Professor Andy Parker hopes to create a transitory micro black hole, in the lab, by colliding protons at very high energy. A question of Scale.
From a great height, the tiny people seem to live in two dimensions. But if we zoom into the same scale as the ant people, you realise they can actually move up and down as well.
Janna Levin shows us how triangles prove the Earth is finite, Sean Carroll does the same, on a grander scale, to prove the Observable Universe is infinite.
Saul Perlmutter “All the distances are getting bigger, every day. So, its still infinite, all the same galaxies are there, its just that we have pumped more space between every point in this infinite universe. That’s really is mind-boggling.”
Professors Anthony Aguirre and Janna Levin consider the ever-expanding universe as stretching space and universal observable view-points.
In an expanding universe every point in space is moving away from every other point in space, regardless of the perspective of the observer.
For centuries sailors, explorers and voyagers of all ilks have relied on the trade winds.
When the trade winds arrive back at the equator, it closes the circle. The resulting pattern of wind is called a circulation cell. But this circulation cell at the equator isn’t the only one. The pattern repeats so that in total, there are 3 circulation cells in each hemisphere, making six.
The rising summer temperatures increase the energy in the atmosphere triggering violent stoems and tornadoes.
Thunderstorms can also give birth to an unexpected phenomenon, massive dust storms called haboobs. This one blew into to Phoenix, Arizona in 2011. Haboobs are produced in normally arid regions when the leading edge of the storm collapses, generating a super-fast downdraught that kicks up a wall of dust and sand in front of it.
The interaction between the Sun, the Moon and our planet’s rotation produce some extraordinary tidal bores every day.
Today’s tides are pretty impressive, but they were actually much, much bigger in the past. The evidence for that is just off the coast of Bermuda. understanding how the tides have changed gives us a surprising insight into the history of the Earth’s spin.
Despite it’s proximity to the sun and the tilt of the Earth in it’s favour, southern summers are cooler. Why?
The high heat capacity of the vast southern ocean keeps temperature low despite the effect of perihelion.
The transformation of water into a solid is the final link in the water distribution chain. Snow Storms are solid water.
Our orbit around the Sun exposes our planet to potentially deadly radiation. But the payoff is a big one, a planet where water can be distributed across the whole Earth, providing spectacular weather and making it habitable.
It is easy to discount the role of water turning to vapour to form clouds, then falling as rainfall over land.
These tropical storms are an extreme version of the familiar phenomenon. Rain. Rainfall is so familiar that it’s easy to forget what a critical role it plays on Earth.
The Earth’s orbit around rhe sun is elliptical and perihelion occurs when the planet is at it’s closest to the star.
And what is so astonishing about this is its location. This isn’t the only glacier in this region, not by a long way. And yet, we’re at 55° latitude south. If you go to the equivalent latitude in the North, 55° North, you get to the Lake District in England. Now, we all know that the Lake District is very pretty. But it hasn’t got one of those.
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