Earth wobbles linked to mammal extinctions: study 3

[donbott]

So when an elephant dies, it falls over and the impact throws the planet out of whack, or am I being too picky?

DonBott

 

[DTSMAN]

I thought the earth wobbled last when an asteroid landed in the Gulf of Mexico..

Bo

Kentucky phone support-
"Mash the Kentrol key and hit scape."

 

[CajunCenturion]

I guess it all depends on how you define 'wobble'.

--------------
Good Luck
To get the most from your Tek-Tips experience, please read FAQ181-2886
As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein

 

[fumei]

Yes. If the motion is symmetrical, is that a wobble? When I think of "wobble" I must admit I think of the motion as being asymmetrical.

Regarding the elephant...I suppose it would depend on how big it was. A baby elephant, probably not.

Gerry
My paintings and sculpture

 

[tsdragon]

I thought the wobble was caused by extremely overweight people commuting back and forth.

Tracy Dryden

Meddle not in the affairs of dragons,
For you are crunchy, and good with mustard.

 

[lewisp]

Its more likely to wobble if all extremely overweight people all gathered together in the same place.

Slightly OT thought: If all the people who own cars in the world all jump in their cars and drive west to east at exactly the same time, would the earths rotation speed be reduced?

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

 

[Dagon]

Technically, a link just means there is a correlation between the two: it doesn't say one is causing the other. If the two things are merely connected rather than one causing the other, you could put them either way round. Therefore I think the sentence is valid.

 

[Lunatic]

Actually the last wobble that I'm aware of that caused problems was Krakatoa, which when it erupted in 1883, according the Discovery Channel show, threw the Earth's center of gravity off enough to cause the plant to speedup/slowdown its rotation by a couple miliseconds. It is also blamed for several years of extreme worldwide cold as the particles from the eruption spread over the world and reflected more solar radiation into space than was usual.

Other tid-bits, apparently the eruption was loud enough that it was heard over a 1/5 of the world and was the louded sound in recorded history.

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/discovery/krakatoa.htm

http://www.discoverychannel.ca/nature/krakatoa/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krakatoa

****

Wobbles leading to extinction would make sense as it would throw off weather patterns and make tens of thousands of years of genetic preference moot overnight (at least in geologic time).

 

[Ladyazh]

The question is - what can you do to prevent it from happening???

 

[Lunatic]

Slightly OT thought: If all the people who own cars in the world all jump in their cars and drive west to east at exactly the same time, would the earths rotation speed be reduced?

Don't you mean sped up?

Am I confusing the physics here? The sun rises in the east and sets in the west meaning the plant turns in what coudl be decribed as a counter-clockwise direction and by travelling west the force of the wheels would be exerted east, adding to the eastward energy...

Did I bungle that up?

 

[Trevoke]

If all the fat people went and sat in the Krakatoa..

"That time in Seattle... was a nightmare. I came out of it dead broke, without a house, without anything except a girlfriend and a knowledge of UNIX."
"Well, that's something," Avi says. "Normally those two are mutually exclusive."
-- Neal Stephenson, "Cryptonomicon"

 

[Lunatic]

What do people have against fat people? Fat people are actually less dense than muscular people, so if we really wanted to fill Krakatoa, we should put 300lb football players there because it would be the most efficient use of body mass. Remember volume =/= mass ;p

 

[Trevoke]

I have nothing against fat people -- they're no good at holding things up.

"That time in Seattle... was a nightmare. I came out of it dead broke, without a house, without anything except a girlfriend and a knowledge of UNIX."
"Well, that's something," Avi says. "Normally those two are mutually exclusive."
-- Neal Stephenson, "Cryptonomicon"

 

[KenCunningham]

They are if they're in a queue!!

Sorry - just my little joke.

I don't mind people who aren't what they seem. I just wish they'd make their mind up.

 

[lewisp]

Am I confusing the physics here? The sun rises in the east and sets in the west meaning the plant turns in what coudl be decribed as a counter-clockwise direction and by travelling west the force of the wheels would be exerted east, adding to the eastward energy...

Erm, I said from west to east, so the force is in a westerly direction against the turn of the earth.


And for the record, I have nothing against fat people.

 

[Lunatic]

Sorry, the sentence structure confused me. You were being to precise in describing it west to east. I read the 'driving west' and moved on to the next part of the sentence. My mistake.

 

[Trevoke]

Are you guys seriously talking about how much the rotation of a flower is modifying the speed of the earth's rotation?
HELLO ? INERTIA! We're all moving at the same speed as the Earth.

"That time in Seattle... was a nightmare. I came out of it dead broke, without a house, without anything except a girlfriend and a knowledge of UNIX."
"Well, that's something," Avi says. "Normally those two are mutually exclusive."
-- Neal Stephenson, "Cryptonomicon"

 

[flapeyre]

If all Chinese jumped at once, would cataclysm result?

Feles mala! Cur cista non uteris? Stramentum novum in ea posui!

 

[Lunatic]

When we're travelling in a car we're all travelling the same speed as a car, but that doesn't mean that if you're an idiot and jump against the back rear of the car that you can't cause the car to 'wobble' in its path. ;p

****

In the flavor of flapeyre's post

1 billion chinese jumping down at the same time = 500 tons of TNT
Krakatoa = 200 megatons of tnt converted to tons is:
200 x 1,000,000 = 200,000,000 Tons of TNT which is:
400,000 times more energy than 1 billion chinese jumping down at the same time.

So, if I did my math correctly (and I already screwed up once in this thread) to emulate the force of Krakatoa there would need to be 400 trillion chinese jumping down at the same time in an area the size of Krakatoa.

 

[KenCunningham]

Ok, we only have to wait a couple more years to test the theory then?

I don't mind people who aren't what they seem. I just wish they'd make their mind up.