Wednesday, February 1, 2012

The biggest Solar Flare since Halloween 2003

--------- #1394 - Results of January 22 Solar Flare

- Attachments : Solar Flare

- On January 22, 2012, a solar flare on the Sun sent a cloud of plasma towards Earth. It hit us on January 24. ( see Review #1385 “ Solar Storm Hit’s the Earth”)

- We had a unique opportunity to measure the intensity of this solar storm. We have a spacecraft en-route to Mars. It carries the Mars rover named “ Curiosity”. Its instrumentation was turned on to measure the radiation environment of inter planetary space. Curiosity does not arrive on Mars until August 6th. A few hours of data has already been downloaded en-route. The “ Corona Mass Ejection”, CME, was clearly evident in the data.

- Results indicate that the January 24 solar storm was the largest radiation storm to hit the Earth since Halloween, October, 2003.

- The Earth’s magnetic field received several days of intense “geomagnetic activity”. The Sun is increasing its intensity of solar storms at this time in its cycle. The predicted maximum intensity does not occur until 2013. We can expect more intense solar storms in the coming months. We can see this increased solar activity as Sunspots. Sunspots are the visible sign of the inner turmoil going on inside the Sun.

- On Sunday, January 22, a cluster of Sunspots (AR1402) blasted a bubble of energized plasma directly towards Earth. The plasma is mostly high-energy positively charged protons. These protons are the nuclei of the element hydrogen. The electrons normally attached to the hydrogen have been blown away leaving the nuclei with a positive charge.

- Impacting plasma clouds do not always create the auroras at high latitudes, called the “Northern Lights”. The blast has to hit the Earth’s magnetosphere in just the right conditions to generate auroras.

- The high velocity charged stream of particles generates its own magnetic field. When this field collides with Earth’s magnetic field, field lines are snapped and reconnected. This activity can inject high energy particles into high latitude regions as the particles enter the Earth’s atmosphere heading for the north magnetic pole. Charged particles collide with atmospheric gases on their way down generating a florescence we call the “Northern Lights”.

- Much of the magnetic storms impact is not visible. The changing magnetic field can induce destructive electric currents in the long power transmission line causing blackouts. The currents can be created in long metal pipes causing electrolysis and corrosion in the pipes. The magnetic fields can disrupt radio communications. Several airlines had to re-route polar flights for 2 days because of radio blackouts. Satellites had to be put on standby mode to avoid electrical damage.

- The space weathermen made a 13-minute error in predicting the time of impact of the solar storm. They are pouring over all the data collected in attempt to learn as much as possible about the effects of the storms on Earth. These storms would be especially dangerous to interplanetary space travelers.

-  SOHO, SDO, ACE, and GOES are acronyms for ground and space-based solar observatories. Google them to learn more about their continued evaluations of Solar Activity. An announcement will be made shortly, stay tuned.
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(1) Other reviews available on this topic:
#850 - How much energy is in a solar flare?
#1385 - Solar storm hits the Earth?
#1156 - When will the next solar flare hit Earth?
#1262 - Are solar flares ever dangerous?
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RSVP, please reply with a number to rate this review: #1- learned something new. #2 - Didn’t read it. #3- very interesting. #4- Send another review #___ from the index. #5- Keep em coming. #6- I forwarded copies to some friends. #7- Don‘t send me these anymore! #8- I am forwarding you some questions? Index is available with email and with requested reviews at http://jdetrick.blogspot.com/ Please send feedback, corrections, or recommended improvements to: jamesdetrick@comcast.net.
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707-536-3272, Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Does Anti-matter really exist?

--------- #1393 - Does Anti-matter Really Exist?

- Attachments :

- The Big Bang Theory contains some really wild assumptions. To start with the theory maintains that we all started from “nothing”. For this assumption to be true there must have been equal amounts of matter and anti-matter created. Even energy and anti-energy must have started in the beginning. So, if you add up the whole Universe again you get zero, “Nothing”. Now that is a big assumption.

- We have a lot of evidence that the Universe is made of matter. It is everything, nearly everything. In the laboratory and in hospitals we have evidence that anti-matter can be created. We have evidence that when matter and anti-matter come back together they create a burst of Gamma Rays. Radiation. Mass back to energy. But, there is no anti-energy that we are away off being created at the same time.

- Anti-matter was first discovered mathematically. It was needed to balance physicists equation of atomic behavior. We finally created some evidence in the laboratory in 1935 when we discovered the anti-electron. Anti-electrons ( also called positrons) are exactly the same as electrons except the charge is reversed, it is positive rather than negative. Again, the Big Bang assumption is that creation had to have equal amounts of positive and negative charges in order to come from nothing.

- All the particles since discovered appear to have an equal and opposite twin. Protons have anti-protons. Quarks have anti-quarks. Even the element hydrogen as a twin anti-hydrogen that is produced in the laboratory. Except for the opposite charges we can not tell the twins apart. A galaxy made of entirely anti-matter would look to us to be exactly the same as a galaxy made entirely of matter. Unless, somehow you get the two together. If you landed one of our spaceships on the anti-planet in this galaxy you would go pwooooof! A burst of Gamma Rays is the evidence you get that that galaxy was made entirely of anti-matter.

- Weird as it is anti-matter is being used in our daily lives. Anti-electrons, or positrons, are the “P” that is in PET Scans. Positron Emission Tomography, PET, they did not want to call it anti-matter for fear it would scare people. Would you lower your body into an anti-matter machine. I don’t think so.

- The biggest mystery in physics is why do we live in a matter world and what happened to all that anti-matter that surely was created in the beginning? We know that the center of our Milky Way Galaxy is still producing anti-matter. We know because when an electron and an anti-electron come together they produce a unique signal of Gamma Ray energy. The signal is exactly as calculated using E = mc^2.

- An electron and an anti-electron have the same mass. 1.822*10^-24 kilograms is the combined mass of the two of them. c^2 = 9*10^16 meters^2/second^2 . m*c^2 = 1,020,000 electron volts. The two Gamma Ray bursts jetting away from the electron / anti-electron annihilation in the opposite directions is exactly 510,00 electron volts. An that is what we measure when we point our detectors at the center of our Galaxy.
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Other reviews available upon request on anti-matter are:
#1303 Why look for anti-matter in the Antarctic?
#1272 Teaching the science of anti-matter
#1149 on anti - matter, #971, #891, #730, #670, #880
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RSVP, please reply with a number to rate this review: #1- learned something new. #2 - Didn’t read it. #3- very interesting. #4- Send another review #___ from the index. #5- Keep em coming. #6- I forwarded copies to some friends. #7- Don‘t send me these anymore! #8- I am forwarding you some questions? Index is available with email and with requested reviews at http://jdetrick.blogspot.com/ Please send feedback, corrections, or recommended improvements to: jamesdetrick@comcast.net.
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707-536-3272, Tuesday, January 31, 2012

How much is that remote costing you?

--------- #1391 - How Much Are Those Remotes Costing You?

- Attachments : Cell Phone recycle pile.

- How would you like to save 15 cents on every dollar you spend on electricity?

- March 12, 2007, I attended a lecture by Dr. Alan Meier, Lawrence Lab Berkeley. He is an expert on “ standby power”. Stand by power is electricity consumed by all products that remain partially on when their main purpose is turned off. Anything operating with a remote must stay on in standby waiting for someone to push a button. There are 50,000,000 garage door openers in the U.S. consuming 3.5 watts around the clock.

- Any transformer plugged in the wall is using electricity whether you have your phone connected or not. Every toothbrush charger. Every microwave oven with a display. There are many homes paying good money for those two little green lights to flash and do nothing. Every dishwasher. Every computer. Any electronic device that has an LED is consuming electrical power on standby. You probably have 40 to 150 of these all around your home.

- If you add up all the leaking electricity it consumes 6 to 12 one billion-watt power plants are just for standby power. In the world standby power is responsible for 1% of the carbon dioxide emissions. The average California home is consuming 500 kilowatt per year, or about $60 per year. That is more than your refrigerator uses to keep food cold. Standby power by definition does nothing, it just leaks electricity. 15 to 20% of all of California’s electric power is lost this way.

- Un plug those transformers when not in use.

- Turn electronics off, kill the standby, if not needed.

- President Bush has issued an Executive Order to all manufacturers that their designs should have standby consumption of no more than 1 watt. Today most appliances consume 20 to 40 watts around the clock.

- Standby power is an easy problem to fix. Power management is readily available in electronics. Most manufacturers just do try to be power conscious. They are selling price profit conscious not lifetime cost conscious. After all they are not paying the electric bills. Or, are they?
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RSVP, please reply with a number to rate this review: #1- learned something new. #2 - Didn’t read it. #3- very interesting. #4- Send another review #___ from the index. #5- Keep em coming. #6- I forwarded copies to some friends. #7- Don‘t send me these anymore! #8- I am forwarding you some questions? Index is available with email and with requested reviews at http://jdetrick.blogspot.com/ Please send feedback, corrections, or recommended improvements to: jamesdetrick@comcast.net.
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707-536-3272, Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Monday, January 30, 2012

How much are those cell phone chargers costing you?

--------- #1390 - How Much Are Those Cell Phone Chargers Costing You?

- Attachments : Cell Phone recycle pile.

- The most abundant source of energy in the United States is not what you think it is. It is in the form of conservation and efficiency of the electricity we are already using. A focused effort on innovation and continuous improvement of energy efficiency would grow our energy independence faster that any other resource. Use American ingenuity over foreign oil. Efficiency is the low hanging fruit that we should be taking immediate advantage of.


- There are over 170,000,000 chargers in California. An average of 4 chargers per household in the state.

- The electric chargers we are using today are cheap and inefficient. If they were replaced with more efficient charges we would save Californians $306,000,000 per year in electric bills. That is enough electricity to power 350,000 new homes.

- Today’s electric capacity cost us $350 per kilowatt-hour. To add new electric capacity at today’s prices it would cost us $900 per kilowatt-hour.
- Duh!

- Let’s save more of the $350 / Kwh that we have now before buying more of the expensive stuff. Here is California’s growth in the consumption of electricity

-------------------- 1960 ----------------- 55,000,000 million watt hours
-------------------- 1980 ----------------- 170,000,000 million watt hours
-------------------- 1990 ----------------- 220,000,000 million watt hours
-------------------- 2007 ----------------- 260,000,000 million watt hours

- That looks pretty bad. An enormous increase in electricity consumption. But, population has grown. New technologies using electricity are ubiquitous. Actually, California is doing much better than everybody else. California’s annual per capita consumption has increased at 8% per year. The United States in total has increased 54% per year. Californian’s consume 40% less energy per person than the national average.

---- Million watt-hours per capita ------California -------- USA ---------------

-------------------- 1960 --------------------------- 4 ---------------- 4 --------------------
-------------------- 1970 --------------------------- 7 ---------------- 7.5 --------------------
-------------------- 1980 --------------------------- 7 ---------------- 9 --------------------
-------------------- 1990 --------------------------- 7 ---------------- 11 --------------------
-------------------- 2007 --------------------------- 7 ---------------- 13 --------------------



- The battery charges deliver 2,900 billion watts of useable electricity, the rest is waste.
- That is 36% efficiency. We have the technology to produce transformers and charging systems that are 80% efficient by comparison.

- Battery chargers for portable devices started appearing in the market in 1989. Lithium battery chargers arrived in 1991. Today California has 170,000,000 million of them. Converting these to efficient chargers would reduce CO2 emissions by 1.8 million metric tons. That is equal to 138,000 cars per year. Efficient chargers would reduce peak demand by 361 million watts and save us 2,038 million watt-hours per year. ( figured at 14 cents per Kwh ).
- There are over 2 dozen innovative ways these efficiency are gained. Here is a few examples:

- Chargers would turn transformers off automatically as soon as it reaches a full charge. Full-wave rectifiers would be used instead of half-wave rectifiers. “Switch-mode” power supplies would be used instead of “linear” power supplies.
- California is passing new laws and regulations to implement these efficiency standards ( AB32). Every decision we make in our lives has two parts: “ what to do” and “ how to do it”. The 1st is effectiveness” , the 2nd is efficiency. The 1st is doing the right things, the 2nd is doing things right. In my opinion, our politician are doing things all wrong.
- Politicians and Federal Departments should be limited to these how’s: communication, education, facilitation, and marketing. Instead, they want to govern with mandates. Constantly expanding laws and regulations. That is NOT how to do it. Give manufactures the tools, in standards and test procedures. Use competition to get a “ green sticker” certification. Market and educate consumers on the benefits and the wisdom of a green sticker purchase. Show the paybacks that come with smarter purchases. Use the laws to punish manufacturers that misbehave and misuse the system. There should be a price paid for lying. Let the free market implement the “what’s” that are important.

- Instead politicians use the laws they pass to benefit the campaign donors that give them the power to pass laws. Regulations with bias and loopholes create abuse and fraud. Enforcement is discriminatory and unfair for those not cronies to lawmakers who need to get elected. Announcements will be made shortly, stay tuned.

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(1) See Review #1188 - Electric Energy - How to Power our Future.

(2) Review #739 - Standby Power.
 
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RSVP, please reply with a number to rate this review: #1- learned something new. #2 - Didn’t read it. #3- very interesting. #4- Send another review #___ from the index. #5- Keep em coming. #6- I forwarded copies to some friends. #7- Don‘t send me these anymore! #8- I am forwarding you some questions? Index is available with email and with requested reviews at http://jdetrick.blogspot.com/ Please send feedback, corrections, or recommended improvements to: jamesdetrick@comcast.net.
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707-536-3272, Monday, January 30, 2012
- The battery charges today consume 8 billion watt-hours per year

Sunday, January 29, 2012

Plants and Dirt can solve Global Warming?

--------- #1390 - The Amazing Power of Dirt

- Attachments : Big Redwood Tree

- Dirt could save the Earth! The amazing power of dirt, and, we could also say the amazing power of plants, that make the dirt. Really, if we went back to farming and understood the genetics of plants and the microbes in the soil we could solve the Global Warming problems the natural way. No mandates needed, just education.

- Plants love CO2. Plants breath CO2 and exhale the “O” that we need to breath. They keep the “C“ and put it in the soil. We get the Oxygen and the dirt gets the Carbon. If science would focus on this part of our environment we could be taking CO2 out of the atmosphere and sequestering it underground, nature’s way.

- One of the obvious problems is that most of the plants farming has developed are “annuals”. They are food crops that have to be planted every year. What we need is a “ perennial “ version of corn and wheat. With perennial crops yields on farming in the world’s most desperately poor places could soar. At the same time these plants would soak up the excess carbon in the Earth’s atmosphere and put it back in to the soil.

- Genetic technology could make this happen. We have the technology.

- With perennials crops would not be replanted each year. Their deep roots would prevent soil erosion. The soil would hold minerals and require less fertilizer and less water. Perennials do not require tilling so the land would remain a carbon sink.

- Adopting perennials to agricultural crops is a significant scientific and cultural change effort. The genomes of plants must be analyzed for desirable traits associated between genes. Then we need to analyze the microbes in the soil that break down the carbon left by the plants.

- Perennial root systems sequester an amount of carbon equal to 1% of a cubic meter of topsoil. Replacing only 2% of the world’s annual crops would remove enough carbon to halt any increase in carbon dioxide in the world today. If all plants were converted to perennials it would reduce the world’s atmosphere by 118 parts per million CO2. That would take us back to pre-industrial historical levels. Today we are at 389 parts per million CO2. Before industrialization in the 19th century we were at 275 parts per million.

- Even without the genetics in the picture farmers in Malawe in southeast Africa are planting rows of perennial pigeon peas in between rows of corn. The peas are a much needed source of protein for the farmer while the legumes increase soil waste retention and double soil carbon and nitrogen content without reducing yields on their money crop, corn. The next step would be to plant perennial corn. Why not ?

- It is not just the plants we should also learn how to get the microbes in the soil working for us. The microbes could be doing same thing, removing carbon from the atmosphere and sequestering it underground.

- Soil is not just top soil that is tilled. Rich brown and black dirt can be 2 to 10 feet down. This is decayed organic matter derived from plants that thrives all the way down to the bedrock.

- Soil organic material is about 60% carbon. Soil holds more than 3 times as much carbon as all the amount of carbon found above the ground. Carbon exist in the living roots, in the microbes themselves, in worms. in fungi and in other organisms as well as the generations that have passed before them.

- The secret lies in the soil microbes that decompose this material. Science has categorized over 15 different types of soil around the globe. Each soil type has its own family of living microbes. One gram of soil can contain 1,000,000,000 individual microbial cells. The number of different species can vary from 10,000 to 1,000,000 species in that single gram of dirt.

- These soil types are not just in our traditional farmlands. The permafrost in the Arctic likely contains half of all the soil carbon on the planet. Permafrost melts could be a serious rapid decomposition of carbon rich soil releasing it into the atmosphere. We need to understand the microbes involved in this process. How do they react to temperature changes?

- Some microbes are “ methanogens”. The exude as waste methane gas.

- Some microbes are “ methanotrophs” that actually consume the gas.

- Developing the balance in nature will take an intimate understanding of microbe cultures and communities. Let’s get with it. If we can do DNA on a chip we should be able to tell what species of microbe is in a sample of soil. Besides it is fun to play in the dirt.

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RSVP, please reply with a number to rate this review: #1- learned something new. #2 - Didn’t read it. #3- very interesting. #4- Send another review #___ from the index. #5- Keep em coming. #6- I forwarded copies to some friends. #7- Don‘t send me these anymore! #8- I am forwarding you some questions? Index is available with email and with requested reviews at http://jdetrick.blogspot.com/ Please send feedback, corrections, or recommended improvements to: jamesdetrick@comcast.net.

Saturday, January 28, 2012

How does light get its power from electricity and magnetism?

--------- #1389 - The Power of Light

- Attachments : Lightning volcano


- We can not learn all about the Universe using “ light”. There is just too little of it. Even if we expand the meaning of ‘light” beyond visible light to the entire electromagnetic spectrum our vision is limited. 95% of the Universe does not respond to electromagnetic radiation or forces.

- And, there is a wide range of intensities of light. Obviously the farthest stars and galaxies are very dim as light intensity falls off at the inverse square of the distance. Long time exposures are required to collect enough light to gather an image.

- And, there is a wide range of frequencies of electromagnetic radiation. Light waves are a very small sliver from 700 to 900 nanometers wavelength. Electromagnetic radiation starts ate radio waves and goes through many octaves of wavelengths before reaching Gamma Rays that have the smallest wavelengths and the highest frequencies. We needed to invent special detectors to “see” everything beyond our little sliver of visible light.

- AM radio at 1230 Hertz on your dial has photons of energy of 7.42*10^-31 Joules.

- If you get a suntan with ultraviolet photos at 2.5*10^15 Hertz, or cycles per second, each photon is 17*10^-19 Joules of energy. Ultraviolet rays are 2.3 trillion times more powerful than the radio waves.

- An X-ray photon would be 1.6*10^-15 Joules of energy.

- Here is a quick summary of the wavelengths of “ light”:

-------------------- Gamma Rays -------------------- 0.01 nanometers
-------------------- X-rays ---------------------------- 1 nanometers
-------------------- Ultraviolet --------------------- 100 nanometers
-------------------- Visible ------------------------- 500 nanometers
-------------------- Infrared --------------------- 100,000 nanometers
-------------------- Microwaves -------------------- 1 centimeter
-------------------- Radio -------------------------- 1 meter

- A 100 watt light bulb has a photon energy of 2.05 *10^-19 Joules. Its temperature is 3,000 Kelvin. How many photons are coming off the light bulb?

- There are 480,000,000,000,000,000,000 photons coming off the light bulb every second. The human eye can detect as little as one photon. Unless you are old like me and you need at least 10 photons to detect the light.

- Light has power, amazing power. It is the light radiation coming from the core of a star that prevents the star from being collapsed by gravity.

- The radiation from the Sun that reaches the Earth ahs 1,000 watts of power per square meter. The sunshine hitting you is 45,000 times more powerful that the TV station’s electromagnetic signal that is also hitting you.

- Light gets its power from electricity and magnetism. The 1,000 watts of power coming from the Sun is a 900 volts per meter electric wave traveling perpendicular to a 0.3*10^-5 Tesla magnetic wave. The wave oscillation is side to side , not back and forth like a sound wave or a density wave.

- To convince you that the light power comes from electricity and magnetism we can go back to when this was discovered. It was discovered in Maxwell’s equations for an electric field and a magnetic field. His equations included the permeability of free space and the permittivity of free space. The product of these two parameters was the speed of light squared, 9 * 10^16. When Maxwell saw this he recognized it as the speed of light and concluded that light was an electromagnetic wave.

----------------- Permeability is the ratio of magnetic flux density to the magnetic field strength in free space.

------------------Permeability = 4 * pi* 10^-7 Tesla* meters / amperes

---------------- Tesla is a unit of magnetic induction equal one Weber of magnetic strength per square meter.

--------------- Permittivity is the ratio of electric displacement is a dielectric medium to the electric field strength.

--------------- Permittivity = 8.8 * 10^-12 Coulombs^2 / Newton * meters^2

---------------- Coulomb is a unit for the quantity of electricity equal to the charge transferred in one second across a conductor in which there is a constant current of one ampere.

------------- Newton is a unit of force that produces an acceleration of one meter per second on a mass of one kilogram.

- In Maxwell’s equation ------------- 1 / permeability * permittivity
-------------------------------------------- 1 / (4 * pi * 10^-7) * ( 8.8*10^-12)

-------------------------- 1 / 111 * 10^-19

-------------------------- 9 * 10^16 meters^2 / seconds^2

- That is the square of the velocity of light, ( 3 * 10^8 meters / second)

- It is crazy math and a rash of scientific units but it illustrates that light comes from electricity and magnetism. Maxwell made this discovery simply looking at his equations trying to understand how electricity and magnetism works.

- Who would have thought that placing a phone call for a dime would lead to a cell phone for $100 a month?
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(1) # 1288 “ We are immersed in electromagnetic radiation”
(2) # 1286 “ What makes electromagnetic waves into light?”
(3) # 726 “ Electric and magnetic forces”
(4) # 1043 “ The strangeness of light”
(5) # 621 “ Background radiation”
(6) # 36 “ What do you think is the oldest thing you can see?”
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RSVP, please reply with a number to rate this review: #1- learned something new. #2 - Didn’t read it. #3- very interesting. #4- Send another review #___ from the index. #5- Keep em coming. #6- I forwarded copies to some friends. #7- Don‘t send me these anymore! #8- I am forwarding you some questions? Index is available with email and with requested reviews at http://jdetrick.blogspot.com/ Please send feedback, corrections, or recommended improvements to: jamesdetrick@comcast.net.
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707-536-3272, Saturday, January 28, 2012

Friday, January 27, 2012

The Energy of Motion

--------- #1388 - The Energy of Motion


- Attachments :

- The energy of motion is called Kinetic Energy. The Universe is in constant motion in all directions and everywhere. The Universe must be FULL of energy. Constant motion is a natural state. You can not feel it as long as everything is in the same constant motion with you. You can feel acceleration or deceleration, which is a change in velocity. Velocity has both magnitude and phase, if direction changes velocity changes. Speed is magnitude only. So, you can have constant speed and change directions and that would be a change in velocity that you would feel.

- The Earth is traveling 66,663 miles per hour around the Sun. Our orbiting velocity is dependent on our distance from the Sun. ( The radius of the orbit). Everything that is the same distance as the Earth, 93 million miles, must be traveling the same velocity, 66,663 miles per hour in order to be in this orbit. Now, if the object happens to be traveling in the opposite direction then our closing speed is 133,300 miles per hour.

- The meteor showers like the December Geminid Meteors hit us traveling nearly sideways at 78,000 miles per hour. The August Perseid meteors are hitting us nearly head on at 132,000 miles per hour. Each night after midnight is when our part of the Earth is facing directly forward to the direction we are traveling.
- The fastest Cosmic Rays whip into our atmosphere at 2,237,000 miles per hour, 0.3% the speed of light.

- The galaxies are rushing away from us at 13 miles per second for every million lightyears distant. So, the farther away the galaxy, the more space that is expanding in between us, the faster it is receding. 47,000 miles per hour for every million lightyears. A galaxy that is 1 billion lightyears away is receding at 47,000,000 miles pre hour.

- What about a galaxy that is 13 billion lightyears away. So its velocity receding from us is 611,000,000 miles per hour. The speed of light is 671,000,000 miles per hour. There is no problem with the Theory of Relativity here. Actually the galaxy is not exceeding the speed of light, it is just sitting there. It is not moving away. The space in between us is expanding. It is like raisins in a baking loaf of bread. The dough is expanding and all the raisins are moving away from each other. The space between us and the furthest galaxies is pushing us apart at 611 million miles per hour. It is all relative. We could say we are going backwards that fast. Or , we are both going in opposite directions at half that speed.

- When an object is moving relative to the space-time uses the Theory of Relativity which says that the faster the object goes the more mass it gains. It length collapses and its time slows down. These changes in mass, distance, and time are necessary to prevent an object from ever exceeding the speed of light, 671,000,000 miles per hour. According to Relativity a pitched baseball is heavier the a baseball lying on the ground. Clocks tick slower when they move faster.

- If you don’t think motion has energy try stopping an asteroid as it hit’s the Earth. All of its Kinetic Energy, it mass times the square of its velocity, gets converted to thermal energy that explodes like a bomb. The energy can never be created or destroyed it simply gets converted from one form into another form. ( See Review #859 for more discussion on Kinetic Energy).
- The Universe is in constant motion, but not all of it is fast. The Pacific Tectonic Plate that I am sitting on is moving 0.000,000,007,09 miles per hour. Does not sound like much but over 100 million years it moved Bodega Head over 600 miles from Baja to my neighborhood.

- Bamboo grass grows at 0.000,023,7 miles per hour

- Olympic swimmers 5.71 miles per hour. Marathon runners 11.6 miles per hour. Jackrabbits 35 miles per hour. Race horses 37.6 miles per hour. Cheetah 60 miles per hour. Sail fish in the water 68 miles per hour. The fastest car on the Salt Flats 763 miles per hour.

- I am sitting here moving east at 814 miles per hour. If I were on the equator I would be moving east at 1,038 miles per hour. I am moving 1,194 feet per second due east. The sound barrier is 1,029 miles per hour. I could be breaking the sound barrier but I don’t feel a thing.

- Our whole Solar System is moving sideways toward the Constellation Hercules the Hero at 43,200 miles per hour. At the same time we are moving forwards towards the star Deneb in the Constellation Cygnus the Swan at 486,000 miles per hour.

- The Andromeda Galaxy is approaching us at 288,000 miles per hour. Together we are approaching the Virgo Cluster of Galaxies at 2,370,000 miles per hour and the Coma Cluster of Galaxies at 16,000,000 miles per hour. These galaxies are gravitationally connected. Galaxies further away are receding from us at the 47,000 miles per hour per million lightyears distance. ( See Review #684 for more details ) .

- Other reviews on energy include # 527 The review starts with the energy of the flowing water in the Russian River near flood stage. Proceed to a flashlight and continue to add energy as far as you can go. Where does it take you?

- Review #682 Symmetry is the expression of things being equal from all frames of reference. What does this have to do with the Law of Conservation of Energy?

- Review # 681 What is the most effective source of energy in the United States today? What is your best alternative for energy independence?

- Review #956 There are 13 different forms of energy . What do you learn when you try to mathematically define each form from electrical to nuclear?

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RSVP, please reply with a number to rate this review: #1- learned something new. #2 - Didn’t read it. #3- very interesting. #4- Send another review #___ from the index. #5- Keep em coming. #6- I forwarded copies to some friends. #7- Don‘t send me these anymore! #8- I am forwarding you some questions? Index is available with email and with requested reviews at http://jdetrick.blogspot.com/ Please send feedback, corrections, or recommended improvements to: jamesdetrick@comcast.net.
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707-536-3272, Friday, January 27, 2012