Ask the Dreadlocked Science Geek

[Venus007]

Thanks AJ for your excellent replies. That quantum foam thing has tripped me up and you helped very much to clarify!

As to the antimatter, clearly I watch too much Star Trek.

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

As far as the anti-matter is concerned, it's not that ANY anti-matter would cause massive annihilation it's that sufficient quantities of it would. A small number of anti-protons encountering protons would annihilate one another and release a lot of gamma radiation. A large number of anti-protons would create a far larger release of energy with more destructive power. Fortunately, antimatter is very rare at this stage of the universe.

Thanks again!

PS this thread is SO giving me a brain wood

[Melissa]

I've always been curious....

Does "Electroweak Breaking" Affect the Macroscopic World?

[Rufusboi]

I love to cook and so I'm always interested in the science of food.

I've always wondered two things:

1. What is the science behind churning butter? How does the churning turn cream into butter? What are some of the molecular changes going on?

2. Who figured this out? How do you accidentally churn and churn cream until it becomes butter?

Rufus

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by Melissa

I've always been curious....

Does "Electroweak Breaking" Affect the Macroscopic World?

Yes and no. To understand why will require some deep discussion.

The electroweak force is what you get when the electromagnetic and weak nuclear forces get together. There are four fundamental forces (also known as fundamental interactions) in the Universe they are (in descending order of strength) :

Strong nuclear force
Electromagnetism
Weak nuclear force
Gravity

The strong force is what holds the nucleus of an atom together.
The electromagnetic force is the other force we're most familiar with--light, magnetism, radio, microwaves are all manifestations of the same thing--electromagnetism.
The weak nuclear force is responsible for atomic (beta) decay.
Gravity is, well, the warping of space-time by the presence of mass. (Yes,you actually warp space-time a very tiny bit)

At VERY high energies, not seen in over 12 billion years, the electromagnetic and weak forces unify into the electroweak force.

The reason why we don't SEE effects of electroweak breaking is because the universe has cooled down so much that the symmetry has already been broken. If the universe were MUCH hotter (100 GeV--Giga electron-volts) then we would observe the electromagnetic and weak forces as one electroweak force.

So does it affect the macroscopic world? Yes, in the sense that without it there would be fewer forces. But can we observe it affecting the macroscopic world now? No, because the Universe is too cold a place for it to happen except in VERY high-energy particle accelerators (the LHC at CERN being the one that can probe at those energies)


Cheers
Aj

[socialjustice_fsu]

Aj ~
I understand we are to experience a 'supermoon' the night of March 19, 2011.
I know this means the moon will be roughly 221,000 miles away from the earth plus it will be a full moon. I know this occurs every 18 years. Can you explain this event and it's impact, if any, upon our planet?
Signed,
The One Who Slept Through Astronomy

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by socialjustice_fsu

Aj ~
I understand we are to experience a 'supermoon' the night of March 19, 2011.
I know this means the moon will be roughly 221,000 miles away from the earth plus it will be a full moon. I know this occurs every 18 years. Can you explain this event and it's impact, if any, upon our planet?
Signed,
The One Who Slept Through Astronomy

Sorry that I missed answering this during my hiatus. I know the event has passed but here is the response even though it is late:

Orbits are stable but they are not perfect, which means that they are not precisely circular. Our orbit around the Sun is an elipsis and the Moon's orbit around Earth is also an elipsis. This means that there are points of the orbit where the smaller (less massive) object will be closer to the larger (more massive) object and points where it will farther away. The 'supermoon' is simply an artifact of orbits being elliptical.

Normally, the Moon orbits the Earth at ~250,000 miles. At its closest this distance closes to ~220,000 miles which is about 10% of the total distance. So what effects occur? As you know now, not a lot happened and this is what we should expect. Why? Well, even as the Earth's mass pulls on the Moon the Moon's mass pulls on the water. The reason this happens is that while most of the mass of the Earth is stationary, the waters are constantly in motion. This means that the Earth's center of gravitational mass has a slightly less firm hold on the water than on other objects. Because gravity is a field and all fields fall off in strength as an inverse of the square of the distance* from the source of that field the closer the Earth and the Moon are to one another, the more intense the tides will be on Earth.

As far as the full-moon, this has no effect because of why there are phases of the moon in the first place. The reason why there are phases is that the moon is tidally locked with the Earth. What this means is that the rotation of the moon on its access, is in synchronization with its rotation around the Earth. This means that the same face of the moon always points toward us. Since the same part of the Moon always faces Earth, when the moon is new it means that all of the solar light striking the surface of the moon is hitting the side pointed away from us and when the moon is full the solar light is hitting the part pointed toward us. To see how this works you can do a very simple experiment with you and two other people.

Have one person stand stationary at a single point in the center of the room with a flashlight--that person represents the sun. Now, you and one other person stand facing one another and move in sync in a circle around the person holding the flashlight. If you are the person in the position of the Earth you will always be looking at the face of the person opposite you. However, when the "moon" person has their face pointed toward the flashlight, you will see their face--this is a full moon when their face is pointed away from the moon you will not see their face. Obviously to get the best effect this should take place in a darkened room. Since the only difference between a full moon and a new moon is which face is getting the light there's no effects of a full or new moon on Earth because gravitationally they have not changed in relationship to one another.


Hope this helps.

cheers
Aj

*The inverse square law is a physical law that says that as the distance from a field increases the strength of the field decreases as a function of the square of the distance. So at twice the distance the field has fallen off not two times but *four* times the distance. At four times the distance from the source the strength of the field has fallen off to sixteen times the intensity which can be found at its source. This applies to all fields in all mediums. This means that it applies to gravity, sound and electromagnetic fields. So let's say that there is a field that, just for the sake of ease, we will say has a strength of '16' at its source. Every ten feet the strength of the field will decrease. This means that at 10 feet from the source it has a strength of four, at 20 a strength of 2, at 30 a strength of 1.4, at 40 feet a strength of 1.2, at 50 feet a strength of 1.1, etc. (I've rounded up just to make it easy) The next time you are driving and you hear a siren, pay attention to how quickly the sound becomes intense as the siren comes toward you and how quickly it falls off as the sound moves away from you. This is the inverse square law in action, the very same thing happens with light or any other field. Dropping a rock into still water will also give you the same effect.

[dreadgeek]

June:

Actually, this is not quite correct. The Earth forms and then over a period of time, gets bombarded by comets (which is where the most likely came from). Now, as far as mass being added by the living things actually that's not the case. All of the mass in your body and in the bodies of other living things was already present on the planet. Here is where the conservation of energy comes in. Right now, chances are, one of the oxygen atoms you've just inhaled was breathed by a Caesar, or some Roman slave from the time of Caesar. All of the activity you've spoken of--comets and asteroid collisions notwithstanding--redistribute the mass of the planet without actually adding or reducing the total mass.

Originally Posted by June

Dear Giver of Science Wood, (Hah!)

Okay, secondary to worrying about the sun exploding in my lifetime, is this 'nother thing.

So, the earth gets formed and begins cooling, and then condensation occurs and eventually, we get a weather system that creates rain, then over time, the oceans get filled up and the original land masses begin tearing apart slowly and clusters of cells begin evolving into different species. Yadda, yadda.

The original earth mass gets added on to. Millions of years of vegetation and decay, birth and death of humans, animals and plant matter -- All of this 'stuff' adds to the total weight of the earth, right?

Strictly speaking, we should talk about the *mass* of the Earth and not its weight. The weight of an object is a function of the gravitational field the object is in. So if you are, say, 180 lbs on Earth on the Moon you would weight just 30 lbs. So in order to talk about the weight of the Earth we would have to know what gravitational field we're talking about. The mass of the Earth, however, is more or less a constant. We gain trivial amounts of mass from dust blown at us by the solar winds and we gain slightly more (but still trivial) amounts of mass from asteroid impacts (large ones actually cause us to lose mass).

But, my real question is: Could we at some point create so much flotsam and jetsam here that it actually will slow down our rotation, creating longer days and nights or other more catastrophic events?

Actually, the Earth IS slowing down but not because of its mass. Remember that any body in motion will continue in motion unless acted upon by another force. The Earth's rotation is slowing down but not because of OUR mass but because of the mass of the Moon. Some of the energy of Earth's rotation is transferred to the Moon. There is also friction from space dust.

It will take a few billion more years before a day on the planet gets appreciably longer though.

Cheers
Aj

[Linus]

Ok. I need to know. Is there a true scientific reason for the level of stupidity on Fox News?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/0..._n_817723.html

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by Linus

Ok. I need to know. Is there a true scientific reason for the level of stupidity on Fox News?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/0..._n_817723.html

Okay, now I'm back.

Here's why O'Reilly is wrong (I know shocking!):

1) "How did the Sun get there?" Remember that gravity is the warping of space-time by mass and is ALWAYS attractive. So dust in our little corner of the Milky Way is attracted to other parts of dust. These bits of rock and dust start to clump together and orbit one another. The more matter that gathers, the more mass and therefore the more matter that is attracted. At some point *enough* mass is collected that it begins to compress at which point a critical mass is formed and a star is born! That's a LOT of mass but we have caught Nature in every stage of that act in the last 50 years or so.

2) "How did the Moon get there?" The early solar system was a chaotic mess. Not ALL of the material in the solar system went to making the Sun, some of it went to make planets. When the Earth was very, very, very young (less than a billion years old), it collided with something that smaller than the Earth. It would have been a glancing blow but it would have torn the smaller planet apart. When it reformed the Earth had a convenient large moon. How do we know? For one, our rotation is not perpendicular to the plane of our orbit. The Earth is actually tilted at 23 degrees (which is why we have seasons). That kind of thing strongly suggests an impact that knocked the Earth off of a perpendicular axis of rotation. (This has happened to at least one other planet, Uranus, which actually is tilted 90 degrees so, unlike the other 7 planets, it doesn't have a north or south pole but a East or West pole) Our moon actually stabilizes our rotation along with creating the tides.

3) "Why doesn't Venus have that?" We don't know why Venus doesn't have a satellite but it doesn't. Not every planet can be in the position to have a satellite.

4) "Mars doesn't have that?" Mars has two moons Deimos and Phobos. Most likely these are asteroids that were captured by the planet (Mars has a mass similar to Earth's)

I think that just about covers it.