It would be perfectly reasonable to ascribe errors to experimental error since an accurate clock was only developed much later and the standards of weight and length were actually not standard.
The Flat Earth society
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mikewint
Captain
Indeed it would BUT by the very standards of the scientific method a Theory is disproven as soon as ONE exception is found and verified. But we are dealing with Human Beings here and when a man has spent years on a Theory that produces close results we hang onto it and ascribe the exceptions to human/instrumental errors which are, of course, very real.
Scientific history is replete with such universal acceptance of wrong theories because they were close.
All experiments produce close results, even calibration of scientific equipment produces close results, if you demand exact results then industry stops. The equipment available in the sixteenth century and the few people in the world who knew what the discussion was actually about cloud the issue. At the time people still believed in biblical creation and even biblical floods
We now understand what causes them (volcanoes are not Vulcan's forges) but it may be a long road to accurate prediction. We are well on the way to predicting where, but not so much when.
Newton was wrong about time. It was Clerk-Maxwell's ideas about electromagnetic radiation (the so called second unification, of electricity and magnetism) that led Einstein towards the concept that time was relative and not absolute. Einstein realised that there was a fundamental contradiction between Newton and Clerk-Maxwell, one he solved with his theory(ies). There is now a contradiction between Einstein's theories and those proposed by quantum mechanics and physics requires another unification.
Unified Field Theory anyone? A doff of the cap to Clerk-Maxwell in the very name. He also sported an absolutely splendid beard, any Victorian gent would have been proud of it
Cheers
Steve
We now understand what causes them (volcanoes are not Vulcan's forges) but it may be a long road to accurate prediction. We are well on the way to predicting where, but not so much when.
Newton was wrong about time. It was Clerk-Maxwell's ideas about electromagnetic radiation (the so called second unification, of electricity and magnetism) that led Einstein towards the concept that time was relative and not absolute. Einstein realised that there was a fundamental contradiction between Newton and Clerk-Maxwell, one he solved with his theory(ies). There is now a contradiction between Einstein's theories and those proposed by quantum mechanics and physics requires another unification.
Unified Field Theory anyone? A doff of the cap to Clerk-Maxwell in the very name. He also sported an absolutely splendid beard, any Victorian gent would have been proud of it
We only know what volcanoes are and what has led to any particular eruption which is like accident investigation. Earthquakes are similar but they happen all over the world all the time, the question is always will anybody die. Early records of earthquakes in UK are almost completely confined to damage to cathedrals or churches, these were the only early buildings that can be damaged, the others were wattle and daub huts that no one cared about anyway. The UK is subject to much seismic activity but it is such a low level no one knows or cares. Forecasting volcanoes and earthquakes is not a fruitful activity there is no guarantee in science that we can, and what is required is to forecast activity that will cause fatal structural damage.
Newton was no more wrong about time than anyone else since there was no accurate means of measuring it and many of his contemporaries considered a day was a constant because God created it.
mikewint
Captain
Fruitful?? to whom? You confuse me as you seem to be both pro and con at the same time. Science has never offered a guarantee of anything useful/fruitful. Theoretical science is by its very nature a "Pie-in-the-Sky" activity with unknown applications and/or even usefulness, BUT...
In 1900, Planck THEORETICALLY deduced (from the selective colors given off by heated objects) the relationship between energy and the frequency of radiation, essentially saying that energy could be emitted or absorbed only in discrete chunks which he called quanta. This in turn gave Einstein, in 1905 the tool to publish his paper on the photoelectric effect (another multimillion dollar industry), which proposed that light also delivers its energy in chunks, in this case discrete quantum particles now called photons. Then in 1917, Einstein proposed that besides absorbing and emitting light spontaneously, electrons could be stimulated to emit light of a particular wavelength.
Almost 40 years were to pass before these theoretical constructs would be further developed.
On April 26, 1951: Charles Hard Townes of Columbia University in New York conceives his MASER (Microwave Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation) idea while sitting on a park bench in Washington.
Inspired by Townes paper, Herbert J. Zeiger and graduate student James P. Gordon were able to demonstrate an actual working MASER at Columbia University. The ammonia maser, the first device based on Einstein's predictions, obtains the first amplification and generation of electromagnetic waves by stimulated emission. The maser radiates at a wavelength of a little more than 1 cm and generates approximately 10 nW of power.
1955: At P.N. Lebedev Physical Institute in Moscow, Nikolai G. Basov and Alexander M. Prokhorov attempt to design and build oscillators. They propose a method for the production of a negative absorption that was called the pumping method.
1956: Nicolaas Bloembergen of Harvard University develops the microwave solid-state MASER.
Sept. 14, 1957: Townes sketches an early optical maser in his lab notebook.
Nov. 13, 1957: Columbia University graduate student Gordon Gould jots his ideas for building a LASER in his notebook and has it notarized at a candy store in the Bronx. It is considered the first use of the acronym LASER. Gould leaves the university a few months later to join private research company TRG.
1958: Townes, a consultant for Bell Labs, and his brother-in-law, Bell Labs researcher Arthur L. Schawlow, in a joint paper published in Physical Review Letters, show that MASERs could be made to operate in the optical and infrared regions and propose how it could be accomplished. At Lebedev Institute, Basov and Prokhorov also are exploring the possibilities of applying MASER principles in the optical region.
April 1959: Gould and TRG apply for LASER-related patents stemming from Gould's ideas.
March 22, 1960: Townes and Schawlow, under Bell Labs, are granted US patent number 2,929,922 for the optical maser, now called a LASER. With their application denied, Gould and TRG launch what would become a 30-year patent dispute related to LASER invention.
May 16, 1960: Theodore H. Maiman, a physicist at Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu, Calif., constructs the first LASER using a cylinder of synthetic ruby measuring 1 cm in diameter and 2 cm long, with the ends silver-coated to make them reflective and able to serve as a Fabry-Perot resonator. Maiman uses photographic flashlamps as the LASER's pump source.
July 7, 1960: Hughes holds a press conference to announce Maiman's achievement.
November 1960: Peter P. Sorokin and Mirek J. Stevenson of the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center demonstrate the uranium LASER, a four-stage solid-state device.
December 1960: Ali Javan, William Bennett Jr. and Donald Herriott of Bell Labs develop the helium-neon (HeNe) LASER, the first to generate a continuous beam of light at 1.15 μm.
1961: LASERs begin appearing on the commercial market through companies such as Trion Instruments Inc., Perkin-Elmer and
Spectra-Physics.
December 1961: The first medical treatment using a LASER on a human patient is performed by Dr. Charles J. Campbell of the Institute of Ophthalmology at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center and Charles J. Koester of the American Optical Co. at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan. An American Optical ruby laser is used to destroy a retinal tumor.
October 1962: Nick Holonyak Jr., a consulting scientist at a General Electric Co. lab in Syracuse, N.Y., publishes his work on the "visible red" GaAsP (gallium arsenide phosphide) LASER diode, a compact, efficient source of visible coherent light that is the basis for today's red LEDs used in consumer products such as CDs, DVD players and cell phones.
Early 1963: Barron's magazine estimates annual sales for the commercial LASER market at $1 million.
June 26, 1974: A pack of Wrigley's chewing gum is the first product read by a bar-code scanner in a grocery store.
I could go on and on..It's difficult to think of a field in which LASERs are not used in some manner
Mike, I am not arguing against science and research just saying that forecasting is not a fruitful activity. People have forecast a big earthquake in both California and Japan since I was a child. Actually they have had a few big earth quakes and what difference has it made? Yes buildings are generally better but still in the same place. People want to know about a big earthquake hitting a large population centre, but if they were ever told Tokyo will be hit next year by a 9.0 earthquake what would be done? As with weather forecasts people only remember when it is wrong.
Well, that's almost the situation we have here, so I can tell you what is currently being done.
We're well overdue for a rupture of the Alpine Fault here in New Zealand - capable of an M8+ earthquake, so not a 9, but certainly big enough to cause major, widespread devastation.
1. New buildings are built to earthquake code, existing buildings are being upgraded.
2. Emergency services have response plans in place
3. Community response plans are in place
4. People get mentally prepared
Forecasting isn't about preventing something from happening, and with natural disasters, generally exact forecasting isn't available, so its about preparation and response rather than prevention.
That was my original point, if Tokyo ever got hit by a 10.0 earthquake the of course many people made the wrong choice or decision, until that time measures will be taken to minimise the risk when everyone could live somewhere else but maybe make less money.
Yes, and this isn't 'fruitless', quite the opposite in fact.
Robert Porter
Senior Master Sergeant
Mainly due to the need for access to navigable waterways for trade historically humans have settled coasts and rivers, and the fertile volcanic soil keeps large populations centered in volcanically active areas. This is an oversimplification but the point I am trying to make is that most modern cities and population centers were picked due to reasons that no longer may be valid, but they leave those populations in high risk locations. Rising sea levels, volcanoes, and earthquakes are all present near most large population centers. The ability to accurately predict earthquakes and eruptions is certainly desirable. Japan has one of the best tsunami warning systems in the world and their population generally takes the risk seriously and acts appropriately when needed. I honestly can't see San Francisco evacuating in anything like sufficient numbers even given sufficient warning. Mainly due to a lack of belief in the consequences. It always surprises me that people would knowingly put themselves and their families in high risk locations yet freak out over manageable and well understood risks like flying.
None of the four points you posted have anything to do with prediction. From UK the earliest records are of damaged cathedrals which would lead one to conclude its best not to build huge bell towers. The UK makes a half decent job of predicting weather but they are surrounded by weather, they rarely predict the really serious events and no one would abandon their home or business for months based on their forecast.
I worked for a while in Japan and it was noticeable that the normal warning about fire in hotels was replaced by "what to do in an earthquake" good advice because there was a tremor while I was there, it is normal. Many countries have moved their capital cities and many cities have withered, I cant see why a political decision isnt made to move from the dangerous to the safe.
They are a result of the predictions. The thing is that EQ's aren't predicted with 100% accuracy, they are just given possibilities, which scientists openly admit to. Did you realise that typically when thunderstorms are predicted, that translates to a 30% possibility? same thing, just lower numbers.
We can't prevent these events, just prepare, and you prepare more for those events that are most likely to happen.
You are mistaken. Newton was fundamentally wrong about the very nature of time which has nothing to do with the measurement of elapsed periods or the relative accuracy of any kind of chronometer.
He thought that time flowed at a constant rate throughout the universe, and it does not.
Cheers
Steve
mikewint
Captain
Wow, the Weather Guys on TV, military, and all those commercial weather forecasters working for outdoor venues are gonna be real sorry to hear that. pbehn, man has been "predicting" the future since Ugh first stepped out of the cave. The ultimate test of any Theory is its ability to predict a future outcome.
In today's world computer "simulations" do that very thing. Auto makers, aircraft designers, boat builders, e.g., can try many different configurations without having to resort to the time and money consuming prototype stage. Naturally the "simulation" isn't the real world and its ability to "predict" is limited since many of the real world events we'd like to model, like weather, are governed by Chaos Theory.
So like weather "forcasting" there are simply too many "initial" conditions that are unknown or just slightly off, that can cascade to cause massive end effectsm the so called "Butterfly Effect".
Try hitting a golfball EXACTLY the same way twice in a row!
Robert Porter
Senior Master Sergeant
I will have you know I hit it the same way every time. Every ball I own has been struck exactly the same way, right into the water "feature".
Mike I was talking about volanoes and earthquakes. It has already been forecast that there will be earthquakes in Japan and California, in fact they happen almost daily it is merely a question of scale. It has also been forecast that statistically "one is due" what is done with this information? Unless someone ca forecast perfectly accurately in the weeks months and years ahead no one will take any notice because it costs too much. Improved building standards help but do not solve the issue and they are not research into forcasting but the way earthquakes happen.
Volcanic eruptions have already been predicted, not exactly, but within a time frame of days. Ongoing research is establishing more and more measurable activities within a volcano that are precursors to an eruption. There are many different classes of volcano, and within each class there are significant variations, none of which makes the job any easier.
At the moment we are further away with earthquakes. There are models which predict where an earthquake is likely based on various means of measuring the build up of stress within a fault, but when the fault will 'let go' and cause an earthquake is still unpredictable. There certainly is a great deal of research devoted, ultimately, to predicting earthquakes. You have to understand the how to stand any chance of working out the when.
Let's bear in mind that the people living in Pompeii and Herculaneum had no idea that Vesuvius was a volcano at all. I imagine they were rather more surprised by the eruption, explained in the only terms they knew, than would be the modern population of Naples, who will have seen all the documentaries about the ancient eruption and be familiar with complicated ideas and concepts like pyroclastic flow. It might not save them if there is ever a repeat of that type of eruption!.
Cheers
Steve
At the moment we are further away with earthquakes. There are models which predict where an earthquake is likely based on various means of measuring the build up of stress within a fault, but when the fault will 'let go' and cause an earthquake is still unpredictable. There certainly is a great deal of research devoted, ultimately, to predicting earthquakes. You have to understand the how to stand any chance of working out the when.
Let's bear in mind that the people living in Pompeii and Herculaneum had no idea that Vesuvius was a volcano at all. I imagine they were rather more surprised by the eruption, explained in the only terms they knew, than would be the modern population of Naples, who will have seen all the documentaries about the ancient eruption and be familiar with complicated ideas and concepts like pyroclastic flow. It might not save them if there is ever a repeat of that type of eruption!.
Cheers
Steve
mikewint
Captain
Really a distinction without a difference. Just as with weather accuracy depends upon the input data, i.e., better data better prediction.
The problem with Volcanoes & Earthquakes is that they are underground and therefore precursor data is difficult to find and measure.
Let me post this again:
We don't know how the Earth works: Let's lurch back to a grander scale. No human, or robot, has ever physically traveled deeper than a few miles into the Earth's crust, everything else is extrapolation and interpolation from 'remote sensing' and clever physical analyses. It took us a ridiculously long time to figure out that the outer planetary skin is moving and sliding around; plate tectonics was not generally accepted until the mid-20th century! We're still not sure exactly how the inner dynamo works, how rolls of convecting, conducting material in the outer core generate our planetary magnetic field. There's also so much mess after 4.5 billion years of geophysics that some of our best information about the planet's origins come from meteorites and the cratering of other worlds - outsourced. Speaking of other worlds, we're not even sure we understand where the Moon came from, maybe it was a giant impact, maybe not. For an allegedly clever species on a small rocky planet this is a bit of an epic fail.
Earthquakes are very difficult due to their location deep within the Earth's crust and perhaps deeper. But there are a number of promising approaches being developed:
1. Unusual Animal Behaviour:
It is a well established fact that animals are endowed with certain sensory perceptions denied to human beings. Some of the animals have much better power of sniffing, hearing, seeing and sensing than the human beings. The unusual behaviour of animals prior to earthquakes received wide publicity after the Haichang earthquake in Liaoning province of China, in February 4, 1975 was successfully predicted.
The Stanford Research Institute, California, under the 'Project Earthquake Watch' has a network along the San Andreas Fault. This group keeps a watch on the behaviour of about 70 animal species. Dr. B.G. Deshpande has compiled a list of 87 animals which have been watched all over the world and whose behavior might sense as an advance indicator of impending quake.
2. Hydrochemical Precursors:
Chemical composition of underground water was observed on a regular basis in seismically active regions of Tadzhik and Uzbekistan. These observations yielded following results.
(i) Concentration levels of dissolved minerals and gaseous components remained almost constant during seismically inactive period.
(ii) An appreciable increase in concentration of dissolved minerals was noticed 2 to 8 days before an earthquake. Variations in level of underground water, the pressure of artesian water, the discharge of water sources and temperature of underground water were also noticed during this period. These variations are large in the event of a strong earthquake.
3. Temperature Change:
There seems to be some relation between temperature and earthquakes. A considerable rise of temperature by 10°C and 15°C was reported before earthquakes in Lunglin in China (1976) and Przhevalsk in Russia (1970). The epicentral distances of these earthquakes where observations were taken in hot spring/well were 10 and 30 km and precursory periods were 42 and 72 days respectively.
4. Water Level:
There are drastic changes in water level in several wells just before a major earthquake. There was a fall in water level a few days before the Nankai earthquake in Japan (1946). Rise of water level by 3 and 15 cm was reported before Lunglin (China) and Przhevalsk (Russia) earthquakes.
Similarly, water level rose by 3 cm a few hours before the earthquake in Meckering in Australia (1968). In China rise of water level in wells was observed before earthquakes of Haicheng (1975), Tangshan (1976), Liu- quiao and Shanyin (1979).
5. Radon Gas:
Radon is a radioactive gas which is discharged from rock masses prior to earthquake. It is dissolved in the well water and its concentration in the water increases. Such an increase was reported in Tashkent in 1972 where increase in concentration varying from 15 to 200 per cent was noticed about 3 to 13 days prior to an earthquake.
In China, 50% and 70% increase in radon concentration was reported 18 and 6 days respectively before the Tangshan (1976) and Luhuo (1973) at Langfang and Guzan stations which were located 130 and 200 km epicentral distances for two cases. In 1995, a correlation in radon anomalies at four sites in Kangra and one site in Amritsar with the time of occurrence of Uttarkashi earthquake (1991) was reported.
6. Oil Wells:
Large scale fluctuations of oil flow from oil wells prior to earthquakes were reported in Israel, northern Caucasus (Europe) and China. These earthquakes which occurred in 1969, 1971 and 1972 gave rise to increased flow of oil before their occurrence. It has been suggested that when the tectonic stress accumulates to a certain level, the pore pressure within a deep oil bearing strata reach its breaking strength causing oil to sprout along the oil wells.
7. Theory of Seismic Gap:
Seismicity gap is a region where earthquake activity is less compared with its neighbourhood along plate boundaries. Soviet seismologist S.A. Fedotov studied the seismic record of 12 large earthquakes which rocked northern Japan between 1904 and 1963. By plotting the size of each tremor- struck area, he found that each quake segment abutted the next contiguous one without overlapping, as if each deep seated crack had been shut off by a barrier at the ends of the fracture zone.
Each large earthquake was in a segment that was quiet for the last 39 years or so. Fedotov predicted that those segments which were quiet for some time will be hit by earthquake sooner or later. Three of these blocks in Kurile Island were struck where according to Fedotov an earthquake was due. Thus evolved the theory of seismic gap in earthquake prediction.
Based on this theory Dr. Kiyo Mogi of Tokyo succeeded in predicting a few earthquakes in Japan. Three geophysicists—Masakazu Ohtake, Tosimatu Matumoto and Gary V. Latham—working at Taxas University's Marine Science Institute had predicted a major earthquake in southern Mexico around the town of Puerto Angel based on the theory of seismic gap. On 29 November, 1978, a severe earthquake measuring 7.9 on the Richter scale with an epicentre within a kilometre of the predicted site struck the area.
8. Foreshocks:
Generally major earthquakes are preceded by minor shocks known as foreshocks. These foreshocks provide valuable dues to the occurrence of a strong earthquake. Some of the earthquakes have been successfully predicted on the basis of study of foreshocks. The Haichang earthquake in China (February 4, 1975) was predicted by studying the increased seismicity from December 1974 to February 1975.
The Oaxaca, Mexico earthquake of November 1978 was also successfully predicted on the basis of foreshock observations. Foreshocks have been detected a few days to a month in advance with the help of closely located seismic stations in Himachal Pradesh for several earthquakes like Anantnag (1967), Dharmasala (1968), Kashmir (1973), Kinnaur (1975) and a few others. Uttarkashi earthquake of October 20, 1991 was preceded by foreshocks on October 15 and 16 with magnitude larger than 3.5 on Richter scale.
9. Changes in Seismic Wave Velocity:
We know that P, S, and L waves originate from the focus of an earthquake. P and S are called body waves because they travel through the body of the earth, while L waves are known as surface waves because they move along the upper crust of the earth. P waves are faster than the S waves and reach seismographs first.
The time lag between the arrival of P and S waves is called lead time. Russian seismologists found that this lead time began to decrease significantly for days, weeks and even months before the earthquake. But just before the quake hit the area the lead time was back to normal. A longer period of abnormality in wave velocity presaged a larger quake.
Taking the cue from the Russians, Lynn Sykes, Scholz and Aggarwal conducted laboratory, experiments on rock samples in 1973. These experiments showed abnormal change of ratio of velocities of P waves and S waves before the earthquake.
This ratio is expressed as Vp/Vs. The duration of Vp/Vs anomaly depends upon the fault or dimensions of the aftershock area. After the Garm region of the former USSR, Vp/Vs anomalies were noticed in Blue Mountain Lake earthquake in the USA in 1973. The velocity anomaly period for this earthquake was about 5 days and the decrease in velocity was about 12 per cent.
Similar decrease in velocity ratio was reported before the damaging Haichang (February 4, 1975), Songpan-Perigwu (August 16, 1966) and bungling (1976) earthquakes in China. In Japan, 7 to 40% decrease in the velocity ratio ranging from 50 to 700 days before the main earthquakes were recorded. In Tehran 14% decrease in velocity was reported 1 to 3 days before three earthquakes in 1974.
