COMMENT BOOK

For some reason electronic stuff breaks around me. I often joke that I need to stay in shape as a pacemaker would be gone in days.

Yesterday my Wifes brand new 20 minute old phone stopped working after I touched it. My Computer went on the fritz, then my Ps3 broke down for the 2nd time in a month. Finally I went to use my good bose headphones and they were now not working.

My Brother will not let me use his stuff because of things like this. I would love to know why this happens!

http://gearturbine.260mb.com

YouTube Video; Atypical New * GEARTURBINE / Retrodynamic = DextroRPM VS LevoInFlow + Ying Yang Thrust Way Type - Non Waste Looses

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cPo9Lf44TE

I'd like to know if I am understanding correctly that in the example, where a copper rod is bent in a ring and spliced into it are the battery and a light bulb, the light bulb is heated and lit up by two forces simultaneously: [Exhibit A] the friction from the Coulombs and the [Exhibit B] the friction resulting from the electrical energy that forces itself through the flow of Coulombs (which may or may not move against the electrical energy. [ Only flowing charges experience friction. Flowing energy can be absorbed, but it doesn't "rub against" matter or create frictional effects. EM field energy flowing into charges will drive them forward even against a retarding force caused by friction. The flux of energy is keeping the charges from being decelerated and halted, otherwise the friction would bring things to a stop. The forced motion of the charges through the resistive material is causing a type of frictional heating. -billb]

Working with The Times Cheltenham Science Festival and sponsored by EDF Energy, we've created five 'blended media' resource packs, including How Movie Explosions Work - with Hollywood Stunt Scientist Mik Jacobs and Anatomical Body Painting with Dr Alice Roberts.

The five resource packs can be seen here: http://www.science.tv/partners/education-partners/cheltenham-science-festival.html

You are very welcome to embed any of the HD videos - just grab the embed code from these links:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4Qcjzj3Zs8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_IEfZRqYQU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oo2HdTidq1I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVtnMS0XlWg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJ3NQYoO8sg
The films are free for teachers to use and each one comes with a lesson plan. If you would like to download the film and plan, please sign up at science.tv.

Thank you and we hope you find the resources helpful. We would very much appreciate your feedback on them as well.

Best Regards,

Sir Charles Lyell did a good job of heading off the creationists. But he also shut the door on any consideration of sudden,violent, catastrophic, events as a driving force in the geomorphology of the surface of this planet.

The likelihood the observations of an amateur will be taken seriously by the academic community is inversely proportional to the significance of those observations. So that a really big idea that changes anything has about as much chance of being heard as a mouse breaking wind in a hurricane. And, paradoxically, the importance of communicating those observations properly is directly proportional to their significance. So it's a kind of Cassandra's curse for the 21st century.

Let me tell you about a different kind of impact event.

Ref: Evidence for an extraterrestrial impact 12,900 years ago that contributed to the megafaunal extinctions and the Younger Dryas cooling

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2268163/Firestone%2B25_2007.pdf

Before I was aware of the R.B. Firestone paper, and before I was more than marginally aware of the megafaunal extinctions at the end of the last ice age, I was looking at the blast effected materials of an explosive event more violent than anything I could imagine; not even with military experience.

Impact melt is often mistaken as volcanic tuff. And, when viewed form the surface, they can be so visually similar that only detailed chemical analysis can tell them apart. But no matter where you find them, and no matter the source of heat, and pressure, that melted, and moved them, ignimbrites are always formed in a violent explosive event. And as a blast effected material they are always a direct signature of the explosive, fluid, motions of their formation, and emplacement; no proxy required.

The sudden, unimaginably violent events of their formation can be understood to an amazing, and extraordinary, level of detail if one simply studies how they moved as blast effected materials moved during emplacement. So the only questions I am asking here are concerned with are simply: How did it move, and flow? We need only to get enough altitude to see the actual patterns of movement, and flow, to determine the exact movements, and true points of origin, of a sheet of surface ignimbrites. So the science of Fluid Mechanics has the trump card. And it doesn't get any easier than when the materials are exposed, in pristine condition, on the surface.

I would have thought that the geology of the north American continent was all very well studied. But when you start looking for any detailed research on emplacement of the pristine surface ignimbrites in north, central Mexico, and west Texas, and the exact nature of the explosive events they were formed in. You quickly find that, while there are quite a few untested theories, detailed studies of it's origins, and fluid motions during emplacement, haven't been done. But by understanding the motions, and fluid dynamics of the ignimbrites, and other blast effected materials we can come to a true understanding of the nature of the explosive events they were formed in. You can look at a flow, and easily see which direction it was moving at any particular point. And, in a hi-resolution satellite image, the motions of the ignimbrites in central Mexico, and those in west Texas, are as easy to read as the patterns of movement, and flow, in splashes of mud, or spilled paint.

There has been some mapping of ignimbrites in the Chihuahua City area, and on northward for about 100 km, or so, in spots along the Chihuahua - El Paso highway. It's taken years to get just that little bit done. But there is more than 40,000 square kilometers of pristine, random-colliding rivers of fast flowing ignimbrites in central Mexico, and up into west Texas that look like they just cooled yesterday. Waiting a lifetime for those Geologists on the ground was not an option. And, in frustration because I couldn't get my hands on any decent research papers on the subject, I set out to work out the patterns of movement, and flow, for myself to get a better understanding of the explosive event they formed in.

The movements of an unconstrained fluid are defined by the forces moving it. And for our purposes we'll need to refine that profoundly simple observation a little more and say that there are two fundamental forces to consider; gravity, and pressure.

Examples:

Take a droplet of paint, and put it on a level surface. Then blow it around with a straw. That's a pressure driven fluid. It's characteristic patterns of movement, and flow, are the result of the motive force being behind the flow, and pushing it. It piles up at the low pressure areas on the periphery where the pressure is no longer strong enough to move it.

Next, tip the surface a bit and let the paint flow downhill. That'll be a gravity attracted fluid. Its patterns of movement, and flow, are consistent with the motive force being in front of the flow, and pulling it down hill. It doesn't work on level ground.

The lines of flow in an unconstrained, and driven fluid will always be away from the driving force. Even if that fluid is melted stone being driven up hill. And when those lines of flow are frozen into a river of melted stone they become a permanent, reliable record of the nature of the forces that melted, and moved it.

An experiment:

Cover a surface with about an inch of wet, slightly sticky, grainy, mud the consistency of thin, wet, concrete. Hit it with short bursts of compressed air coming down from above to simulate the patterns of movement, and flow, in a pressure driven flow of blast melted ignimbrites.

A fun variation if you want you involve the children is to use runny oatmeal spread out on a cookie sheet. If you have the kids surround the Cookie sheet, and blow the oatmeal around with short, random, puffs of air thru a straw. You get the same flow patterns. But the kids taught me one should be vigilant, and use caution with this version of the experiment due to the danger of the experiment escalating into a food fight. If you look away at the wrong time you could become the first casualty. It was a good learning experience for all though. The kids learned what the flow patterns of a pressure driven fluid look like. And I've learned that it's difficult to do good, objective, scientific, observation with oatmeal in your ear.

You can mock up a classic science fair scale model of a volcano if you want to simulate the flows of a gravity attracted density current down slope.

If it takes months, or years, to map a few miles along a highway from the ground it's time to bring the work into the twenty first century and use the satellites our tax money paid for, and do it from space, or it'll never be finished. Thanks to NASA, LandSat, and Google, I can produce my own image map of any given area on the continent in full spectrum color with resolution down to about 1 meter per pixel. And computer memory is the only constraint to size. I have a couple I've had printed professionally that cover a whole wall. If you look at a specific location anywhere in those flows, it is very easy to see which way it was flowing at any given point. And backtrack it to its source location. A sheet of clear plastic, and a handful of markers, and you have a large area, hi-resolution flow map. Complete with little directional arrows.

There are gaping holes, and glaring discrepancies, in the data when it comes to the actual movements from it's supposed source vents, and final emplacement. There simply aren't enough vents. And you can't say it came from one direction if it was flowing from the other. Those material movements tell an extraordinary story, one that is far different than anything we ever imagined.

In an explosive volcanic eruption we see both gravity, and pressure at work as the material is ejected from the vent forcefully, only to be attracted by gravity down, and away from the vent. And it rarely flows very far. But we see something different going on in central Mexico, and west Texas. There are tens of thousands of square kilometers of pristine ignimbrites, with no visible signs of decomposition, at the very top of the geologic column. And the patterns of movement, and flow are not consistent with a volcanic eruption at all. All of the material movement is pressure driven. There aren't enough volcanic vents to account for even a fraction of all of the melted material. And, because of the scale of it all, you don't see it until about twenty thousand feet. But when you spend some time studying the movements of the blast effected materials in the satellite images, you'll notice something that generations of Geologists on the ground missed. The simple, observable, fact is that, contrary to the old literature, the melt didn't come out of the ground at all. It was the original surface terrain, blasted, and flash melted, by multiple sources of heat, and pressure coming down from above. The material was blown off its source locations by those same above ground sources of heat, and pressure.

Any given fragment of ignimbrite, no matter the scale of the event it formed in, was only in fluid state on the surface for a few violent seconds at most. Even in a super eruption that goes on for days. So if two flows of melted stone are representative of two separate events, even a separation of only a few seconds, then one of them will be seen to be over-topping the other, already solidified one. But if they were both melted, and flowing at the same time, the interaction between the two will be a fluid convergence. i.e. They will inter-finger. Or they will come together like two rivers flowing into one.

Everywhere, in all of the tens of thousands of square kilometers of random, colliding, flows of pristine surface ignimbrites you'll note that, without exception, the patterns of movement in all of the material is consistent with very fast, and sudden, motion like ejecta. And every collision between flows is a fluid convergence. There is not one, single, over-topping flow. The inescapable conclusion is that contrary to the old literature, all of the pressure driven ignimbrites in the Chihuahuan Desert were in rapid, fluid, motion at the very same time. All of that tuff describes an intricate, almost infinite, dance of violent fluid motions. And all of those turbulent, inter-flowing, motions describe the very same moment.

Either that material is the geologically recent result of the largest super eruption since primates first came down out of the trees. And most of central Mexico is one giant, explosive, caldera that no one ever noticed as such. And all of the missing vents will be found... someday. (And never mind that the motions of the simultaneous, inter-flowing, rivers of melted stone describe a sudden, virtually instantaneous, event.) Or all of the melt is the result of the most violent ET encounter in 65 million years. And it, and its ground effects, are different from anything ever studied before.

Both are pretty extraordinary possibilities. The visual evidence is more supportive of the latter though. Because, when viewed from high altitude, it is profoundly obvious the heat and pressure to melt, and move, all that material came from above. But, no matter what the source of the heat, and pressure, the more than 40,000 sq km simultaneously, random-colliding, and interflowing, mega-flood of blast-generated ignimbrites, at the very pinnacle of the stratigraphic column describes a geologically recent explosive event that was arguably the single most violent natural disaster in all of human existence. Yet, with the exception of a few prospectors looking for money rocks, it's almost completely unstudied.

Our impactors appear to have been a large, highly fragmented, and loosely grouped, cluster of comet fragments, about 500 km wide, like a giant, flying gravel pile. The thing would have looked like a sister to the images of the fragmented comet Linear. It came in at very high velocity, and low angle of approach from the southeast. And almost all of the fragments exploded above ground like Tunguska. Except that, in Mexico, only the very first of the fragments on the leading edge fell into cold atmosphere. The rest fell into already super heated impact plasma, and just added to the heat.

The primary impact zone is a 500 by 1300 km oval that covers most of north central Mexico. And extends well up into west Texas, and New Mexico. The other impact zone is a little smaller in the great lakes region. And it extends from northern Minnesota, well up into Canada.

All of the available literature assumes the ignimbrites in the Chihuahuan desert to be the result of ancient volcanism millions of years ago. But there is no such thing as immortality. Even the rocks of the Earth crumble to dust after a few million years of exposure to the elements. And those tens of thousands of square kilometers of perfectly pristine, simultaneously, random-colliding, and inter-flowing, rivers of blast melted stone at the very pinnacle of the geologic column are most certainly not thousands of times older than the stones in the monuments of the Nile.

If an extraordinary hypothesis requires extraordinary proof all I can say is look closely, and see for yourself. There is no visible trace of exfoliation, or decomposition, in the flows at all. And except for some sparse cacti, and sagebrush, growing on them, those flows of ignimbrites are all in the very same condition as the day they first cooled. And their motions are very easy to read.

I live in Israel and I see all the same scenarios.

Here, we too suffer of the "achieviness" syndrome - trying to get everything we don't need just for the sake of some one else not having it. I'm sure you see it all the time in the States :)

The difference is that while in the US size means a lot, here size is more of a constraint. This, among other causes, brings the entity responsible for planning the roads to build them optimized at first - as few lanes as possible. Over the past decade we grew and our commercialized & industrialized center of the country became denser and denser with population, which gradually brought the need of wider roads. One ring has been expanded twice during 15 years. And it's the only ring we've got. On top of this, this ring still suffers traffic.

But at least this one is well maintained. A lot of the infrastructure is done by the lowest bidder, and that's usually the guy who can get the cheapest labor. The cheapest labor around here is usually not as good as the labor that values its time. This brings a lot of patch-work and brings the roads to an even worse condition.

Looking at the States, it seems that no matter how wide the roads are, there will always be lane-jumpers, as you've put it.

Another amazing thing is that you reached your conclusions by mathematical thinking while I've been exploring this while studying for my BA in Economics, and reached conclusions based on economic research. I wrote a short paper (my final) in game theory that proves "watching your distance" as an optimal strategy for sub-optimal-speed scenarios. In my model the cause is biased time preferences which bring impatience and preprocreation (or procrastionation) at times. (check out "Doing it Now or Later" By TED O'DONOGHUE AND MATTHEW RABIN, I based my paper on theirs - http://www.uibk.ac.at/economics/bbl/lit_se/lit_se_ss06_papiere/now_or_later.pdf)

I find the traffic waves (I called them "traffic lumps", myself, and prefer to ride between the lumps :) ) effect is caused by a set of circumstance, rather than just the distance not being kept. While not keeping your distance is the direct cause, people don't mind their distance because:
a. they are in a reasonable hurry/mindless greedy rush.
b. There is no communication between the drivers. Everything is taken personally and immediately so.
c. We tend to expect the status quo to last, rather than prepare for fluxuations, and until we see a reason we don't beleive there is one.

To clear up point "c", I'm sure some version of this happened to you: you're driving close to someone's rear, your field of vision blocked, and he hits the brakes. Boy, are you pissed. "What is he doing? What gives him the right to surp..." you go around him with a sharp swerve of the wheel and immediately see that he was cut off by some one who just barely avoided an accident with a truck. Less angry now. But if you kept your distance, you'd have a wider field of vision, and you'd predict his actions and respond better yourself.

Another thing worth mentioning, I know of a sort of "Traffic Research Institute" in Haifa, Israel, but I never looked into it. Hope this enriches your hobby :)

Thank you for sharing your experiences and thoughts, and if you reached this, for sharing my experiences and thoughts as well.

Please write back in case you have anything else that might interest an amateur traffic observer :)

Here is my story:

I noticed for a long time that street lights would go out more often for me than for others. I also noticed that more street lights would go out when I was stressed. I've never had an entire line of street lights go out for me, so perhaps I'm not as "powerful" as some who frequent this website. For me, it seems like the same street lights will turn off as I pass by night after night (ie on my way home from work). There seems to be some sort of perimiter because as I walk up, there is an invisible line that I can cross that will turn off a street light (this is definitely repeatable). I have no idea why scientists have had difficulty proving this in a laboratory experiment. Watches with metal wristbands actually cause me pain in my wrist (similar to the pain of carpal tunnel syndrome) until I take it off and then the pain slowly decreases (takes about an hour or two to get back to being pain free). The electrical system in my car has been wanky. I've gone through two batteries in a short amount of time, and there seems to be an alternator problem as the lights flicker inside my car and the headlights too. The alternator has been tested by more than one mechanic, but the problem persists. I've changed the headlights and tail lights as they burnt out which may or may not have been related to the up/down voltages caused by the alternator problem.

I didn't tell anyone else about my experiences until I met a guy with the same experiences (he's now my husband). My husband has the same problems, but his wrist hurts more than mine when he wears a watch, so he doesn't wear one. He's told me that he's broken watches before. He has also had electrical (gremlins) problems with all of the cars that he's ever owned.

I'm very interested to learn if there are any other common denominators between those who are SLIders. Does it affect health, longevity, etc?