The VC Bar

Welcome to the Volcano Café bar, a place for all things on or off topic and inane ramblings. There has been a need of late to find a place better suited to various theories, long comments and enthusiasm. This page will be less moderated than the main article pages and cleared out every month (this may change depending on use).

Have fun and don’t forget to tip the barman 😉

4,748 thoughts on “The VC Bar

  1. Busy morning on Kilauea
    2019-07-21 12:31:31 1.7 0
    2019-07-21 12:27:32 2 0.1
    2019-07-21 12:26:28 1.7 -0.2
    2019-07-21 02:46:27 2.1 -0.3
    2019-07-21 02:17:06 1.9 -0.4
    2019-07-21 01:48:50 1.9 -1.1
    2019-07-21 01:18:43 3.1 -1.1
    2019-07-21 01:17:48 2.6 -0.4
    2019-07-21 01:15:53 1.8 -0.1
    2019-07-21 01:11:59 2.2 -.02

    • The tiltmeter at Uwekahuna has jumped up and stayed there, it did the same during the collapse events past summer (though MUCH more impressively of course). Also, given that the quakes are very shallow (around sea level) then I suppose it is still the caldera faults releasing some remaining strain from the magma removed in the eruption or what one could call a collapse aftershock.

    • I’ll vote “don’t understand.”

      If they did know, then they are flat out idiots for hanging out there

      • That was my feeling too. Some people do seem to think that phones have magic power: hold one up to ward off danger. An even worse layer of stupidity is taking a selfie, because you don’t even see what is coming.

      • A related link off of those was a vid of a guy shooting a flash flood in a dry wash out in the US southwest. Evidently he had experience in doing so but had brought his wife along on that excursion. As he fled the was she lagged behind despite his coaching… both of them with cameras in hand. They both made it. But it seems that had he not kept prompting her she wouldn’t have. It looked as if she wound up about 20 feet in front of the flow front as she fled. One misstep and she would have been part of that flow.

    • 2019-07-25 12:38:50 3.1 -0.9
      2019-07-25 02:10:38 2.2 -3.1
      2019-07-25 01:31:33 2.1 -2.6
      2019-07-25 00:39:39 2 -3.3
      Mauna Loa today

      Scotch please

      Mac

  2. i’ve been so busy with summer and family visits… making beds and getting go bags ready in case more forest goes up in flames closer…. let me dust off my bar stool. Heard a story about a basejumper who loved the sport and commented that the first observation after launch was the inability to see. The eyes are open but so much is happening that the brain shuts down and no information is registered. Don’t know if that happens to all space jumpers but it happens to him… sooooo i was wondering if that is what happens to me during an earthquake because i’ve complained about not being able to observe some of the movement around me. Just interesting….. and if i never get another chance it’s fine with me. And i’ll take a double martuney. Ever hear the joke about the double martuney? Best!motsfo

      • One dark and stormy night a man came across a rain-drenched nun standing next to an overturned car. He pulled over and insisted on the nun getting into his car… Good grief, sister… i almost hit You, what happened… “a deer… a deer jumped into the road and and and i don’t know what happened to the deer.” Don’t worry, i’ll take call for help but let’s get You somewhere warm… It being late at night, the only open establishment was a bar but it was at least warm…. Let’s get You something to warm you up… what would You like…..” i’d like a double martuney”, she said quietly…. not wanting to embarass her, he ordered a double martuney…. “A double martuney? A double MARTUNEY???!!!! came the cry from down the bar…… “Is that Sister Elizabeth in here AGAIN!???” 🙂 for those youngsters who haven’t heard it yet….

        • After leading an arduous life a faithful Christian passed away and appeared before St Peter, Peter said the man, why was my life so hard? I tell you what said St Peter, go back and this time choose another cross to carry through life, your choice can be selected in this room of crosses to the right. The man enters the door and selects a cross, being aware of how he struggled in his previous life he picked the smallest cross he could find. No said Peter you can’t take that one! What! said the man, this is totally unfair, I knew everyone in heaven was cruel and spiteful like a boy burning ants with a magnifying glass. Why can’t I take this tiny cross? Because, Peter said, that’s the one you had before.

  3. While checking the HVO website I noticed that they have added a running 24 hour (1 photo per hour) history of each (did not check them all) camera. Nice to be able to see what has been going on.

  4. 2019-07-26 06:43:52 3.6 -0.4

    Another event at Kilauea with the same signature as one of the collapse events in the caldera.

    • This a HVO map of the caldera from a few months ago. the current quake was under the leftmost edge of the caldera, where the map suggests there have been earlier slides.

  5. Peter Vervoorn wrote

    AND – if all that exists, exists within a value field of absolutely nothing, can we be thought to truly exist at all, except as a digital beings in a digital universe, the result of absolutely nothing and something other than absolutely nothing (the existence of nothing) in superposition, where everything possible exists simultaneously in digital form?

    The bar is open..!

      • I’d dispute that information can’t travel faster than light. Conveying information probably can’t go faster happen faster than light, if light is used to convey it; but the information itself – the way things are – is instantaneous.

        • Disagree. Information cannot travel faster from its origin than the speed of light. If it seems to do so, you have assumed the wrong origin.

          • Encase one of a pair of entangled particles in layers of lead and depleted uranium, surrounded by a magnetic shield; place them a good distance apart; and you’ll prevent the phenomenon because there is no way for the shielded particle to receive information about the state of the other one?

    • This is where some interpretations of quantum physics disagree most with our experience. We do exist, we do make choices (and don’t duplicate ourselves every millisecond) and for the most part those choices are quite consistent, and my life is still a bit more than an echo in cyberspace (although some people I know would not notice of their lives outside of the internet would cease). And if we are living inside a simulation, who is running it and is that ‘person’ a simulation too? I remember an issue of New Scientist where two articles ran back-to-back, one on the impossibility of ‘God’, and the other on the likelihood that we are a simulation. Of course those two options are contradictory.

      I wrote in one of my posts (always happy to advertise my own work – that is my choice)

      “Science is not everything. There are many aspects of our lives which it does not cover. It doesn’t know about right and wrong, it doesn’t do friendship and humanity, and it only knows love as a chemical. There is more to us than science.”

      • No matter how far the human intellect reaches there is always the tempter whispering..”See there is no god and you do not have to obey the rules.” i know there is a God( and yet i did not obey the rules). No matter how much You know, there is always more. It’s my experience that people always want to limit God. Don’t waste Your time.He is always beyond Your reach and yet He is closer than Your next breath. i understand science as a wonderful reveling of how God manages the creation. Even if it appears that it’s all a computer set………. well at one time we thought it was turtles…. we just don’t know everything yet. and we never will know everything. Marvel at the ride… and pass the popcorn.
        Best!motsfo

      • I would not say that God is impossible. The Abrahamic description of God certainly is. You just can’t create a Universe many light years in dimension in just 6 days and take the next day off for cheese, crackers and a nice Chardonnay. It leaves an unexplained gap of quite a few days between creation and actualization.

        However, the whole of that which has and will ever exist, does exist; as did the compressed energy form that preceded its expansion; which necessarily contained all the information required to evolve into a universe, including us. Life hasn’t stopped evolving yet. Who knows what is possible.

        It might not be a mistake to attribute a value of “God” to that energy form, if creating a Universe is a criterion for Godhead. I suspect that form was not too smart and did not have much of a plan however, as it’s evolution has taken a lot of trial and error.

        • Christian theologians I know (a monk, a couple of bishops) think time is different and or does not exist on the spiritual plane. “A day for a year” is often a measure.

          • Well, it is commonly refered to as “Space-Time” so if new space is coming into existence shouldn’t new time form along with it?

            Years ago, while wandering around Combat (CIC) monitoring the activity of my watch-standers, I ran across a book one had been reading. In it, the author use a couple of key instances in the physically known life of the universe, specifically the energy level of the “freezing out” of the quantum background radiation and the current measure to formulate an exponential decay curve. Oddly enough, the major epochs of the universe seemed to line up quite well using that formula with the seven days of creation.

            I can’t recall the title or author, but I think it was something along the lines of “The Science of God.


            More recently, I have been wondering about the Pineal gland. In more ancient lifeforms, it has a function that seems to be related to an early sense of light. New agers tend to think that it is the basis for the “3rd eye”. What I wonder, is if it has some ability to sense alternate quantum states and could be the basis for people to see what is not there. Possibly gathering data from dimensions that we can not ordinarily sense. Yes, this idea is “moon-bat” as hell, but it’s just a thought.

            “René Descartes believed the human pineal gland to be the “principal seat of the soul”. “

            And it is associated with chemicals that produce profound spiritual experiences.

        • Interesting discussion.

          I think it’s a vexed question unless approached in a spirit of “serious play”, and of creativity.

          Before you can meaningfully discuss the existence or possibility of God, surely you have to be able to define “God” in some fashion ?

          “God” apparently is unknowable, according to some, so that would scupper that.

          Most discussions I’ve seen or been a part of seem to anthropomorphise “God”. I don’t understand why they would…. When all things are possible, why accept such a flawed vessel?

          They also seem to be highly culture-bound. In my context, that tends to mean they assume something vaguely (or specifically) Abrahamic. But that is clearly at odds with several other branches of religious cosmology and philosophy. Buddhism for example, where divinity is a much more diffuse thing, possibly even a shared, collective kind of thing in which all things have a stake… which also leads off into areas of Animism.

          And so on.

          In brief, Define your terms… Now there’s a challenge

          • My definition of “God”, or the absence thereof; as you choose to attribute value; is the whole of that which is, was, or ever can be.

  6. In Iceland, there is a small and seemingly insignificant swarm a bit west of Hekla at longitude -20. In spite of being small, I still think it’s interesting because this place is a good candidate for the next large quake in the SISZ. I read a good paper (that I can’t find now) about stress in the area and precursors for the 2000 and 2008 quakes. The plots in that paper indicated that longitude -20 could become interesting.

  7. Just found the Bar. Life’s bee totally upside down with the wife hospitalized with a very nasty Urinary /tract infection . Almost got her. She’s home now very weak, fortunately we’ve had a coolish summer has vet to top 35C and never for over 3-4 days in a row..This is the high, dry, country of NE Oregon…
    No major fires yet.

    • Had one of those last year after surgery. Staphoccocus. Came pretty close to slugging a Corpsman. (Felt like an appropriate move, but I stopped and pondered it for a moment)

      • she’s still weak but better today. She too almost punched a nurse for stepping on her toe and jamming a BP cup up her arm. I told her to go and called her supervisor who is a friend of ours..
        Apparently this is not new with this nurse..

    • Sorry to hear this…. ut infections can be very bad… Hope she’s better soon… motsfo

  8. And submarine lava lake is entierly possible too specialy if the convection is fast.
    The crust on submarine lava lakes and flows are an amazing insulator
    Rock conducts heat poorly thats why submarine flows can form tubes and flow so far underwater insulated.
    Lava Lakes deep underwater are 100% possible but convection must be vigorous heat loss is faster than on land

  9. Another significant quake at Mauna Loa. M3.5, in an identical location to the M3.1 two days ago. It is the southwest rift, some 4 km from the caldera. This is not out of range for what Mauna Loa does, but still it makes one wonder whether the run-up has started.

      • Still continuing at the moment especially inside the caldera. Some of it may be related to the Japanese quake.

        This is the ‘live’ figure so in a couple of hours it may show nothing much..

  10. It’s after 3am and i’m tired…we just worked 35 salmon. Son went dipnetting and was successful. Took 4 adults 4 hours to clean, cut up, ackage and freeze. Wish i could have a double martuny but i’ll settle for a good dose of painkiller. Good Night All and Best!motsfo

  11. Etna is erupting again
    Lava flows moving towards to Rifugio Sapienza
    Still high up

  12. Here’s one for you.

    This is critical to me. It may cost me BEER later today if I’m wrong 😀

    I had an exceptionally busy and irritating day in my shop yesterday, and I started to feel early warnings of my narcolepsy kicking in.
    My defence against it in situations like this is to do something challenging and interesting that has some level of novelty (as in “new to me”) about it.
    So I sparked up the Book of Face to see if there were any stimuli on offer there , found something and decided to dive in , give a “first thought” answer, then try to defend it until it broke (or not).
    I’ll give you the pitch as it came to me, then the essence of my answer.

    So, a friend starts with

    “Can any of my clever friends substantiate this ?” with the attached link, which I hope will work here.
    ?_nc_cat=1&_nc_oc=AQkMCNa6jCNToPuQPSA-k3agqv8bT7f4mI5pcZuc0fxYA7hKjB8dfhhR6aHCcJxv3NAnFYunmgG95qQdBjoWRrzS&_nc_ht=scontent-lhr3-1.xx&oh=e0a89029d9d7b3b3001e065aa035f959&oe=5DAECBD7

    Now I know myself that this is a fairly useful technique, but my own experience of it is that it just aint that cut and dried, and shouldn’t be used if there is a more reliable method available.

    My initial reply.
    “Hmmm… Assuming you don’t have huge hands, it can only be at best (no pun) a rule of thumb.
    If you’re moving through a landscape,(as the image implies) your horizon is changing.
    The sun rises and falls more quickly or slowly depending on where you are in the World, and the time of year.
    Try this in Norway, for example…..?”

    To which a friend responded.
    “WHOOOOAAAA! “The sun rises more quickly or slowly…etc”?!?
    The sun doesn’t rise – the earth rotates. That’s a consistent speed surely?”

    Me again.
    “Think.
    Norway?
    Mexico?
    Geometry ?
    Time of year ?
    Again, geometry?
    Of course sun rise and sunset are optical illusions, at least insofar as it is the Earth doing most of the moving, and the person taking the measurement is on a fixed point on the surface of the Earth.

    You already have the knowledge yourself.
    The relative speed of Earth and Sun in both orbit and turning on axis may (or, thinking about it, may not) be constant, but no point on the surface of the planet is constant in it’s angle to the Sun , and the axis of the planet itself is tilted…..
    Think it through.
    Here’s another clue.
    “Land of the midnight Sun”.

    I’ll put it another way, to demonstrate.
    Even within the UK, there is a very noticeable variation. Go up to Skye in (to keep it within my experience) late August. Come half eight in the evening, it’s definitely beginning to look like the end of the day, but the Sun won’t actually fully set until just before 11.
    I have a photo I took about 25 years ago of twilight on Skye, near Portree. The Sun HAD set, but it was still just in twilight, and it was 11.15 pm.
    In parts of Africa, the Sun drops like a stone.
    Geometry !”

    My friend.
    “sorry – this yet another piece of science and mathematics/geometry which seems, to me, to defy logic. We definitely need that pint !”

    Me.
    “We do.
    It’s to do with light striking at more perpendicular angles or at more oblique angles at different latitudes and different points in the year, and also with the Earth’s axis being tilted at 23.5 degrees.
    “Length of day” being variable really should settle it in terms of logic. Maybe I should have started with that. The sun moves more slowly across the sky at some times of year than it does at others.
    Maybe the more pints you drink, the clearer it will become.”

    Now it’s going to be another bad day with narcolepsy. I can feel it muzzing brain and body, so I’m accepting, as I have to, that intellectually I may be far from my best today.

    Is my friend right?
    Or will he be buying the beers tonight?

    I suspect that I’m right, but that I over-complicated my answers.

    • I can’t see the link so not sure what that said. The Sun moves at almost the same speed, in degrees per hour on the sky, year round, although it varies by some seconds because our orbit is elliptical. The length of the solar day (measured between when the sun reaches its maximum height above the horizon) varies by 50 seconds over the year. But the height the sun reaches above the horizon varies a lot, and so does the apparent place on the horizon where it sets/rises. During the equinoxes that is due east and west, but mid-summer in the UK it rises NE and sets NW, leaving only a small part of its arc below the horizon. So in summer, the sun is never very far below the horizon, which is why twilight lasts forever. Summer nights in the UK do not get very dark. It is even worse at the poles: it may be night for 6 months, but the sun is never more than 23 degrees below the horizon.

      How quickly night falls depends on the angle that the sun’s trajectory on the sky makes with the horizon. In the UK, that is quite shallow and so the sun sets and rises slowly. In the tropics it is close to 90 degrees and the sun sets like a stone.

      • My years as an Aerial Firefighter-we were all over the Western half of the US.Alaska too. One week-dropping retardant of a fire Just slightly north of the arctic circle. The next we were in Ft.Huachuca -just north of the Mexican border.
        (I really got serious jet lag over that little adventure.)
        Anyway We were dropping product at 1130 pm (for a couple of days)
        the we went home (It Rained and the next week were down in the American south west. Cutoff for operations was 7:30 it was- dark- by 8:30…
        You are not supposed to use landing lights to make a drop.
        Aircraft broke for a couple of days-tank issues .Then we had our mandatory day off..
        Got caught up, and never enjoyed doing laundry so much…

        • Ft.Huachuca saved my but some time ago. I had an issue with a stack of Sparc5s I needed help with. 15 minutes on the phone and it was resolved.

      • Probably not neccessary to comment here but remember that the sun rides just below the horizon in summer after the ‘sunset’ for a while prolonging the twilight. and i love it. i never see the sun or the moon for that matter, directly overhead…. it just rides around the horizon either higher or lower but never overhead. Best!motsfo

      • Ok, the link showed a graphic of a hiker looking to the sun sinking to the horizon, trying to work out how much daylight time was left.
        It said “Hold your hand out so that your little finger runs level with the horizon.
        Use two hands if needs be, one above the other, so that the sun appears to be resting on top of your top-most finger.
        Each finger represents 15 minutes of daylight”

        • That should just about work for the UK. At the equator it could be less than 10 minutes per finger.

        • lets take it to the extreme (generally works for getting you head around stuff) – imagine the planet lying on its side – and rotating with the sun staying relatively still lined up with the equator – if the earth rotates once in a day then someone sitting on the equator sees the sunset travelling past at one earth circumference per day – while someone sitting approx 1 meter from the pole sees the sunset go past at 1 meter per day (ignoring the bending of the light and all the complicated stuff) – so ground speed for sunset is very different

          but in this example I think the “sky speed” of the sun in radians at arms length would be pretty consistent wherever you stood in this example

          you’re measuring the sky as a cylinder the length of your arm centered around the axis through your shoulders (if you imagine that’s parallel to the planet rotation)

          if I put my hands out in front of me – and start counting handwidths upward – just using the 4 fingers I get from horizontal to vertical in 12 or maybe 13 – so that would take me 24 to go from horizon to horizon over the top which would eqate to 12 hrs – so I think each had width would be half an hour – but importantly for your argument wouldn’t matter where you were on the planet – though at the pole you would have to lie down with your shoulder on the floor to be at the right angle

          dunno if that helps 🙂

      • Sounds like a discussion of the analemma would be appropriate here, but not sure I’m the one to do it. 🙂

        • Give it a shot, it’s related.

          The fun bit is that the Antikythera mechanism had a method of accounting for the Lunar speed through out it’s orbit. Over 2100 years ago. This was accomplished with an off center wheel driving a second wheel with a peg in slot design.

          Some people scoff at the idea of it being a “computer,” but it was. The technology is not that different that the early gunfire computers used for Naval guns. They were also mechanically driven computers.

          Mk-6 Naval Gunfire Computer USS Alabama.

          • It was indeed an analog computer although not as accurate as sometimes claimed. It was probably used as a teaching aid, perhaps at the Stoic school in Rhodes where Posidonius worked.

          • Yeah, gear lash can really add a lot of slop to calculations. A lot of effort in designing better computational devices is for quicker speed and greater resolution even to this day.

            My first computer was based off an 8 bit 6510 CPU, now I use a 64 bit quad core Phenom by AMD. And I still have an Alpha PC sitting in the corner of my shop for sentimental value.

  13. Question whats the chance of Iceland developing an Erta Ale like constant slow effusion of lake- tube feed pahoehoe?
    Erta Ale and Icelands North Rift Zone are acually quite similar in geology
    The only diffrence is that Iceland is an fully oceanic spreading zone. But otherwise its same Hotspot- Spreading boundary combination setting.
    Theistareykjarbunga episode in northen Iceland may have been very similar to Erta Ale once it calmed down into steady state. Theistareykjarbungas current shield shows eruption that formed it likley lasted many many decades as slow and tube feed

  14. @FarmerOz in response to your comment on my question re Conservation of Energy.

    1) Yes, I read a Brief History of Time. I’ve read more persuasive stuff on a can of baked beans.
    2) Redshift is the appearance of a property of light from a human perspective, not a property of mass/energy; and it says little about conservation of energy other than raise questions about whether gravity can ultimately reverse the expansion of the universe when motion and gravity is all that is left of it.
    3) I have an IQ of 152. I might be a hard to persuade on a few points, but I think I can follow the arguments without the PhD; and I don’t appreciate being patronised.

    I don’t trust Hawking. I don’t trust Einstein completely; and Einstein would be the first to agree that is entirely warranted. I don’t trust anyone when it comes to understanding the way things are, because nobody does a wholly credible job of it; and I’ll take a sceptical view of almost anything because that is good science.

    Where did the energy that fuelled the explosion/expansion of the universe come from if not from a pre-existing compressed form of the same? Quantum theory does not provide an adequate answer. Quantum fluctuations are said to wink into and out of existence. I doubt they could accumulate more energy in an eternity than my bowels five minutes after consuming that persuasive can of baked beans.

    • Redshift is not human perception. It is related to the expansion of space. The photon really does get longer and loses energy. That indeed doesn’t violate conservation of energy, because it can be regained by recompressing space.

      If the net energy of the universe is indeed zero (as seems likely), then there is no problem getting a universe out of a quantum fluctuation. You could do it with just two virtual particles.

      • Describe the process whereby two quantum fluctuations or virtual particles are transformed into a universe containing a very large quantity of mass, energy and motion and then reverts back to net zero energy. I love your story telling ability. I’m sure you can write a better Bible than its authors; but I’ll have as much faith in your facts as I do in theirs.

        I just love the models astrophysicists come up with. Everything always makes perfect sense and stacks up mathematically if you just insert an unknown variable, like x, dark energy, quintessence, or God. Let’s see how many quantum fluctuations you can fit on the head of a pin.

        Until you convince me otherwise, a net zero void containing absolutely nothing will remain impossible and cannot be transformed into a physical universe, or back again. Call me a Luddite; but my universe will remain either a wholly digital phenomenon; indistinguishable from reality for us and requiring no-one too run a simulation; or the product of a pre-existing compressed form; a very large black hole containing all the mass and energy of the existing universe; formed because previous iterations of a universe collapse due to gravity.

        The expansion of my universe will be slowing down due to gravity, as initially expected; not accelerating; because the further you measure the red shift of your standard candles in space, the further you look back in time. The corollary to Hubble’s Law that the speed with which a galaxy moves away from us is proportional to its distance; is that the closer to our time and space you get, the slower they move away from us; ergo expansion is decelerating over the passage of time. The higher speed expansion in earlier times is explicable by the initial energy of the explosion. No dark energy required.

        • Gotta do my tax return, but I’ll be waiting. Please chip in if anyone else has their own myths to decorate my rhetorical or actual pinhead.

          • The universe will keep expanding as it gets larger more repulsive energy is formed and more it expands.

            The expansion will continue
            But the nuclear fuel and the dust that needed to form stars and runn them.. will eventualy runn out…

            And billions of years after humans are gone..
            the other galaxies expands away from view, leaving Milky way alone.
            A few newer stars may remain
            But most have long moved away

        • There are three misconceptions in your comment. You are probably aware of them. Let me first address the biggest one.

          1. The Hubble flow does not indicate deceleration. Imagine an explosion which hurls stones through the air. You are on one of these stones. Each stone gets a different speed. After a second or so, the fastest stones have traveled furthest, The slowest stones are still close to the explosion, You are somewhere in between, What do you see? you see al stones around you moving away from you and the stones furthest from you move fastest away from you. In fact you see a Hubble flow – even though all stones still have their original speed.

          (But there is deceleration because gravity pulls all galaxies back. So how would you see deceleration in the Universe? When you look at the furthest galaxies, you see them as they were a long time ago. At that time they were still moving faster. So you see distant galaxies moving too fast compared to the Hubble flow. That is indeed seen.)

          (And how do you see the dark energy? You see that somewhat closer galaxies are not decelerating as much as they should – not as much as the more distant ones predict. That is the hallmark of the ‘dark energy’: something is opposing the force of gravity. Note that the galaxies are not accelerating – they aren’t slowing down as much as they should. We haven’t got a clue yet what this dark energy is – that name is just a catch phrase. It kicked in when the Universe was about 5 billion years old.)

          • Pour me a port. I’ve got a bite.

            You should be writing books explaining physics for the mathematically impaired. You do a much better job of it than anyone I’ve come across.

            I’m happy to note that the expansion of the universe is not accelerating; but the galaxies closer to us do not appear to be slowing as fast due to gravity as the more distant as faster galaxies suggest they should (whatever that may be). This is a different proposition from accelerated expansion and I can accept it.

            You stole the illustration I was going to abuse to argue that the appearance of the above mentioned photon is relative to your viewing position, so I have to accept all of the above.

            A talented race of little menschen, on the fifth planet from the star that was about to explode in the A1 supernova that ejected that red-shifted photon, invented tiny, light-speed, spherical escape pods to avoid their fiery fate. An early product of stellar evolution, with a very similar sense of being “me” as you, set off in such a pod for where he predicted a galaxy with sentient life would exist some 10 to 12 billion light years in the future. After consuming nothing in all that time but a daily (3.2 earth days) serve of quantum flux, smeared over 2 waves of baryon acoustics, he finally arrived at a telescope on planet earth and penetrated the retina of a curious astrophysicist, replacing what passes for a scientist’s soul with his own sense of being “me”.

            He noted with glee that his escape pod had remained perfectly spherical for the entire journey. It had not stretched due to the expansion of the intervening space. He and his pod still had the same energy as when they left due to their wholesome fuel. He had not suffered middle aged spread from his diet and the effects of time, in spite of taking a detour around the rim of a gravity well created by a large galaxy in his path.

            Why is the photon different? Why would the photon appear to stretch and lose energy when it hit the physicist’s eyeball – because it’s always a wave frequency and can never be a spherical particle?

          • Yes, that is a good question: why do somethings in the Universe expand (photons, galaxies away from us) and others not (solar system, for instance)? In the case of the solar system, it is because locally, the gravitational force is much larger (the sun, mainly). You need to go very far away to reduce the gravitational from the sun and other stars so much that the Hubble flow can overcome it. Beyond the local group of galaxies, in fact. Your pod is held together by internal cohesion – gravity is a very weak force in comparison.

        • The next misconception is that you can’t get something out of nothing. In physics, you can. You will be aware of the uncertainty principle: you can measure position and speed at the same time to infinite precision. A similar relation applies to energy. The more time you take, the more accuratey you can measure how much energy there is. If you take a very short time, the energy becomes very uncertain. So at the big bang, the uncertainty was infinite, or at least very large.

          The universe uses this to its advantage. It creates so-called virtual particles, using the energy there may or may not be. That is fine, as long as it removes the particles very fast as well. Virtual particles do exist: we have detected them. But they don’t hang around, and they don’t create energy when they self-destruct. Of course you have to create a particle-antiparticle pair, otherwise you violate other laws of physics.

          Now imagine that the self-destruction fails. That happens for instance near a black hole, when one of the pair accidentally falls into the black hole. The universe now has to make the other particle real. This is called Hawkins radiation. It could also happen at the big bang. Imagine the pair being produced in a suddenly expanding universe. They fly apart, and have to become real. And bingo, there you have your universe.

          I am not saying that this is the way it started. The reality was probably far more complicated, involving a quantum gravity we don’t yet have. But it could have done it this way — it is all within the laws of physics.

          • Hmm. If you can get something out of nothing, your definition of nothing is dodgy – it is something other than nothing – a force of some sort with an uncertain quantity of energy. We know fairly well how much energy was involved in the Big Bang because we’ve had 13.8 billion years to add it up to 1 universe worth of energy, mass and motion.

            I’m not sure how a lot of uncertainty necessarily equates to a lot of energy; but I suppose that anything other than absolutely nothing is huge by comparison. From 70 years of personal experience I’ve discovered what I expect to be a quantum fart can turn out to be an explosive dose of diarrhoea.

            What I take away from your explanation is that an absolute void, or absolutely nothing, is not really nothing. It is simultaneously an infinite force (likely a negative force, a force of absolute collapse, or perhaps the elusive quantum gravity) with the energy equivalent of at least one universe. Such a force must be concentrated in a single point, somehow reaching a critical phase and exploding into positive energy, to become matter and the rest of the universe.

            How does one convert a force of contraction or collapse into a positive force of expansion? Flick a polarity switch of some sort? Add a spoonful of sugar? Can the energy of that negative force become mass if divided by the speed of light squared? Can such a mass reach a critical stage, change its charge and explode from its nuclear transition?

            Do we really need antimatter to explain existence, especially if its absence creates problems? If so, where is it, or the missing quantum gravity? In the now missing negative force of collapse? In my missing large black hole, smashed and flung like stones into the abyss to become the black holes in the centre of every large galaxy, forever entangled with their origin and destined to be reunited? Buggered if I can figure out what your explanation omits; but I’ll accept the bits that do add up.

        • The final misconception is that a ‘nothing’ has no energy. In physics, even an empty vacuum can have energy, and by expanding it, you create more vacuum and this has more energy. The trick is getting it out. This is done by cooling – just as freezing water can release energy you didn’t now it had, so vacuum can release energy by phase transitions. We know this happened shortly after the big bang when it caused a phase of exponential expansion. Don’t underestimate the vacuum.

          • I think we’ve established that absolutely nothing must be a force of some sort; a source of energy to fuel a universe; and I assume it must always exist in one form or another. However, the expanding space between the component parts of the universe is not a true vacuum, nor a ‘nothing’.

            Space may have little by way of gas outside galaxies; but it is full of galaxies, light, temperature differences, gravity binding stuff together, nuclear transitions blowing stars apart, stellar winds, the material products of stellar explosions; and, if current speculation is right, a lot of other mysterious, unseen stuff.

            I would not call that early phase after the Big Bang, when available space was filled with plasma too hot to evolve into hydrogen, a vacuum. No doubt there was energy involved in its cooling; but I doubt the Big Bang needed a boost from cooling plasma, or expanding spaces between resulting atoms, to cause exponential expansion. That said, I’m willing to accept an expanding vacuum can create a little more energy.
            ———————————————————————
            @Jasper. The universe may get to that point; but billions of years after humans have gone, I can guarantee there will be sentient beings about this galaxy and a few others, with a similar sense that you and I have of being “me”, or “I AM”, or I exist, because my senses tell me so.

            To all extents and purposes, they will be you and me, in different bodies, in different circumstances, with different histories. I’ve had more personality changes in 70 years than changes of underwear; and I reluctantly accept our immortality as such, hoping for the best but fearing the worst.

            Some of those analogues of you and me will dig up electronic records, sandwiched between layers of rock in cratons on dead planets such as ours and remark, “Fancy thinking repulsive energy with no obvious cause was involved in the expansion of the universe, when simple motion and trajectory was all that was required to explain it.” You may be right, rather than they, but I doubt it.

          • I think of it as an N dimensional issue – if you just take a flat square sheet of thin plastic and flex it back and fore between curved in and curved out you could take ‘flat’ as being “nothing” and the “curved in” as being ‘something’, and “curved out” as being ‘anti something’

            then imagine that sheet was made out of rubber and was slowly bouncing back and fore between the two states with no friction – that could go on for ever

            then if you filmed that – and started filming at the point a quarter of the way through – but only film for a second of two – then you (as an inhabitant of that world) might run that film backward and try to predict the shape of the sheet and think to yourself I bet that winds back to flat if you go back far enough (and flat equates to ‘nothing’) –
            but that (2D+time) “nothing” state still has a velocity/momentum in the 3rd Dimension

            so if I scale that up to 4 dimensions (3D+time) – then if a film of time and space could be watched and wound back to a ‘nothing state’ I can still get my head around it potentially having ‘velocity/momentum’ in some 5th/6th dimension

            now I know that’s non standard nonsense – but the maths sort of makes sense (if you can bounce through the big bang and big crunch and anti-bigbang and anti-bigcrunch states) – and it gets my head around stuff ‘spontaneously happening from nothing in 4D’

            oh look a pangalactic gargle blaster in the large virtual bar – I think I’ll go wrap my head around that nice gold brick 🙂

  15. Open question for VC
    The Axial Seamount Caldera.. basicaly holuhraun event draining on mammoth scale
    How large was the lava flow ascossiated with this enromous rift draining event?

    Axial Seamount caldera is more than 10 km long and around 4 km wide and seems to be filled up by submarine lava flows since formation.
    The event that formed it coud have generated many 10 s of km3 of lava very quickly basicaly submarine Thjorsahraun. Thats a huge effusive caldera….
    The lava flow acossiated with this event is long buried beneath newer smaller flows

    • Most of the large calderas of basaltic volcanoes are in Iceland (Katla, Bardarbunga, Grimsvotn, Krafla…), but there are also some prominent ones in Galapagos, remarkably Sierra Negra, 10×7 km.

      Masaya in Nicaragua has a 11×8 km basaltic caldera but that is apparently explosive in formation and expanded in several episodes.

      In Vanuatu, Ambrym’s is 12×11 km wide and covering 120 km² that I think is the largest caldera of an active basaltic volcano, covers 120 km², the next in size that I can think of is Katla, that covers 100 km². However for Ambrym it is not clear how it formed, some older work seemed to point to an explosive event but a more recent article finds no evidence of this, so it is still up in the air and may have been a huge rift effusive eruption.

      Just wondering where to expect the posibility of fast, high volume effusive eruptions…

      • Axial caldera is immense and clearly an effusive gentle drainage event
        The lava flow resulting from the draining coud have been ( 40 km3 ? ) but is now buried beneath smaller younger flows and also destroyed by seafloor spreading,
        The caldera is alot filled up by seafloor flows of sheet and lobate flows
        Coud have been very deep

        Most of the lava that drained never erupted since its mid ocean ridge but we are still talking about a submarine Laki

        • Mayotte apparently was a major event, maybe a third of Laki. Under the assumption that gravity provides the pressure that feeds the eruption, an undersea eruption fed by a sub-aerial volcano could quickly become a major, but invisible event.

          • Axial Seamount was a much larger lava flow ( when its huge caldera formed )
            How large was it?

          • From the size of the caldera one can make an estimate, Axial Caldera is 20 km² in area then assuming an average depht of 500 or 750 m (Which would sound reasonable to me for a caldera of this size), the volume of the caldera would be 10-15 km³, that would be the DRE, the eruption volume could be slightly larger.

            But since it can’t be ruled out that a substantial part was intruded into the crust, that the caldera collapsed in multiple stages, or that there was more than one magma source involved then it is not a very good estimate for the eruption, however otherwise we might never get one…

          • The 4 GPS on Mayotte avaliable at the Nevada Geodetic Laboratory still show subsidence, maybe it has slowed down (more obvious in the east component, I can’t tell in the vertical one), so the eruption still goes on.

            When the eruption was still not confirmed I compared it to Timanfaya (being in a similar geologic setting), that one lasted 6 years so I think this eruption could turn quite long-lasting.

          • Axial prehistoric caldera draining event must have been spectacular
            Maybe much more than 10 km3 in a few months.
            Souch fast submarine flows do not form pillow lavas at all.
            Instead it flows in submarine rivers and raging channels just like on land just with more crust on them. These submarine flows are called “sheet flows” . They are high eruptive rate submarine pahoehoe flow flows
            Some come with lava wholrs and spinned flow crusts a sign it went very fast underwater.

      • Nabro is a complex volcano with 2 nested calderas of 8 and 15 km diameter (225 km²). Mostly trachyte flows.

  16. with the possibility of being considered insane: take nothing and separate it into a “Positive” and a “Negative” and because change is involved: time is created. i’ll get my coat….. 😉

    • interesting idea.
      change without time would kind of imply that multiple editions (before and after) exist at all times.

  17. @Carl or any of you Scandinavian types. On an ancient map off of one of the links on VC, the usual suspects are labeled. But what should be Katla is labeled Solheima. I’m guessing “House of the sun”

    Please elaborate.

    • I appreciate that link, but I am seeking tidbits of lore from the past. I guess I’m looking for tales predating Bardi running afoul of Katla’s anger.

      Based on location, I am assuming that who ever did the sun – house/home naming resided to the west since that we would align the rising sun with the glacier.

  18. A climate scientist has just said what I have been thinking on ACC

    The publication of the IPCC Special Report on global warming of 1.5C paved the way for the rise of the political rhetoric of setting a fixed deadline for decisive actions on climate change. However, the dangers of such deadline rhetoric suggest the need for the IPCC to take responsibility for its report and openly challenge the credibility of such a deadline.

    This rise of ‘climate deadline-ism’ is, in some ways, a product of long-standing scientific (and political) endeavours to quantify what is ‘dangerous’ climate change. First articulated as a peak temperature target, this was then converted to a finite carbon budget and is now expressed as a fixed deadline after which policy interventions are deemed to be ‘too late’. This discursive translation of danger may help to increase a sense of urgency, as evidenced by the recent emergence of a youth climate movement. However, it also creates the condition in which a climate emergency is being rashly declared, a move that could lead to politically dangerous consequences.

    A more fundamental problem with deadline-ism is that it might incite cynical, cry-wolf responses and undermine the credibility of climate science when an anticipated disaster does not happen. The imagery of deadlines and countdown clocks offers an illusory cliff-edge after which the world heads inevitably to its imminent demise. It promulgates the imaginary of extinction and the collapse of civilization. The impacts of climate change are more likely to be intermittent, slow and gradual.

    ‘climate deadline-ism is the reason why there so many skeptics on the modern viewpoint on ACC, you can’t keep making bad deadlines and expect no skepticism when the deadline falls

  19. well pour me a double… and keep them coming….. it’s been hot here… 80s F and working fish gets one tired beyond belief….. so we’ve had doors and windows open a lot, sometimes into the late hours of the evening. So i’m tired… tired and my head finally hits the pillow and the little mouse that crawled into my pillow case took that moment to anounce that he didn’t like being squished by my weary head… give me another.

      • thought Your response very funny … read it to a Grandkid and he laughed….. EVERYBODY in the house knows i hate mice and that they run right for me…. i’m the house spider handler… bee helper, wasp relocator, but mice? i’d rather burn the house down, rebuild it and burn it down again…. and i get them in here all the time… and who can blame them with our weather… Best!motsfo

  20. (in response to a comment on the main site)

    I agree with you on coal. It is a killer. We are getting better at air quality, at least in America and Europe. In the rest of the world, air pollution is a massive problem, and I can say this from experience. A lot of that is due to coal too. We have also removed lead from petrol, cigaret smoke from public spaces, and CFC’s from fridges. There is still a way to go: next on the list are unnecessary plastics, overuse of pesticides and the waste of antibiotics as growth hormones, things we can’t do without but need to fix. There is progress. I am deeply concerned about the current generation of leaders, who date from the ‘it is all about me’ generation and have actions to show it. There is hope though. Many younger people are more alive to the world than I have given them credit for.

    I can see a number of problems coming up
    -Loss of jobs. This includes miners, but also anyone in a job that is open to robot/AI operation. It is the task of governments to stimulate new activity where old activities are at risk. Automation will change the world in the next decade.
    -Climate refugees. Both the Middle Eastern wars and the African conflicts have an element of climate change in them: hunger radicalises. This will only get worse.
    -Political collapse. Current governments are too weak to implement difficult programs. In many cases (and this includes the UK) they seem to act as spokesmen for corporations rather than representing the people. And when countries try to go it alone while the companies are international, it is clear who wields the power.

    These are solvable problems. If we don’t, out children will solve it for us, but in a far more difficult way than we could do now.

    • The universe doesn’t care about our problems, people assume they’re so important. You fix one problem you create another. Maybe two. I’m am more than sure if we correct CO2 there will be another issue on the horizon, some technology that creates another global threat. This time it will be hung on those who ‘only’ fixed CO2 and ignored the next looming threat, that generation will be blamed for ignoring the ‘real’ threat. For being too selfish to change etc. CO2 is a problem but I doubt humans will once and for all cure the world of all ills, we’re just not like that at heart and it’s a bit of polyandry to consider us so

      • I am not sure what your point is. If you’d like credit for saving the world, history is not on your side. Our children will have other problems to solve. We can at least try to ensure they have a chance to solve their problems. I am an optimist: problems can be solved. Sometimes a bit of luck helps, such as the accidental choice of chlorine for fridges when bromine was equally possible but marginally more expensive. Bromine would have destroyed the ozone layer before we had had an inkling that anything was wrong. I’ll take that as an encouragement.

        • But We are doing nothing about the next looming threat say for example robot armies, evil AI, engineered viruses, enhanced human cloning, nanotechnological attack weapons, frail infrastructure with a single point of failure, mono-cultured food sources suffering the same threat , etc.. just the tip of the iceberg,You/ we could of stopped it now, but you/we stood by watching while others were doomed to suffer from your/ our negligence… these responsibilities will be laid at your / our children’s feet for the next generation to suffer. But they can play their online games, eat french fries, buy cheap stuff online, without having to be uncomfortable distracted or disturbed life should be fun easy and perfect for the next generation. Not challenging. They should be taught someone else should take the blame before taking responsibility for themselves, spending time complaining beats spending time fixing it for themselves or I dare suggest undeserving others Nobility of character Is out. Nobility of appearance is in. Get online be loved and famous be unauthentic and gripe about everything and everyone else but don’t lift a finger to make a difference unless I get my fifteen minutes of fame first and foremost, the next generation talks down to the previous without understanding their faults doomed to repeat what we did and are doing to the world with their own, that’s my 2 cents on it.

          • Want some fun? Take a note pad and a calculator and figure out how many calories there are per foot of shelf space in your local grocer then estimate the total available in the store.

            The core problem you are hinting at is Histrionics. It’s gotten to the point that I’m surprised there isn’t a line of study for it in College.

            Me? I’m content to hang out in this little corner of the net. I don’t Fakebook and I don’t twit.

          • Ref the grocery store calorie counting.

            Extra credit: Estimate the caloric consumption of the neighborhood around that grocer and determine about how long that food source will last when the “Just in Time” product chain fails to deliver.

            Around here, as soon as a tropical storm is determined to have a good chance of getting close, there is usually a run on bottled water. I’ve seen that several times.

          • everybody’s going through; nobody came to stay. Love, laugh, live and letgo. and marvel. Life is sh…… 😉

          • https://youtu.be/iSwoM7WIy5M?list=RDFewzfHLo71E

            @Motsfo.

            1 lb peeled de-veined shrimp (tail-off)
            1 lb sliced link sausage. (preferably smoked){I slice mine into coin sized pieces}
            2 cans sweet corn. ( ¡NOT CREAMED CORN! )
            Several quartered small red potatoes.
            roughly 4 to 6 cups of water.
            Liberal amount of Old Bay™ seasoning.
            One vegetable bullion and one chicken bullion cube. (adds body to the broth)

            Rolling boil for 30 minutes.
            Dash of garlic or diced onions to taste. Add diced Bell pepper and/or celery as you desire.

            While this is going, make a pan of cornbread.

            Enjoy.
            (I typically add powdered cayanne to my bowl before eating. I don’t cook with it since my wife can’t handle it)

            Note: This is based off a Low Country boil but it is pretty close to a gumbo. Old Bay™ has a lot of powdered celery in it’s ingredients, so omitting the celery is not a meal killer.

            You can add Tony Chachere’s powdered roux to the boil while it is going to add a bit of thickness if you like. Not important though.

            What is important is the 30 minutes of rolling boil. That allows the sausage and shrimp to cook.

            You can pretty much augment this with any meat you like, just make sure that it boils long enough to cook that type of meat. I tried this with tilapia slices.. it works, but I wasn’t really happy with the tilapia. Sliced chicken breast works pretty well and is what I recommended to my grandson in lieu of shrimp since his girlfriend is not a shrimp aficionado. (Which is quite strange for a Florida Girl)

            No, I wouldn’t kick her to the curb over that, she has a good head on her shoulders and is not a typical Florida twit. Her dad’s a retired Master Chief and I can easily understand how she made it to adulthood as a non idiot.
            {I’m a retired Chief}

            In fact, I think that is one of the reasons that my grandson was not hated by him when they were first dating.

            Yeah, he can be stupid, but he has integrity.

          • Every generation is different. And if they spend their lives in an on-line dream world where they are easy prey to persuaders and advertisers, well, who was it that invented facebook? If they live in a world where children (they) are seen as collatoral damage to people’s right to shoot anything in sight, where they are taught by teachers in the most underpaid and undervalued profession, offered work which is little more than slavery, who gave them that world? That is a bit over the top, I know. But they need help and value, not judgement and condemnation. But I am more impressed with the new generation. They are willing to go after the problems, rather than giving up. And all these problems you list, some are real and some imagined, but all are solvable. The key, in my opinion, is education. Studies have shown that birth rates are directly related to the level of education of the women (not the men!). Solve the overpopulation problem and you are halfway there.

          • Deal with problems as they arise, or when you’re able.
            But if you’re doing it to gain the approval of others, perhaps your biggest issues are personal rather than global?
            Maybe you’ve missed the point somewhere?
            Deal with problems, but be clear. We attempt to do so because we have to.

    • Like Neil, I very much like your opinion. Makes a lot of sense and was a good start of discussions here at our table!

      • One thing I saw a while back was that some random law firm had started using AI based on IBM’s Deep Blue to do case research, effectively negating the need for Paralegals. Deep Blue is well suited for this sort of tasking, able to gobble up gigabytes of pleadings and case results to find applicable precedence for the lawyer to argue in front of a judge.

        How long is it until an AI actually pleads a case by itself?

  21. Sweet music there, Lurk! and nothing to cover the mistakes… and i didn’t hear any… sweet! Just down Good.

    • and i’m trying Your boil… and the shrimp need 30 minutes of boiling time?? seems a little long for shrimp. i understand the sausage needing 30 and the potatoes don’t fall apart with 30 minutes? or are they supposed to turn out that way. i’m trying it soon. Thanks, Best!motsfo

      • Btw, my wife is fond of ear corn. You can use half or quarter ears in the boil for a little variety, but it starts leaning more towards a crawdad boil when you do that. I’m not partial to crawdads myself. By using shrimp it leans more towards being a gumbo.

    • No, the shrimp doesn’t need 30 min. But at that point your going for flavor infusion anyway.

      Generally I start with the sausage boiling and start my counter, the slice and add the ingredients as I go. Potatoes are still solid but well cooked by the end with little disintration.

  22. The human industrial Co2 is rising at alarming rates.
    Our huge cities and combustion engines and industries relase 40 gigatons of carbon dioxide every year.
    Co2 levels are rising at many ppm every year.

    If this is not controlled soon… we are back in Paleocene – Eocene Thermal Maxium in just a few 100 s years.
    Our Carbon Dioxide emissions are similar to Siberian Traps mass dying volcanism.

    In 500 years in bad scenario… Iceland is a tropical / subtropical paradise
    Sweden have same forests as Thailand..
    Greenland is covered with forests like South China.
    The forests will likley take longer to develop .. but temps will allow.

    And the equator is a hot humid rainy 40 c hell where humans cannot stay for more than a few days.

    • I don’t know, but for some reason volcanoes tend to come with a theremin soundtrack for me.
      Now, whether that counts as music or not, is probably a matter of discussion…

    • And here there is a video :

      https://volcanoes.usgs.gov/observatories/hvo/multimedia_uploads/multimediaFile-2729.mp4

      I am amazed by the colours, there is a white band that crosses the lake from left to right, could that be an area where magmatic gases rise through? The larger lobe of the lake seems to have more suspended particles than the opposite end where the floor is partly visible. I guess that as it grows circulation will improve and it will get a more homogeneous aspect?

      • Interesting colours. The green may be iron. Volcanic lakes that are green can turn white if the temperature rises or the pH goes up. The combination of white at the (shallow) edge and the fumarole (?) activity (SO2?) suggests gypsum as a possibility. Or the tropic birds have been dropping their droppings.

        • The colour is most likely amplified by optical effects. If you pour up a pint of verdant green water into a glas jug it usually turns out to be whiteish opaque. Judging from the sulphur deposits around I would suspect that it also contains arsenic, either lead or copper, and a pinch of silver. Basically we are watching a silicate ore vein being in the making (thousands of years into the future).

  23. just an observation on my mouse epidemic….. one of them as run off with one of my sticky paper mouse traps….. hope it’s not too mad… wouldn’t want a vengeful mouse on the loose, and now he’s armed… pour me another. Best!motsfo

      • Thanks, Albert, i actually got a lot out of this… esp the clip of Nancy Pelosi which was slowed 25% which made her sound drunk… used to be “Don’t trust anything You hear and only half of what You see.” Now You can’t trust Your own eyes or ears… Live in a saltmine. Take everything with a grain of salt. i’ve been fortunate to actually have witnessed things first person. Best!motsfo

  24. There has been a jump at Mauna Loa GPS measurements, both in the width of the crater and (less) in the vertical movement. This is now three days old. It is normally wise to discard one or two high (or low) data points, but after three days the chances that this will be corrected away is diminishing. Looking at some GPS;s, it seems to stem from movement at the caldera itself. Seismographs are quiet though. The main seismic activity is in fact at Kilauea, just north of the caldera, but this seems unrelated.

    • Albert,
      I have noticed that and have been waiting to see what it does. I have also noticed that SLPC has accelerated west since around June. PHAN also shows a little acceleration West, North and Up since March.

      Mac

  25. Weak Pahala tremor. But the first in almost a month.

    2019-08-12 12:56:22 2.2 40

  26. Question for the VC bar

    Its about Red Dwarf star Glisese 710 c passage in the outermost solar system in 1 million years.
    How much will this disturb the ort comet cloud?

    Its going to come very very very very close.
    Most models puts the star comming as close as 13 000 AU with a 1/ 10 000 chance comming as close as 1000 AU. This will bring Ort Cloud chaos?

    • It is actually 4000 AU. We may get some more comets coming in to us over the 10-100 thousand years after the flyby. It is a low-mass star which limits the effect. It is also going fast and therefore has little time to interact. These flybys are quite common. It may have its own Oort cloud and that could get more interesting, but because it goes so fast, comet liberated from that system by our sun are likely to fly away at jigh speed, rather than falling in towards us.

          • Sounds very dangerous
            shooting comets towards earth: some of these comets can be 60 km across and goes at 70 km a second.
            The energy is enough to make our earth into a huge kind of like an incenirator for days… we bake under a glowing fiery sky IF it happens.

            But most likley Jupiter eats the incomming comets in the future.
            Earth is a tiny target.

            Albert Is the 13 000 AU that previous models says scrapped now?
            Im just curious

          • Is there any other star systems that have come this close recently?
            4000 AU is very close indeed thats only 4 times further out than sednas farthest point from sun.
            But most likley nothing will happen to the Earth.

            We humans can survive Ice Ages, Volcanism, Global warming and Maybe nuclear war.

            But we cannot survive an impact event thats much worse than KT boundary. But I will be dead anyway… why bother…

    • Here is the perfect Red Star Theme Song for the event.
      I will put on a kettle of tea and wait for it.

  27. Really off topic. I was reading about the Naval aviator that lost his life in Rainbow canyon (star wars canyon) the other day. This video is 11 years old, I think I have been watching it for 10 years and includes the same type of flying except this is in the Swiss alps. The song just became poplar a year ago or so. Enjoy

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsCodoY4cQ4

    Macusn

    • I remember watching UK Harrier jets train in the Yorkshire Dales when I was a kid. They flew up the valleys well below the level of the peaks and then would flip over the hilltops upside down as they went, close enough that we could see the pilots wave at us as they shot overhead. I loved those jets 🙂

  28. i see Your ‘Red Army Choir’ and raise You a “https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNb54rwDQJM&list=RDuNb54rwDQJM&start_radio=1&t=0”

  29. Anyone else a fan of No Man’s Sky on here? I’m waiting impatiently for the new update out today. Not that I’ll have time to play the damn thing, I’m lucky if I can finish a turn on Civ VI…

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