Isn't wind and hydro energy just secondary solar energy?

I don't think that is correct. Nuclear decay is what I understand to be the primary heat source. And volcanism is also driven by the production of helium in this decay as I understand it. Of course, I haven't seen an energy balance that shows the relative magnitudes so perhaps I'm mistaken.

I did read a story a year or two ago about some fellow who had a theory about an impressive natural nuclear reactor forming at the core of the planet and kicking into a high power mode at times. I think it used a measured volcanic helium isotope ratio as part of the support for his model.

 

It couldn't have been the new LHC machine on the Swiss-French border that operated for a few days last September. It broke before it was brought up to the point of creating any collisions. The restart is this coming fall. And though it is the most powerful existing collider, even it is many orders of magnitude smaller than necessary to make a black hole the size of the Planck minimum, which is thought by many to be the smallest possible size for anything.

If any existing collider can create a black hole -- I think 'nano' or 'femto' is more descriptive than 'micro' -- then some important hypotheses can already be tossed aside.

 

Once again,,,, semantics.

What are we trying to prove here,,, aside from the sense that some have too much time on their hands?!

Are we trying to feel good about being green, or good for global warming, or trying to convince us as the American Petroleum Inst. is trying to that " we should drill more American oil?" Or as I heard(NPR 4/29/09) today that because the Arctic Ocean is realistically projected to be ice free in the summer season in the next 10-20 years it will make oil drilling in the arctic sea bed easier! How dumb is this,,global warming makes it easier to get more of the stuff that creates global warming! I get so sick of those that don't get it!

The only free energy is conservation!

Icarus

 

I have a question for you science type people.
If the moon exerts a pull on the earth which is doing work, creating heat on the earth, how long until the earth draws away enough stored kinetic energy from the moon that the moon is no longer orbiting the earth but because it has no forward motion the forces of gravity pull the earth and moon together? If the moon is making stuff happen on earth it must be taking energy from the moon.

Are we all doomed? The moon will crush a lot of stuff if it falls down!

 

The moon is getting farther away each century. You're safe

 

Great, it will be a race, to see if the moon pulls away before the new improved National Debt is paid off!!!

 

That's what they think. There is life beyond Hollywood.

Like a giant lung, breathing in and out over vast time scales. Or does time itself reverse on the way to the 'big crunch'?

Uh oh. If there's no such thing as a tame black hole, what's holding my filing system together?

 

The sun has an effect on tidal forces as well. This is why we see high high tides, high tides, low tides, and low low tides as well as the neaps tides. The ocean is affected by the particular alignment of the moon AND the sun. When the sun and moon's gravitational pull are combined we observe the highest and lowest tides, which are called spring tides (high tides). When the sun and moon's gravitational forces are perpendicular to each other, with respect to the earth, we observe neap tides (low tides) because the gravitational pull from the sun and the moon effectively cancel each other out, or almost anyway.. Changes in eathr's orbit will create variations in this pattern and we observe abnormally high and abnormally low tides as a result of the distance of earth to the sun and how that effects the gravitational force we experience.

Last I looked most of the heat generated inside earth's core was due to radioactive decay. This process was well described by Ernest Rutherford and explained why Lord Kelvin's estimate of the age of the earth based on its temperature was wrong due to not including the heat added by radioactive decay within earth's core (Kelvin was wrong for other reasons as well but this helped him maintain face). Radioactive decay of such elements as Potassium 40, Uranium 238 and 235, and Thorium 232 contribute over 80% of the heat generated in the earth's core. Other factors include residual heat from the forming of the earth but this may only contribute 7% or so. "Gravitational heat" due to the heavier part of the earth being pulled to the center while lighter parts slide past the heavier generated frictional heat and is considered a minor contributor. There is also latent heat but I don't have any real information on how much this contributes to the net heating effect.

My sources are genernally text books that line my bedroom wall as well as various documentaries and lecture series (I have over 400) and college courses. I'm not a geologist, oceanographer or a chemist though so I am open to corrections.

Earth - An Introduction to Physical Geology by Tarbuck and Lutgens
http://www.amazon.com/dp/product/0131438883?tag=priuschatcom-20 Thurman and Trujillo
http://www.amazon.com/dp/product/0077221222?tag=priuschatcom-20 Cunningham, Cunningham, and Saigo

 

As we all know, the moon is made of cheese. Should it manage to fall back to earth, it will destroy the cheese market. Who's going to pay for the stuff when you can pick it up anywhere for free? The bigger question is whether it will be crumbled or toasted.

Tom

 

Of course you could always become a "cheese moon is falling" skeptic and you will not be harmed simply due to the fact you do not believe in it.

 

There are two conserved quantities here, energy and angular momentum (i.e. spin). As energy is dissipated in tides (we extract some in tidal power stations, but far more is lost to friction), the Earth's rotational energy is reduced. But angular momentum of the Earth-Moon system must be conserved. It is conserved by the Moon getting pushed a little further away, which also takes more energy away from Earth's rotation.

We can waste all the the energy nature lets us get our hands on, but we cannot get rid of Earth-Moon angular momentum (not counting the trivial amounts sent away in satellite launches), so as long as Earth's rotation continues to slow down, the Moon will continue getting pushed up to higher orbit.

As the Moon gradually gets farther away, its tidal influence diminishes, drastically slowing the process. When Earth's rotation finally slows to match the Earth-Moon orbital period -- the Moon has already done this, which is why we see only one side of it -- the process stops.

The whole Moon will never escape, unless it gets hit by something from outside our system, such as a large enough asteroid, or extremely nasty solar winds when the Sun eventually goes Red Giant. But if we broke it into pieces, we could make some parts escape, while dropping other parts into lower orbit in order to speed up Earth's rotation.

 

The moon will escape. To avoid stealing energy from the earth, the moon would have to be in geosynchronous orbit, and it is much too far out for that. The earth effectively spins underneath the moon, where tidal forces exert drag on the earth and propel the moon forward. This can be easily quantified with conservation of angular momentum, but it may be easier to visualize using a simplified model:

Think of the moon as a water skier behind a big boat - the earth. Gravity is the tow rope. The water skier, in this case the moon, is cutting sideways across the wake. If the rope were fixed, the skier would go around in circles until drag slowed him down, but our rope isn't fixed. It is attached to one corner of the back of the ski boat, not the middle, and the boat is turning away from the skier. The boat keeps turning away and turning away, pulling the skier faster and faster.

This is what happens with the tidal forces on the earth. Gravity tries to pull the earth and moon together. Since they are not point sources, gravity works on all of the pieces independently. These tidal forces slow the rotation of the earth, but pull the moon forward. As a simple example, imagine two ropes stretching from the earth to the moon. One rope comes from the eastern horizon, the other from the western horizon. As the earth rotates to the east, the eastern rope becomes taught, pulling on the moon, while the western rope becomes slack. Replace the ropes with gravity and now you have it.

The earth's rotation slows down; the moon speeds up, which raises it's orbit. Eventually the moon achieves escape velocity and goes on its way.

Tom

 

Oh not, the sky is going away, the sky is going away!! Run for your lives!!

 

Pat, there is another theory: the moon isn't actually getting farther away. It's simply a matter of the laser reflectors left by the Apollo missions sinking into the green cheese.

Tom

 

The article I read had more statistical data to run through Hawking's formulas than the one below, but I believe this is the incident I was referring to. Note that they indicate that at the scales involved gravity isn't the most important force. It doesn't mention that Hawking's formulas would indicate that at these small scales the black hole would evaporate due to loss of matter through transfer and loss as Hawking radiation.


Last Updated: Thursday, 17 March, 2005, 11:30 GMT
E-mail this to a friend Printable version
Lab fireball 'may be black hole'

Creating the conditions for the formation of black holes is one of the aims of particle physics

A fireball created in a US particle accelerator has the characteristics of a black hole, a physicist has said.
It was generated at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) in New York, US, which smashes beams of gold nuclei together at near light speeds.
Horatiu Nastase says his calculations show that the core of the fireball has a striking similarity to a black hole.
His work has been published on the pre-print website arxiv.org and is reported in New Scientist magazine.
When the gold nuclei smash into each other they are broken down into particles called quarks and gluons.
These form a ball of plasma about 300 times hotter than the surface of the Sun. This fireball, which lasts just 10 million, billion, billionths of a second, can be detected because it absorbs jets of particles produced by the beam collisions.
But Nastase, of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, says there is something unusual about it.
Ten times as many jets were being absorbed by the fireball as were predicted by calculations.
The Brown researcher thinks the particles are disappearing into the fireball's core and reappearing as thermal radiation, just as matter is thought to fall into a black hole and come out as "Hawking" radiation. However, even if the ball of plasma is a black hole, it is not thought to pose a threat. At these energies and distances, gravity is not the dominant force in a black hole. The RHIC is sited at the Brookhaven National Laboratory.

 

You're correct! That's what I get for relying on 40 year old memories of science classes (then, again, 40 years ago what I said may have been what was taught!).

 

As the moon's velocity increases and the earth's rotation rate decreases, the energy transfer between the two also decreases. Eventually we will reach a steady state with the earth's rotation matching the moon's orbital period and also matching the moon's rotation. All three bodies will become "tidally locked", if I remember the astronomical term correctly.

BJJB

 

Due to the relative sizes of the bodies involved, the moon will reach escape velocity before the two bodies become tidally locked. If they were closer to the same size, then it would happen.

Tom

 

I'm thinking of LaGrange points and suddenly have a headache. Need a barley pop ....

 

There you all go again,,,, using science to explain stuff! Everyone knows that science is just the figment of pointy headed thinkers! Next thing you know you will be trying to convince me that global warming has some scientific basis!

Icarus