Re: Boffinspeek galore

''Shield', 'terrain' and 'craton' are all pretty much interchangeable (to a five year old geologist)'

Is this a misprint of 'terrane' which is a slice of crust (of any age) which has been docked with another section of crust by subduction or continental collision?

Re: Boffinspeek galore

Just a couple of additional points.

Ultramafic eruptions were common in the Archaean (which ended 2.5Gya) although they continued into the Neoproterozoic. There are still some ultramafic eruptions in and around the North West Pacific.

Serpentinite is the product of hydrous metamorphism of ultramafics at low temperatures. You can see some lovely examples at the Lizard in Cornwall where a slice of the ocean crust and the upper Mantle (an ophiolite) has been pushed up over the Cornish slates and shales.

Re: A4

Quite agree.

The new Kobo Aura HD has just about the resolution to let you read a page of A4 if you're prepared to accept small (but very clear) fonts. But something bigger - closer to the old Amazon DX would be ideal.

Not really. Apollo couldn't have put the Hubble into orbit, constructed the ISS or launched Cassini.

Re: Don't want a Ring of Fire?

On a sort of related topic - has anyone heard from Lester recently? I check the seismographs, but nothing obvious in Spain.

Re: meh...

You have so much more faith in humanity than me.

And it will get worse when they are available for prescription lenses because there is no way glasses wearers will carry around another pair of (expensive) lenses for the times when Glass is a social faux pas (that is most of the time).

Glass is pretty much doomed the moment the MPAA finds out it is possible to take a flaky, shaky recording of some of a movie in a cinema - the lawyers will have a field day. And in Google versus Hollywood I find it hard to pick who I'd like to lose more.

Well said.

Seriously - a geologist not producing thin sections is nearly as bad form as them forgetting to leave their hammer at home. Extraterrestrial or impact quartz would be immediately obvious under polarised light.

Why do so many bad papers come out of august Russian scientific organisations these days?

Re: Pathetic Journalism

I must admit I've missed all the naked fat people in San Francisco.

Re: International treaty vs national law

'If I am correct, an International treaty beats a national law.'

Treaties are enacted by Acts of Parliament. Under what passes for our constitution it is generally held that no Parliament can bind its successors, so a second Act could be passed to revoke the treaty. There's some disagreement over whether certain acts are 'entrenched' and cannot be simply overturned - the European Communities Act being the most commonly mentioned.

Re: Flawed but...

'It's a surprise that decent quality hardware is more reliable?'

It can't just be that, after all the Lenovo scored at the bottom of the table; traditionally they've been every bit as well-built as Macs.

Although, as the article suggests, perhaps its the extra software they insist we need that's doing it - my last X-series came with a mountain of bloatware that kept finding ways back on to the system everytime it needed an update from Big-L.

Re: I think walruses are from the northern hemisphere

With chips please.

Re: Units.

Coconut?

This earlier image: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ISS018-E-038182_lrg.jpg seems to show the volcano's structure better.

The shadow line at bottom right shows a breached caldera rim with glaciers flowing off to the left. The resurgent cone of Mawson Peak partially fills the caldera. The dark spot at the centre would appear to be the active crater.

'I did hear once that the long version of the name is supposedly locals having a laugh, the volcano is Ejya, the glacier is Ejyafyallajokul, but the news carried on using the long name, so not sure if this is apocryphal'

The glacier is Eyjafjallajökull (literally the glacier on the mountain overlooking the (Westman) Islands). The south side of the massif on which the glacier is perched containing the volcano is Eyjafjöll proper, but most Icelanders call the whole thing Eyjafjallajökull - unlike the rest of us they don't seem to have problems round about the thirteenth syllable.

Re: A long time but...

There are some field experiments at Rothamsted which go back to the 1840s.

And of course Britain's ongoing experiment of the American colonies seems to be going nicely after more than 250 years. There is even some evidence you will soon be able to get a decent cup of tea on the other side of the Atlantic.

Re: Glass is not a liquid

Or indeed the Earth's Mantle which is a solid so far as an earthquake is concerned, but loses heat through fluid convection.

Krakatau.

The earliest mention of Krakatoa is a misspelling in a telegraph message conveyed to the British press.

Lava lakes are very rare and there are only four persistent lava lakes on Earth (Nyragongo, Erta Ale, Erebus and Kilauea), so it is quite possible the lava lake has drained back into the volcano and this is erupting through a vent at or around the crater rim. Bearing in mind just where Big Ben is located and the low risk it presents, I doubt any geologists will be hot-footing it there to take a better look.

Re: Do you know anyone on benefits? No, didn't think so

Because you might have bought your smartphone or iMac a while back but found yourself disabled, with a chronic illness or unemployed. I know it's hard to believe in the current Wirtschaftswunder, but people lose their jobs and are entitled to benefits.

Re: Also, don't forget

Average heat from the Sun 340W/m2; from the Earth's interior 0.09W/m2.

The Earth radiates an enormous amount of heat, but it is utterly dwarfed by the mind-buggering amount of energy arriving from the Sun.

Re: Fossil fuels are being used faster than they are being discovered

There's a difference between total fossil fuel reserves and economic fossil fuel reserves. The new reserves are almost all at the very high end of the price spectrum and would have been completely uneconomic even ten years ago. We have adapted to a world where oil costs $75-100 a barrel, we might be prepared to go even higher.

Re: I think we should all email them the link to the picture of the cock on Mars

Are you proposing to put Iain Duncan Smith on Mars?

I'm good for a tenner.

Re: What exactly do they think they are going to change?

Birgitta has experience in politics as she was elected in the previous general election. She led the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative's work with the Alþingi to introduce constitutional protections for human rights regarding the media, especially protecting whistleblowers. Not just WikiLeaks, but in Icelandic society as a whole, where tight interconnections between families and businesses allowed politicians and bankers to run riot in the runup to the crash. A large chunk of her work was agreed with all of the parties in the parliament which is generally more consensual than the nightmare at Westminster.

Re: So in other words (warning, Heretical thinking within)

'Given that it survived the creation of the moon (assuming that impact theory is correct) and the Chixculub (sp?) extinction impact and still balanced itself back out, who'da thunkit.'

The Earth survived just fine. The dominant lifeforms (or organic molecules) didn't come out of it quite so well.

Re: Call me sceptical if you will, but...

In America, celebrity 'I'm sorry's are usually followed by 'God has forgiven me, so why can't you?'

Re: The power of memes

'At the right moment, an accomplice can distract the guards by driving up in a flatbed truck bearing a cat playing a piano.'

Oh for that to happen, not just because the sight of the Home Secretary explaining that to the Commons would never get old, but for the gloriously po-faced Crimewatch reconstruction that would follow.

Re: You want to know if it'll work?

Didn't British Rail used to have some electric locomotives that used flywheels to carry them over gaps in the conductor? Or am I imagining something much cooler?

Re: The problem with WRITTEN Welsh is...

The article mentions books being available in Cornish. Well that language is even more fragmented and marginal than Welsh.

Re: you forgot!

And plastic - just like Paris H.

Re: Missile fuels and testing

UDMH is the stuff that's so nasty it resulted in a series of fires and explosions of Titan missiles in their silos. One exploded when a technician dropped a spanner on to the rocket's skin. It was armed at the time. The warhead was blown out of the silo and landed almost intact nearby.

Nitrogen tetroxide also nearly killed the crew of the Apollo half of the Apollo-Soyuz test mission when a reaction control system malfunctioned during re-entry and bled fumes into the capsule. I seem to recall the crew suffered 'bleached lungs'.

Re: Shame...

Some of those folks are still working. 'The Cave' from Double Fine is written by some of the people behind the LucasArts originals and has some of the same humour.

Re: "The only similarity is that both rings are round!"

The ring of power is also inspired by Norse mythology; especially Odinn's ring Draupnir which granted its owner control over the Nine Worlds. It's safe to say that Tolkein was an expert in many cultures and combined them with his own imagination to produce Middle Earth.

'Why send probes, send people.....'

Because Jupiter's radiation belts would cook you.

Re: Anybody working on superguns?

Not since supergun genius Gerald Bull met a nasty end at the hands of the Israeli secret service (allegedly).

Re: Kerbal Space Programme....

And Konstantin Tsiolkovsky.