The Globe at CERN in Geneva.

Since we’re visitors to Geneva we got free public transport passes, so getting to CERN from our hotel (on the tram) was free. The Globe is an exhibit and one of the more distinctive buildings you’ll see when approaching the CERN complex in Geneva. To the lower left you’ll see a blue cylinder which is what the 27 diameter track of the main LHC collider ring looks like. The magnets, liquid helium-cooled super conductors and track through which the protons are accelerated are all housed in a tube this size. The tour started with watching a short, embarrassingly cheesy video celebrating CERN’s 50 year anniversary. Did you know that the current ring which houses the LHC was dug for a previous experiment called the Large Electron–Positron Collider? I didn’t. But that’s probably because I didn’t read the full Wikipedia article on the LHC before arriving.

After the video finished we met our guide for the tour, particle physicist and soon to be Deputy Physics Coordinator at CERN, Bill Murray. Bill spent many years designing and building some of the instruments used in the ATLAS experiment. The instruments he designed detect particles as they’re liberated from protons colliding at close tot he speed of light. Each of the 1000+ detectors produces (or can produce) 4 GB of data per second. Though as they only collect a tiny fraction of this information, the stuff they find interesting, their data requirements are slightly less daunting. According to Bill, the LHC produces 1% of all data produced by humanity each year. Impressive considering all the photos on Facebook, the videos on YouTube, the trolling comments on blogs.

Bill Murray of ATLAS telling us about the physics behind the proton collisions at the LHC.

On the day we visited the LHC was in shutdown. They have a conference in July so the experiments they’ll conduct this year will wrap up in June so they have time to analyse the data they’ve collected. The LHC will then go into an 18-20 month shutdown for upgrades and repairs before firing up to full power (7 TeV) in 2014. Bill said at the current energies (4 TeV) they should have enough collisions to detect the elusive Higgs boson. This surprised me, he said we’ll know whether the Higgs (or Higgses) exists and what its values are, by December.

The control room for the ATLAS detector.

We spent most of our time in and around the ATLAS detector buildings. The control room (pictured above) was pretty empty due to the shutdown, but still impressive all the same. This is where some of humanity’s greatest scientific experiments are being conducted and discoveries being made. The other major experiment at the LHC is CMS. The two large experiments are in competition and there seems to be a friendly rivalry between the two. Well, as friendly as cutting edge, competing scientific teams can be.

The ATLAS building complex. The actual detector is directly underneath the tallest building.

A mural showing the ATLAS detector at CERN. The mural accurately shows ATLAS at half scale of the actual detector.

At points through the tour, Bill asked if anyone had any questions. I decided to ask “what if you find there’s no Higgs boson?” He seems pretty confident there is one, or several, and that they’ll find it. He also mentioned that even though detecting the Higgs would be great, and help in improving the Standard Model, our understanding will still be incomplete. as we don’t know why there’s gravity. And that’s a question that’ll like be around for a good while yet.

CERN runs tours regularly and they’re free, but you’ll have to get in and book early if you want to go. I wouldn’t go all the way to Geneva to attend one (unless I was an absolute particle physics nerd), but if you’re nearby, it’s definitely worth a visit. Details can be found on CERN’s outreach page.

As impressive as the physics were, I was, as a geologist, also awestruck by the beauty of the Alps. So to finish off this post, I’ll leave you with the enviable view the physicists and engineers at CERN get to enjoy on a daily basis. It warms this geologist’s heart.

The Alps as viewed from CERN in Geneva

Episode 17 of the podClast concentrates on the 6.3 magnitude earthquake with struck Christchurch on 22nd of February 2011 which has tragically resulted in thousands on injuries and hundreds of deaths. We chat about the seismic setting and the human element of this disaster. Also discussed is the concept of the anthropocene, a proposed new geological epoch, age or chron (whichever it may be).

Participants

Chris - goodSchist (@yorrike)
Ron - Ron Schott’s Geology Home Companion Blog (@rschott)
Chris - Highly Allocthonous (@allocthounous)
Ian – Hypocentre (@hypocentre)
(links in brackets are Twitter feeds)

Christchurch / Canterbury Earthquake

The seismic data of the earthquake can be found at Geo Net and the USGS.

Chris’s post on aftershocks, triggered earthquakes and Christchurch’s future. And his post on possible seismic lensing.

The Australian ABC has interactive ariel shots before and after the earthquake.

Christchurch City Libraries have a brief rundown on historical earthquakes in Christchurch.

The GNS map comparing September’s 7.1 M quake and Tuesday’s 6.3 M quake, centered on Lyttelton.

Dave Frampton’s mother was caught in the collapsed PGG building. Dave tweeted right through the event. You’ll probably want to follow the sequence starting on the 22nd of February 1343, 1416, 1425, 1504, 1510, 1526, 1646, 1658, 1719, 1730, 1735, 1841, 1844, 1847, 1849, 1852, 1940, 23rd February 0620, 0628, 0730, 0850, 1108, 1117, 1256, 1315, 1346, 1348, 1357, 1436, 1445, 1446, 1444, 1510, 1544, 1614, 1649, 1651, 2136, 24th of February 0650, 25th of february 0029, 0831, 1053, 1733, February 26th 1533, 1609.

Help If You Can

Dave and his family were very lucky. Tragically, many other Christchurch families have lost homes, businesses, property and more seriously, been injured and lost loved ones. All the people in Christchurch are in need of help as they recover and New Zealand as a country starts the clean up and rebuilding of our second largest city. If you can spare a little money to help our plucky little nation out, please consider the following avenues for donation;

Firstly there’s The Official New Zealand Government Earthquake Appeal. Here’s a NZ Herald article about the appeal. This will help directly by helping rebuild Christchurch while those who are directly affected are given all the help they need.

The Red Cross in New Zealand is accepting donations. The Red Cross does fantastic work the world over, and has been working tirelessly in Christchurch.

And if you want to get a little entertainment out of your donations, this week all profits from the purchases of Chopper 2, by Dave Frampton (mentioned above) will go towards the quake appeal. You can get Chopper 2 on iPhone, iPad and Mac OS X.

The Anthropocene

The Wikipedia entry on the Anthropocene.

Andrew Alden at About:Geology has a good summary of the debate around the Anthropocene proposal. And details about how the term will appear in National Geographic next month.

You may also want to read up on the Geological Time Scale.

Contributing

If you’re keen to hear a specific topic talked about, or would like to join the discussion during the next episode, either leave a comment below or email chris [the at symbol] goodschist.com. You’ll probably also do well reading the details on joining the podclast. If you don’t have the time to join us but would like to contribute a 3-5 minute audio clip to the show simply record it, make sure it’s an mp3, and send it to the address above.

Credit

The intro and exit music was Roots Fi Cool by Burning Babylon.

Text Addresses

The post that accompanies this podcast can be found at http://www.goodschist.com/2011/02/27/the-podclast-episode-17/ or  and an archive of all podClasts can be found at http://www.goodschist.com/category/podclast/

It’s episode 16 of the podClast. This episode discusses the magnitude 7.1 earthquake which struck Christchurch New Zealand at 04:36  NZST on 2001-09-04. We discuss the damages, the geological setting and other bits and pieces relating to New Zealand seismicity.

Participants

Chris - goodSchist (@yorrike)
Ron - Ron Schott’s Geology Home Companion Blog (@rschott)
Chris - Highly Allocthonous (@allocthounous)
(links in brackets are Twitter feeds)

Christchurch / Canterbury Earthquake

The seismic data of the earthquake can be found at Geo Net and the USGS.

Chris has a good summary of the Tectonics of the M7 earthquake near Christchurch, New Zealand.

The New Zealand Herald has a really good summary of the facts surrounding the quake.

Pics of NZ EQ surface rupture – could be a clay cake deformation experiment http://bit.ly/bzAbz1 (via @eruptionsblog).

Nice map animation of the #nzquake main shock & aftershock sequence http://bit.ly/9TWoIc (via @Allochthonous).

Liquefaction caused mud/sand volcanos to erupt on the streets & gardens of Christchurch. Some nice photos: http://bit.ly/91DYaQ (via @Allochthonous).

More damage in NZ, bridge looks like an optical illusion http://twitpic.com/2l0ahe (via @herasings).

BGS press release on #nzquake has map of all >M6 quakes since 1843. Clear seismic gap on central Alpine fault http://bit.ly/9mQRKo (pdf, via @Allochthonous).

Nice summary of #nzquake from Prof. Euan Smith http://bit.ly/9tYmEe [esp. rupture characteristics, risk of future quakes] (via @Allochthonous)  - Euan was one of my lecturers when I did undergraduate geophysics.

Google Earth Visualisation of the #nzquake & aftershock sequence http://bit.ly/9Cpnog (via @Allochthonous).

There’s ariel footage of the damage area.

The NZ Herald says that 20% of houses in Christchurch are now uninhabitable.

Ole Nielsen talks about the Earthquake in New Zealand – and “Beach Balls”.

In case you’re wondering, no there haven’t been more earthquakes than normal recently.

Geographile has a post with a collection of pictures of damage.

And Cosmic Log talks about why the Christchurch quake in no Haiti.

And for a retrospect, Wikipedia has a list of all >M 6 earthquakes to have been recorded in New Zealand.

Contributing

If you’re keen to hear a specific topic talked about, or would like to join the discussion during the next episode, either leave a comment below or email chris [the at symbol] goodschist.com. You’ll probably also do well reading the details on joining the podclast. If you don’t have the time to join us but would like to contribute a 3-5 minute audio clip to the show simply record it, make sure it’s an mp3, and send it to the address above.

Credit

The intro and exit music was Roots Fi Cool by Burning Babylon.

Text Addresses

The post that accompanies this podcast can be found ahttp://www.goodschist.com/2010/09/07/the-podclast-episode-16/or http://bit.ly/aIhSXi and an archive of all podClasts can be found at http://www.goodschist.com/category/podclast/

Perhaps enamored by such “scientific” “triumphs” as The Core and 2012, the main stream media decided to employ superlatives, overtly panicky headlines and outright lies to gain hits and advertising dollars. Had they simply asked a geologist what to expect, perhaps this page wouldn’t have been necessary. The time for giving a pass for scientific ignorance and lying is over. If your organisation appears in the list below, which has been amassed by a massive range of geologists and other scientists online, you should be absolutely ashamed.

Reuters – Tsunami brings flooding to Australia (as it appeared on stuff.co.nz) – If you read the article, it says nothing of the sort. (via @Yorrike / www.goodschist.com)

Garry at Geotripper bemoans the expectation of the MSM with What? You Were Expecting This? (via Geotripper)

Erik at Eruptions posts Chilean earthquake fallout: MSNBC implies nature is “out of control” – which is an astonishing headline for MSNBC to post. Astonishing in it’s stupidity (via Eruptions).

Lockwood posted this staggering video of CNN reporter Rick Sanchez asking “9 Meters In English Is What?” It’s 9 meters you twit. Or for a rough calculation in feet times it by 3 (via Outside the Interzone). There’s a takedown of Sanchez at Phreatic: Anchorperson Science Stupidity Award.

Reuters (again) – reports that Japan nuclear plants continue ops after tsunami. The height of the Tsunami waves that his Japan? 0.6 metres (22 inches in English). What a pointless article. A more interesting article would have been along the lines of “Japan shuts down nuclear plants in preparation for tsunami,” but then again, that’d be a worthwhile thing to read about.

The Mirror is so blasé about the whole topic, it’s reports on the Millions in fear of tsunami that never came following Chile quake. Yeah. All of us who live around the Pacific look pretty stupid being prepared for a natural disaster.  Here’s a quote for that article:

They battened down the hatches or simply prayed after one of the planet’s most powerful earthquakes struck South America.

But experts’ predictions of huge waves sweeping across the Pacific and smashing 53 countries proved to be a false alarm last night.

[...]

California, Tonga, Samoa and New Zealand there were small waves and flooding with little damage. Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology cancelled its tsunami warning last night.

Really? Experts predicted that? I have to be honest, I have serious doubts you actually listened to an expert on the topic. And a false alarm? “There’s a possibility of large, damage-causing event happening in the coming hours” is a false alarm now? It’s not a real alarm unless it happens? It’s not a false alarm, it’s a triumph of scientific intrigue, investigation and monitoring which could have resulted in saving millions (MILLIONS!) of lives. And the last quoted line there – I live in New Zealand, there was NO flooding and NO damage, liars.

The Associated Press notes that it’s now necessary that Scientists defend warning after tsunami nonevent. Again, it was a warning and something that’s only been possible in the last 50 years. You’d prefer nothing? This story does have a good point at the end, though:

But Okamoto said his family understands the tsunami threat better than most because some of his relatives lived through the tidal surge in 1960. They remember how the water was sucked down the beach moments before the wave hit.

“My uncle was on the top floor when all the water washed away and all the kids ran out to grab the fish and before they could get back, the wave came. He was way up top, he saw all his friends get washed away and none of them were found, ever,” Okamoto said, as he sat with his father in a hotel lobby. “They did the right thing.”

And that’s the only conclusion you can reach on this story. There was a warning, luckily it wasn’t as bad as it could have been, but had it been the worst case scenario, you’d be thankful there was a warning at all. Perhaps the article should have been titled “Scientists pleased with warning system and response, urge countries at risk not to become complacent”.

Have you seen any other panic-inducing anti-scientific howlers like those above? Post a link int he comments section here, or Tweet it with the hashtag #tsunamistupid

Now I realise that many of my readers are experienced scientists with either undergraduate degrees or published research papers behind them, and this article is not for you. For those of you out there who may have a passing interest in science or geology and find yourself intimidated by the overwhelming barrage of terminology I tend to stuff into my articles, I thought I’d lay out some basics for future reference.

Today, it’s a pretty easy concept with far reaching and extremely important consequences, and that is the concept of an isotope.

Hopefully you know what an atom is. If not, there’s plenty of resources online to help you. Every atom, except your standard Hydrogen nucleus, contains both positively charged protons and neutrally charged neutrons. The chemical element an atom is, is dependent entirely on the number of protons. Hydrogen has one proton, Helium 2, Lithium 3, for example. What can vary, however, is the number of neutrons, and this variation in neutrons in an atomic nucleus is what defines an atom’s isotope.

Take Helium for example. Your standard Helium atom, such as the one many people would have inhaled, contains two protons (making it Helium) and two neutrons. This combination makes it a ⁴He, pronounced “Helium 4,” isotope. It’s 4 because that’s the total count of protons and neutrons in the nucleus: 2 protons + 2 neutrons = ⁴He. The nuclei of these atoms can be visualised like this (blue are neutrons, orange are protons):

Helium also comes in the form of ³He, which has two protons and one neutron. How and why there are different isotopes is due to the process which formed the atom in the first place, be it a big bang, the nuclear decay of bigger atoms, or the fusion of smaller atoms (in this case, two hydrogen atoms will fuse, in a process, to form Helium). ³He can be visualised like this:

Both ³He and ⁴He are what’s know as stable isotopes. This means they’re quite happy sitting in the 3 or 4 isotopic states for ever and ever without decaying, i.e, having sections of the atomic nucleus splitting away. Helium has 8 know isotopic states, but none of these 6 other isotopic states are physically stable, and tend to split into lighter Helium isotopes and eventually Hydrogen and a hail of neutrons after a very short amount of time. ⁵He, for example, has a halflife (the time it takes half of any given quantity to decay away) of 0.7 zeptoseconds, which is 7×10^-22, or 0.0000000000000000000007 seconds. That’s incredibly quick, meaning ⁵He, whenever it happens to form, isn’t around long enough to do anything before effectively exploding into two Hydrogen atoms.

These unstable isotopes, such as ⁵He or ²⁶Al (Aluminium is stable with 13 protons and 14 neutrons, i.e, ²⁷Al) and big, heavy elements like Uranium and Plutonium (which are unstable simply due to their large nucleus size) are not able to hold together their atomic nuclei and after a time, each atom does something called decay – i.e, split into smaller atoms by radiating away parts of their atomic nucleus (hence, nuclear radiation). This is the basis of nuclear power – as the splitting of Plutonium, Uranium and Thorium atoms into smaller atoms releases a lot of energy.

And this is where the really useful part of isotopes comes from. The decay of unstable isotopes is constant, predictable and measurable. After 0.7 zeptoseconds, half of all ⁵He atoms produced 0.7 zs previously, would have decayed. Guaranteed. So if you know the ratio of ⁵He produced in a reaction in relation to the quantity of something stable like ⁴He, produced in that same reaction, and you can measure them both, you can very easily work out how long it’s been since the reaction took place. That’s the basis radiometric dating, and the subject of a future science basics post.

This week’s podClast is the Geobloggers in the Pub: San Francisco edition. We talk in a slightly intoxicated way about what makes a geologist, human exploration of the planets, the importance of primary research and more.

Participants (links in brackets are Twitter feeds)

Chris - goodSchist (@yorrike)

Sandra – Looking For Detachment (@sfoxx)

Dave – Geology News (@rockbandit)

Andrew – About:Geology (@aboutgeology)

Cian – @cbdawson

Brian – Clastic Detritus (@clasticdetritus)

Next Episode

We like to have a new episode of the podClast every fortnight. So episode 15 of the podClast will be recorded from at 2300 GMT the 17th of October 2009. Either comment in this post if you’d like to join me, or if you’re on my email list, I’ll send you the details cloder to the 17th.

Contributing

If you’re keen to hear a specific topic talked about, or would like to join the discussion during the next episode, either leave a comment below or email chris [the at symbol] goodschist.com. You’ll probably also do well reading the details on joining the podclast. If you don’t have the time to join us but would like to contribute a 3-5 minute audio clip to the show simply record it, make sure it’s an mp3, and send it to the address above.

Credit

The intro and exit music was Roots Fi Cool by Burning Babylon.

Text Addresses

The post that accompanies this podcast can be found at http://www.goodschist.com/2009/10/03/the-podclast-episode-14/ or http://bit.ly/fefXt and an archive of all podClasts can be found at http://www.goodschist.com/category/podclast/

Bart Hanson (09:08 pm Sep 18 2009) This article epitomizes my disgust for experts who cannot tell us when the next huge natural disaster will hit and merely being in a particular place at that moment will decide who lives and who dies, but still we are being told not to be complacent? Like hell, get stuffed I’ve got better things to worry about.

You are beyond ignorant if you think the experts can even start to accurately predict earthquakes or many other major natural disasters. Even having a basic grasp of geology of seismology will tell you that these things are not predictable to within a useful accuracy or precision. We had a discussion about the dangers, and inadequacies, of earthquake prediction in Episode 11 of the podClast.

Other things science can’t do: accurately predict when the next killer asteroid will strike the Earth. The reasons are the same, there’s not enough data on either scenario in order to make an accurate, down to the minute-, hour-, month-, year- or decade-accurate forecast or as to exactly where either event will exactly occur.

The best geologists can do is look to the past, i.e, the old geology phrase “The past is the key to the future.” If a fault has ruptured roughly once every 100 years (and you’d be able to see this in the geological record), you should expect it to do so again in 100 years since the previous event. Or 150 years. Or 80 years. Earthquakes don’t run on a precision clock, and thus are never “early” or “overdue”. They occur when they occur.

If you’re caught out by having “better things to worry about”, Mr Bart Hanson, don’t go crying to others for food, shelter or clean water when you are caught in a natural disaster. Obviously the tiny amount of effort it takes to store some water, canned food and other supplies somewhere (details here at the USGS) is far outweighed by your necessity to spend time complaining on the internet.

Being prepared for natural disasters is important. Like not paying tax, not taking medication or indulging in smoking, you may think you’re getting away with it, but after a while, it could catch up with you, and the results could, literally, be deadly.

If you live in an earthquake zone, like I and many others do, the seriousness of being prepared cannot be overstated. Again, a list of the things you need can be found at the USGS. It’s not difficult and it could well save your life.

Although I haven’t posted here in a while, I’m still actively working on the site and this brand spanking new theme is proof.

Have a look around. If you feel like it, tell me of anything you spot that looks wrong either in the comments, or just by tweeting it to me on Twitter @Yorrike . If you’re feeling particularly adventurous, try using the “tweet this” link below and watch in delight as any tweets regarding this post will appear in the “tweetbacks” section of this post.

If you’re using Internet Explorer, you can wait a few days until I get around to fixing any display bugs you’ll no doubt be seeing (even though it’s all perfectly valid XHTML and CSS, which is displayed properly in Safari, Firefox and Opera).

freshphotons:
via USGS

freshphotons:

via USGS

You can have a look at all of my links, geology related and not, at yorrike.tumblr.com

Digest powered by RSS Digest.