Some Knowledge

Kristen Byrnes wrote a long article last year about global warming and solar radiation.  She comes to the conclusion that the observed variations in global temperature are not due to changes in the level of atmospheric CO2, but are instead due to the changing solar radiation coming from the sun.

The Maunder Minimum was an observed minimum in sunspot activity that corresponded to the Little Ice Age in Europe and the world.  Instead of attributing global temperature increases to the burning of fossil fuel, this paper and website attempts to show that global temperatures correspond to changes in solar flux.  If you have some time to read a very detailed presentation, check this out.

It just seems obvious to me that the premise of this paper is correct.  Even Homer Simpson could understand this:  “Sun heats up, earth heats up.  Sun cools down, earth cools down.”

The energy that drives the weather events in our atmosphere all comes from the sun.  It is known that the energy output of the sun is not constant.  If the sun were to disappear the atmosphere of earth would condense and the planet would be a dark, frozen ball of ice.  In five billion years when the sun goes red giant, earth will probably burn up and evaporate into space.

It’s my opinion that global warming is a political issue designed to scare people and get them ready for the time when fossil fuel will be rationed and tightly controlled.  It is a fact that petroleum reserves are running out.  End of the world scenarios are popular in the entertainment industry.  Instead of trying to scare people that the world is going to end, scientists should be spending their time trying to think up new sources of energy so we do not have to rely on a limited resource.

Recent news has highlighted the release of bisphenol A from common polycarbonate plastic containers.  This has become a health concern for people, in that a lot of food is packaged in polycarbonate bottles and containers.  Baby bottles, plastic utensils, and other food containers are made of this plastic.  Such containers are labelled with a number 7 on the recycling symbol on the bottom of the package.

Here’s a site that goes into depth about polycarbonate plastic and bisphenol A.  While this site states that bisphenol A is not a problem at the levels observed being released from plastic containers, some people still have doubts as to the safety of this contaminant in their food.  Here’s another site that has a different outlook on the toxicity of this chemical.

There’s no doubt that small amounts of bisphenol A are present in a large number of people in the world from exposure to this chemical in the food chain.  What is not known is the effect this chemical has on health.  Bisphenol A mimics the effects of estrogen in the human body.  Such hormonal effects can be a source of concern for people who might consume small amounts of this compound.  Studies have linked bisphenol A to breast and ovarian cancer.

If you don’t want to be exposed to this chemical you should avoid eating foods or drinking beverages that come in plastic containers marked with the number 7.  Also, if you do consume foods from these containers, do not heat the foods in the containers, as elevated temperatures soften plastic and hasten the release of this chemical.

This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve read all day.  Apparently some person has come up with a design for a Fisher-Tropsch reactor that is supposed to turn garbage and organic waste into gasoline.  If you like to be confused and amazed that somebody would figure this all out, click here.

I seriously doubt this will ever solve the energy crisis.  Setting up a lot of small, high-temperature, high-pressure syn-fuel plants is not going to save the earth.  If this process were really that economic the petroleum companies would have set up plants long ago to turn coal into gasoline.  In fact, the Nazis used this same technology in World War II to provide motor fuel for their armies.

It’s well-meanimg that a person would want to save the earth from high fuel prices.  It might be nice to live in a world where we can throw our trash into a pipe and cook it and make fuel for our motor vehicles.  The problem is that small scale chemical plants are very inefficient and high pressure, high temperature reactors such as this are inherently dangerous.  It is probably a good thing that this person never constructed his own device.  It is probably a good thing that his instructions are so vague and confusing that no person could follow them to build this thing.

I have to say that I just don’t believe this whole Texas Tea Theory.  The best thing to do with garbage is either to burn it for energy or bury it in a landfill and let bacteria ferment it into methane.  Cooking trash up into synthetic gasoline would consume more energy than the trash contains.  This is why people don’t do these things.  In theory we could turn all our coal into gasoline by a similar process, but the cost would be pretty high.  Setting up your own chemical plant is not the answer to high fuel prices.

Here’s a site that shows what an e3 sparkplug looks like and what it claims to do.  I find information like this interesting.  Once again some company has come along with some gadget that it claims will improve your gas mileage and all for a high cost.  If spark plug design affected mileage that much the manufacturers would put these plugs into the cars when they were built.

Here’s the deal.  The plug sends a spark through the compressed fuel and air mixture, lighting it up.  As long as the mixture burns the plug has done its job.  If the mixture is not lit you will feel the engine miss and lose power.  The spark plug could have any shape, as long as it lights the fuel and does not fall apart, that’s all it has to do.

The only time different spark plugs will affect your mileage is when the old ones are fouled and are no longer lighting up the cylinder.  You will want to put the proper plug into your engine.  This means the plug the engine was designed to use.  Using the wrong sparkplug can damage your engine.  The shape of the ground lead on the plug is not going to change your mileage.  The way you drive affects mileage.  The design of the car affects mileage.  The quality of fuel affects mileage.  The spark does not propel the car forward, burning gas does that.

Gasoline is expensive these days, and the price keeps going up.  If you are worried about low fuel mileage, sell your hummer and buy a nice little four cylinder car.  Spending lots of cash on dubious products that claim to save you money will only get you deluded and burned.

This is the number one search term on Google Trends today so far.  There seem to be a lot of people interested in making their own biodiesel fuel.  Save yourself the trouble of searching and go here if you are interested.

Be sure to read the FAQ on this site if you are really considering making your own diesel fuel.  There is a lot of interesting information on the process you will go through to get a batch of biodiesel together.  You might be sure to notice that biodiesel will gel in cold weather, rot the rubber hoses in your fuel system, and cost you some tax money even if you make it yourself.

I don’t know why anyone would want to make their own diesel fuel.  Yes, the price is high, but so is the cost of vegetable oil.  It costs money for pure methanol, and you have to put up with safety issues in handling caustic chemicals and heated vats of oil.  This is not the answer to rising fuel costs.  Cooking up your own methyl ester of lard is not the way to get your big rig across the USA any cheaper.

I am surprised that you don’t need some kind of license to run this kind of a chemical plant.  There are dangers involved in any chemical reaction, and especially so when you might not even know what you are doing.  Selling equipment like this to people who probably did not even take high school chemistry is irresponsible.  This is probably why Freedom Fuel America does not exactly sell this system.  They direct you to some mom and pop shop that sells the reactor.

I’ve heard of people cooking up biodiesel in old water heaters.  I’ve heard of people building biodiesel plants in old chicken coops.  This is not the stone age.  If you want to go into the fuel business, hire a chemist and raise the capital for a full scale safe operation.  If you can save some money on a small time setup like this, imagine the profit potential of a bigtime business.

Sure, old fryer grease can be got for free from restaurants.  How long will that last once everybody has a biodiesel reactor in their garage?  Not long.  Believe it or not there is no such thing as a free lunch.  Renewable energy sources like vegetable oil still cost money and consume petroleum in their production.  Spending a lot of time and effort to make low-quality fuel substitute is not going to make you any more free.  If you want to save money on fuel costs, don’t drive so much.

Plasma guns and rifles, even cannons are staples of science fiction.  As a weapon, they are more than likely to stay fictional.  There are certain problems involved in trying to make a usable and functional weapon that uses packets of plasma as a projectile.

Plasma is basically superheated, electrically ionized gas.  It takes a lot of energy to create and accelerate a plasma to any levels that will do damage to a target.  Such high energy levels must be in the form of electrical power to generate the plasma.  It is just not possible to find an energy source that will deliver this kind of power and still be portable by a man.

The energy contained in the plasma bolt is also a problem.  High speed jets of gas do not project far in an atmosphere.  Even in space the superheated and accelerated plasma will tend to disperse as it travels from the weapon to the target.  There is not a lot of mass in a gas.  Even at high speeds the plasma packet will not have the momentum to deliver a shocking blow to the target.  The amount of energy contained in any bolt of plasma will not have much effect on a target that has even the slightest kind of armoring.

A plasma gun is like a peashooter without the pea.  Little puffs of glowing hot air are simply not going to carry enough energy to a target to do any real damage.  Any plasma gun that will ever be developed will have less than a meter range in the atmosphere, and probably less than ten meters range in vacuum.

The discharge of a plasma weapon makes a colorful display for computer games.  It is flashy and dramatic.  In reality, a good plasma rifle should shoot a small bolt of highly focussed plasma directly to a target without a lot of wasted energy spent in fireworks.  If you could generate a small torus of highly pressurized and fast plasma it might actually do some damage to a target if it carried enough energy.  Chances are this is never going to happen.

Modern plastic products come embossed with a recycling number.  This is a number between 1 and 7 which indicates the type of plastic used to manufacture the item.  It has generally been reported that numbers 3, 6, and 7 plastics have the potential to release toxic chemicals into any food product contained within them.

When you buy a container of some product it is a simple matter to turn the product upside down and read the number inside the triangle of arrows.  Numbers 1, 2, 4, and 5 are considered safe, as there has not been any chemical leaching detected from these materials.

Number 3 is polyvinyl chloride, or PVC.  PVC releases dioxins and can leach vinyl chloride and plasticizers in use.  These chemicals are potent carcinogens.  Number 6 is polystyrene, which can leach styrene, which has been shown to be a carcinogen and disrupts hormone levels.  Polycarbonate, which is number 7, is supposed to be the worst of these three.  It has been shown to leach bisphenol A, or BPA into hot liquids.  Most baby bottles are made out of number 7, and this could be a source of concern.  While bisphenol A has a low acute toxicity, there is concern about it because it mimics estrogen in the human body.  Studies of bisphenol A exposure in animals have shown links to breast and prostate cancer at levels very much below what the government considers safe.

To minimize any harmful effects from plastic containers, do not heat foods or liquids in plastic containers.  Look for the more inert plastics when you purchase items.  It might be advisable to purchase foods in glass, metal, or paper containers.  With most of the food sold today coming in plastic packaging it might be hard to find an alternative.  Still, with a bit of safe handling and remembering not to heat foods in these containers, any risk can be minimized.

Science is taught in schools.  There are lots of science programs on TV.  How much do people really know about the methods of science?

The first part of the scientific method is observation.  You find some object, phenomenon, or creature and observe it.  You take notes on what it looks like, what it does, what its properties are.  You might take samples of this object for your records, or you might take a photograph.  These observations, measurements, categorizations are all the first steps in doing science.  You can not use science on something if you have no data on that thing.  In general, you will want to get as much data as you can in the collection phase of your work so that you have material for the next phase.

Analysis.  Once you have made some observations it is time to analyze the data.  This is where an education really helps.  You might use mathematical methods to categorize your data.  You might make a database of chemical constituents of some object.  If you are studying stars or planets you will want to analyze the spectra and other observations to find out what they are made of.  In the analysis phase is where you will be arranging your data to support the hypothesis you are going to make about your subject.

A hypothesis is some reasoning that tells you something about what you are studying.  The data might suggest this hypothesis, but your underlying theory should be logically consistent.  Your hypothesis should tell you something about your subject and be useful in predicting the behavior or properties of similar objects.

If you are studying something that can be experimented on the next step is to do an experiment.  The hypothesis will need to be tested.  Certain sciences such as astronomy are not necessarily the best areas for doing experiments.  We cannot create a star in the lab.  We can however send space probes out to perform better observations.  In any case, your experiment should be set up to either prove or disprove your hypothesis.  If you are studying the motion of electrons in a magnetic field you will want to know the field strength, the electron velocity, and deduce any forces encountered by this particle.  If you are studying how some plants manufacture some chemical, you will want to monitor chemical production in this plant under different conditions.

Once we have proved our hypothesis with an experiment it is time to write up the paper and submit it for publication.  There are many scientific journals that publish original research.  Include observations, hypotheses, theories, and experiments in your report.  You publish your work so other scientists and people in general can learn what you found out in your studies.  Publishing is an important step in the scientific method that is often overlooked in schools.

Using the scientific method to study the universe can tell us many things about the world and creatures around us.  Science is the search for truth.  Any fake data or wrong assumptions made in science degrade the value of the research to any person referring to that work.  The scientist will try to get to the truth of the matter and will not be manipulating his data to support his own prejudices or beliefs.  This is why the scientific method is so powerful, it tells us real things about the way the world works.

Chi is a life force that is supposed to permeate and animate the universe.  It is a concept of Chinese philosophy.  In the times before western science became the predominant explanation for the phenomena of the observed universe, the concept of chi provided a theoretical construct which served to explain observed nature.

One of the fundamental questions asked by man is what separates living creatures and makes them different from inanimate objects.  The qualities of metabolism and motion are seen in many natural objects.   Living creatures must take in food and water and must breathe air in order to survive.  It is a simple assumption to suppose that there is some substance in the food and air that serves to animate living creatures.  This life force is named chi and has had important consequences in man’s interpretation of the physical world.

Chi was seen in the motions of the planets, in the movements of clouds and water, and in the animations of creatures.  The concept is very similar to the modern concept of energy.  Chi was seen as a subtle fluid which flowed throughout nature and which was tapped by anything in motion.  It was postulated that chi flowed in the meridians of the human body, and that disruptions in this flow caused disease.  Much of Chinese medicine was based on restoring the natural flow of chi with herbs or acupuncture needles.

In the modern world the theories of chi are usually discounted because chi or subtle energy can not be directly observed or measured.  If chi is thought of as being the energy of a system, then this difficulty disappears.  The entire modern world runs on energy, and as a system it can be seen as a living entity.  Certainly society is composed of a myriad of seperate living beings who all co-exist on planet earth.

While the concept of chi might be seen as an outmoded model for the ways the universe works, the exercises and therapies developed using the theory of chi still provide a valid source of health and vitality in the modern world.  Simple, easy, repeated motions might not draw chi from the universe, but they do provide therapeutic motions for the health of a body.  Exercises such as tai chi and chi gung are still practiced by many people.

Because a theory has been superceded by modern understanding does not mean that the observed results of applying this theory are invalid.  There may be better, more scientific understandings of disease and health and motion in the modern world, but the theory of chi still holds as a practical understanding for how things operate in the universe.

What I want to know is not “will the earth be hit by an asteroid” but “why do they have so many TV shows about the earth being hit by an asteroid.”  Seriously, I was watching the tube last night.  It seemed like a perfectly normal TV show about space.  Then it sunk in.  The show was all about how the dinosaurs went extinct from a giant meteor impact.  Why does every science show on TV have to have some kind of cataclysmic explosion?  Why does every program have to have some end of the world scenario?

I think it’s a pretty safe bet that at some time in the future earth will be hit by a big meteor.  It may be millions of years before this happens.  It may happen tomorrow.  We simply do not know about all the rocks that are flying around in space.  Can you prepare for a giant asteroid collision?  The answer is no.  You can not even do anything about the fact that space junk falls on earth.  There is a constant stream of meteors that collide with earth.  Most of them are really small, like grains of sand.  Why does the media have to make such a big deal about something that is not likely to happen?  The government even set up a website to answer people’s questions about asteroids striking the earth.   I blame Hollywood.  They make movies about disasters all the time.  Why not make a movie about rocks falling from the sky and killing people?  So what if it almost never happens.  It might happen.

Yes, there are asteroids whose orbits cross  earth orbit.  Yes, it is possible that a very large rock could strike the earth.  Yes, it has happened before.  It is more likely that you will be struck by lightning.  You don’t see Hollywood making many movies about the dangers of lightning storms.  If something is not very likely to happen and there is nothing you can do about it anyway, why worry?  Why consume so much of the mass media with nonsense about what a disaster it would be if an asteroid struck the earth?  It’s all silliness.

Every time I see one of these programs it reminds me of the children’s story about Chicken Little and the sky is falling.   Are people really so simple that they would get all worried about an asteroid or a meteor?  This is just another case of the mass media trying to control the population’s thought patterns.  Maybe Hollywood has a stake in selling meteor insurance.  I don’t know.  It would be nice if they started making science programs about science and stopped making apocalyptic nonsense about disasters that will probably never happen.