CFI Forums

Physics & Skyscrapers

2011-02-10T20:42:04-05:00

I moved this out of crop circles and pseudo-science since skyscrapers are grade school physics.

Rocinante - 10 February 2011 12:14 PM
psikeyhackr - 10 February 2011 11:38 AM

I’m sorry. I didn’t know I had to specify a VERTICAL STRUCTURE.

That is what WTC 1 & 2 were. The conservation of momentum doesn’t apply to a bridge falling down through empty space like the mass of the top of the north tower falling down into mass designed to support it.

I purposely chose bridges to point out how silly your implication is. Bridges don’t have story after story of excess weight on top of them.

So now it is your turn. You show me any other self-supporting vertical structure that:

Was already weakened by being slammed into at 500 MPH by a jetliner

Had its fire proofing knocked off its trusses

Burned uncontrollably from a combination of jet-fuel and office furniture

Had its steel load lateral holding columns sheared off by a jetliner

Oh and while your at it, find me one controlled demolition crew that can drill thousands of holes in concrete, cut and pre-score thousands of support beams, insert hundreds of pounds of explosives, run thousands of feet of wiring for the weeks on end it would require and all in an occupied building without anyone noticing anything unusual…and keeping quite about it for nearly 10 years!

Even though you can’t show any of those, I can show you a self-supporting vertical structures that collapsed from fire:

Steel-Framed Building Collapses from Fire

You will notice it was a toilet paper factory. Appropriate for all the shit that comes from the vile and disgusting Troofers!

You brought up the bridges because you are STUPID!

And can you tell us the TONS of steel on every level of these self supporting vertical structures?

The NIST couldn’t do it for the WTC in 3 years with 10,000 pages and $20,000,000.

So if the airliner could do so much damage then why did the building only move 15 inches due to the impact?

It seems you can’t handle any rational physics since you need to come up with the moronically emotional “all the shit that comes from the vile and disgusting Troofers!”

And then the example you use is a ROOF COLLAPSE. A horizontal structure like a bridge. It was not a vertical structure having to hold dozens of levels of its own weight.

He added: “Intense heat buckled the steel girders holding the roof.”

So how thick does the steel have to be to support a roof?

psik

Black Hole Eats Asteroids, Burps Out X-Rays

2012-02-08T18:05:49-05:00

By Adam Mann February 8, 2012

The supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy may be constantly snacking on asteroids. A new study finds that asteroids at least 12 miles wide falling into the black hole would account for the regular bright x-ray flares seen through telescopes.

{...}

For several years, NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory has spotted daily fluctuations in the emissions coming from the Milky Way’s central black hole. Known as Sagittarius A*, this 2-million- to 4-million-solar-mass black hole is approximately 26,000 light-years from Earth near the border of the constellations Sagittarius and Scorpius.

Sagittarius A*’s daily flares generally last a few hours and increase the black hole’s brightness by a hundred times. Scientists have been at a loss to explain why the black hole would have such regular eruptions.

Researchers now suggest that tens of trillions of asteroids and comets, stolen from their parent stars. . . . . . .

How’s that for exciting?

Sure beats endlessly beating that dead WTC horse.
Visiting that thing helps me appreciate how people can cling to believing Earth is six thousand years old . . . after all there’s plenty of “proof” the scientists are all screwed up

It’s big, it’s old and it lives under the sea

2012-02-07T15:41:28-05:00

Always happy to oblige, and I won’t even do it on an AGW related topic, though I’ve got plenty of them stored up

George - 07 February 2012 01:15 PM
Today is the Sophie’s Choice day on our forum: it’s between 9/11 conspiracy, the envelope problem, and sports. Can somebody start a new thread on something else?

Cool stuff and I didn’t even have to go far to find it.

Just imagine it. . . . . . . our oldest common ancestor.

Ancient Seagrass Holds Secrets of the Oldest Living Organism On Earth

ScienceDaily (Feb. 7, 2012) — It’s big, it’s old and it lives under the sea—and now an international research collaboration with The University of Western Australia’s Ocean’s Institute has confirmed that an ancient seagrass holds the secrets of the oldest living organism on Earth.

How highs the water mama? {courtesy of climatesanity.wordpress.com}

2012-02-07T18:34:44-05:00

So ya looking for a little excitement?
Coming to a shoreline near you, even if it takes a bunch of decades, it’s still a coming…

Sea Levels to Continue to Rise for 500 Years? Long-Term Climate Calculations Suggest So
ScienceDaily (Oct. 17, 2011) — Rising sea levels in the coming centuries is perhaps one of the most catastrophic consequences of rising temperatures. Massive economic costs, social consequences and forced migrations could result from global warming. But how frightening of times are we facing? Researchers from the Niels Bohr Institute are part of a team that has calculated the long-term outlook for rising sea levels in relation to the emission of greenhouse gases and pollution of the atmosphere using climate models.

Still trying to figure out what to make of this video, but if you want exciting. . . . . . .

http://climatesanity.wordpress.com/2012/01/29/sea-level-data-set-to-music-yeah-thats-right/
Sea level data set to music. Yeah, that’s right.
January 29, 2012
Vermeer’s and Rahmstorf’s “Global sea level linked to global temperature” (PNAS, 2009) relied on Church’s and White’s “A 20th century acceleration in global sea-level rise” (GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 33,) for their sea level data. Church and White built their sea level time series from the Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level (PSMSL) tide gauge data.

The following video shows all the PSMSL tide gauge data so you can search for a sea level rise acceleration. Or you can dance or sing along!

It starts slow, but when the graphs start coming it goes a tad too fast. Fortunately with this here computer it can be stopped, even moved backwards {unlike the real world}. But, like I said not sure what to make of it…

How do you focus the ‘Galelioscope’?

2009-08-09T19:57:10-05:00

I hope someone on the forum can assist me. I ordered several of the Galileoscopes for friends and family, and received them last week. We put them together using the easy and clear directions included, but we are stumped as to how to focus the telescope at 50X. We can get it focused just fine at 25X, but 50X is a blur, despite all of our manipulation of the eye piece! Help! Even at 25X the moon is pretty awesome, but I want to see the craters and look at Jupiter and Saturn too!

Which came first, the chicken or the egg

2012-02-06T13:26:27-05:00

One of my favorite comics takes on the topic!

http://sci-ence.org/vapid-arguments/

The answer seems to be that at some point in the very recent past, the first fully domesticated chicken was hatched from an egg laid by it’s mother, who was almost-but-not-quite a domesticated version of the jungle fowl. But wait—was the egg a jungle fowl egg because it came from a jungle fowl or was it a chicken egg because it hatched a chicken? Yikes!

Vitamin D supplements?

2009-08-02T11:28:28-05:00

Listening to a tech podcast last week one of the hosts mentioned taking Vitamin D supplements. This sounded to me odd, like some sort of vitamin quackery a la Linus Pauling’s obsession with Vitamin C. But now I see it mentioned in the most recent issue of Consumer Reports magazine:

“Many Americans don’t get enough calcium and vitamin D, which together help build bone and might prevent certain cancers and protect the heart ... Citing recent research, our medical consultants say that the current Daily Value for D, 400 IUs, is too low; most people should aim for 800 to 1,000 IUs.” (Sept. 09 issue, p. 9. It’s in the report on Calcium + Vitamin D orange juice).

Well, Consumer Reports isn’t always right. I double checked at the UC Berkeley’s Wellness Guide online, HERE. Their bottom line: “In any case, consider taking 800 to 1,000 IU of supplemental vitamin D a day (multivitamins usually supply only 400 IU).”

And the Harvard HEALTHbeat is even more strict. See HERE:

“Depending on how much a person started out with, a daily intake of about 2,000 IU—the upper limit set by the National Academy of Sciences—is necessary before blood levels get high enough for vitamin D to have its full disease-fighting effects. ... A daily 1,000-IU supplement should take care of your minimum needs. If your multivitamin contains some vitamin D, but less than 1,000 IU, you can take a separate vitamin D supplement to make up the difference.”

(See also the article in Sept. 08 Harvard Women’s Health Watch HERE).

I must say, I hadn’t been aware of this. My inclination is to say that if three respected sources like these give virtually identical information, I’m inclined to accept it. Anyone hear otherwise?

Brian Angliss engages Burt Rutan (one of the WSJ 16) Engineer to Engineer

2012-02-04T15:56:01-05:00

In researching the various signers of the Wall Street Journal’s letter
“No Need to Panic About Global Warming” (1/27/12)
I was surprised that Burt Rutan winner of the Ansari X-Prize in 2004 was among the crowd. It gave me pause since he has accomplished some great things that I was aware of during there happening. And it also caused me to again wonder about the difference in the approach of thee Engineer vs. the Earth Scientist.

Then I came across a series of exchanges between one Brian Angliss, an engineer, and Burt Rutan.
I haven’t gotten closer to grasping the root of the dichotomy between climatologists and the scientifically proficient AGW deniers most of whom are engineers.
But, I did discover what a disappointing ideology driven demagogue Rutan has turned into.

Refusing to acknowledge anything other than his own shallow, and misleading, talking points - while willfully ignoring the excellent points and questions directed at him by Mr. Angliss.

On the other hand Brian’s even tempered issue focused approach is a thing of beauty that students of AGW debate can learn from.

Climate science discussion between Burt Rutan and Brian Angliss
Posted on January 31, 2012

http://www.scholarsandrogues.com/2012/01/31/climate-science-discussion-between-burt-rutan-and-brian-angliss/

NCAR & UCAR “Staff Notes”

2012-02-03T07:35:42-05:00

http://www2.ucar.edu/staffnotes/research-in-brief
“Staff notes”
For and about the people of NCAR and UCAR
(A brief look at research throughout the organization)

For someone who spends as much of his free time searching the web as I do - I am consistently smacked in face by the wonderful resources that I’ve been missing. And when I find an exceptionally good site I want to shout it from the tree tops. Or at least share it with others who are passionate about learning.

If learning about Earth dynamics, and the sub-topic of global climate change, is your thing you owe it to yourself to take a look at this site. Eighty odd studies going back to 2008 are reviewed in brief. Perhaps you too will be amazing with the varied bona fide scientific information collected at this one location.

Poop transplant - A really good example of why we need to see our bodies as complex ecosystem and why bacteria are so important to our health

2012-02-01T06:41:01-05:00

This weeks Science Talk podcast has a very good discussion on a new and evolving concept in medicine.. Using bacteria to restore our natural bioflora in order to treat disease.

As many of you may have heard along the way, our bodies are home to more bacterial cells than human cells. We are outnumbered 10-1 by bacterial cells in our own body. There are literally thousands of different species and we are only beginning to understand what function they play in our bodies. For many years we have viewed bacteria as the enemy and to some extent that is true but its an entirely over simplified view of the real world. Some of the bacteria that live in and on our bodies are harmless. Some are essential in that they produce vitamins or essential amino acids. Some are harmful, but its even more complex than that. Some are beneficial in certain places or harmful in others or important in combination with certain other bacteria and dangerous with others. Our ecosystem is at least as complex as a rainforest ecosystem.

Antibiotics and diet can affect our ecosystem but we really don’t have good data on how. There is a huge amount of research that needs to be done yet in this area. The odds are that these bacteria have evolved with us over millions of years and I wouldnt be the least bit surprised as we learn more that we find out many of these baceteria may even produce hormones and other substances that control important bodily functions for us. I think someday we are going to be thinking about the bacterial inhabitants of our body as another organ and perhaps the largest and most important organ in our bodies.

The podcast is about some work being done to transplant feces from healthy people to people who have had their gut flora disturbed by antibiotic treatment resulting in an infection with a bacteria called c.difficile which is often very difficult to treat. They have reported very high success rates compared to existing treatments but they also discuss some of the practical and regulatory difficulties with studying and using such an unusual treatment.. ie. The FDA doesn’t know how to regulate it because its not a drug, its not an appliance or a device and this deters researchers from using it in studies because it puts them at risk if the FDA hasn’t set guidelines.

Anyway if you can get past the yuck factor its actually pretty interesting.