Bloggers would serve us better going bananas and nuts about actual bananas and nuts than worrying about what might come from Japan. (ref)

Selling fear is an industry and its purveyors gain viewers, readers and Internet hits so their self-interest is blatant and uncontrolled. And don’t get me going on the Internet hoaxes coming online phonily claiming to cure the radiation sickness you are not about to get. 

0.0000001%

Years ago, there was a billboard you could see while driving along the Mass Pike outside Boston. It read "We don't know one-millionth of one percent about anything. - Albert Einstein"

That's not true.

It was originally said by Thomas Edison (ref ).

The part about how little we know IS true and this can be proven. I recently viewed this video showing the large scale structure of just a small chunk our little universe:

Entire galaxies are mere points of light in this depiction and we see them forming into even larger universe-spanning alignments.Yet, despite the vast amount of matter and structure we see in this video, it still represents only what we can see and measure in the universe. We know there is also what we call dark matter and dark energy (Just because we name them does not mean we know what they are. We don’t.) which comprise 95% of the universe (ref). All we are seeing in that video is our universe like foam on the waves of an ocean we can’t see. Even if we knew everything about the visible universe, we’re at 5% tops.

Lastly, a current model of the universe posits that everything we know as existence is likely only a multidimensional “skin” or membrane/m-brane formed between two “bubbles” (of something) intersecting outside in the wider multiverse, well beyond anything we know. (http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2010/09/how-could-universe-originate-from.html ). That easily brings us in under 0.0000001%.

In my first class in physics in my freshman year at college, Professor Milton Stecher taught that we would not begin to learn physics until we learned how much we did not know. I immediately put down my pen and started not knowing. I almost failed that course. But, thirty years later, I think I am finally beginning to learn. 

5.6k Saturn Cassini Photographic Animation on Vimeo

There is little that I can add to this except to say that when you fly by the "Death Star" moon. Mimas, shout out, "That's no MOON!"

5.6k Saturn Cassini Photographic Animation on Vimeo

Don't underestimate the danger

When a friend on Facebook shared the link to this article (California unlikely to see a quake like Japan's), my skeptical alert was triggered. The ability of earthquakes to occur outside our models has been demonstrated multiple times. Large earthquakes have occurred in southeastern Missouri and Charleston, SC the origins of which have been difficult to explain with our models. (ref) 

But things have moved forward in the present day as stated by the United States Geological Survey (USGS):

"Whereas specific information about the relatively immediate future is desired, whether it can be provided with much reliability is debatable. However, numerous models exist whose purpose is to make estimates of earthquake probabilities," (ref)

That's pretty much what I found in the article. The thrust fault model we use for Japan, where the Pacific Ocean floor slowly thrusts down under Asia, does predict to deeper and higher energy events than in California. Here, the strike slip fault model, where Los Angeles slips slowly to the northwest on its way to becoming an island, does not support the amount of energy needed for a > M 8.0 earthquake.

But my skepticism was redeemed, that danger still lurked, as this distinction is largely of scientific interest. Other factors in California, such as the way certain soils will act like a liquid when shaken, will unfortunately lead to catastrophic consequences even with lower energy events.