Walter Munk's Astonishing Wave-Tracking Experiment 55
An anonymous reader writes in with a look at a scientist's interesting wave-tracking experiment and the incredible journeys that waves make. His name is Walter Munk, now in his 90s and a professor emeritus at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California. About 60 years ago, he was anchored off Guadalupe Island, on Mexico's west coast, watching swells come in, and using an equation that he and others had devised to plot a wave's trajectory backward in time, he plotted the probable origins of those swells. But the answer he got was so startling, so over-the-top improbable, that he thought, "No, there must be something wrong." His equations said that the swells hitting beaches In Mexico began some 9,000 miles away — somewhere in the southern reaches of the Indian Ocean, near Antarctica. "Could it be?" he wrote in an autobiographical sketch. Could a storm half way across the world produce a patch of moving water that traveled from near the South Pole, up past Australia, then past New Zealand, then across the vast expanse of the Pacific, arriving still intact – at a beach off Mexico? He decided to find out for himself. That is why, in 1957, Walter Munk designed a global, real life, wave-watching experiment.
Now that's what I call... (Score:5, Funny)
... making waves.
Re:Now that's what I call... (Score:5, Funny)
I'm not really sure why this whole thing is offensive.
My Mum had sex. At least once because, you know, I'm here. This much should be clear. And if she wanted to have sex with you too? Well, she's a grown woman, she can do whatever she wants. Hell, I hope that at age 60 I'm still getting some as well, especially from people who are around a third my age.
I mean, really. That's some high grade success there. Having earth-shattering sex with nubile young 20-something's when you're 60. That's hardly an insult.
I love my Mum a lot. I want her to be happy. If that means having all the crazy sex she wants, by all means. She can. I'm not going to judge her.
And another thing... what does that say about you? "Yeah bro, I had intercourse with a 60 year old woman! Fuck yeah!". I mean, by all means, if that's what you're into then whatever mate, go for your life. Some people like that. It's fine. Some people are into having sex with blowup dolls. That's weird but if it's their thing, then I'm cool with it. They tend to brag about it a lot less though.
Honestly, the most offensive thing about that is the waterbed. Those things are a piece of shit.
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Don't know if the Dumas quote is apocryphal or not but it made my day nonetheless.
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"my Mum had sex. At least once because, you know, I'm here"
Not really, you could be adopted or the result of artificial insemination. It's far from clear.
Could even be a 'bot for all we know.
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Mod up + infinity. ROTFL.
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"My life's a mess, because under that dress she's got a P-E-N-I-S."
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I made some waves fucking your mom on my waterbed bitch.
Oh Hi Dad
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Slow news day? (Score:2, Informative)
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Especially when the most outstanding fact in there is that when waves "interfere", there is no loss of energy of either wave [wikipedia.org], which is a well-known result in physics...
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Only at low amplitudes, for waves in water. At higher amplitudes non-linear effects become significent. The same applies to sound, and electromagnetic radiation in any medium other than vacuum. You don't see it much because the required amplitudes for that to happen in air are at the retina-scorching level.
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Only at low amplitudes, for waves in water. At higher amplitudes non-linear effects become significent. The same applies to sound, and electromagnetic radiation in any medium other than vacuum. You don't see it much because the required amplitudes for that to happen in air are at the retina-scorching level.
You've apparently never seen Motörhead live.
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http://www.surfline.com/surf-s... [surfline.com]
Two somewhat informative videos here - it's the best I got in a quick google.
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Because Slashdot.
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Waves isn't a physical thing that propagate over the seas.
A wave denier!
Re:What a clown (Score:5, Funny)
Waves isn't a physical thing that propagate over the seas.
A wave denier!
I don't believe those exist.
Cheap documentary? (Score:5, Interesting)
Could a storm half way across the world produce a patch of moving water that traveled from near the South Pole
This reads like the voice-over for one of those embarrassingly poor 'documentaries' you sometimes see, where the producers have tried to sensationalize a fairly standard, scientific subject, and draw it out to fill a whole hour, when it could have been adequately explained in about 10 minutes. A shame, really, because the subject is in fact quite interesting.
However: waves don't move patches of water half-way around the globe; the actual water more or less stays in place. A wave is simply energy propagating through a medium, and it is quite astonishing to hear that an ocean wave can travel that far without dissipating, because the expectation is that it would spread out in a circular pattern and thus grow weaker with distance. I would have been interested in hearing what the explanation is.
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In a plane you are correct - they spread and dissipate.
The earth is not a plane - and the curvature will focus the wave after a certain distance is traveled.
Re:Cheap documentary? (Score:5, Informative)
After 1/4 of the Earth's circumference (6000 miles) the wavefront stops dissipating and starts converging.
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Have you got a link with more information? (I did try Googling, but words like "wave" and "sphere" and "converge" are used in too many contexts and they drown out specifics.) How does that work?
Re:Cheap documentary? (Score:5, Informative)
Imagine a planet completely covered with water. Now throw in a big stone at one of the poles:
This results in a circular wave expanding from the pole, parallel to the latitudes.
As soon as it crosses the equator, it starts converging again, until it arrives as a peak at the
opposite pole.
Distance from pole to equator: circumference/4.
This works with a stone drop at any other point on the globe as well, I just used poles and
equator because it's easier to imagine. In reality, land masses complicate things a bit of course.
Re:Cheap documentary? ^MOD THIS UP!!!!! (Score:1)
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Oh. Duh. That makes perfect sense, visualized that way. Thanks.
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waves don't move patches of water half-way around the globe
I suppose it depends on what you mean by "move". The swell (which is different from a wave of water) is moving the water vertically, and the swell did originate thousands of miles away.
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What I'm not quite buying is the idea of a wind fetch in the Indian ocean sending a swell to California (or Mexico), since it would be entirely blocked by Australia.
Or focused. Just sayin'
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:) it's probably thanks to this kooky old man gazing at the sea that this is "common knowledge". his experiments ran in the 70s.
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It's a feedback system. The wind displaces the flat surface of the ocean into waves. Then those waves catch more wind, create turbulence. You can download or view any number of GPU based ocean wave simulators.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v... [youtube.com]
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Look at what happens when an earthquakes occurs in one side of the Pacific, creating a tsunami which travels all the way across the ocean. With a storm over the ocean, the waves can reach 100 meters or more in height, and stretch for hundreds of meters (determined by a mathematical equation linking amplitude to wavelength and ocean floor depth). And the storm is 100 miles across.
Walter Munk (Score:1)
I'm glad this was posted, at least for me. I had the pleasure of meeting him some years ago. I also worked for a scientist who had been a student of his for many years. Munk contributed greatly to the understanding of ocean waves.
Monk, 65 in '82 , is still alive and active (Score:1)