Josh Fink writes "A group of Dutch Scientists have recently released a study stating that they have found that changes in Earth's orbit around the sun are linked to mammal extinctions. From the article: '"Extinctions in rodent species occur in pulses which are spaced by intervals controlled by astronomical variations and their effects on climate change..." The cycles are associated with lower temperatures, changes in precipitation, habitats, vegetation and food availability which are the main factors influencing the extinction peaks, the study published in the journal Nature said.' So on top of worrying about global warming, it seems we should also worry about the physics that govern the orbit of Earth around the sun. Too bad we don't have a way of keeping the Earth in the same orbit/on the same axis of rotation."
600 million people were supposed to simultaneously jump [go.com] on July 20th to alter the earths orbit to prevent global warming. Only after the fact did anybody bother to tell us this could lead to our extinction. Oh no!
before anyone starts getting all 'see, all you global-warming believers, this is a perfectly rational natural explanation for the current warming trend,' the periods of these natural cycles are on the order of 1.2 and 2.4 million years. not exactly fast-acting.
It doesn't account for the massive extinctions such as the Permian. The arrangement of the continents also very likely either exacerbates or minimizes the effects of orbital variations. They also only studied a specific region in Spain (not to mention rodents in particular) which may have been especially prone to subtle climate changes. They need to study a wider geographic and species range.
Sure, but let's just say that rats aren't exactly a fragile, endangered species. They'll probably survive the next world war despite how practically every other species won't.
Yes, but if someone starts looking at actual science like this, they might notice that ALL the actual mass extinction events in earth's history are cooling events, not warming events. The warming (and increased CO2) means more food availability, more fresh water availablility, and more survivable habitats. The only downside is rising ocean levels, and that is only a downside if you either 1) own ocean-front property, or 2) are planning a trip from Russia to the Americas on foot.
70% of all vertebrate species died in under a million years, leaving fungi dominant. Something of a mass extinction event, eh? (In fact, Earth's worst mass extinction event.) Observe the big temperature spike at PETM. (Top right corner)
70% of all vertebrate species died in under a million years, leaving fungi dominant. Something of a mass extinction event, eh? (In fact, Earth's worst mass extinction event.) Observe the big temperature spike at PETM. (Top right corner)
Yeah.. so? In science, a person's agenda is irrelevant. The researchers can be pedophile Nazi cannibals for all the universe cares, but if their theory correlates with observable fact, their theory is worth taking seriously. Period.
There's way too much public discussion that treats science like some kind of popularity contest.. 'truth' is what the cool people say, and refutation from the uncool camp can be discarded simply by sneering at its source. People who engage in that kind of bullshit surrender the
Firstly, there is an upper limit (temperature-wise) in which humans can survive. There are areas near the equator which are beyond this limit now, and a slight increase in temperature would enlarge them considerably - possibly as far as Spain, or equivilant southwards.
That's absurd. There's no "areas near the equator" that are too hot for humans to survive. There's no such "area" anywhere on earth. Daily temps of 120+ are easily survivable - Las Vegas sees that regularly. See, humans have these things called "sweat glands". All they need is water and they can survive the heat.
But what if there's no water, you say? Well then, the problem isn't the heat.
That its perfectly fine for one side to have exceptions to issues the other side but the reverse is not true. My problem with the whole GW crowd is how they will quickly object or attempt to marginalize anything which doesn't support their view. At the same time any little piece of information which supports their view is held forth as indisputable fact.
Look, we don't know half of what we think we do. The one great thing about science in this day and age is that we are continously changing what we know as
We can barely predict the weather from day to day let alone week to week.
Someone needs a lesson in the difference between short term weather prediction and long term weather trends.
Here's a (probably flawed) analogy: I throw a rock through the air. Moment to moment, I can't predict the exact path that rock will take. A breeze, some dust in the air, an updraft, these things can alter the path of the rock. But ask me to tell you where it's going to land, and I can probably do a pretty good job.
before anyone starts getting all 'see, all you global-warming believers, this is a perfectly rational natural explanation for the current warming trend,' the periods of these natural cycles are on the order of 1.2 and 2.4 million years. not exactly fast-acting.
Though is is worth noting that something happened either to the earth's orbit or its speed of rotation in the 8th century BCE. History shows civilizations around the world dumping their 360-day calender at right about the same time after having used it for over 1000 years, followed by a struggle to come up with a 365-day one. Attempts to hand-wave this away as "silly ancients couldn't make an accurate calendar" or "it was just a ceremonial calendar" are clearly wrong. With a 5 day variance like that the calender would become 180 degrees out of phase in only 36 years-- within one person's lifetime-- so obviously someone would've noticed and adjusted it and not just left it alone for 1000+ years. As for the second, that ignores the entire purpose of the calender: agricultural planning. A calender so inaccurate you can't plant crops by it is worthless. No, clearly the mechanics of earth's orbit were altered. Probably not enough to make any significant climatic difference, but an orbital alteration nonetheless, and within recorded history. Worth keeping in mind lest people get the idea that we live within a static system
ah, it's amazing how so many conspiracy theories have been brought to my attention through slashdot postings. Apparently, ithis particular linked in with Christian eschatology [escapeallthesethings.com] or some such nonsense.
Might I point out that the Romans used an especially inaccurate calendar [wikipedia.org], and it was not until 46 BCE that the somewhat more familiar Julian system was adopted?
360 happens to be an easy number to use. It's not especially accurate, but correcting the error requires some knowledge of astronomy, as well a certain amount of political power. Now, it may be that a number of civilizations adopted a 365 day year at approximately the same time. Perhaps some of them were trading partners.
They figured a way to stop a Supernova, a change on Earth's orbit should be a piece of cake!
You can't stop a supernova, but if you're an action movie star you can outrun it.
Too bad we don't have a way of keeping the Earth in the same orbit/on the same axis of rotation.
You sir are shortsighted. Find someone to blame, add it to the party platform (either one, it doesn't matter) and then fund raise on it. Global Wobbling must be stopped!! We can stop it!!! It won't be stopped if party X get's/keeps control of Congress!!! The time to act is now!!
Please click here to donate 25, 50, 100, 1000 dollars to STOP GLOBAL WOBBLING. You will receive two complimentary pamphlets entitled "The Wobble, the Planet, and You" and "Why is Galileo weeping?". Both are packed with earth-shattering information to help you spread the news of this new threat to our precious freedoms and way of life.
You know how people suggest that having everyone jump at the same time would cause an earthquake?
If we all got on swingsets and swung at the same frequency, we could alter the rotation of the planet. Might even be able to adjust the orbit a little bit.
If Al Gore makes a slide show, I think it will convince enough people to actually do something...maybe make a movie like "Day Before Yesterday" or something.
More info in nature [nature.com]. It seems to do with something called Milankovich cycles [wikipedia.org]. But i guess 'wobble' is specific enough for stuff that matters.
The whole tone of this/. post freaked me out. There's no way for there to be 'irregularities' in the Earth's orbit without something with both really high mass and really high velocity interacting with the earth or the sun.
So I read up on Milankovich cycles, and it turns out it's just precession. It's perfectly regular, it's just that in the case of something the size & slow angular velocity of the earth, it takes a really long time to change.
When you spin a top, you can see the axis of spin describe a circle. This is precession.
Likewise as the Earth rotates, there is precession. Also, as the earth orbits the sun, there is precession. These have cycles on the order of tens of thousands of years. Both can affect the climate by changing the angle of sunlight. There are cycles on the order of millions of years long in which the two effects both affect the climate the same way, and so produce a bigger net effect.
I guess wobble is an accurate term, except that to me it implies something irregular. In a system as big and isolated as the Earth's orbit around the Sun, or the Earth's rotation, momentum is king, and very little could cause an irregular change. These changes are just precession, and they're perfectly regular.
I am not a physicist, but I do have a Bachelor of Science in Physics.
Even if we could affect a change in the earth's orbit around the sun, who's to say if that is a good thing? Might that not be akin to preventing all forest fires? Controlled burns are our way of preventing some large/catastrophic forest fires and lightning strikes are nature's way of doing it. What makes us think the "wobble" in our orbit isn't causing cyclical "refresh" events?
No, I'm not suggesting some diety is controlling things or that ZOMG WE R AL GOING 2 DIE or anything like that. Just saying we might not yet comprehend the consequences of making this "fix" change. Hell, we are still unable to predict the weather with any certainty more than a day or two out./shrug
...and asteroid impacts, close passes by rogue planets, ice ages, orbital wobbiling, development of nuclear weapons, and the occasional odd supernova in your immediate vicinity, you go on to develop advanced civilization and the Double Whopper with Cheese (tm).
Clearly, this is caused by the precession generated by all those people who are spinning in their graves. I say we dig 'em up and reverse their polarity.
That's not the Earth's orbit causing rodent extinction.
That was the mice [sadgeezer.com] rebooting the Earth while debugging it.
Since the users of our iPlanet are bailing out now without the system shutting down, I expect we're obsolete. Get ready to do your part for the firewall they turn us into.
We don't have animals in our climate model, but if you'd like to see how orbit effects climate, you can do so yourself.
The EdGCM [columbia.edu] project has wrapped a NASA GCM in a graphical interface. You can double-click to install, and if you'd like to turn the sun down a few percent or change the orbit, there are checkboxes and sliders. Press play, wait a while (hours to a day or so depending on your computer), and you can look at the results...
What if we solved global warming a few hundred years from now, reversed a lot of the temperature increases we found we are directly responsible for, and over that time the Earth's orbit/rotation changed such that an Ice Age was triggered? Oh noes! Suddenly global warming doesn't seem all that bad, does it?
Suppose again someone in charge actually accepted my supposition and decided global warming research was pointless.
Of course, the better known theory that an asteroid caused the dinosaur extinction 65 million years ago might also be related to changes in earth's orbit, no?
"...So on top of worrying about global warming, it seems we should also worry about the physics that govern the orbit of Earth around the sun. Too bad we don't have a way of keeping the Earth in the same orbit/on the same axis of rotation."
A link to the paper: Korycansky, D. G.; Laughlin, Gregory; Adams, Fred C. Astronomical engineering: a strategy for modifying planetary orbits. Astrophys.Space Sci. 275 (2001) 349-366 http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0102126 [arxiv.org] Abstract: "The Sun's gradual brightening will seriously compromise the Earth's biosphere within ~ 1E9 years. If Earth's orbit migrates outward, however, the biosphere could remain intact over the entire main-sequence lifetime of the Sun. In this paper, we explore the feasibility of engineering such a migration over a long time period. The basic mechanism uses gravitational assists to (in effect) transfer orbital energy from Jupiter to the Earth, and thereby enlarges the orbital radius of Earth. This transfer is accomplished by a suitable intermediate body, either a Kuiper Belt object or a main belt asteroid. The object first encounters Earth during an inward pass on its initial highly elliptical orbit of large (~ 300 AU) semimajor axis. The encounter transfers energy from the object to the Earth in standard gravity-assist fashion by passing close to the leading limb of the planet. The resulting outbound trajectory of the object must cross the orbit of Jupiter; with proper timing, the outbound object encounters Jupiter and picks up the energy it lost to Earth. With small corrections to the trajectory, or additional planetary encounters (e.g., with Saturn), the object can repeat this process over many encounters. To maintain its present flux of solar energy, the Earth must experience roughly one encounter every 6000 years (for an object mass of 1E22 g). We develop the details of this scheme and discuss its ramifications."
shows that for last 450,000 years Earth was mostly in the Ice Age, interrupted by 10,000 year long warm periods spaced 100,000 years apart. We are about 15,000 years into the last warm period on record.
Because of strong periodicity, the current best explanation of this cycle is by astronomical phenomena (Earth orbit/axis wobble).
This does not contradict global warming---it just shows that the climate is a very delicate balance between strong opposing phenomena; the point being that we should be real careful how we influence it.
Actually, this study isn't all that new. The globes tilt has been known to be linked to CO2 levels (and temperature) for a while now. The question is how do the effects of greenhouse gases put out by industry compare to this effect, and the answer is not so clear. Yes, obviously many scientists and virtually all non-scientists attribute all of our climate changes to to industry, but we need to remember to be rigorous on both sides of the debate.
In short, this is not junk science. And to claim so only show
Or....people, w/o a clue, are reading this and blowing it out of proportions by not keeping it in context. Changes to our atmosphere, because of orbital deviance, happens in the millions of years category.....changes in our environment, due to global warming is happening on a monthly/yearly basis.
So yea, if I edited portions of the article I could make it sound like the orbit change is the reason for global warming.... then again, if i took bits and pieces of the quoran (sp) I could tell people that All
Incorrect. Millions of football fans and fantasy football players sighed upon news of Roethlisberger's motorcycle accident, either in relief or exasperation. All that additional hot CO2 released into the atmosphere is dangerous, dammit!
I'm now physics expert, but I would certainly think a meteor slamming into the Earth with enough momentum could shift the orbit or tilt the axis. So the change in orbit might be a secondary effect to the impact, with the primary effects being the decrease in temperature due to ash in the air.
figuring a mere 60lbs per person, the 78,838,422,780 pounds landing on one side of the planet should have quite an effect.
Converted to kilograms, your figure works out to 3.5 * 10^10 kgs. Let's triple the weight to 180 lbs, and your figure becomes 1 * 10^11 kgs.
Now, the mass of the earth is approximately 6 * 10^24 kgs. That's 6 * 10^13 bigger. Let's see what a similar ratio would look like applied to a 100 kg (220 lbs) human. Something that is 10^13 smaller would be approximately 1 microgram. The avera
We did... (Score:3, Funny)
We did until George Bush ordered it to be defunded.
Re:We did... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re:We did... (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
But a Grass Roots Movement May Kill Us! (Score:3, Funny)
Stupid people are funny.
BTW (Score:2, Informative)
Re:BTW (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:BTW (Score:4, Interesting)
Not saying this necessarily applies; just pointing out that just because a process may be gradual does not mean that its consequences can't be sudden.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:BTW (Score:4, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian-Triassic_ext
70% of all vertebrate species died in under a million years, leaving fungi dominant. Something of a mass extinction event, eh? (In fact, Earth's worst mass extinction event.) Observe the big temperature spike at PETM. (Top right corner)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/1b/65_
Thank you and goodnight.
Parent
Re:BTW (Score:4, Funny)
The world's worst extinction event is the Permian-Triassic extinction event (251 million years ago).
That temperature spike is the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum (55 million years ago).
Wikipedia has a chart of extinction events over time [wikipedia.org]. Note the lack of a spike near 55 million years ago.
Here's a crowbar. You might need it to extract your foot from your mouth. ;)
Parent
Re:BTW (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
In science, a person's agenda is irrelevant. The researchers can be pedophile Nazi cannibals for all the universe cares, but if their theory correlates with observable fact, their theory is worth taking seriously. Period.
There's way too much public discussion that treats science like some kind of popularity contest.. 'truth' is what the cool people say, and refutation from the uncool camp can be discarded simply by sneering at its source. People who engage in that kind of bullshit surrender the
Re:BTW (Score:4, Insightful)
That's absurd. There's no "areas near the equator" that are too hot for humans to survive. There's no such "area" anywhere on earth. Daily temps of 120+ are easily survivable - Las Vegas sees that regularly. See, humans have these things called "sweat glands". All they need is water and they can survive the heat.
But what if there's no water, you say? Well then, the problem isn't the heat.
Parent
Why is it? (Score:3, Insightful)
My problem with the whole GW crowd is how they will quickly object or attempt to marginalize anything which doesn't support their view. At the same time any little piece of information which supports their view is held forth as indisputable fact.
Look, we don't know half of what we think we do. The one great thing about science in this day and age is that we are continously changing what we know as
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Someone needs a lesson in the difference between short term weather prediction and long term weather trends.
Here's a (probably flawed) analogy: I throw a rock through the air. Moment to moment, I can't predict the exact path that rock will take. A breeze, some dust in the air, an updraft, these things can alter the path of the rock. But ask me to tell you where it's going to land, and I can probably do a pretty good job.
Re:BTW (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:BTW (Score:5, Insightful)
Might I point out that the Romans used an especially inaccurate calendar [wikipedia.org], and it was not until 46 BCE that the somewhat more familiar Julian system was adopted?
360 happens to be an easy number to use. It's not especially accurate, but correcting the error requires some knowledge of astronomy, as well a certain amount of political power. Now, it may be that a number of civilizations adopted a 365 day year at approximately the same time. Perhaps some of them were trading partners.
Parent
Wrong... (Score:4, Funny)
Leave it to Hollywood (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
American Obesity (Score:5, Funny)
They've got it all wrong... (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Shortsightedness (Score:5, Funny)
You sir are shortsighted. Find someone to blame, add it to the party platform (either one, it doesn't matter) and then fund raise on it. Global Wobbling must be stopped!! We can stop it!!! It won't be stopped if party X get's/keeps control of Congress!!! The time to act is now!!
Please click here to donate 25, 50, 100, 1000 dollars to STOP GLOBAL WOBBLING. You will receive two complimentary pamphlets entitled "The Wobble, the Planet, and You" and "Why is Galileo weeping?". Both are packed with earth-shattering information to help you spread the news of this new threat to our precious freedoms and way of life.
Re: (Score:2)
if we drop enough bombs on an arab country it might affect the orbit of the earth.
Re: (Score:2)
If we all got on swingsets and swung at the same frequency, we could alter the rotation of the planet. Might even be able to adjust the orbit a little bit.
Re: (Score:2)
Vague article (Score:4, Informative)
Freaked out (Score:5, Informative)
So I read up on Milankovich cycles, and it turns out it's just precession. It's perfectly regular, it's just that in the case of something the size & slow angular velocity of the earth, it takes a really long time to change.
When you spin a top, you can see the axis of spin describe a circle. This is precession.
Likewise as the Earth rotates, there is precession. Also, as the earth orbits the sun, there is precession. These have cycles on the order of tens of thousands of years. Both can affect the climate by changing the angle of sunlight. There are cycles on the order of millions of years long in which the two effects both affect the climate the same way, and so produce a bigger net effect.
I guess wobble is an accurate term, except that to me it implies something irregular. In a system as big and isolated as the Earth's orbit around the Sun, or the Earth's rotation, momentum is king, and very little could cause an irregular change. These changes are just precession, and they're perfectly regular.
I am not a physicist, but I do have a Bachelor of Science in Physics.
Parent
Cyclical what? (Score:4, Insightful)
So if you survive the comet impacts... (Score:2)
...and asteroid impacts, close passes by rogue planets, ice ages, orbital wobbiling, development of nuclear weapons, and the occasional odd supernova in your immediate vicinity, you go on to develop advanced civilization and the Double Whopper with Cheese (tm).
Cause (Score:2)
Old Mouse Pad (Score:4, Funny)
That was the mice [sadgeezer.com] rebooting the Earth while debugging it.
Since the users of our iPlanet are bailing out now without the system shutting down, I expect we're obsolete. Get ready to do your part for the firewall they turn us into.
Model orbital changes on your own compy (Score:5, Interesting)
The EdGCM [columbia.edu] project has wrapped a NASA GCM in a graphical interface. You can double-click to install, and if you'd like to turn the sun down a few percent or change the orbit, there are checkboxes and sliders. Press play, wait a while (hours to a day or so depending on your computer), and you can look at the results...
Disclaimer: I'm the developer.
Just imagine... (Score:2, Insightful)
Suppose again someone in charge actually accepted my supposition and decided global warming research was pointless.
Ok, I'm done making improbable suppositions.
Duh! (Score:2, Funny)
Two alternative explanations of extinction (Score:2)
The earth did it [sciam.com]]
Of course, the better known theory that an asteroid caused the dinosaur extinction 65 million years ago might also be related to changes in earth's orbit, no?
Modifying the orbit of Earth is feasible! (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, we have! And it's very interesting indeed!
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/planetearth
A link to the paper: Korycansky, D. G.; Laughlin, Gregory; Adams, Fred C. Astronomical engineering: a strategy for modifying planetary orbits. Astrophys.Space Sci. 275 (2001) 349-366
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0102126 [arxiv.org]
Abstract:
"The Sun's gradual brightening will seriously compromise the Earth's biosphere within ~ 1E9 years. If Earth's orbit migrates outward, however, the biosphere could remain intact over the entire main-sequence lifetime of the Sun. In this paper, we explore the feasibility of engineering such a migration over a long time period. The basic mechanism uses gravitational assists to (in effect) transfer orbital energy from Jupiter to the Earth, and thereby enlarges the orbital radius of Earth. This transfer is accomplished by a suitable intermediate body, either a Kuiper Belt object or a main belt asteroid. The object first encounters Earth during an inward pass on its initial highly elliptical orbit of large (~ 300 AU) semimajor axis. The encounter transfers energy from the object to the Earth in standard gravity-assist fashion by passing close to the leading limb of the planet. The resulting outbound trajectory of the object must cross the orbit of Jupiter; with proper timing, the outbound object encounters Jupiter and picks up the energy it lost to Earth. With small corrections to the trajectory, or additional planetary encounters (e.g., with Saturn), the object can repeat this process over many encounters. To maintain its present flux of solar energy, the Earth must experience roughly one encounter every 6000 years (for an object mass of 1E22 g). We develop the details of this scheme and discuss its ramifications."
Global warming vs. global wobbling (Score:3, Interesting)
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/temp/vostok/graphics
shows that for last 450,000 years Earth was mostly in the Ice Age, interrupted
by 10,000 year long warm periods spaced 100,000 years apart. We are about 15,000
years into the last warm period on record.
Because of strong periodicity, the current best explanation of this cycle is
by astronomical phenomena (Earth orbit/axis wobble).
This does not contradict global warming---it just shows that the climate
is a very delicate balance between strong opposing phenomena; the point being
that we should be real careful how we influence it.
I believe that headline would be... (Score:3, Funny)
Or was I the only one who read it as a paucity of mammoths might cause a tilt...?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Move Along (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
So yea, if I edited portions of the article I could make it sound like the orbit change is the reason for global warming.... then again, if i took bits and pieces of the quoran (sp) I could tell people that All
Re: (Score:2)
...and you just linked it!
Observe:
"140Mandak262Jamuna mentioned NFL quarterbacks having motorcycle accidents in a comment about Global Warning."
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Converted to kilograms, your figure works out to 3.5 * 10^10 kgs. Let's triple the weight to 180 lbs, and your figure becomes 1 * 10^11 kgs.
Now, the mass of the earth is approximately 6 * 10^24 kgs. That's 6 * 10^13 bigger. Let's see what a similar ratio would look like applied to a 100 kg (220 lbs) human. Something that is 10^13 smaller would be approximately 1 microgram. The avera