I don’t actually have this title category, I just invented the title in honor of what I just stumbled across flipping through channels on DirecTV. I landed on the History Channel. Egads! Some diving guys on a boat haul around some scientist with a “magnetic anomaly detector”, which looks like a Radio Shack electronics kit gone bad, and are looking for black holes (yes the gravitational kind) in the Bermuda Triangle. Yes, really.
Here’s the DVD you can buy from the History Channel.
And here’s the program description:
Explore with us the wonders and mysteries of the Black Holes in our universe. Is it possible that areas on earth might, in fact, show black hole like tendencies?
We take a hard scientific look at an area known as the Bermuda Triangle to see if there are indeed any similarities between the supposed forces in the triangle and the destructive force of a black hole.
From a research boat trip through the triangle to interviews with scientists at the US Geological Survey, Harvard University, and the UK’s Cardiff University, we go far beyond the event horizon to explore the dangers in this area and what relation they might indeed have with its counterpoint in space.
===================================
There’s a line in the TV show where they say “…there’s no question that the climate can change suddenly around the Bermuda triangle”…so for these folks, I guess weather is climate. *Sigh* God help us.
The poor chumps at these prestigious organizations they brought in as experts probably had no idea that they’d appear in a dreckumentary that has the crew of the Minnow looking for black holes under the sea in the Bermuda triangle.
Of course the History Channel also shows “Life after people” and Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth“…so I suppose crap like black hole hunting in the Bermuda Triangle fits right in.
Sounds like something the Goons would have done if you ask me. They wanted to climb the highest mountain in the world by diving off a boat? One of them had a mole hill in a box from which he was going to make a mountain, sound familiar (CO2 ). They were way ahead of the History Channel and the IPCC for nutty ideas although you knew you could laugh at them without getting blown up (unless your name was Bluebottle).
I’m surprised they didn’t bring in NASA’s Goddard Space Center’s deputy news chief Rob Gutro to determine if there’s some special properties in those earthbound black holes that may allow better communication with the dead. After all, they’d only need to apply for a couple mil or so in stimulus funding. I mean Michael Mann got 500K in stimulus. So think of what you could do if you could talk to, and thence make the dead finally productive. Whew, would this moribund economy take off like a rocket.
Life After People is very entertaining and quite possible in parts. Also a good excuse for some nifty CGI!
I’m not quite sure what a MAD will show, if a mini black hole is actually detected! It sounds more like a treasure hunt (Nice big cannon should show up on a trace!) disguised as a black hole search!
Still, there are those who’ve theorised about the Tunguska Event being a mini black hole hitting the earth!
Must keep an eye on the next few editions of New Scientist.
Sounds like this is right down their wacko editorial alley these days.
Why they have to go all the way to the Bermuda Triangle for their research I really don’t know as there are plenty of corporations around with resident black holes as their shareholders will readily tell you.
Sigh!
How I would love a series of nice all expenses paid part time working holidays in some exotic locations and all on OPM.
Should have taken up some sort of science all those years ago instead of going farming.
Foolish me!
[ OPM = Other People’s Money]
Cassandra King says:
October 29, 2010 at 9:52 pm
Might as well have a inner inner core of pure gold, or maybe even platinum.
There was once a project called the Moho Discontinuity, where they were going to drill down to the layer separating the crust from the mantle and use a nuclear device to blast through it. Just to see what was on the other side, mind you.
Not black holes, but something far more difficult to understand?
“The Marques was one of 39 tall ships that took part in a transatlantic race in 1984. Shortly before dawn on Sunday, June 3, the ship sailed into a fierce squall north of Bermuda. The gusty weather was not unusual, but the wave that slammed the vessel broadside was. Crew member Philip Sefton, 22, described it as “a freakish wave of incredible force and size.” As the ship tipped over, a second monster wave filled the Marques with water, sinking it in less than a minute. Out of a crew of 28, only Sefton and eight others survived.”
http://www.seadercraft.com/sea-sci.html
Here’s a video clip of a freak of rogue wave in action:-
The most plausible theory to explain how these 100ft monster waves can suddenly appear out of the blue lies in the realm of deterministic chaos:-
“Instability and Evolution of Nonlinearly Interacting Water Waves” – 2006 – P. K. Shukla, I. Kourakis, B Eliasson, M Marklund and L Stenflo.
“We consider the modulational instability of nonlinearly interacting two-dimensional waves in deep water, which are described by a pair of two-dimensional coupled nonlinear Schrödinger equations. We derive a nonlinear dispersion relation. The latter is numerically analyzed to obtain the regions and the associated growth rates of the modulational instability. Furthermore, we follow the long term evolution of the latter by means of computer simulations of the governing nonlinear equations and demonstrate the formation of localized coherent wave envelopes. Our results should be useful for understanding the formation and nonlinear propagation characteristics of large-amplitude freak waves in deep water.”
Full paper here:-
http://www.pm.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/imperia/md/content/pressestelle/freak_waves.pdf
However, climatologists still seem to want to deny that deterministic chaos can change weather regime/climate, without the need to invoke the effects of CO2.
Jimmy Haigh says:
“(he still reminds me of nurse Gladys…) ”
Oh the good old days eh?
Not many of the subtle comedic calibre of Mr Baker around any more.
More the pity.
These findings will be incorporated in the next IPCC report.
Deniers and and followers of “voodoo science” can sneer if they like – if effects nothing.
Ongoing research at UEA is investigating the link between CO2 , Black Holes and the Bermuda Triangle!
Sometime I wonder about the c**p that some people are serious about.
Tonite on our dearly beloved Ozzie ABC was a “news” item on the 7 O’clock News about methane f**ting cows and how we could possibly put a stop to this flatulence – Yes you guess it AGW. Put a sock in it I say. What are the folks in 30 years time going to think about all of this rubbish.
Cheers.
Don’t they have some editor who is supposed to actually check what programs are being produced, ie that they are somehow related to actual “history”, and not fantasy? And aren’t they partly funded by the taxpayer? I have seen privately funded organisations do this kind of thing, but at least then it’s their own money they are losing.
Daniel H says:
October 29, 2010 at 8:58 pm
He’s looking in the wrong place. The black hole is located in New York City, above Tom’s Restaurant.
Well i sure fits the description of a black-hole, lots of stuff like grants and data flows in, but hardly anything gets out, only Hawking radiation gets out but wich by its nature does not contain information of that what flowed in.
And then, these black-holes keep gaining mass because the current universe is still to warm, its only when the universe has cooled enough that these massive black holes start to evaporate.
Looks like climatology to me 🙂
Slightly off topic: “Life after people” … if anyone wants some real, thoughtful fun on this I recommend Dougal Dixon’s “After Man” and , even more interesting, “Man after Man”.
Disastrous man made environmental pollution of the intellectual kind is lurking beyond the event horizon. Worse than we thought.
What about barycentrism? Or air pockets? Do we really know what’s in those “black boxes?” Roswell!
A few years ago, as I recall, Phillip Klass of Aviation Week did a study and determined that more aircraft disappeared over the continental US than in the Bermuda Triangle.
The inappropriate innuendos are overwhelming.
Thirty or more years ago, I read a paperback called something like “The Bermuda Triangle – the mystery explained”. Of course, although I’m sure I still have it, I can’t locate it right now so can’t give the reference.
As I recall, the author was a librarian who researched all the reports of then recent incidents and concluded that there was a rational explanation for all of them. He summed up by saying, and I paraphrase, that “the paradox of the Bermuda Triangle consists in presuming that there is a paradox”.
Spookily, I was only saying to someone in the pub the other night that we don’t seem to have heard anything about the Bermuda Triangle for what seems like years now – and see what happens!
rbateman says: October 30, 2010 at 12:46 am
….There was once a project called the Moho Discontinuity……..
Moho discontinuity was first defined by Croatian scientist Andrija Mohorovičić (in this case male not female). This layer is called the Mohorovičić discontinuity but because of the complexity of his name’s pronunciation abbreviated to Moho.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohorovi%C4%8Di%C4%87_discontinuity
(vukcevic)
But, but, what about the Vogon hyperspace bypasses. That is what the triangle is.
The most amazing thing? You have time to watch TV!
History – that’d be the antidiscipline whose tagline is: “We can tailor whatever you want to remember to fit any view”, right?
this is what happens when “science” turns into nothing but an opportunity for any promoter with a gadget and a video camera. My wife watches every ghost and haunted house show out there, and every wannabe Egon , Stantz, and Venkman has a got a boatload of gadgets to “prove” how “scientific” they are.
Sigh – no wonder so few people anymore can tell the difference between that and honest scientific work – so little of the honest work is on display today that no one even knows what it looks like.
Charlie Barnes says:
October 30, 2010 at 4:17 am
“Spookily, I was only saying to someone in the pub the other night that we don’t seem to have heard anything about the Bermuda Triangle for what seems like years now – and see what happens!”
That’s what you get for going to the pub Charlie! (I’m just jealous – stuck on a bleedin’ oil rig in the middle of the bleedin’ South China Sea a billion miles, and 3 weeks, away from the nearest bleedin’ pub…)
Brian Johnson uk says:
“Data from Lloyd’s of London records show 428 vessels were reported missing throughout the world between 1955 and 1975, and there was no greater incidence of events occurring in the Bermuda Triangle than anywhere else in the world.”
And many accidents and disappearances are dragged in to bolster the myth from many miles away from the “Bermuda Triangle” – on odd occasions not even from the same ocean!
This is typical of the History Channel. They are warmists over there. Any good alarmist story will get airplay.
I love this stuff, nothing better than watching a good snipe hunt.