Scotch Tape emits X-Rays: film at 11

22 10 2008

Now here’s a science story you don’t hear every day. Simple scotch tape pulled off it’s reel in a vacuum makes x-rays powerful enough to image this finger.

NEW YORK -AP- Just two weeks after a Nobel Prize highlighted theoretical work on subatomic particles, physicists are announcing a startling discovery about a much more familiar form of matter: Scotch tape.

It turns out that if you peel the popular adhesive tape off its roll in a vacuum chamber, it emits X-rays. The researchers even made an X-ray image of one of their fingers.

Who knew? Actually, more than 50 years ago, some Russian scientists reported evidence of X-rays from peeling sticky tape off glass. But the new work demonstrates that you can get a lot of X-rays, a study co-author says.

“We were very surprised,” said Juan Escobar. “The power you could get from just peeling tape was enormous.” Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 51 Comments »

Categories : Science, fun_stuff

Sea ice area approaching the edge of normal standard deviation

22 10 2008

10/31 NEWS: See updated graphs here

UPDATED: 10/22/08 The new images below are even closer

Watching arctic sea ice rebound this year has been exciting, more so since a few predictions and expeditions predicated on a record low sea ice this past summer failed miserably. I’ve spent a lot of time this month looking at the graph of sea ice extent from the IARC-JAXA website, which plots satellite derived sea-ice extent. However, there is another website that also plots the same satellite derived data, the Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center of Bergen Norway, and they have an added bonus: a standard deviation shaded area. For those that don’t know what standard deviation is, here is a brief explanation from Wiki

…standard deviation remains the most common measure of statistical dispersion, measuring how widely spread the values in a data set are. If many data points are close to the mean, then the standard deviation is small; if many data points are far from the mean, then the standard deviation is large. If all data values are equal, then the standard deviation is zero.

In a nutshell, you could say that any data point that falls within the standard deviation area would be considered “within normal variances” for the data set. That said, current sea ice extent and area data endpoints (red line) are both approaching the edge of the standard deviation (gray shading) for both data sets. Here is sea ice area:

Click for a larger image

And here is sea ice extent: Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 266 Comments »

Categories : Science, sea ice

Contributor/Blogger Prognostications of Future Temperature Trends

22 10 2008

Guest post by Bob Tisdale

Near the current end of the thread titled National Post: Thirty years of warmer temperatures go poof Allan asked, “What is your global average temperature prediction for the next several decades?”  There were a few responses, including Allan’s. I sent an email to Anthony, letting him know I believed it would make a fun thread.  He agreed and asked me to write up a starter post to get the ball rolling.

So, here’s Allan’s original group of questions:

What is your global average temperature prediction for the next several decades?
- warming or cooling?
- for how many years?
- on what technical basis?
- for the dataset provided (UAH Global anomaly) how would you extrapolate, if at all – linear, polynomial, or ???
- does anyone believe that a linear extrapolation is valid? If yes, how do you reconcile with the cyclical nature of the PDO and global avg. temperatures?

Let’s hear what you believe, not just what you don’t believe.

Thanks, Allan

I didn’t want to repost the comments of the others without their okay.  If they wish, they can add them and identify themselves, or you can go back to the thread and see who they were. Here’s my response, edited with the correction already included:

Allan: I’ll join in the predictions, but I’ll use the slow cycle in the Southern Ocean SST anomalies as my base.

Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 117 Comments »

Categories : Science, climate_change