It doesn’t appear that British Petroleum caused the gulf oil spill through its own negligence; apparently it was just an unfortunate accident. Want to read more?
The Richter Scale Equation and Earthquakes
The Richter scale formula is a measure of ground movement at the epicenter of an earthquake. This Richter scale number can then be used to calculate the energy released from an earthquake.
- For example; the difference in power between the 8.8 magnitude earthquake in Chile and the 7.0 earthquake in Haiti is:
The Chilean quake had 63 times as much ground movement
And released 501 times as much energy.
You can see how this is calculated at the bottom of this post, in the section called “Comparing the 8.8 magnitude quake in Chile to the 7.0 quake in Haiti”.
- If you want to know how much power is represented by each order of magnitude of the Richter Scale, read the “What are the Energy Equivalents of different Earthquake Magnitudes?” section below.
- If you want to calculate the difference in power between any two earthquakes then read the ‘Calculating the Increase in Magnitude’ section below.
The bottom of this page has links to lists of recent earthquakes and earthquake maps.
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Proof of Global Warming; Whatever Happens Outside
An article in Time Magazine blames the series of blizzards that are hitting the East Coast on Global Warming. According to the article; “There is some evidence that climate change could in fact make such massive snowstorms more common, even as the world continues to warm.”
Note: As I write in all of my global warming posts; I am an agnostic about whether global warming is caused by humans, I just hate bad science and stupid journalism.
The argument made is that storm systems have gradually tracked to the north because of the warming earth and this has caused an increase in storm intensity during the winter months hence more blizzards (as reported in the National Journal of Predetermined Results). Want to read more?
The Mystery of Missing Matter
And, Now for something completely different.
Some of the best mysteries are scientific mysteries and the more scientists discover about missing matter in the universe the more amazing this all gets.
One of the most baffling mysteries of the last century is found in the field of Astrophysics and has to do with a paradox in the rotation of galaxies. The problem is that the stars on the outer edge of all galaxies are moving too fast to be constrained by the gravitational pull of all of the material in their galaxies. Those stars should be just shooting right into space. Want to read more?
The Earth with Rings like Saturn
Did you ever wonder what the Earth would look like if it had rings like Saturn does? Of course you did! Want to read more?
Life on Mars?
Back in the 1990’s a Japanese Polar Expedition discovered a Martian meteorite that fell to earth in Antarctica. This meteor was analyzed by some NASA scientists who raised the possibility that there were some Martian fossils imbedded in it. This meteor became a big media story when the results were published in the middle ‘90’s. Want to read more?
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