Sunday, September 11, 2016

Science Which is Cool Even With No Idea How it Works

Through monitoring of antineutrinos, physicists research when the Earth will 'run out of gas' in terms of running out of the radioactive material deep in the Earth which fuels it.  (Science Daily: Scientists expect to calculate amount of fuel inside Earth by 2025)

Right off the top, what's an antineutrino and don't get tense since the OCD doesn't stretch that far and I really don't need to know.  Maybe you remember in "2012" the way the Earth went all to hell and those calculations were based on neutrinos but no mention of antineutrinos.  It resulted in some of the most ridiculous sci fi anyone ever saw but John Cusack and the kids made it cool.  The old Russian was great as well.  The old boy died saving his kids so you've got to love him, right?

Woody Harrelson also played one outstanding "2012" End of the Earth crazy.  Note:  the End of the Earth crazy was dead accurate and, regrettably, ended up actually dead since hanging about to watch Jellystone Park blow up wasn't such a good idea for his career plans.


So we have no idea about antineutrinos but they're the object in the current study and if even you understand and disagree with the results, likely you admire the scope.  This isn't just about charging the battery on that piece of hardware-compromised junk in your Prius but rather it's the charge for the entire planet.

The research is not toward, oh, gee, there's another asteroid to destroy us all.  CNN is kept around for those kinds of stories.  In this case, scientists make the measure simply because they can and likely they're trying to discover more about planetary physics because this is the closest planet to study and the only one on which they can rig such complex experiments.  The hardware requirements alone are punishing.

More likely than death tomorrow due to an asteroid, they will find, well, the Sun will blow up and eat the Earth in a few billion years so likely you will want a few billion years worth of fuel to last long enough to see it.  If you see Woody Harrelson around that time, it's a sign.


This is the finest kind of science insofar as they really don't know what they will find and it doesn't seem particularly useful for anything but that's when some other scientist connects this information with something seemingly unrelated and then interesting things happen which neither anticipated until that point.

It's that Eureka moment and it means the most to scientists and gold prospectors but some of us have a few Eureka moments as our lives blunder through existence.  Mine will make no difference to you and I don't know what yours may be so trying to list them would serve no purpose.  Much better to leave them in a dream world because ...

all together with the Ithaka theme ...

dream big, it just might happen.

(Ed:  do you get paid each time you write that?)

Buddy, if I got paid for it, I would be the rich bitch with the mile-long yacht which I never see because I'm too busy doing richie things, whatever they may be.

So, yah, dream big and hopefully cooler things than a mile-long yacht just might happen.

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