Geographos The Geographer

2004-05-31T14:15:00.001-07:00

“THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW”

Richard B. Cathcart
Geographos
rbcathcart@msn.com

On 29 May, theatre ticket sales spiked globally, due in large part to the spectacular cinematic special effects displayed in Roland Emmerich’s allegedly Geoscience-based film.

In 1998’s movie box-office hits ARMAGEDDON and DEEP IMPACT, huge sea waves caused by ocean impacts of extraterrestrial debris destroyed coast-located urban regions, including New York City. However, in THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW, a confection of every Green person’s dreamt epic ecodisaster desires, a monstrous sea wave merely inundates the streets of New York City, even allowing for super-ships to float placidly in the flooded city streets. [See still picture reproduced from the film that accompanied Myles Allen’s review, “Making heavy weather”, Nature 429: 347-348, 27 May 2004.]

How can truly cinematic Geoscience be so inconclusive?

Never mind that comedian Jay Leno’s nightly national TV program recently mocked the movie’s title with a delightful video skit, presented as a “promotional trailer”, by playing on its confusing time sequence—a la “Abie”, the child-character, in THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY (1950) concocted by Jack Trevor Story (1917-1991).

The dynamic force of a large slamming sea wave on a vertical wall is immense. Roland Emmerich’s Manhattan Island skyscrapers, however, don’t even quiver, let alone collapse or shatter from the sea wave’s watery impact! Geoscientifical rubbish!

The maximum physical wind pressure on a tall building’s solid exterior sheath could be ~3 Newton per square meter of surface. But, a slamming sea wave—as depicted in the film—might exert ~690 Newton per square meter. [Seawater’s density is ~1.025 gram per cubic centimeter while air’s is ~0.0012 gram per cubic centimeter. One Newton is the SI unit of force equal to the force that gives a mass of 1 kilogram an acceleration of 1 meter per second per second in the direction of action of the force.]

So, Roland Emmerich’s computer-skilled special effects employees took considerable artistic license with ordinary geophysical facts. After all, who’d care about a subsequent new Ice Age’s effect on New York City if New York City had already been rendered into crumbled beach debris! In fact, a pulverized New York City would be of interest only to geoscientists, who must struggle to come up with an agreed new name for an abruptly formed new geological deposit! That would be an unfilmable scientific conflict!

THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW gets its physical geography, geology and basic physics wrong; its storyline is preposterous. Nevertheless, its commercial public showings as well as its eventual DVD rentals and sales will gross a geophysical-scale quantity of money worldwide! All that cash, collected in one place just might cause….

With Hollywood, it’s never “The End”!

2004-05-31T14:15:00.000-07:00

“THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW” (28 May 2004)
Richard B. Cathcart

On 29 May, theatre ticket sales spiked globally, due in large part to the spectacular cinematic special effects displayed in Roland Emmerich’s allegedly Geoscience-based film.

In 1998’s movie box-office hits ARMAGEDDON and DEEP IMPACT, huge sea waves caused by ocean impacts of extraterrestrial debris destroyed coast-located urban regions, including New York City. However, in THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW, a confection of every Green person’s dreamt epic ecodisaster desires, a monstrous sea wave merely inundates the streets of New York City, even allowing for super-ships to float placidly in the flooded city streets. [See still picture reproduced from the film that accompanied Myles Allen’s review, “Making heavy weather”, Nature 429: 347-348, 27 May 2004.]

How can truly cinematic Geoscience be so inconclusive?

Never mind that comedian Jay Leno’s nightly national TV program recently mocked the movie’s title with a delightful video skit, presented as a “promotional trailer”, by playing on its confusing time sequence—a la “Abie”, the child-character, in THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY (1950) concocted by Jack Trevor Story (1917-1991).

The dynamic force of a large slamming sea wave on a vertical wall is immense. Roland Emmerich’s Manhattan Island skyscrapers, however, don’t even quiver, let alone collapse or shatter from the sea wave’s watery impact! Geoscientifical rubbish!

The maximum physical wind pressure on a tall building’s solid exterior sheath could be ~3 Newton per square meter of surface. But, a slamming sea wave—as depicted in the film—might exert ~690 Newton per square meter. [Seawater’s density is ~1.025 gram per cubic centimeter while air’s is ~0.0012 gram per cubic centimeter. One Newton is the SI unit of force equal to the force that gives a mass of 1 kilogram an acceleration of 1 meter per second per second in the direction of action of the force.]

So, Roland Emmerich’s computer-skilled special effects employees took considerable artistic license with ordinary geophysical facts. After all, who’d care about a subsequent new Ice Age’s effect on New York City if New York City had already been rendered into crumbled beach debris! In fact, a pulverized New York City would be of interest only to geoscientists, who must struggle to come up with an agreed new name for an abruptly formed new geological deposit! That would be an unfilmable scientific conflict!

THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW gets its physical geography, geology and basic physics wrong; its storyline is preposterous. Nevertheless, its commercial public showings as well as its eventual DVD rentals and sales will gross a geophysical-scale quantity of money worldwide! All that cash, collected in one place just might cause….

With Hollywood, it’s never “The End”!

2004-04-19T17:49:00.000-07:00

NUMBY (“Not Under My Back Yard), or a non-CALTECH History of Stevenson’s Unworkable “Earth Probe” Concept Nimbly Re-examined

Richard B. Cathcart
Geographos
rbcathcart@msn.com

Two writers (Jules Verne and Paul Cooper) have fostered my continuing curiosity about the physical state of Earth’s core. Verne, of course, is famous for his imaginative projection of the human will in VOYAGE AU CENTRE DE LA TERRE. Cooper worked out the mathematics of an imaginary conveyance (subway car) to our planet’s center of mass and beyond to some antipodal place on the Earth’s opposing surface. I first read about his work in the 11 February 1966 TIME magazine (at page 30). During March 2003, THE CORE jolted my somewhat dimmed curiosity with a science fiction-style Hollywood-made film. So much so, that I bought CINEFEX 94 (July 2003) that contains a beautifully illustrated plot description penned by Joe Fordham (at pages 15-38) and the film’s dvd format recording.

Possibly many people are still unaware that NBC will televise, on 2 and 3 May 2004, a mini-series entitled “10.5”. Quite literally, it will portray in dramatic action movie style the post-apocalypse events for the USA when half of the State of California falls into the Pacific Ocean! In a 10 April 2004 LOS ANGELES TIMES news item (at page B7) written by Kenneth Reich, “Earthquake Epic Rock Experts—with Mirth”, it is made explicit that the mini-series’ Executive Producer knows that “10.5” will be scientifically uninformative and might even mislead the Americans about actual geological processes.

Today, a globalized human civilization is, more and more, penetrating this planet’s crust for exploration, industrial production, pipeline transportation, storage and manufacture, and vehicular traffic. Yet, almost everywhere, when places are selected for underground installations of any kind the infamous NUMBY (“Not Under My Back Yard”) protestors get a lot of news and entertainment media attention. One of the most immodestly put forth serious proposals for human subterranean scientific activity seems to be that authored by Dr. David Stevenson of CALTECH published in the 15 May 2003 NATURE. It got a fair summarization in John G. Cramer’s “A Mission to the Earth’s Core” in the December 2003 ANALOG: SCIENCE FICTION AND FACT.

Since our planet’s innermost material has fascinated me for decades I can comprehend a bigger picture than was, or so far has been, portrayed by the off-campus media. I am not at all fond of America’s current PR-styled science promotion techniques and so, as a form of relief for accumulating dissatisfaction, I did a series of blog pasquinades to expose some of the obvious Geoscience data inadequacies and theory inaccuracies broadcast worldwide by the informational media subsequent to Dr. David Stevenson’s NATURE paper. I don’t know exactly what material forms the Earth’s core, but I do wish to understand what properly educated, inquisitive minds think might be there! An interesting example is from Russia: Dr. E.M. Drobyshevski and his colleagues think there is an ongoing aggregation of mini-Black Holes at Earth’s center of mass and that this building mass deposit may cause Earth’s expansion in volume. GOTO: arXiv:astro-ph/0111042 posted 27 February 2002. On the other hand, Dr. David Stevenson seems to hold that Earth’s inner core is iron, an unremarkable—that is, standard—interpretation nowadays.

I was surprised that Dr. David Stevenson, during May of 2003, failed to publicly mention his immediate scientific predecessors in invention of the experimental technique for an “Earth Probe”. For example, William M. Adams holds USA Patent 3115194, awarded on 24 December 1963 for a “Nuclear Reactor Apparatus for Earth Penetration”. Adams’ invention, also described in PURE AND APPLIED GEOPHYSICS (61: 113-122, “A Thermal Tool for Direct Investigation of the Interior of the Earth”, 1965), has a benefit Dr. David Stevenson’s one-way reporting “Earth Probe” does not—namely, the Adams invention allows for the retrieval of deep-lying material, just like those bobbing automated devices used by oceanographers!

Even more surprising, at a WWW humor website, http://www.halfbakery.com, on 9 June 2003 was posted “Highway to Hell: Nuclear waste can surf to the Earth’s Core” by one [pseudonym] “bungston”. One subsequent commenter added “Russian Scientists Suggest Burying Spent Nuclear in Earth’s Core” as a link; clicking onto that WWW link, brought up a 7 May 2003 PRAVDA article with that same title. Evidently, geoscientists at Russia’s Lev Davidovich Landau Institute of Theoretical Physics, as long ago as circa 1973, had rather thoroughly thought through the possibility of detonating a small nuclear explosive at a depth of several kilometers to create a rock cavity into which many 20 centimeter spheres fabricated of tungsten and filled with very hot solid nuclear waste could be dumped. These disposal spheres would easily melt the surrounding rock and then fall gravitationally toward Earth’s core. Their “Hot Drop” project proposal is a non-retrievable nuclear waste disposal proposal. The two Moscow inventors, Alexei V. Byalko, author of NUCLEAR WASTE DISPOSAL: GEOPHYSICAL SAFETY (1994), and Igor Khalatnikov are both published in the necessary knowledge fields. Interestingly, their theoretical and experimental work on this so far unimplemented nuclear waste disposal scheme took place at least 30 years before the world-public ever heard of Dr. David Stevenson’s popular media-spread proposal. This must be a function of this “Age of the Internet”. The only notable advancement on the idea that Dr. Stevenson offered is to make the descending sphere a beeping reporter—but even there, he did not offer any clues as to the means to cause such reporting mechanically or electronically.

In closing, I would like to marvel that so much is suspected of happening at our Earth’s core where very extreme physical conditions prevail! Out of pure curiosity, I would like to ask informed persons how 1973’s “Hot Drop” and 2003’s “Earth Probe” might be affected by Earth’s rotation and its whole-body periodic tidal stresses instigated by the Moon and Sun. Is it possible, as Samuel Warren Carey (1911-2002) asserted for many years, that Earth is actually expanding in volume? With Hollywood’s cinematic community about to unleash (on 28 May 2004) the world-public another epic catastrophe film, THE DAY AFTER TOMMOROW, involving an abrupt global climate change (new Ice Age), is it not truly appropriate that 21st Century geoscientists comprehensively review their own scientific heritage literature and, thus, to thereby actively help all living persons blessed with abiding curiosity about the surrounding and enveloping world to understand our physical homeland better?

2003-08-01T20:56:00.000-07:00

Roundabout Echo-sounding of America’s Public Purse

Richard B. Cathcart
Geographosrbcathcart@msn.com

Presbyopia plagues pretenders! It was the life-long public-appreciated “affliction” of Ruben Lucius Goldberg (1883-1970), an erstwhile student of mining engineering at the University of California, to undertake to accomplish by complex means what seemingly could be done simply. A recent contender for Goldberg’s mantle is CALTECH’s Dr. David J. Stevenson; “Challenging core ideas”, a July 2003 GEOTIMES (Vol. 48, No. 7, pages 6-7) News Note nudges its readers to this obvious conclusion. It seems Dr. Stevenson’s deepest unfulfilled desire is to “shake people up” and to inform every uninformed American “cracks are something the Earth does naturally”! Dr. Stevenson’s “Mission to Earth’s Core” scheme is a gigantic Scheme to probe the American public’s purse-string perspicacity using a SHEAR lunacy mining/polling technique available because of the existence of gullible popular press publishers.

From all extant published public reports read, Dr. Stevenson appears to be a person as far-over-the-hill geoscientifically as the famous “Mr. X”, who promotes the notion that denies Americans ever tipsy-toed on the Moon encased in their marshmallow-shaped spacesuits. [See: Steven Mirsky, “Sheer Lunacy”, SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, Vol. 288, No. 2, February 2003, page 92.] Heaven help America’s IRS-hounded taxpayers if the US Patent Office eventually awards Dr. David J. Stevenson a monetary monopoly on his Class 175, “Boring or penetrating the Earth”, postulated device!

The “Fermi Paradox” was first succinctly enunciated—circa May 1950—by Dr. Enrico Fermi (1901-54). Dr. Fermi started and operated our world’s first self-sustaining nuclear generating reactor during December 1942. Fermi’s Paradox is the contradiction between the apparent absence of non-terrestrial Aliens, and the common expectation that humans ought to observe and/or hold in their hands some solid evidence of their existence. Asked Fermi: “Where is everybody?” Nowadays, the American public more and more views geoscientists as if they were extra-terrestrial Aliens seeking the keys to the National Treasury. America’s public asks: “Where are those folks in relation to my Government-confiscated money?” In the July 2003 GEOTIMES article, Dr. David J. Stevenson’s semi-Goldbergian trope is displayed as an obvious, if a bit indistinct or esoteric public policy ploy. He wants generous public FUNding for his profession!

What Dr. Stevenson overlooked, did not examine superficially or in depth, is the true import of any “Mission to Earth’s Core” attempt: it could make our planet uninhabitable for unsuspecting humans or finicky Aliens explorers! Before Dr. Stevenson’s probe reached Earth’s core in (an almost Bible-like) seven days, his reporting capsule’s descent through the crust and mantle mat put into motion natural event-processes that are exceedingly dangerous for the Earth-biosphere, causing an anti-biotic geological catastrophe in this Solar System. Indeed, Dr. David J. Stevenson’s “Mission to Earth’ Core” may be a new form of “suicidal” type solution—additional to Nuclear Armageddon—for Fermi’s posed Paradox. In other words, our globalized Google-Age civilization overdevelops Geoscience (much earlier than, say, Astronomy or Genetics) and subsequently destroys itself by misguided intra-Earth exploration. But, how you ask?

Drs. Hans Keppler, Michael Wiedenbeck and Svyatoslav S. Shcheka in the 24 July 2003 NATURE (Vol. 424, pages 414-416) offer a teasing answer: mass extinctions can be caused by the liberation of carbon formerly lodged in the Earth-mantle. It’s already proved that methane hydrates form a huge reservoir of carbon and the quick, punctuated release of this frozen methane—the geological “Clathrate Gun Hypothesis”—results in global warming. [See: James P. Kennett, Kevin G. Cannariato, Ingrid L. Hendy, Richard J. Behl, METHANE HYDRATES IN QUATERNARY CLIMATE CHANGE: THE CLATHRATE GUN HYPOTHESIS, American Geophysical Union, Washington DC, 2002.] Whether he realizes it or not, Dr. David J., Stevenson has assembled all the necessary basic components for a “Carbon Dioxide Gun” capable, if misused, of murdering life forms of many kinds, including Earth’s fun-loving people! Forced entry by punching through Earth’s crust with a “Mission to Earth’s Core” will not be risk-free and, at the site of its inauguration, may construct a volcano-like “crust-mantle cannon” shooting unwanted (biologically undesirable) gases upwards! For example, when his core-bound reporting probe passes through groundwater it will certainly cause the interaction of freshwater with magma becoming lava. Earth-normal thermal equilibration between freshwater in a ratio of 10^13 gram-moles of 25 degree C freshwater to one cubic kilometer of 1200 degree C magma then evolves 10^12 gram-moles of gaseous hydrogen. A cadre of CALTECH geoscientists reported recently that there’s a “Potential Environmental Impact of a Hydrogen Economy on the Stratosphere” in the 13 June 2003 SCIENCE (Vol. 300, pages 1740-1742). Wouldn’t massive anthropogenic gas escapes instigated by Dr. Stevenson’s “Mission to Earth’s Core” macroproject really, over an abbreviated period of Earthly Geological Time, eventually transmogrify the mantle’s constituents, as well as the planet’s naturally shear-cracked crust?

Perhaps there’s a better means to garner and warrant the American public’s dynamic fiscal support—why not try honest dialogue instead of indirectness and countless cloying public news media crescendos. Oh, if only we could create a genetically engineered clone of an anti-Ruben Lucius Goldberg or anti-David J. Stevenson person—you know, someone who’s a straight-talker and to whom the American public in its infinite wisdom can bestow its trust and general affection. [Personally, I’d borrow a few bits of Dr. J. Marvin Herndon’s DNA—now, there’s a really direct, courageous Enrico Fermi-like communicator on nuclear reactor topics!] The American public asks: “Where are the straight-shooters”!!!!

2003-07-27T16:38:00.000-07:00

Potential Future Initiation of the “Permanent Global Summertime”: A Geological Event-Process Inadvertently Designed by a “Down-to-Earth” CALTECH Professor?

By
Richard B. Cathcart
GEOGRAPHOSrbcathcart@msn.com

More slavish journalists have dispersed the “idea” propounded by Dr. David J. Stevenson of CALTECH for a “Mission to Earth’s Core” macroproject in the popular print medium. [See: Sarah Simpson, “Deep Thoughts: How to journey to the center of the Earth—maybe”, SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, Vol. 289, No. 2, pages 24-25, August 2003 and S.B. “Melt down”, ASTRONOMY NOW Vol. 18, No. 8, page 14, July 2003.] Therefore, it is time to offer additional observations, minus the overtone of Project SATIRE.

Earth became a planet within a period of perhaps 30 million years after our Solar System’s formation. It is still collecting materials, growing more massive as we live and breathe today! Earth’s air has been splashed into Outer Space by gigantic asteroid and comet impacts, yet we still have gases to inhale.

Some gases—especially water vapor (97%) and carbon dioxide—are added to the Earth-atmosphere by visible volcanoes. Such additions, naturally, play a profound role in the thermodynamics of our planet’s air. Large volcanic eruptions, it has now been reported, inject carbon dioxide gas that is mainly derived from molten veins and subterranean pockets of carbonate. This revolutionary discovery, by Dr. Hans Keppler and several colleagues, can be examined in “Carbon solubility in olivine and the mode of carbon storage in the Earth’s mantle”, NATURE, Vol. 424, pages 414-416, 24 July 2003). Dr. Keppler was a Research Fellow in Geology at CALTECH from 1988 until 1990 and, since April 2000, is a Professor of Mineralogy at the University of Tubingen in Germany.

The most startling conclusion reached by Dr. Keppler’s Germany-based research team is that it is nowadays logical to speculate that a large melting event-process in a carbonate-rich region of the deeper mantle could very rapidly allow the migration of a large quantity of carbon dioxide from this presently crust-isolated reservoir into the Earth-atmosphere. Already, geo-scientific experts accept that some documented ancient global extinctions of various life forms were caused, evidently, by sudden releases from underground of carbon dioxide gas co-extant with widespread volcanic activity such as that in India and Iceland. A really notable large outburst of carbon dioxide gas from this deep reservoir could cause a drastic heating event-process affecting the Earth-atmosphere and the biosphere it shelters.

Dr. David J. Stevenson’s “Mission to Earth’s Core”, announced in May 2003, could trigger just such a massive (artificial) exhalation of carbon dioxide gas, which is definitely not a good thing for humanity’s civilization! By technologically penetrating the crust, perhaps weakening its local integrity, a descending Stevensonean Probe could artificially initiate an eventually massive volcanic eruption! Yet, Dr. David J. Stevenson never foresaw any such possibility in his plan. It would seem proper that he should address this dangerous facet sometime in the near future! Surely, no sane person wants the Earth-atmosphere to become life’s shroud instead of its shelter!

2003-07-20T14:18:00.000-07:00

A SF/Nuclear Geochemistry Parallelism?
By
Richard B. Cathcart
GEOGRAPHOS
rbcathcart@msn.com

DISCOVER magazine’s August 2003 issue (at page 16) offered “A Strange Brew in Middle of Earth” by Kathy A. Svitil. There is an ongoing debate in Earth Systems Science, currently in temporary dormancy, about the composition of our Earth’s hot core. Specifically, there is argument not only about how Earth formed billions of years ago but also concerning what kinds of materials collected in its center.
Svitil mentioned briefly a CALTECH professor’s (Dr. David J. Stevenson) 15 May 2003-announced plan in NATURE encouraging a future “launch” of a reporting, penetrative probe to the Earth-core in order to certify that it does consist only of iron. Recently, I had a bit fun redefining this impractical scientific proposal from a macro-engineering viewpoint via Project SATIRE, which can be accessed on the WWW: GOTO: http://www.geographos.blogspot.com/ .
A renowned American nuclear geochemist, Dr. J. Marvin Herndon, since about 1992, has continued to undercut the Earth-has-only-an-iron-core adherents with his innovative articles in major international peer-reviewed science periodicals, of ever more elaborate new forms of proof that our Earth’s central most core is made mostly of uranium, with iron relegated to the outer, fluid core! GOTO: http://www.NuclearPlanet.com . A March 2003 American SF film, THE CORE, delved into this Earth Systems Science subject most graphically.
There seems to be a parallelism of Science Fiction—in particular, the Superman genre—and Earth Systems Science! The Superman character made its debut in ACTION COMICS #1 in June of 1938. Reared on Earth by loving foster parents, a refugee from the planet Krypton, Superman does good works for all humankind. Interestingly, the world of Krypton is disrupted by a chemical imbalance within its uranium core on 39 Ogtol, 10,000!
Furthermore, most SF fans will easily recall that a 1956 American-made movie, FORBIDDEN PLANET, featured exciting visuals of that planet’s artificial core, which was comprised of many self-maintained nuclear reactors emplaced by the extinct Krell people. I have penned an essay that redefines the cinema’s storyline from its ordinary rendition. GOTO: “Geological Time Termination in a SciFi Biosphere: An Alternative View of THE FORBIDDEN PLANET”, which was posted during October 2001 at astronomer Dr. David Darling’s “Astrobiology Central” website: http://www.angelfire.com/on2/daviddarling/ForbPlan_Cathcart.htm .

2003-07-10T21:43:00.000-07:00

Deep-Biosphere’s Denizens Ignore Shutdown of Project SATIRE?

Richard B. Cathcart
Geographos

rbcathcart@msn.com

No recognizable communication of any kind from Intra-Planetary Life Forms—those organisms living deep inside “our” Earth—has yet voiced a cogent scientific objection to Dr. David J. Stevenson’s announced niche invasion plan for a “Mission to Earth’s Core” macroproject.

Finding no out-spoken allies in my somewhat lonely WWW-based effort to increase the ecological sophistication of the extant “Mission to Earth’s Core” game plan, I have concluded it is now the appropriate time to shutdown Project SATIRE (Scientific and Technical Information Reviewed and Exposed), which was tailored on http://www.satirewire.com , a now defunct, yet still accessible, WWW site offering tasteful renderings on real and non-real news items. But, before closing SATIRE, a few general comments on the topic seem to be necessary, even obligatory.

MONITORING THE EARTH: PHYSICAL GEOLOGY IN ACTION (2002), by Claudio Vita-Finzi is the first book-length review of all the recent advances in satellite data acquisition, supercomputing and mass-spectrometry techniques that are “disrobing” Earth to the unsympathetic gaze of Earthlings. Scientific investigators nowadays behave like mechanics removing the cover-plates from the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair “Atomium”! To this activity, Dr. Stevenson has proposed a version of the American medical industry’s video pill, a television camera approximately the size of a vitamin pill that, when ingested by a patient, transmits images from a person’s stomach and intestinal tract. Greens have petitioned America’s law courts to restrain, sometime prevent, the US Navy from testing its most powerful sonar gear in the open ocean because, they allege, it hurts the eardrums of whales etc. Therefore, it’s very improbable that threadbare Green vegan litigants and commission-addicted lawyer$ would idly stand by whilst Dr. Stevenson’s gadgetry invades Earth’s molten interior after, first, passing through a zone that might be teeming with undocumented life forms!

SATIRE, in a final prediction, states for the historical record that Dr. David J. Stevenson’s “Mission to Earth’s Core” macroproject, if undertaken, will be as disappointing to the world-public as humankind’s so-called Space Age. [See, for instance: Sean Topham’s WHERE’S MY SPACE AGE? THE RISE AND FALL OF FUTURISTIC DESIGN (2003).] And, furthermore, it wont even equal a non-profit French group’s KEO Project [GOTO: http://www.space.com/searchforlifeseti/seti_vakoch_keo_030710.html ] to project, then retrieve after Earth impact or splashdown 50,000 years hence, a deep-space probe which had been autographed by people from every country before it was sent into Outer Space! If Dr. Stevenson publicly offers more refinements on his “Mission to Earth’s Core”, SATIRE will feel obliged to offer a few worthwhile corrections should mistakes be found.
Overall, SATIRE thinks/believes that “Mission to Earth’s Core” is another modern-day absurdity masquerading as Macro-engineering—see, especially, SATIRE’s remarks of 10 June 2003 below—and is dismayed that a massive missive macroproject has been planned by a mere geoscientist, not a macro-engineer! “Mission to Earth’s Core” is remarkably too remindful of the wildly devised macroprojects offered by “halfbakery, call ambulance, rebuild kitchen” ( http://www.halfbakery.com ).

Besides, SATIRE’s impassioned macro-engineering objections to “Mission to Earth’s Core” are, perhaps sooner rather than later, as likely to become accessed by the WWW world-public as the recently published CALTECH discovery that a proposed Hydrogen Economy—nowadays still advertised as a near-certain “cure” for the atmospheric build-up of carbon dioxide gases allegedly causing global warming—poses a palpable threat to all Earth life in terms of pollution impacts. See: T.K. Tromp, R-L Shia, M. Allen, J.M. Eiler and Y.L. Yung, “Potential Environmental Impact of a Hydrogen Economy on the Stratosphere”, SCIENCE 300: 1740-1742 (13 June 2003). Heck, it seems even if we harvested hydrogen gas from Saturn via a Saturn Hydrogen Acquisition Mission (SHAM), as anonymously proposed by “timmyd” on 12 June 2003 at http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Hydrogen_20Source that just wouldn’t be a good macroproject either! It just seems to be one of those not-so-rare instances of “Damned if you do it, damned if you don’t” doesn’t?

SATIRE anxiously awaits further developments in this saga of BIG SCIENCE! Meantime, SATIRE’s body craves another vitamin pill, which will, of course, be thoroughly examined—maybe pulverized—before being swallowed!

2003-06-25T16:19:00.000-07:00

Feigned Journalistic Fury versus Fiery Geoscience Feint?

Richard B. Cathcart
Geographosrbcathcart@msn.com

Flopping inside my mailbox, almost invisible amongst the US Postal Service-delivered adverts and throwaways, was the glossy-covered 26 May 2003 issue of U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT [Vol. 134, No. 8]. Flipping through it, finally reaching its page 54, I spied “A hell of an idea: A leading scientist has a half-serious scheme for sending a probe all the way to Earth’s fiery core”. Situated next to an advertisement for the MERCK MANUAL OF MEDICAL INFORMATION—SECOND HOME EDITION, is the article penned by Nell Boyce that is cleverly illustrated with a drawn bald human male, enrobed in a dinghy white laboratory coat, intently peering into a “holed” Earth and, incidentally getting himself facially irradiated by an intensely radioactive Earth-core! Madness!

Journalism just can’t get more bizarre than this! Dr. David J. Stevenson, originator of the widely noticed geoscience plan reported in this weekly national news magazine by Nell Boyce, seems to be a person that is not to be taken seriously by some American journalists! Is it possible Dr. Stevenson may come, sometime during the 21st Century, to achieve the notorious stature that Mr. John Cleves Symmes (1780-1829), promoter of the “Hollow-Earth Theory” held during the 19th Century? Symmes died 29 May 1829. By lobbying members of the U.S. Congress—specifically Richard M. Johnson—petitions were considered by that august legislative body on 7 March 1822 and, again, during December 1823 to encourage a Federal order for exploratory expeditions to discover the inside of our Earth! Evidently, there was some enthusiasm for Mr. Symmes’ fascination with Earth’s interior for it was his ideas that played a major role in getting the Federal government’s financial underwriting for Charles Wilkes’ 1838-40 U.S. Exploring Expedition to Antarctica, thereby determining it was a continent. The 5 March 2001 CALTECH press-release [ http://pr.caltech.edu/media/Press_Releases/PR12112.html ] issued by Mr. Mark Wheeler, “Stevenson Receives Feynman Prize for Excellence in Teaching”, clearly stated that Dr. Stevenson “doesn’t have a lab.” But, maybe Nell Boyce did not see that announcement.

Many readers are aware of the periodical MOTHER EARTH NEWS that purveys a Green viewpoint on mankind’s current and past activities in the Earth-biosphere. Will it soon become possible, after expenditure of USA$10 billions of Federal science research monies, to actually “contact” Mother Earth herself?

Soon to be ex-President William J. Clinton, during January 2000, spoke at CALTECH. Standing before a stage backdrop that portrayed Earth’s Western Hemisphere in big gold dots, President Clinton gushed that he endorsed a “major new Nanotechnological initiative worth $500 million”. (The BIG gold dots were meant to symbolize TINY gold atoms.) CALTECH is proud of its connection with the late Dr. Richard Phillips Feynman, perhaps the earliest American academic advocate of Nanotechnology’s development. Specifically, Dr. Feynman (1918-88) proved all the words in all of our world’s libraries could be stored permanently on a material cube 1/200th of an inch on each side. [R&D in Nanotechnology is a cause for Green anti-pollutionary alarm, if the May 2003 cover story in THE ECOLOGIST (Vol. 33, No. 4, pages 28-44) pans out in terms of future unfolding ecological disasters.] The import of Dr. R.P. Feynman’s calculated scientific fact is that Dr. David J. Stevenson’s beeping capsule—intended for rapid descent to and, perhaps, even someway into our Earth’s core—might also be utilized to carry thoughtful messages penned by Average Federal Tax-paying Americans directly to Mother Earth’s “Heart”!!!!! Literally, it would amount to messages placed inside a sinking, not floating, bottle that is conveyed gravitationally to the planet’s center of mass.

Unquestionably, humans today impress a gigantic ecological footprint on Mother Earth’s “Face”—that is, this planet’s enshrouding crust. Now, Dr. David J. Stevenson desires our species to also, quite intentionally, pollute Earth’s mantle and its outer and inner core with manufactured materials not naturally present—at least during our brief segment of Geological Time—in those interior global zones! To appropriately apologize for humankind’s post-Industrial Revolution making of ugly superficial messes, many will concur with Dr. Stevenson that we ought to—in effect—send Mother Earth a heartfelt message of our species’ happy surface presence. And, there is the cheering prospect for defraying the “Mission to Earth’s Core” macroproject’s estimated USA$10 billions cost by selling autograph space on Dr. Feynman’s Cube to be inserted within Dr. Stevenson’s lively, reporting planet pill(s).

Luckily for Californians, there is virtually no chance that iron ore will be ripped from our Golden State’s surface since our heroic Gov. Gray Davis, on 7 April 2003, signed into law Senate Bill 22 which requires that open-pit mines on Native American sacred lands be filled in after they close and the landscape then restored to its natural contours. On 10 April 2003, Gov. Davis’ obedient appointees to the State Mining and Geology Board adopted regulations extending the SB 22 reclamation requirements to ALL new open-pit metallic ore mines in the State of California. Thus, no new iron ore excavations hereabouts since the cost of mining is, effectively, doubled!! (It is widely known that the State of California is now very deeply in debt, remarkably without any spare funds for any scientific research.) This means, obviously, that there is virtually no possibility for an ironworks’ construction on or near the lovely, tree-shaded CALTECH campus in bucolic Pasadena; nearby commercial and residential property values are unlikely to precipitously plummet. So, it properly seems, isolated and mostly rural New Zealand really is the most perfect macroproject Test Site for Dr. David J. Stevenson’s “modest proposal” to touch our Earth’s core with mankind’s Neo-Iron Space Age technology.

2003-06-11T05:01:00.000-07:00

Earth-science Puzzles: News Reportage on the WWW during a period of mammoth US Budget Deficit Growth

Richard B. Cathcart
Geographos
rbcathcart@msn.com

READ these WWW REFERENCES:

“Plumbing the Earth’s depths” [14 May 2003, Ivan Noble, BBC News Online, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3021255.stm ]; “Going Deep: Scientist Outlines Plan to Probe Earth’s Middle” [15 May 2003, Amanda Onion, ABCNews, http://abcnews.go.com/sections/scitech/World/earthcore030515.html ]; “Going Down? Probe could ride to Earth’s core in a mass of molten iron” [17 May 2003, Sid Perkins, SCIENCE NEWS, http://www.sciencenews.org ] and “Route one to the center of the Earth”, May 2003, Belle Dume, physicsweb, http://physicsweb.org/article/news/7/5/8 ].

Just what is the Average American expected to think, or believe, about the true national importance of the topic of these remarkably similar one-subject news stories?

An architect and landscape planner, William Snaith, offered a trenchant comment in THE IRRESPONSIBLE ARTS, 1964, at page 90-91: “Perhaps a Venusian sociologist sent here to observe and record the habits and mores of earthlings could, after peering into the windows of a contemporary dwelling, send back the following penetrating analysis of a mealtime ritual: ‘At meals the diners eat clear soup from crystal bowls placed upon a clear glass table, in order to look at their feet’”.

Journalists, daily offered a deluge of FAX press releases from universities in the USA as well as worldwide, seem to have difficulty in coping with this intentional inundation of information. (Perhaps this daily “news” input operation is analogous to the infamous “document dump” the UNO’s weapons inspectors received from Iraq’s dictator before the recent war.)

Perusing the 14 May 2003 PR from “Caltech Media Relations” penned by Mr. Robert Tindol, the third from final paragraph thereof relates that Dr. David J. Stevenson “…came up with part of the title ‘A Modest Proposal’ for his paper…to have a bit of fun but at the same time to issue a serious scientific proposal. He purposely took the title from Jonathan Swift’s famous essay of the same name. The Swift essay suggests that Ireland’s terrible economic circumstances could be solved by people eating their own children, thereby allowing England to continue pillaging the country’s resources for its own one-sided benefit.” Mr. Robert Tindol’s statement is confirmed by the very first marginal note, scribed by Dr. Stevenson, at the longer-than-the-NATURE-published “A Modest Proposal: Mission to Earth’s Core”:
GOTO http://www.gps.caltech.edu/faculty/stevenson/coremission/index.html .
Therein, Dr. Stevenson, rather candidly states: “’A modest proposal’ is an allusion to Jonathan Swift’s essay on how to solve the ‘Irish Problem’ (This essay can be easily found using Google.) In this way, I attempt to warn the reader that what follows has both a humorous and a serious intent.”

An Average American might consider it silly when a notable academic personage, who is currently working at one of our Nation’s leading private-sector university’s, suggests scarce iron ore be mined at high dollar cost with indisputable resulting physical damage to America’s beautiful landscape, only then to be told it will be industrially processed into an expensively heated liquid, which is subsequently destined to be returned to the underground!

Only 5.6% of Earth’s crust consists of iron. According to recent statistics related in Dr. Bjorn Lomborg’s THE SKEPTICAL ENVIRONMENTALIST: MEASURING THE REAL STATE OF THE WORLD (2001, page 140) humanity spends “…annually $31 billion on iron ore or about 11 percent of our raw material budget.” Often, the popular media—especially the Green media—condemn such material waste and widespread landscape despoliation. Puzzling it is, therefore, when the popular media both accept (and even sometimes seem to promote) a truly unique macro-mining idea as is interpreted in the particular WWW REFERENCES cited above!

Obviously, America’s BIG Science Establishment has little to say comprehensively because it is not well integrated geo-philosophically. The ever-proliferating BIG Science specialties, such as Planetary Science in which Dr. Stevenson labors, each have a jargon and privately-documented discoveries; they have not yet come to cohere intellectually or organizationally and do not yet presume to settle very large subjects [as, for example, Earth’s mineral composition and geophysical architecture]. Unfortunately for America’s tormented taxpayers, it has become a matter of pride and profit that BIG Science always remains incomplete! For a few privileged persons in its innumerable component specialties, America’s BIG Science is an activity whose popular-media disseminated results will never give its substantially over-taxed sponsoring society a world region fit for contented contemplation by suffering Average Americans.

As we are mesmerized to gaze downwards at a profoundly opaque Earth-crust by exciting, if practically unenlightened news stories, should not Average Americans—who are obligated to undertake their own self-defense by our country’s Constitution—vigorously voice a loud demand for a Federal-level inquisition concerning the responsible BIG Science-reporting popular media’s capability to cull worthy from worthless university FAX press releases? It’s a thought, only a thought, Ladies and Gentlemen.

2003-06-10T12:02:00.000-07:00

BIG Taxes for a BIG mega-project: another BIG Tax gambol?

Richard B. Cathcart
Geographos
rbcathcart@msn.com

Taxpayers very reluctantly part with a large fraction of their hard-earned yearly incomes; commonly, they are unhappy when annually paid tax monies are used inappropriately or wastefully. BIG government, especially at the Federal level in the USA, is not presently popular with taxpayers; too, BIG Education is not really uppermost (favored) by many American taxpayers. I have heard and over-heard many such persons—the folks who impress a tremendous national ecological “footprint” on their geopolitically demarcated segment of the Earth-biosphere—express the sentiment that BIG Education, especially BIG Academia’s Science-development offshoot, seems to frisk and frolic with their taxes. For instance, following many incomplete experiments such as the lost Mars Probe and human deaths by incineration during the past decade or so, NASA is currently subjected to unfavorable public comment in the popular media.

“Father of the H-Bomb” Dr. Edward Teller, in a 20 May 1959 address “What Is Scientific Education?” at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA, explained “the most common activity in which a scientist finds himself is to make mistakes, recognize them and correct them.” In other words, scientists can make mistakes in their quest for knowledge; macro-engineers, however, cannot since their livelihoods would be seriously compromised (jeopardized financially)! Scientists can boo-boo BIG time, but still pay their Federal taxes! Life certainly is unfair to macroengineers, offering fines and Federal jail time for “avoidable” mistakes in professional judgment. Is that why so many scientists (Carl Sagan and others) seem to gambol with the American public’s tax contributions supporting their personal research into the Universe’s mysteries? And, most all thinkers will agree, there is much hidden waste in Federal expenditures.

The built environment (civilization’s vital infrastructure) is the footprint in the Earth-biosphere of all human activity. Funds are privately being collected for “The Clock of the Long Now”, an underground mechanical time-keeper that will remain extant for 10,000 years into Earth’s future Geological Time. (See: W.W.G., “A Clock for all Time”, SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, Vol. 287, No. 3, September 2002, page 92.) During 1999, UK scientists insisted the “Millennium Rock”—a volcanic rock “from a site in England with historic associations” to the explorations of Charles Darwin and John Cadman—be sent to the MIR Space Station (later broken into scrap by Earth-atmosphere entry at high speed) and returned to the UK. Reasonable American taxpayers must expect that some Science-minded Academicians will expect to be memorialized by a Federal taxpayer subsidized mega-project such as Dr. David J. Stevenson’s “Mission to Earth’s Core” since it could be managed to have the features of a deeply-emplaced Time Capsule. (See: Declan Butler, “Space ‘time capsule’ could send a message to the future”, NATURE, Vol. 391, 8 January 1998, page 112.) {Send your autograph to Mother Earth’s Heart Today?]

Dr. Stevenson’s mild insistence on the remote possibility of H-Bomb use to initiate his crack in the Earth’s crust has the potential to make any Test Site chosen by Dr. Stevenson a new nuclear proving ground. (See: Center for Land Use Interpretation, “Nuclear Proving Grounds of the World”, January 1998. GOTO: http://clui.zone.org/clui.html ) As noted in a previous posted essay, New Zealand could serve as the main Test Site (NZTS). If selected as such by Dr. Stevenson, an established NZTS would most closely resemble, at least geographically, Novaya Zemlya in Earth’s Northern Hemisphere that was amply dimpled by indelicate nuclear explosions set-off by Russia’s most thoughtful, and yet astoundingly tax over-funded, scientists. (There, on 30 October 1961, a nuclear device of 50-60 MT yield was detonated in the Earth-atmosphere at an altitude of about 3600 m.) A totally balanced approach to the full investigation of Earth’s still-hidden geological secrets seems more than warranted during the 21st Century! Besides, Dr. Stevenson’s tiny-yield A-Bomb or H-Bomb probably would be exploded inside an excavated (and uninhabited) “slit trench” located on New Zealand’s North Island, a perfect, yet mirror resemblance to Russia’s Novaya Zemlya Test Site!

During the summer of 1945, on 16 July, scientists created a “Second Sun” on the desert surface of New Mexico, USA. Inadvertently, a new kind of mineral was created too; “Trinitite”, the glazed, green, glass-like substance was manufactured by the first A-Bomb from common desert sand which had been melted, then re-solidified by the proof-of-concept nuclear blast. It was labeled for the “Trinity Site” test location. If all goes as Dr. David J. Stevenson clearly hopes, new stratigraphical layers close to, as well as above, our Earth’s Core will finally be recognized by Academia’s Science-development social group, so the option is likely to be presented of new geological strata becoming available for official global names: can we foresee the application of personal names to such strata? Yes! I cast my vote for “Stevenson’s Stratum” for the first of any new layers discovered via “Mission to Earth’s Core”—it would be situated just beneath Mohorovicic discontinuity. (Obviously, his CALTECH colleagues, close friends, family members could make the short-list of candidates.) But, wouldn’t it be truly lovely if the most inferior newly discovered strata were named “Taxpayers USA”?

[Oh, and by the way, New Zealanders evacuated from the NZTS will have to be settled elsewhere—on their own South Island or, just possibly, somewhere near Las Vegas, USA. Fully compensated financially for their losses (local radioactive contamination due to fallout), they’ll enjoy their gambol as so many other foreign natives have already (at the American taxpayer’s expense) for a lifetime. New Zealand’s government would be wise to institute a “tax-the-ex-patriots” policy ASAP.]

2003-06-08T14:39:00.000-07:00

Gravitational Art?

Richard B. Cathcart
Geographosrbcathcart@msn.com

Post-Modernism Art may be useful as the defining marker for a new epoch of Earth Geological Time. That particular type of Art is founded on the publicly asserted philosophical contention that a radical break with past civilization trends is occurring. It can, therefore, be taken to represent a sum of all present-day social changes and it is sufficiently apocalyptic to serve as a naturally identifiable named period yet to be endured by humans everywhere. Since an epoch is the start of a new Geological Time period, we are fortunate to have the distinctive opportunity nowadays to create delimiting, anthropogenic monuments on this planet!

Sculptors are dreamers. In January 1832, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82) speculated: “Dreams and beasts are two keys by which we are to find out the secrets of our nature. All mystics use them. They are like comparative anatomy. They are our test objects.” Post-Modernism Art’s rational proponents commonly measure its worth against the dreams of its economically poor creators. Humanity’s Space Age obligates Post-Modernism Art’s classification by the criterion of gravity instead of our world’s known geography or serialization based on reputedly recorded human history (divided into time periods); that is, we’ve built Space Art in interplanetary and interstellar Outer Space above our long-standing physical forms grounded in the Earth.

Essentially, and rather disappointingly, Dr. David J. Stevenson’s 15 May 2003 “Mission to Earth’s Core” published proposal was misrepresented, if not actually distorted by its author! In fact, it is an extremely praiseworthy artistic proposal for some serious taxpayer funding consideration—by New Zealand’s most upright Land Art aesthetics experts generously blessed with finely-honed grass-Green sensibilities!

Post-Modernists immediately recognize the comparability of Dr. Stevenson’s concept with the still extant dug artwork by Michael Heizer named “Double Negative” (1969-70). Furthermore, Dr. Stevenson’s vision, in some very important particulars, resembles Richard Serra’s destroyed “Tilted Arc” (1981). [Serra’s site-specific metallic object of Art was, unmistakably, an exact analog for an excavation sunken fence, a ha-ha; GOTO: http://bsc.edu/~jtatter/borders.html ] In the UK, The Cardiff Bay Development Corporation has asserted (in STRATEGY FOR PUBLIC ART IN CARDIFF BAY, 1990, page 22) that the entire barrage spanning that coastal environmental zone, and separating the bay from the ocean, ought to be apprehended by all of its admiring Green viewers as “a work of art”. It is logical to conceive Dr. Stevenson’s insightful “Mission to Earth’s Core” in exactly the same manner.

Dr. J.V. Sanchez and his colleague discovered and reported that regular arrays of rigid, vertical metal bars damp sound waves in air. (See: PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS 80: 5325, 1998.) A year later, on 15 May 1999, Dr. F. Meseguer and his colleagues reported that certain vibration frequencies are markedly attenuated if they pass through a regular array of vertical excavated holes in the Earth-crust. (See: PHYSICAL REVIEW B 59: 12169.) Has Dr. Stevenson undertaken the mandatory calculations to demonstrate that his “Mission to Earth’s Core” macroproject wont have unforeseen consequences—whether useful or adverse—long before his dropped (passive or active) tattle-tale device ever reaches our Earth’s core by speedy gravitational descent? Again, it seems wise to confine Dr. Stevenson’s geoscientific fieldwork to New Zealand. Being an island nation, New Zealand will naturally constrain any accidents of molten iron emplacement and, also, being situated so close to the cold Antarctic Current encircling the world, any spillage into that ocean might be roundly beneficial—a short-term Southern Hemisphere equivalent of the Northern Hemisphere’s Gulf Stream!

2003-06-07T15:11:00.000-07:00

Impracticality of a 21st Century Inverted ‘Tower of Babel’

Richard B. Cathcart
GEOGRAPHOSrbcathcart@msn.com

The history of materials engineering has focused on the prevention of cracks in materials used by humans to construct civilization’s infrastructure. Nowadays, Dr. David J. Stevenson wishes macro-engineers to foster crack development in the Earth-crust that underlies our civilization, according to the 29 May 2003 issue of CALTECH336: THE CAMPUS COMMUNITY BIWEEKLY (Vol. 3, No. 11, pages 1 and 5).

This publicly demonstrated professional obsession of a down-to-earth scientist is not beneficial for progressive Geoscience! In effect, and quite shamelessly, Dr. Stevenson is promoting himself, using a “modest proposal” that mocks America’s Science Establishment! (See: NEW SCIENTIST, 14 May 2003) The Van Osdol Professor of Planetary Science is becoming a modern-day “Stalin” in his professional literature dominance and artful salesmanship techniques applied to molten iron rather than solid iron; of course, the “Stalin” moniker is meant only in the sense of a humorous nickname.

Theoretically, a Tower of Babel composed of many baked bricks could have been built 2 km high with parallel walls. Dr. Stevenson wants to start a self-propagating crack in the Earth-crust, using very big blob of molten iron. The physics of his NATURE essay may be too simple—a more complex and certainly more realistic proposal will be overwhelmed by practical difficulties. His Sputnik-like, grapefruit-size squeaking pip descending from the Earth-surface (aka, Earth’s lithospheric rind) is a much too embarrassing reminder of America’s 20th Century failure to commence humankind’s Space Age. Our extant materials technology cannot provide us with the ingredients necessary to put together such a reporting device immersed in hot metal and suffering great compression. (See: T. Yoshino et al., NATURE 422: 154, 12 March 2003.) Is Dr. Stevenson even aware that gravity within the Earth varies from a maximal extreme of –10.8 m/s^2 at the core-mantle boundary? (See: Andrew J. Simoson, “The Gravity of Hades”, MATHEMATICS MAGAZINE, Vol. 75, No. 5, December 2002, pages 335-350.)

Dr. Stevenson seeks to irreparably industrialize a segment of glorious Nature (at a still undetermined surface quarry or subterranean solid rock site) via an anthropogenic inverse Surtsey, a well-studied submarine North Atlantic volcano that commenced noticeable eruption on 14 November 1963. He continues to chuckle (in the press) that an H-bomb may be needed to start his crack in our planet’s crust. Gee, why not use a man-made meteoroid instead? A narrow tungsten rod with a density of 19.25 metric tons per cubic meter, or an iron rod with a density of 7.87, dropped from Earth-orbit and touching down at 11 km/s, might penetrate quite a useful distance into the crust, propagating a vertical crack into which Dr. Stevenson’s molten iron then could be dumped in one industrial action. (Unless this industrial process was highly automated, there would naturally follow a spike in worker unemployment statistics.) What sort of open but insulated storage container could ever hold such a huge volume of artificially melted iron? I suggest that some convenient site located in New Zealand might be the best Test Site (NZTS). However, just like crustal unloading, a molten iron deposit by “Stalin” will certainly trigger vicinal NZTS earthquakes! But hearty, stolid New Zealanders wont in the least mind being shaken up; Americans will appreciate that, sadly, Dr. Stevenson will have to return to his distant, Southern Hemisphere, birthplace-homeland for perhaps at least a decade or so. Green politically correct Californians surely will enjoy the absence of a smog-heating iron works anywhere near CALTECH! Imagine the meteorological “heat island” over L.A. caused by the gigantic metal-ladle’s stored heat!! (Air-circulation between Earth’s hemispheres is not a significant danger.) Those responsible for safety at this NZTS macroproject ought to pile up restraining dikes surrounding the selected pour site just in case the holding container cracks or bursts unexpectedly. Otherwise, many sheep may perish—and people too! Naturally, such dikes must be guaranteed earthquake-breach proof.

Seriously, Dr. David J. Stevenson’s “modest proposal” wastes NATURE’s limited printed-page space, and is not amusing in that it holds the American Science Establishment to general public ridicule. Frankly, his published essay is on a par with Dr. George H. Kaub’s “National Geographic, the Doomsday Machine”, JOURNAL OF IRREPRODUCIBLE RESULTS, Vol. 20, No. 3, March 1974, page 22, which subsequently was successful undercut theoretically with a delightful factual statement by Dr. Lois M. Jones in July 1974 in the same publication at pages 12-14. Depression of the Earth-crust by a massive aggregation of the popular yellowish, politically correct, Green geographical journal might just be a perfect mirror of Dr. Stevenson’s “modest proposal” if both geophysical exercises were conducted simultaneously! Still, it might also be an undesirable, yet vividly imaginable, Phyrric Victory, the only final proof-of-theory Dr. J. Marvin Herndon’s negative critics will ever accept.

2003-05-26T13:17:00.000-07:00

Earth’s core and Early 21st Century Outré Geoscience

Richard B. Cathcart
GEOGRAPHOS
rbcathcart@msn.com

Listening to university Geoscience department PR spokespersons, browsing the “hot” Geoscience websites, and attending the public cinema can lead to crowd-induced reactionary alarm or, privately, to severe psychological depression! The 20th Century could even be apprehended—by those ignorant or forgetful of Earth’s history—a halcyon period of Geological Time. The Holy Bible clearly reveals that the physical Earth will not be destroyed. Ecclesiastes 1:4: “One generation passes away, and another generation comes; But the Earth abides forever.” In other words, no new globular mass of material will be revolving about the Sun in Earth’s stead. Geoscience, of course, has other visions of Earth’s far future. [See, for example, Peter D. Ward and Donald Brownlee’s THE LIFE AND DEATH OF PLANET EARTH, Henry Holt & Company, New York, 2002.]

Unconventional, eccentric, even somewhat bizarre macroproject plans for modifying the Earth are espoused by some internationally recognized Geoscience experts; 21st Century outré scientific social group culture paroxysm has had the interesting effect of stimulating the current outburst of filmic catastrophes. THE CORE, which premiered in American theaters on 25 March 2003, was soon followed by a 15 May 2003 NATURE trial balloon penned by Caltech professor Dr. David J. Stevenson enthusiastically suggesting America’s Federal taxpayers finance a gravity-powered data-broadcasting probe falling to our Earth’s core! That would be no easy macroproject to accomplish since 99% of Earth’s mass is 1,000+ degrees Centigrade.

Dr. Stevenson’s “modest proposal” succeeds the August 2002 cover story “Nuclear Planet” by DISCOVER magazine writer Brad Lemley, discussing the documented scientific views of Dr. J. Marvin Herndon, who has propounded a theory that Earth’s innermost core is a nuclear fission reactor, not solid iron. Dr. Stevenson has publicly opposed Dr. Herndon’s theory judging by quotations found in America’s printed mass media. Professional acceptance/adoption of Dr. J. Marvin Herndon’s site-specific Geoscience theory would cause a bouleversement in Geoscience.

The chance association of THE CORE movie’s release with the almost simultaneous publication of Dr. Herndon’s most recent theoretical calculations in the 18 March 2003 PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES seems to have egged Dr. David J. Stevenson to virtually denounce Dr. Herndon’s association with similarly educated Geoscience professionals and, further, to purvey his own very dramatic, theatrical, “Mission to the Earth’s core” scheme—in effect, capitalizing on THE CORE! All of Science’s history, including that of Geoscience, is rife with suppression efforts. [See, for example, Brian Martin’s SUPPRESSION STORIES, 1997.] Outrageous hypotheses, “ideas without precedent are generally looked on with disfavor and…[powerful and influential professional persons] are shocked if their conceptions of an orderly world are challenged” says UK geoscientist Dr. R.J. Huggett in “Terrestrial Catastrophism: causes and effects”, PROGRESS IN PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY (December 1988). Dr. J. Marvin Herndon’s theory is not Catastrophism; however, Dr. Herndon still seeks a truly final proof-of-usefulness for his unique Geoscience concept.

GEOGRAPHOS today suggests such undeniable proof may eventually become evidential via future industrial activity, perhaps by actions conducted by heartless non-Homo sapiens sapiens, of busy mining macro-engineers. Not via panning, nor sluicing, or mere hydraulicking, but strip mining on a planetary scale would expose Earth’s inner-core to visual inspection and sampling! That scintillating, radioactive nugget would dazzle macro-engineers, produced by a brilliant outburst of crust and mantle material. The entire process of strip mining Earth down to its inner core—99% planet disassembly—is technically described in a January 2001 WWW-posted essay, “Earth’s Sequential Abandonment by Terra-creatures and Subsequent New Niche-creation (Space Habitats)”, by R.B. Cathcart Dr. Viorel Badescu.
GOTO:
http://www.aeiveos.com/~bradbury/Authors/Evolution/Cathcart-RB/ESAbTcaSNNc.html

If Earth were spun up, the crust would shatter and the mantle would vaporize if exposed to Outer Space’s hard vacuum, while the inner-core most likely will stay intact. Dr. Freeman J. Dyson has freely outlined the globe-encompassing electric machine necessary to increase Earth’s axial rotation speed from 1675 km/hr to a disruptive 24120 km/hr. Discovery of Earth-core fission reactor by this means obviously just repeats human technological history; Africa’s famous, unquestionably natural, Oklo nuclear fission reactor geological formation was physically uncovered and recognized, during the 1970s, by earth-moving uranium miners! What a surprise provided humans by Earthly Geological Time!

[GEOGRAPHOS asks anyone with relevant technical expertise who cares to answer: (1) “Would the supposed natural Earth fission reactor continue to function as it previously had if it were totally exposed to interplanetary space in an unconstrained state of operation?” and (2) “Is it possible to encapsulate an artificially unshielded former Earth fission reactor, then use it subsequently as a convenient Nature-made compact nuclear power source for an exotic interplanetary and/or interstellar manned spacecraft?”]

2003-05-23T18:03:00.000-07:00

David J. Stevenson, “Mission to Earth’s Core”: A Repeat of “The MOLE” Project?

Richard B. Cathcart
GEOGRAPHOS
rbcathcart@msn.com

During January 1998 the Space Shuttle Endeavor, at unreported expense to America’s taxpayers of ~USA$ 22,000/kg, conveyed a brittle 220 million-year-old fossilized dinosaur skull—Coelophysis—to the MIR Space Station (1986-2001). Why? Because Dr. Jay Apt of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, successfully purveyed a “modest” idea to “…marry Earth’s history with humankind’s future…” (GEOTIMES, 43: 10, April 1998). Huh?
Now comes Dr. David J. Stevenson with another inapt idea, a 15 May 2003 proposal for taxpayer funding of a deep-Earth probe. Some of us are already aware, from viewing a 1965 cinema, “Crack in the World”, that bad consequences for Earth are possible! Stevenson’s beggary is outlandishly Hollywood, and quite immodestly presented too. Since a nuclear explosion to commence his crack is not needed, Stevenson merely mentioned it for the controversy it would generate. Would it not be wiser to initiate his iron melt at the bottom of a deep, vertical mine shaft or bored hole, preferably below an automobile wrecking yard?
On 24 December 1963, Dr. William Mansfield Adams, was awarded USA Patent #3115194 for his “Nuclear Reactor Apparatus for Earth Penetration”, a needle-shaped device designed to descend under the influence of gravity. This unique device was to be a tele-mining nuclear reactor with a bulk density of 7.6 g/cm3. Such a thermal tool for the direct investigation of planet interiors, and the return to the surface of macroscopic material samples, is a developable means to search any rocky crust at a rate of ~7.8 km/yr. Theoretically, the W.M. Adams tele-miner could reach Earth’s Mohorovicic Discontinuity in ~6 yrs, or possibly quicker if the machine were adapted to become a self-propelled gadget.
Dr. Stevenson’s obvious Big Academic America attempt for general, even worldwide, public notice repeats a May 1958 publicity stunt attempted by a member-in-good-standing of Big Corporate America.
Dr. Willard Bascom, who died in 2000, was Director of the Mohole Project for the National Academy of Sciences. In his 1961 history, A Hole in the Bottom of the Sea: The Story of the Mohole Project (Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, New York) he described how a corporate publicity stunt nearly derailed the Mohole drilling scheme. In Chapter III, “Science Fiction and Pseudo Science Inside the Earth”, in the sub-section at pages 65-66 titled “The MOLE” he says:
“In mid-1958, about the same time that AMSOC formally became a deep-drilling committee under the National Academy of Sciences and the word Mohole had been coined, rumors of a project with similar-sounding name and destination began to circulate around Washington. There is no direct evidence that there was a confusion between the two but it is possible that after the story of the MOLE became known, some of those who might have supported AMSOC in the early days held back for fear of being taken in by another elaborate hoax. The story of MOLE is told by a series of excerpts from pseudo press releases in electronics trade journals which printed Washington date-line stories above the very tiny word adv.

May 19, 1958
An undisclosed source deep in the Pentagon today admitted that the Department is ‘becoming heavily committed to a radically new weapons system known as Project MOLE (Molecular Orbiting Low-Level Explorer).’
The MOLE should put an end to the threat of war. No place on earth will be secure from the MOLE.

June 2
Dr. Talpa, chief of SEA (Subterranean Exploration Agency) outlined the basic premise of the MOLE. Because conventional missiles are in danger of burning up when the missile reenters the atmosphere, the MOLE is conceived to avoid that problem. It is to be launched downward. Since its orbit is below ground, reentry at high velocity is no problem. To avoid high temperatures the MOLE will travel near the planet’s crust.

Aug 4
The MOLE which was successfully fired a few days ago is now in orbit at depths variously reported as from a few inches to 60,000 feet. Scientists have their ears to the ground listening to the steady ‘crunch, crunch’ signals from the new missile.

Aug 18
A senatorial security committee today declared there has been altogether too much publicity on the vital MOLE project and clamped on it the megasecret classification of DBR (Destroy Before Reading).

This signaled the end of an advertising campaign with phony news stories for a real company that makes potentiometers. It effectively accomplished its objective of spreading the company name through the electronics industry, but, to the surprise of the originators, it left a trail of people who actually believed the fantastic story. Letters and phone calls arrived from people wanting jobs and from companies seeking subcontracts to build parts and launching bases.

The increasingly frequent appearance and mushroom-like growth of new and secret government agencies with large sums to spend on ‘Buck Rogers’ projects had made industry jittery. Who knew which way science would go and what might follow?”

Dr. Stevenson’s 15 May 2003 “modest proposal” in NATURE (423: 239-240) ought to fall into the same defunct status as the MOLE. A Sputnik-size—“grapefruit”—Mission to Earth-core Probe” is ridiculous, although possibly doable. GEOGRAPHOS prefers Dr. Adams’ workable idea to Dr. Stevenson’s tricky proposal.