13 August 2011
Weekend Digest- Skeptical Dictionary for Kids
Posted by Dan Satterfield
The Scientists are the real skeptics
Skepticism is the heart of science. Nothing is accepted by faith, you must have a ton of evidence and observation for something to reach the level of consensus and thus the status of theory. This level is reached only after hundreds and in most cases thousands of independent observations/experiments. Any one observation or experiment can bring the whole thing crashing down.
Richard Feynman put this most succinctly “It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong”
This is really the fundamental foundation for science and unfortunately it does not seem to be taught to students. Adults for the most part have no inherent understanding of this. Just this week someone messaged me on twitter demanding that I show proof that humans are causing the climate to warm. This the common refrain of those who disbelieve accepted science like the age of the Earth or evolution. It is often reversed by those who make claims about astrology, or other forms of magic by the claim that you offer no proof that it does not work!
Phil Plait’s fantastic blog Bad Astronomy has a link to a much-needed Skeptics Dictionary for Kids. It’s designed for kids, but from my experience a lot of adults could learn some things from it as well. I’m surprised I haven’t heard of this before, its well worth showing to your kids when they ask about such questions.
Arctic ice questions
An interesting paper published in the AGU Journal Geophysical Research Letters about Arctic Sea ice is gathering some attention this weekend. The gist of it is that while the ice is likely in a slow death spiral, the melting may slow or even stop for several years due to negative feedbacks and internal climate oscillations. It’s common to want to ascribe one cause to an event, whether in science or hum a fairs, but this is usually a mistake. Nature simply does not work that way.
You were probably taught that Gavrillo Princep’s assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand (and his wife, which history books tend to leave out) was the primary cause of World War One. It’s just not that simple, and neither is the rising concentrations of greenhouse gases and their effect on sea ice. The AGU press release has more. I have started reading the paper on my iPad and it looks quite interesting.
The Sun is hotting up
The sun released an X class flare this week as it approaches the top of the 11 year activity cycle. X-class flares are the top of the line and if directed at Earth can cause major problems, especially for satellites. Astronauts on the ISS are also at risk but have an area on the station that has protective shielding.
Flares are rated according to a system that is very similar to the scale used for earthquakes. It’s a logarithmic scale where each letter increase is a factor of ten higher in energy than the one before. The scale uses A,B,C,M and X and an M flare is ten times more powerful than a C etc. A flare stronger than M9 becomes an X1 flare and there is no upper limit on the X scale,with the X23 in Nov. 2003 the record holder. This week’s X class flare was an X 6.9, although flares above X20 have been seen, and if one of these were directed at Earth, it could cause massive damage to communication satellites and the electrical grid.
Brought to you in living colour
The true colour images produced by the MODIS sensor on NASA’s Aqua and Tera satellites have sent back some amazing pictures of our home in the cosmos, but this image released by NASA is a composite of many, producing a true look at our tiny speck in the vastness of space. My only complaint is that the image is North America centric.
In the Mercury Theatre broadcast of War of The World, Orson Welles referred to Earth as “this small spinning fragment of solar driftwood”. True indeed, but it’s our home in the unimaginably vast inky black of space.
Addition Sat. 13 Aug:
CWM’s and climate change
David Roberts at Grist wrote about a paper being published entitled Cool dudes: The denial of climate change among conservative white males in the United States. Anyone who writes about science can tell you that any mention of climate change in a blog post will get you emails (many times in all caps with many misspellings) from angry CWM’s. This paper attempts to explain the denial and the anger. I would also recommend the book by Bob Altemeyer that goes into this even more deeply.
The 2/Apr/2001 http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/hotshots/X17/ and 4/Nov/2003 http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/hotshots/2003_11_04/ flares were massive, both saturating (overloading) the sensors thus their actual magnitude could not be measured. Measurements are less than what actually occurred and estimates were made, with the value I saw for the 2003 event as X28+ by SEC (now SWPC) with some estimates upwards of X45: Thomson et al, 2004 http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2004/2003GL019345.shtml Thomson et al, 2005 http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2005…/2005JA011008.shtml Brodrick et al, 2005 http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2005…/2004JA010960.shtml etc. (it also generated the first recorded evidence of a solar burst emission component peaking in the broad terahertz band: Kaufmann et al, 2004 http://iopscience.iop.org/1538-4357/603/2/L121 ). Here’s a list of the largest recorded flares http://www.spaceweather.com/solarflares/topflares.html .
Would be interesting to know where the Carrington event would rate on the modern scale.
dan
Hi Dan,
First, some kudos for a good post. I don’t mean to hijack it with a singular focus.
The NOAA magnitudes are satellite xray measurements. There are ground measurements and aurora sightings from the 1859 Carrington event, and depending on the specific measure it is on the high end to somewhat above other events. An aurora in 1872 apparently was visible from lower latitude. It seems that the Carrington is near the top but not substantially stronger than other events in historical past, and that on some measures another event within that period exceeded it. It occurred during a very active period of several weeks as was Oct-Nov 2003.
http://www.leif.org/research/1859%20Storm%20-%20Extreme%20Space%20Weather.pdf
Your comments are more than welcome!
I recalled this post and now no one may see it, but a relevant update was published a few month ago. Melott and Thomas (Nature, 2012), found more evidence of an event in 774-775 CE, which based on terrestrial 14C measurements, was 20x that of Carrington in 1859. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v491/n7426/abs/nature11695.html
A version is available at arXiv for those lacking access to Nature: http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1212/1212.0490.pdf .
Wow! Thanks for that Scott! Might be worth a repost on that one.
A major solar eruptive event in July 2012: Defining extreme space weather scenarios
“… On 23 July 2012 solar active region 1520 (~141°W heliographic longitude) gave rise to a powerful coronal mass ejection (CME) with an initial speed that was determined to be 2500±500 km/s. The eruption was directed away from Earth toward 125°W longitude. STEREO-A sensors detected the CME arrival only about 19 hours later and made in situ measurements of the solar wind and interplanetary magnetic field. In this paper we address the question of what would have happened if this powerful interplanetary event had been Earthward directed. Using a well-proven geomagnetic storm forecast model, we find that the 23-24 July event would certainly have produced a geomagnetic storm that was comparable to the largest events of the 20th Century (Dst ~ -500nT). Using plausible assumptions about seasonal and time-of-day orientation of the Earth’s magnetic dipole, the most extreme modeled value of storm-time disturbance would have been Dst = -1182nT. This is considerably larger than estimates for the famous Carrington storm of 1859. This finding has far reaching implications because it demonstrates that extreme space weather conditions such as those during March of 1989 or September of 1859 can happen even during a modest solar activity cycle such as the one presently underway. …”
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/swe.20097/abstract
Another paper on the potent CME of 23 July 2012
“Simulation of the 23 July 2012 extreme space weather event: What if this extremely rare CME was Earth directed?” http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2013SW000990/abstract
…and another. I’ll just keep compiling things here.
“Observations of an extreme storm in interplanetary space caused by successive coronal mass ejections” http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2014/140318/ncomms4481/full/ncomms4481.html
This one actually got fairly wide popular press coverage. Here’s the UC-Berkeley press release which links to others. http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2014/03/18/fierce-solar-magnetic-storm-barely-missed-earth-in-2012/
Abstract of a paper from the 2014 Space Weather Workshop (SWW):
The Major Solar Eruptive Event in July 2012: Defining Extreme Space Weather Scenarios
Daniel Baker, University of Colorado, Boulder
A key goal for the space weather community is to define extreme conditions that might plausibly afflict human technology. On 23 July 2012 solar active region 1520 (~133°W heliographic longitude) gave rise to a powerful coronal mass ejection (CME) with an initial speed that was determined to be >3000 km/s. The eruption was directed away from Earth toward 144°W longitude. STEREO-A sensors detected the CME arrival only about 18 hours later and made in situ measurements of the solar wind and interplanetary magnetic field. We have posed the question of what would have happened if this huge interplanetary event had been Earthward direct ed. Using a well-proven geomagnetic storm forecast model, we find that the 23-24 July event would certainly have produced a geomagnetic storm that was comparable to the largest events of the 20th Century (Dst ~ -500nT). Using plausible assumptions about seasonal and time-of-day orientation of the Earth’s magnetic dipole, the most extreme modeled value of storm-time disturbance would have been DST= -1182nT. This is probably considerably larger than the famous Carrington storm of 1859. This finding has far reaching implications because it demonstrates that extreme space weather conditions such as those during March of 1989 or September of 1859 can happen even during a modest solar activity such as the one presently underway. We argue that this extreme event should immediately be employed by the space weather community to model severe space weather effects on technological systems such as the electric power grid.
PPT of presentation: http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/sww/SWW_2014_Presentations/Tuesday_Morning/Baker_July2012_SWW.pptx
NASA Science News coverage: http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2014/02may_superstorm/
Whoa!