Tag: science

how the Grand Canyon formed

I saw a TV show on the History Channel that explained how the Grand Canyon was formed.  They said that many billions of years ago, that area was a massive mountain range, with peaks higher than the Himalaya Mountains.  I can believe that, at least the mountain part.  But then the story went in an unexpected direction.

These mountains were covered by the ocean at least 8 times.  I can easily believe they were at least once, but what do I know?  But then the mountain range flattened out, into flatlands.  There were no mountains, no valleys, and no canyons.   Then the land rose up, kinda like how mountains are formed from plate tectonics, but it didn’t create mountains — all the land rose up in that area.  (Can you picture that?   And can you believe that?)

To get the canyon-forming process under way, there was a giant lake, and it overflowed.   That’s what formed the Colorado River.   The lake is long gone, but the river still flows (obviously).  And over the past 5.5 million years, the water carved out the Grand Canyon.

Now you know.  Or well, you know what some scientists think happened.  The question is, are they right?  Parts of the story are believable, although I’m having trouble with the whole area of land rising evenly.  But either way, it’s interesting to think about.

I like watching these types of shows, because it challenges how I think.  It also gives me ideas on how to create my own Grand Canyon, so I can have a great view like that and make millions of dollars from tourism.  I’ll need to speed up the process, plus extend my life for a few years.   But I already plan to live forever — so far so good!  🙂

Anyway, back to reality, let me make a serious point (if the editor-at-large will allow that).   If the Grand Canyon was covered by ocean at least 8 times, who is to say it shouldn’t ever happen again?  And those things don’t just happen randomly.  There had to be some sort of… um… climate change… to cause such a massive event.   And probably not one or two degrees.  I’m just saying…

how to prevent hurricanes

If you know much about weather, you know that mankind does not possess the ability to stop a hurricane.  Hurricanes are kinda like a migraine headache in that regard — unstoppable once it gets going.  In fact, a migraine feels kinda like a hurricane in your head.  Or a tornado.  But I digress.

Anyway, we cannot stop a hurricane once it gets started.  I’ve heard that Hurricane Katrina contained the energy equivalent of 150,000 atomic bombs, and released enough of that energy to power the United States for a year.  Amazing!   If only we could capture a fraction of that power.  But that’s another discussion.  (I almost digressed again…)

satellite photo of Hurricane Jeanne from 2004So obviously the key to stopping a hurricane is to prevent it from forming.  That may sound impossible, and it almost is, but I learned from The Discovery Channel where hurricanes (affecting the U.S.) come from.  The whole process starts from hot, dry air from the Sahara Desert.  Pockets of that hot, dry air get released over the ocean about every three days, and then convection and evaporation and condensation and stuff take place, and hurricanes are formed.  So one possible solution would be to destroy the Sahara Desert.   I know, that sounds crazy, but think about it — the climate of the Sahara is such that its inhabitants have to live elsewhere.  So who would it inconvenience?  It would save a lot of money when we don’t have destructive hurricanes!

I can see some people opposing that plan.  Fortunately there’s another potential way to stop hurricanes.  During the convection process, clouds form and begin to rotate because of the rotation of the Earth.  So obviously if we stopped the Earth’s rotation, that would prevent hurricanes from forming.  However, this plan would have some major side-effects, like perhaps altering gravity, and we might lose the Moon.  I’m sure some other bad things would happen too, so I can see this idea being vetoed.

Perhaps instead of destroying the Sahara Desert, we should just cover it with solar panels to capture the heat.  And since the Sahara Desert is one of the hottest places in the world, this could also reduce global warming, and it would be a clean, green, unlimited, renewable energy solution.  Sounds perfect, right?  That could be quite expensive, which is probably why it hasn’t been done.  But it would produce untold amounts of clean energy, which everyone wants these days.  Since a large up-front investment is needed, you can start sending in donations, and I’ll do this whenever I get enough money, and it’ll be a win-win for everyone.  You can give using various denominations of cash, check, credit card, and bacon.

Why doesn’t time ever run backwards?

As you well know, time goes forward.  We cannot go backwards in time — only forward.  But supposedly the laws of physics also work in reverse.  (I don’t remember that from school, but perhaps I was drawing monster trucks that day.)  So why doesn’t the universe ever run backwards?  Physicists have often wondered why time seems to only go forward.  They call this “the arrow-of-time” mystery.  Lorenzo Maccone, an MIT physicist, has spent time contemplating why it doesn’t happen.  (You’re going to enjoy this one, if your brain doesn’t crash.)

If the universe were to run backwards, a cold cup of coffee might spontaneously heat up, or a broken piece of glass might un-break.   (Hold on to your logic, because we’re only getting started!)  These events are governed by the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which states that the entropy (degree of disorder) of a closed system never decreases.  Regardless of the fancy scientific terms, things work the way they’re supposed to — in forward motion.

However, Maccone’s “solution” is that “entropy-decreasing events occur all the time”, so there’s really no mystery about the arrow-of-time.  So why don’t we witness these things?   After all, wouldn’t you notice if certain events started running backwards?  I think everyone would.  So how does Maccone explain this?  He says that according to quantum mechanics, if you ever do witness an “entropy-decreasing event”, those memories of the event “will have been erased by necessity”.

Just to clarify, Maccone says you actually have the memories, but then they are subsequently erased.   He says this happens because of “quantum entanglement“.   Basically, you and “the system” have become entangled and cannot properly be described separately.  Obviously, you can’t have this entanglement, so there’s a disentangling process.  Maccone says, “the disentangling operation will erase this entanglement, namely the observer’s memory”.  (Why isn’t the actual event ever erased, where we remember something backwards that once happened but then never happened?)  Anyway, Maccone published a paper that explained his conclusion mathematically.  (I was unable to reach the same conclusion mathematically, unless I multiplied by the page number a few times.)

In layman’s terms, Maccone thinks that because of symmetry, if there are transformations that increase entropy (and there are), then there must be transformations that decrease entropy.  (Is that like saying because a star blows up, then it should eventually unexplode?)

Unfortunately for Maccone, there is no proof of these backward events, because he cannot remember them.  🙂

Not everyone in this field of study agree with Maccone (which is not surprising).  Huw Price, head of the Centre for Time at the University of Sydney, thinks Maccone is simply trading one mystery for another: “The proposal to explain the thermodynamic arrow in terms of the [quantum] effects of observers has an obvious flaw.  It doesn’t explain why all observers have the same orientation in time. … Why don’t some observers remember what we call the future, and accumulate information towards what we call the past?”  See, I can explain that, and even with common sense!   The past has already happened, but the future hasn’t happened yet.  Is it really that simple?

In the last sentence of the article about this, the writer said, “Whether or not Maccone has solved the mystery of the arrow of time is unclear.”  I can answer that one, too, without even drawing upon the vast reserves of knowledge accumulated from collegiate study.  The answer, in one word, is NO.

proof that pickles are not for eating

We discussed here before that pickles are evil and shouldn’t be eaten.  Science has confirmed this, by showing that pickles can be used to create TV screens.  That’s a much better use for pickles than consumption (and it doesn’t involve the risk of you becoming a zombie).  That shows that even something as evil as a pickle can be used for good.

However, it’ll be essential that the TV screen doesn’t smell like pickles, or I’ll have nothing to do with it.

Also, other organic materials can be used to create OLED screens, so I still think it would be a good idea to shoot all pickles into the sun.