Thoughts

Hello world, I’m almost through with my Master’s! I only have one class and my project left, though I’m still working out the details of how I’ll finish it up. Almost done!

I had a thought that I can’t let slip, and it involves energy. The current source of our energy is one of a collection of huge issues we’re dealing with today. Most of the popular solutions for renewable energy involve either drilling for more oil or experimenting with different chemicals to generate non-oil-based combustion. At heart, I think these solutions are short-sighted. They both involve depleting limited resources of the Earth, and I think they won’t suffice as our global energy demands increase. The future 2.0 will pull amps! Lets face it.

Specifically, we need electricity. Electricity is the life-blood of today’s society of devices.

If we can get a sustainable way to stream electricity without depleting Earth’s resources, we’d be set for quite a while; much longer than we’ll be with combustibles.

Though plans unfortunately call for turning drills down to dig through the crust for expendable oil. My question is, why not turn up? Just look at the sun. It might sound as if I’m about to push the use of solar panels, but I think we can actually do better.

The sun embodies energy - light, electricity, and a lot of other useful physical phenomena. Plants are the masters of transforming light-energy into electricity, but in our efforts to emulate them, we’ve hit limitations preventing our efficient conversion of solar light-energy into the amounts of electricity necessary for society. Slow pace in material-science discoveries, inefficiencies in photovoltaic processes, and occlusion (from clouds and such) are issues hard to solve.

But as humans, we have advantage over plants - we’re mobile! So why don’t we bypass the light-to-electricity conversion? I think we can tap into the electricity stream of the sun, directly. Remember, the sun streams solar wind.

This is a constant shower of charged particles flowing from the sun outward, in all directions through our solar system. In fact, if not for the magnetic field of Earth, the solar wind would radiate all parts of the earth’s surface with ionic particles. Energy abounds in this particle storm. If the particles are ionic, then they have charge.

Charge means electricity. And this electric wind isn’t too far away. It blows just past the boundary of the Earth’s magnetosphere. Traces of it actually leak into the ionosphere. A recent study found evidence for a direct link between the sun’s solar wind and our ionosphere:

See here: Strange Portal Connects Earth to Sun

That’s actually why it’s ionic! Have you seen the Aurora Borealis?

There it is! It’s but a glimmer of the solar wind, it’s right in front of us, and it’s power. But the question is, can we get that power down to earth?

I think it’s doable, and I have an idea to test it out that might help to advance a different effort involving space travel, so here’s my idea. Several groups in the world are currently working to find materials that will allow them to construct what’s known as a “space elevator.” The idea behind it is to construct a cord stretching from the ground into space. If the space-end of the cord is weighted, the spin of the earth will theoretically hold it taught with centripetal force. Once taught, the theory goes that an elevator can be attached to the cord, offering a cheap and easy ride into space. One group performed some experiments and realized that a vertically extended tether actually experiences a charge as it encounters upper parts of the atmosphere.

So elevators might be too tricky. But I say, take the space elevator idea, lose the elevator, then extend the tether. Extend it just past the magnetosphere. Have it touch the raw solar wind. What happens then?

I’m predicting … Space Power Cord!

Plug the ground end into a power plant, then maybe we’d be saying hello to clean, space-born renewable electricity.

Of course, there’s thousands of further questions. How much electricity will we get? Will it work at all? If it does, will the electricity just trickle in, or will it overpower our current resistance and voltage regulation technology? Will it fluctuate too wildly to design control systems around? Many questions remain, but now they are questions of managing an unlimited resource. The current energy investigations involve questions about managing rapidly-depleting resources, and it will be a short matter of time before we’re in a resource addiction rut once again. The Space Power Cord offers less to think and worry about, and the technology to get these tethers up there isn’t too far off.

SpaceShipTwos and/or Armadillo Aerospace pods will be flying by 2011. So why not get some tether on the back of one and test this out?

Update: I should bring to light some obvious issues of a tether in space, and offer some alternatives. E.g. what if it falls down via unexpected forces (stray meteorites, space junk, aliens, deadly missiles, etc)?

Well, there is a simpler way to test this. If the solar wind is, in fact, giving the ionosphere its healthy ionized state, it may very well be that we’d only need to transmit electricity from the upper atmosphere down to earth to get this renewable flow going. But how do we tap it? Space elevators? They still look to be a ways off, so it’s more feasible to try this out by hanging cord off a high flying geostationary craft such as an Armadillo pod or high-altitude balloon to try out. The balloon is the most cheap and realistic option.

But even if tethers are a no-go, maybe the energy of the ionosphere can be transferred to ground without cords. I remember, not very long ago, some research experimenting with a powerful ionizing laser. The researchers would shoot it into the air to ionize the atmospheric particles along its pathway. This ionized path would trigger the flow of electricity - as lightning. The goal: removing energy from clouds to reduce the effect of lightning storms.

So it may be as simple as designing the laser a little stronger, then designing an efficient way to “catch” whatever comes out the bottom of the ionized path created by it …

Recent Laser-To-Cloud Work

It seems that the laser road is imperfect as well, but the point is, options exist.

I’d ideally still prefer a solution that doesn’t at all touch the earth’s atmosphere. Who knows what might happen if we start robbing the ionosphere of its charge at a rate faster than it might be renewed…Though I think it warrants investigation. Just … wear helmets

Update 2: It appears I’m not the only one thinking about this!

See this link:http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/23/opinion/23smith.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

The solution mentioned in this article is nice in that it relies on outer-atmosphere collection. My worry with it is the use of solar panels and the “beaming” of energy that they speak of. The panels still waste energy in the photovoltaic conversion process, and the “beam,” well…As a friend of mine recently recalled, Sim City 2000 had a city-crisis scenario involving a space energy beamer accidentally missing target and laying waste to a nice portion of the player’s city. The preconditions here sound terrifyingly similar…

If we could somehow move energy from one spot to another across a distance like this, safely, it seems to me that a whole host of current energy issues can vanish. I have an idea about this, but I’ve rambled enough, so I’ll save it for … the future =)

God bless Randy Pausch.

His last lecture. A world’s lecture.

The back story.

His take on things.

Alice.

It’s hard to know what to say. But it’s important to listen.

Well, today is a little crazy. I’m juggling various celebrations for my family this weekend, an upcoming trip to Canada on Sunday, school work, and … for some crazy reason, I’ve decided to make a blog post about geology.

I know geology may be somewhat random, but read on! Intriguing things (may) lay ahead.

I happen to have a little interest in geology. It stems from my general interest in Earth. I love and appreciate it, and at moments in my past, I’ve considered being a geologist. Geologists strive to understand the forces that shape this world around us, and to this day, many such forces remain a mystery. Exploring mysteries is what I’m all about.

Being a Geologist wannabe, I occasionally dwell on the specific forces that bring about this surprising place of beauty. In particular, I’m a little skeptical of “plate tectonics.” In case you’re unfamiliar, this is the notion that that Earth’s surface is a collection of various rigid ‘plates’ of crust which coast around on a soft, goo-like sub-crust called the “lithosphere.” As the plates drift in this geological gelatin, they interact with each other. One plate may slip under another plate, and when they do, we get mountainous Seattles and Californias (and breathtaking views, as I can now attest to). Elsewhere, plates pull apart, and we get deep, dark, mysterious mid-oceanic ridges. The physics of plate tectonics is fuzzily justifiable, so most accept it and move on with their lives. I decided to become a skeptic…

Assuming Earth’s size hasn’t changed much through the bulk of its history, the planet has essentially served as a liquid-covered host for some coasting continents that we, as humans, occupy. The “internal forces” that drive these plates just so happen to push the plates out of the liquid here and there, yielding these continents. Consider this; it’s obvious that the disparate continents of today were at one point connected. That’s why South America and Africa look like they ought to fit together like matching puzzle pieces. Today’s lands in fact stem from one giant connected super-continent called Rodinia, which, by initial assumptions, must have poked out of a vastly larger whole-planet-covering ocean. At some point, Rodinia split and began separating into various continents by way of internal forces, and today, we have our Earth.

They say “convection” is actually the agent driving these plates. This is the churning of non-solid material under the crust as heat enters and exits the system. Such heat can stem from the radioactively decaying elements below the lithosphere. It all works out by inspection, but we can’t inspect too deep yet, and to me, the convection argument is similar to arguing that humans operate because “food digests in their stomach, keeping their blood flowing.” It’s true, but talk about fudging on the details.

I guess tectonics theory has held its own against Geologists so far, but I’m more inclined to support the “expanding earth” theory. If you’re interested, have a look:

Wikipedia: Expanding Earth Theory

The gist of this theory is that the features of today’s crust have formed from internal growth of the earth, rather than convection, since the times of Rodinia. The theory says that the supercontinent was actually the entire surface of the planet. The ocean was either very small or non-existent.

The “Status” section of the above wikipedia page (as of Sept 25th, 2007) says that the theory was dismissed due to a lack of an explanation for the process that allows such a growth. Some, such as the comic book artist Neil Adams, have taken up this theory, and he in particular has taken a somewhat radical and confrontational stance on it. I feel such an approach serves to hurt an otherwise intriguing theory. The reason for my blog post today is to make public my idea on a possible cause for this growth that stays true to physical constraints.
I’m hoping this will get caught by a search spider and prompt investigation by future searchers in the geo-know.

An aside about science: Science is still a growing practice. I feel that any and all proposed theories ought to be analytically investigated to some extent. The slightest bit of evidence in favor of a theory should justify its exploration. Scientists should mainly propose, prove, and disprove. In the case of this theory, i get the impression that many simply dismissed the theory. They ought to keep their consideration open to new things, and only end their consideration once a proof of contradiction is given. If such a proof can’t be provided, the exploration for further evidence ought to continue until enough is found to reason over.

Of course, there are plenty of arguments contrary to this. I can guess at a few: “Certain things can never be proven, so the question will linger forever, bogging down resources/time/(grant)money. People and research groups can only tackle so much at any given time. Other matters are more pressing. Scientists have to eat. Etc.” All these arguments are true. To get around them, I say, let computers do the work. Use deductive databases! Problem solved Granted there are still a few open problems to be solved in the realm of automatic deduction in the presence of mis-information, unknowns, contradictions, and self-reference, but in time, science can (and should) benefit significantly from an automatic reasoning framework.

Anyway, back to Earth. Wikipedia tells me that they want a process that can cause Earth’s expansion. I think I have one, and I managed to convince myself with it so much that I decided to e-mail geologists at Stony Brook University to ask their opinions on it. I was curious if my theory holds up against the constraints of physics and the measurements we’ve taken of the Earth so far. I’m largely out of touch with the state of geology, so it’s best that I let the professionals consider the low-level details. One professor got back to me and said that no evidence existed to support planetary growth, though he suggested I pursue a career in geology ( which I appreciate! ). The other professor never replied =(

I want to post my theory here, just to have it out there in case it’s actually true. Here is the letter I sent.

If you read it, let me know if you think it’s plausible. In brief, the theory holds that Oxygen phase changes (coupled with associated volume expansion over time) can cause the slow expansion of the planet. I haven’t worked out all the details, but if you’re interested, pick it up and run with it. Try not to ‘dismiss’ it unless you know a reason it wouldn’t work, and in that case, let me know so I can change and/or drop my theory =) Also, if you decide to take it up, drop me a line. I’d be interested to see if anyone else out there would consider this.

Here is my original e-mail, and clips from the Professor’s response. I’ll only present the knowledge.

Hi Professor *****,

[...]

Back in my Geo classes, I remember the discussions of plate tectonics. However, not long ago I came across a talk on an alternate theory of continental formation called “Expanding Earth Theory”. The theory claims it’s possible that the Earth is actually growing, expanding outward due to some internal growth, and that this growth is the true cause of the continental separation from Rodinia. I also read that this theory was largely dismissed because the supporters could offer no solution for why this expansion might occur.

My first question is, is there any direct disproof of the expanding earth theory? Is there any particular geologic event that directly contradicts the possibility?

If it isn’t totally ruled out, I was wondering if it might be plausible that such a volume expansion might be caused by a phase transition of dense materials near the core into less dense material (with greater volume), triggered by the gradually decreasing pressure from the core outward. Specifically, I’m wondering if it’s possible that this is occurring with oxygen. I know that oxygen is a main component in most of the suspected minerals of the inner earth (not to mention outer), and I’ve also recently read some research that’s revealed that it has a dense red crystal phase at 10 MPa and also a liquid metallic phase near 100MPa. Is it possible that there is a large reservoir of metallic oxygen near the core that is slowly transitioning and expanding into red crystal oxygen, then farther into the forms that we’re familiar with in the upper crust and atmosphere? If so, is it possible that this phase transition might be generating heat that is ultimately being released in various surface features on the globe? [Could such a mechanism] serve as a cause of the ‘expansion’ in the expanding earth theory?

[...]

Summing it up, I think that a slow and gradual phase-change - from a very compressed, metal-like oxygen near the core, through a rich spectrum of phases (dense molecules at the core, to crystals at middle-earth pressure, to the larger spacious molecules we find in the upper atmosphere) - and an associated volume expansion can create the inner “push” for the expanse.

By analogy, think about how dry ice evaporates. The volume of the dry ice is initially very compact, locked in the crystal structure of the ice. As it slowly evaporates, the volume of molecules grows until they flow freely, filling their container. This is only a single phase change from solid to gas. This one change also takes quite a bit of time as temperature slowly breaks down the crystal structure of the ice.

Oxygen, from the core outward, can very well start as a metal-like substance at extreme pressure (100MPa, or the pressure at the core), then at some point switch to a red crystal substance (10MPa), then to a liquid, then to gas. These phases of oxygen have been created in lab conditions. Even more phases actually exist mid-way through the process, and after each change, volume increases. The fact that oxygen has metallic properties at core-earth pressure may even make it a candidate for the ‘metal’ that generates Earth’s magnetic field, though I don’t want to make too many off-the-cuff claims. The accepted belief is that the outer core is a mix of mostly iron, but in light of these interesting material properties at high pressures, new possibilities ought to be considered and old theories ought to be revisited as well.

Here are some clips from the response:

Earth is ever changing
…
Supposed that there is no addition to the mass, there are two ways
that a material could change its volume - change its temperature or
experience a phase change (from one crystal structure to another,
for example from ice to water). The temperature of the Earth’s
interior is controlled by three factors: radioactive heating by U, Th
and K elements, secular cooling and movement of materials from
one place to another (convection). Overall, convection does not
change much of the bulk budget of heat (since it just moves materials
around); and the secular cooling overwhelms the radioactive heating.
So the bulk Earth cools over time (and shrinks in volume). The major
phase changes occur in about the depths of 40 km, 410 km, 660 km
and of the Earth’s inner core. These phase changes change
the bulk volume of the Earth’s and phase changes strongly
depend on temperature, composition and pressure. There are
some phase changes related to the convection system that could
change the volume of the material, for example, the subducted slab;
but that change of volume is probably balanced by that of the returning
hot materials in the convection system. There are places that Earth is
expanding in response to the convection flow, but overall, there is
no evidence that the BULK Earth is expanding.

Are there any addition materials into the mantle? It depends on the
interactions of the Earth’s surface with the atmosphere. Overall,
the change of mass is probably balanced between the
atmosphere and Earth’s surface. The early Earth however
experienced degassing during the accretion stage.

Interesting! I should probably get back to him. I should also look for evidence confirming a bulk-earth expansion. I think I remember reading some recent research about this… lets see…

http://archives.cnn.com/2002/TECH/space/08/01/earth.pumpkin/index.html

Maybe? I need better references. Well, I’ve got to run. Thanks for reading. In the end, I like computers and I like geology… *shrug.* You have to like something!

If you’re curious about the properties of oxygen at high pressure that I mentioned above, see here for starter details:

“High-pressure oxygen: a non-conventional magnet studied by means of neutron diffraction”

-Rojo

Ok so… I’m lying in the grass on a lawn at Stony Brook University, relaxing, taking the sun, and typing …

Honestly! I’m surrounded by grass (and a few bees, unfortunately) with laptop in chest, sun in closed eyes, typing my thoughts into the laptop as I relax and take rays. It’s times like this that I’m grateful I learned to type with my eyes closed =)

I know it sounds out-there, but honestly, this is fantastic. Everyone out there, especially bloggers, try this! I’m telling you.

So, what am I doing besides schlepping around in grassy meadows with my laptop? I’m actually trying to get a tan. I convinced myself that I need one after my talk of the good qualities of sunlight in my last post.

Though I got to thinking about it, and I can’t ignore that there are bad qualities of sunlight as well. Most obvious, skin cancer and 3^rd degree burns are a risk of prolonged exposure to the sun’s rays. I need to figure out how much sunlight it takes to get a healthy dose of vitamin D and brownish complexion, without the whole irreversible-skin-damage thing. I guess it’s a function of exposure time, skin cell regeneration rate, and skin cell degradation rate in the presence of sunlight. Which I guess also makes it a function of latitude and time of day … ozone layer thickness … solar storm activity … so this is getting complicated. Ah well …

Something physics-related popped into my head today. Did you ever wonder how those sun rays are propagated from the sun to the earth?  My understanding from undergrad physics is that photons basically shoot off the surface of the sun and connect with the earth at some point. My question is, how do they know what path to take? The idea is that they propagate radially outward from the surface of the sun, and the sun is a a sort of sphere-like ball of mostly-hydrogen (as far as we know), but is there something written in stone that says photons absolutely must propagate radially outward perpendicular to the surface of their energetic emitter in a vacuum? This makes me wonder about the sun.

Actually, the reason i’m even thinking about it is because I read some interesting findings about the sun’s plasma today. This is the hot gas that floats around and ejects off the sun’s surface. Scientists recently observed, by tracking the velocity of plasma discharging from the surface, that a wave-pattern is clearly present in the velocity of the plasma discharge. That means that plasma is streaming off the sun in alternating periods of fast-slow, fast-slow, over and over again, ad infinitum. From the footage I watched, the plasma seems to have variable velocity across different patches of the surface, but the period of each wave (the time it takes cycle from one particular velocity back to that same velocity again) seems to be fixed across the entire surface. Considering the size of the sun, this is a huge feat of synchronization.

This interesting find gives some insight into what’s going on under the frothy heat layers over there. My guess is that the sun must have some sort of rippling energetic mass near its middle that is making some waves.

This is probably obvious, but it seems to me that waves are a part of everything, and it should be acknowledged. They say that solar bursts cause ripples across the surface of the sun, like ripples on water, and that the sun rings like a bell in the process. These are surface waves. Now they are also saying that the sun has these core-to-surface velocity waves perpendicular to the surface that manifest in the solar wind. It’s obvious that waves have a fundamental coolness. Is it a coincidence that in math, one can use ‘wavelets’ to approximate any function, with any amount of variables? That means that the sum of waves can be used to represent anything you see in 2D (paper), 3D ( the world ), 4D (3d plus time), and anything in higher dimensions. The universe works in waves it seems. I find that interesting…

One last sun factoid: they say that the emitting plasma waves might give insight into why it is that the outer atmosphere of the sun, called its corona, is hotter than the sun itself. This fact is something that has perplexed scientists ever since it was discovered. Think about it. If you scaled the sun’s situation down to, say, toaster-oven size, this would be like saying that the space just in front of a toaster oven gets one-thousand times hotter than that inside the oven. If you were to throw some toast in there and crank the ‘toast’ knob up, reaching for it upon hearing the chime would cause you severe bodily harm! And you wouldn’t even be able to reach the toast!

Maybe this velocity-wave business has something to do with that. If the speed of the escaping plasma is constantly changing speed as it escapes the sun, I can see it causing a build-up of energy around the atmosphere as all that mass bursts out of the surface. The fluctuating fast-and-slow motion of the escaping plasma is probably creating a situation such that no inertia in the surrounding space can stabilize over time. Incoming plasma will always clash with the existing atmospheric plasma in a maximum of friction, and therefore, heat. Maybe it’s hotter around the sun than in it because there’s more friction out there.

So sun is great. And I don’t mean the guys that made Java! Though they aren’t so bad I guess.

That’s all I have for now. Adios!

-CJ