Wilson of the Cloud Chamber – broadcast in 1959

Nobel prize-winning physicist CTR Wilson

‘Charles Thomson Rees Wilson, CH, FRS (14 February 1869 – 15 November 1959) was a Scottish physicist and meteorologist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his invention of the cloud chamber.
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The invention of the cloud chamber was by far Wilson’s signature accomplishment, earning him the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1927. The Cavendish laboratory praised him for the creation of “a novel and striking method of investigating the properties of ionized gases”. The cloud chamber allowed huge experimental leaps forward in the study of subatomic particles and the field of particle physics, generally. Some have credited Wilson with making the study of particles possible at all.’ — Wikipedia.

A potted biography, including cloud chamber images and a diagram of the global atmospheric electrical circuit, can be found here.

The link to the broadcast script is below the introduction.
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Still waiting for greenhouse: No response to my last email to Roy Spencer

Before the last time I had to dive deeply into politics to defend the EU referendum result, I had an email conversation with Roy Spencer in an attempt to resolve the conflict between physicists like himself, who believe the radiative greenhouse theory is correct, but it’s effect small, and physicists like Ned Nikolov, who contend that the theory is fundamentally incorrect.

After a couple of to and fro emails I sent this response in Feb 2019, to which I never received a reply. It’s time we got this discussion back out in the open, because Boris’ green reset #netzero plan for the UK post Brexit and post pandemic is set to ruin our economy and cause untold suffering, deprivation, and death.

the lukewarmers have utterly failed to convince the fanatics that although they think their theory is correct (it isn’t, but that’s their misguided opinion), they’ve overestimated the magnitude of the effect.

It’s time they stopped supporting the fanatics by deploying false arguments against better theory which will exonerate CO2 and move the debate away from ridiculous and expensive ‘mitigation’, and forward to adaption to the effects of natural climatic change.

Solar gravitation puzzle

Browsing twitter recently I ran across this short video of a solar flare shot a few days ago.

The largest solar feature I've seen this minimum is raining Earth-sized gobs of plasma on the surface. Shot yesterday afternoon from my backyard, about an hour of activity sped up. #astrophotography #space #opteam pic.twitter.com/Y72I37zswR

— Andrew McCarthy (@AJamesMcCarthy) May 5, 2020

After asking for some clarification on frame rate I was really intrigued.

50 frames with 90 seconds between each

— Andrew McCarthy (@AJamesMcCarthy) May 6, 2020

Chris Martz: No, global warming is not causing more frequent Arctic outbreaks

Credit: weather.com

By what known physics could a few molecules of carbon dioxide upset the jet stream? A meteorologist is not impressed by such claims.

By Chris Martz | November 9, 2019
INTRODUCTION Just when wildfires weren’t enough, we now have people blaming cold weather on a warming climate, which seems quite contradictory.

In light of the Arctic outbreak in forecast this coming week, people like Phil Plait (who has since blocked me) took to Twitter (Figure 1) to claim that man-made climate change is causing frigid, Arctic air to be displaced south into the United States, Europe, and Asia.

His argument, which is supported by some climate scientists, suggests that man-made global warming causes the polar jet stream to destabilize causing it to become wavy rather than zonal, sending Arctic air southward into the mid-latitude regions.

He also stated that without global warming, the polar air would stay near the north pole.

Both of these claims are exactly backwards from reality and are not supported by weather dynamics, the global warming theory, or statistical observations in long-term temperature data.

Record-Setting Noctilucent Clouds

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Something of a mystery developing here. Open season for theories.

Spaceweather.com

June 11, 2019: On June 8th and 9th, many people who have never previously heard of “noctilucent clouds” (NLCs) found themselves eagerly taking pictures of them–from moving cars, through city lights, using cell phones and iPads. “I have never seen clouds like this before!” says Tucker Shannon, who took this picture from Corvallis, Oregon:

“I heard that they may have been seeded by meteoroids,” says Shannon.

That’s correct. NLCs are Earth’s highest clouds. Seeded by meteoroids, they float at the edge of space more than 80 km above the planet’s surface. The clouds are very cold and filled with tiny ice crystals. When sunbeams hit those crystals, they glow electric-blue.

Noctilucent clouds used to be a polar phenomenon. In recent years, however, researchers have noticed their electric-blue forms creeping south. Is it climate change? Or the solar cycle? No one knows for sure.

This past weekend…

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The physics of evaporation explained – pressure is the key factor

Not what some might have imagined perhaps. Researchers found that temperature difference between the surface and the liquid was less important than ‘the difference in pressure between the liquid surface and the ambient vapor’.

For the first time, MIT scientists have analyzed the evaporation process in detail at a molecular level and determined the physics of evaporation, reports Tech Explorist.

Evaporation is the process by which water changes from a liquid to a gas or vapor. The process is the primary path for water to move from the liquid state back to the water cycle as atmospheric water vapor.

Evaporation commonly occurs in everyday life. When you get out of the shower, the water on your body evaporates as you dry. If you leave a glass of water out, the water level will slowly decrease as the water evaporates.

For the first time, MIT scientists have analyzed the evaporation process in detail at a molecular level. For this, they used a new technique to control and detect temperatures at the surface of an evaporating liquid. Doing this, they were able to identify a set of universal characteristics involving time, pressure and temperature changes that determine the details of the evaporation process.

Earth’s mantle is magnetic, researchers find

Still plenty of work for scientists to do to gain a better understanding of our rotating Earth’s electromagnetic processes.

Scientists assumed Earth’s mantle, the layer stretching from the crust to a depth of 255 miles, was magnetically dead. New research suggests they were mistaken, reports Phys.org.

Most scientists thought Earth’s magnetism was powered by materials in the crust and core, but according to a new study published this week in the journal Nature, hematite, a common iron oxide, retains its magnetic qualities at high temperatures.

“This new knowledge about the Earth’s mantle and the strongly magnetic region in the western Pacific could throw new light on any observations of the Earth’s magnetic field,” Ilya Kupenko, mineral physicist and researcher from the University of Munster in Germany, said in a news release.

Response to Roy Spencer Regarding His Support of Flat Earth

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Readers can comment on this disagreement/misunderstanding/debate here at The Talkshop and/or at Joe Postma’s own website (link below).

Roy Spencer’s post that kicked it off is here.

[UPDATE: follow-up video to the one shown below – here.]

Climate of Sophistry

Roy Spencer published an article today stating that I am incorrectly ranting about the fraud of flat Earth theory making its way into modern physics via climate science.  I analyze his statement and expose that climate science truly is indeed flat Earth theory: it is baked into the mathematics!

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Polar Mesospheric Summer Echoes

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Noctilucent clouds form when molecules from summertime water vapour stick to the microscopic debris of disintegrated meteoroids.

Spaceweather.com

May 21, 2019: Every summer since the late 1970s, radars probing Earth’s upper atmosphere have detected strong echoes from altitudes between 80 km and 90 km. The signals come from noctilucent clouds (NLCs).  NASA’s AIM spacecraft is still waiting to spot the first NLCS of the 2019 season, but the echoes have already begun. Rob Stammes of the Polarlightcenter in Lofoten, Norway, detected them on May 19th and 20th:

“I detected these VHF signals from Eastern Europe,” he explains. “They reflected from the mesosphere back down to my receiver in Norway. The wave patterns were recognizable and very strong.”

Researchers call them “Polar Mesospheric Summer Echoes” or “PMSEs.” They occur over the Arctic during the months of May through August, and over the Antarctic during the months of November through February. These are the same months that NLCs appear.

The underlying physics of these echoes is still uncertain.

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Understanding physics could lead to big gains in shale oil recovery

Credit: mining.com

A longer delay in the middle of an existing process could be the key to even greater success than is currently being achieved.

Oil companies are missing out on vast sums of recoverable oil in unconventional reservoirs, according to Penn State experts, as Phys.org reports.

The researchers propose that companies are applying tried-and-true transport mechanisms for conventional oil extraction but are hitting recovery stumbling blocks because they are not accounting for the difference in physics found at unconventional reservoirs.

Nikolov & Zeller: Reply to Dr Roy Spencer’s blog article.

Confusing Diabatic and Adiabatic Processes within the Climate Theory:

A Reply to Dr. Roy Spencer’s Blog Article “Giving Credit to Willis Eschenbach”

Ned Nikolov, Ph.D.
Physical Scientist

In a recent blog post, Dr. Roy Spencer at the University of Alabama at Huntsville attempted to criticize and dismiss the importance of our recent discovery about the physical nature of the atmospheric “Greenhouse effect” (Nikolov & Zeller 2017). I normally do not reply to blog articles, but this one reflects a fundamental generic confusion in the current climate theory that is worthwhile addressing for readership clarification. In his blog, Dr. Spencer demonstrated several misconceptions about our work that could be due to either not having read/understood our papers or perhaps an incomplete grasp of thermodynamics. The fact that Dr. Spencer cites a newspaper article about our research instead of the actual published paper may indicate a lack of familiarity with the technical details of our study. These are some key misrepresentations that I spotted in his article:    

1. Dr. Spencer incorrectly referred to our main finding as a “theory” when, in fact, it is a discovery based on vetted NASA data extracted from numerous published studies. This empirical pressure-temperature (P-T) function emerged from reported NASA measurements in the process of Dimensional Analysis, which is an objective technique employed in classical physics to derive/extract physically meaningful relationships from observed data.

Gavin Cawley explains the radiative greenhouse effect

Ned Nikolov, Ph.D.‏ @NikolovScience Oct 31

Here are 2 key issues that you must address when trying to defend the radiative “Greenhouse” hypothesis:

1. How does 240 W m-2 absorbed solar radiation get converted into 342 W m-2 IR back radiation without violating the Energy-Conservation Law?

2. Why there is such a POOR relationship between #CO2 and global T for past 70 My?

• Gavin Cawley‏ @Gavin_Cawley Oct 31

  Gavin Cawley Retweeted eli rabett

  The answer is still the same as the last time you ignored it

  Gavin Cawley added,

  

  eli rabett @EthonRaptor

  As Eli has pointed out many times, the 240 W/m2 is the solar input, not the energy the surface and the atmosphere exchange. 462 W/m2 enters the atm from the surface, 79 from the sun = 541 W/m2. 342…

  Ned Nikolov, Ph.D.‏ @NikolovScience Oct 31

  Gavin, this is not sensible answer to my 1st question, but a CIRCULAR argument! Can’t you see it? The 342 W m-2 IR back radiation cannot be explained by surface LW emissions, because then the question becomes, where does the 398 W m-2 surface LW radiation come from?

  Gavin Cawley‏ @Gavin_Cawley Oct 31

  I seem to remember I have already explained this to you at least once. Here is the thought experiment. Imaging a black body in a vacuum containing a 1W constant power heat source. Eventually it will reach an equilibrium temperature at which it radiates 1W out into the (1/n)

  Gavin Cawley‏ @Gavin_Cawley Oct 31

  vacuum. Now put a thin shell surrounding, but not touching the sphere, of the same blackbody material. The outgoing sphere will heat the shell, and it too will begin to radiate heat until it too reaches thermal equilibrium. Now the shell will radiate equally out into the (2/n)

India Rumbles Wind Power as Fake Electricity: Output Collapses During Dead-Calm Monsoon

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STT highlights the ‘tension between economic energy and politically correct energy’.

No amount of money or technology can force the wind to blow on demand.

STOP THESE THINGS

The spinning wheel was meant to signify Indian independence, too.

It never takes them long to work out that wind power is the greatest economic and environmental fraud of all time. Eco-zealots have attempted to ram wind and solar power down the throats of Third World governments under the auspices of saving the planet and purportedly with the purpose of dragging millions out of poverty. As the initiated well-know, wind power rates zero on both scores. Pointless and expensive, wind power is a kind of first world disease being spread by UN endorsed lunatics, across the developing world.

In India, solar power is seen as ‘fake electricity’, by those being forced to use it: The Cruel Hypocrisy: West Drops Wind Power as it Forces ‘Fake Electricity’ on the World’s Poor

Now, Indians have branded wind power an outright fraud, too. The calm, and very wet weather that comes with the monsoon…

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A conversation with Ken Rice on the causes of the ‘Greenhouse effect’

Rog Tallbloke‏ @RogTallbloke 3h3 hours ago

Yes, adiabatic compression heating is an ongoing process, due to the convection cycle. I’ve tried to illustrate it by modifying NASA’s energy budget diagram. Calcs on right show PV/nR=T gives correct values regardless of radiative transfer.

Ken Rice‏ @theresphysics 3h3 hours ago

This has probably been explained before, but if adiabatic heating is to be an ongoing process then that would suggest the atmosphere is contracting. Since it clearly isn’t, this can’t be the source of the enhanced surface temperature.

Rog Tallbloke‏ @RogTallbloke 3h3 hours ago

Ken. Air convecting upwards every day displaces cold high altitude air downwards through the pressure gradient which compresses and heats it. If it didn’t, that air would be colder at the surface, and would allow much more rapid conduction of heat from surface to the air. Agree?

Ken Rice‏ @theresphysics 2h2 hours ago

Roger, if you want to enhance the temperature on the surface via compression then the atmosphere would need to continually contract.

Scientists receive $1.3 million to study new propulsion idea for spacecraft

Image credit: Spaceflight now

Light as a power source is only a theory so far, but could have interesting implications if it can be shown to work. Or it could go nowhere…

Spacecraft and satellites could in future be launched into space without the need for fuel, thanks to a revolutionary new theory, says EurekAlert.

Dr Mike McCulloch, from the University of Plymouth, first put forward the idea of quantised inertia (QI) – through which he believes light can be converted into thrust – in 2007.

He has now received $1.3million from the United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for a four-year study which aims to make the concept a reality.

Thermodynamics 101: Compression increases temperature.

Question: If I had a container, full with air, and I suddenly decreased the volume of the container, forcing the air into a smaller volume, will it be considered as compression, will it result in an increase in temperature, and why?

Answer on Stack Exchange by Luboš Motl: Yes, it is compression and yes, it will heat up the gas.

If there’s no heat exchange between the gas and the container (or the environment), we call it an adiabatic process. For an adiabatic process involving an ideal gas (which is a very good approximation for most common gases), pV^γ is constant where γ is an exponent such as 5/3. Because the temperature is equal to T=pV/nR and pV/pV^γ=V^1−γ is a decreasing function of V, the temperature will increase when the volume decreases.

Macroscopically, the heating is inevitable because one needs to perform work p|dV| to do the compression, the energy has to be preserved, and the only place where it can go is the interior of the gas given by a formula similar to (3/2)nRT.

There’s Ken Rice’s nonsense, and then there’s thermodynamics

Ken Rice, an Edinburgh University academic who selectively censors dissenting comments at his pro-AGW “and Then There’s Physics” propaganda blog, has another of mine in moderation:

tallbloke says:

Your comment is awaiting moderation.

March 12, 2018 at 10:02 am

OK, I’ll drop that subject and deal directly with the subject of your blog post.
You state that:

“If the Earth’s atmospheric pressure is to contribute to the enhanced surface temperature, then that would mean that the atmosphere would need to continually provide energy to the surface. It could only do this through the conversion of gravitational potential energy to thermal energy. This would then require the continual contraction of the Earth’s atmosphere.”

This quote demonstrates that you’ve fundamentally misunderstood Ned Nikolov’s hypothesis. He’s not positing a raised surface T due to an ongoing gravitational collapse producing a compression, generating heat which is then lost to space.

Atmospheric pressure produces a density gradient; i.e. it forces there to be more air molecules per unit volume at lower altitude than at higher altitude. Denser air intercepts and absorbs more of the sunlight passing through it than less dense air, producing more molecular collisions and excitation. It therefore holds more kinetic energy.The more kinetic energy it holds the higher its temperature will be.

Earth’s mysterious hum recorded underwater for first time

Image credit: strangesounds.org

But amplitude variations in the hum did not correlate with the seasons as once thought.

Scientists finally capture hum coming from the centre of the Earth, reports GeologyIn.

Although we like to think we know everything – and technology has advanced so much we practically have the answer to everything we don’t know at our fingertips – there are still plenty of mysteries left to solve.

For the past few decades, something has been becoming increasingly clear: Earth constantly hums, even though we can’t hear it.

NASA’s GOLD mission continues despite launch anomaly

The GOLD mission to learn more about the Earth’s ionosphere ran into comms problems after launch yesterday and may take longer than expected to reach its required orbit height. NASA’s own publicity says: “Just like an infrared camera allows you to see how temperatures change with different colors, GOLD images ultraviolet light to provide a map of the Earth that reveals how temperature and atmospheric composition change by location”.

NASA has reported that despite a glitch within minutes of its GOLD mission launch, the satellite is communicating with control systems, reports the Indian Express.

The aim of the Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk, or GOLD, mission is to study the dynamic region where space and Earth’s uppermost atmosphere meet.

APOD: Fibonacci relations appear in IR at Jupiter’s poles – Why Phi?

So to clarify here (because I messed it up earlier) what was presented this morning at #AAS231 were infrared images of Jupiter's north pole (left, via @lrebull) and south pole (right, via @Stardustspeck) showing respectively eight and five cyclones circling central vortices. 😲🤯 pic.twitter.com/lFkfl25wam

— Jason Major (@JPMajor) January 9, 2018