An open letter to the 'frack off' community

Dear Frack-Offers,
                            I'm going to assume that the majority of you do not live in a cave or wooden hut, wear hemp and wool only and use candles (beeswax not paraffin) for lighting. I'm going to assume you own a phone, probably traveled to your protest site by a means of transport that wasn't walking or bareback horse riding and have drunk out of a plastic bottle at some point.

    We live in the Oil Age, just as our ancestors lived in the Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages. Almost every part of our modern lives is fueled in some way by oil. It is unfortunate but many of the wonderful things about life today, plastics, medicine, the internal combustion engine require drilling for oil. And yes, it is a finite resource. But tell me, if we do not drill for oil in this country, under some of the strictest laws and regulations on the planet, where would you like to get your oil from?
    Your answer would probably be either, 'nowhere' or 'not here'. Neither of those are particularly selfless recommendations. Until we perfect cold fusion or whatever is the next big breakthrough in energy we need oil. Yes, we should recycle, lower our energy usage and really think about whether driving to work and school is necessary but we will still need oil even if that is the case. Just less of it. (If, by the way, you are part of the NIMBY lot, I've nothing to say to you except people in Saudi Arabia probably don't like having whacking great oil refineries all over their landscape).

    Now to the crux of my letter, so I hope you're sitting comfortably,
I am a geologist. I have study geology formally for five year of my life and have held a keen interest in it for probably nearly 15 years. I don't say this so I can pretend I am qualified to pass judgment on the situation. No, I tell you this to prove I am a scientist and apply logic, knowledge and the scientific method to things and that my knowledge is mainly based in geology.
    Here's a home truth: Fracking causing earthquakes because any breaking of a rock below ground produces thermal and seismic energy which we would call an 'earthquake'. But, do you know how big an earthquake has to be to actually be felt by a human? 2 on the Local Magnitude (Richter) Scale. Do you know what size most fracking earthquakes are? In the negative numbers, -2, -1 etc. Richter, who made the Local Magnitude scale thought that any earthquake less than 1 (a size only rarely felt by humans) would be so insignificant as to not be relevant.

    Now, the larger quake in Blackpool I can't pass much comment on as I've not read any literature on the causes of the quake or what people think happen but that kind of event is not likely and not supposed to be a regular event when fracking happens. Besides, the UK government is currently enforcing a policy of no fracking. I mean, what more do you want? As old and as fractured as Britain is, it is also extremely well mapped, geologically. A company knows what they are drilling into and, wait for it, will always mitigate risks to the environment, people and their workers because they are legally obligated to do so, and also for the sake of any future contracts they may wish to acquire.
     Cuadrilla is not fracking at the site you are protesting. They are drilling an exploration well for oil and even admit the site might not go into full scale production at all. Also, and this may have escaped your notice, the company does not possess a licence to frack at the site.

Please, go home. Leave Cuadrilla alone. Groups like the RSPB who have real concerns about drilling occurring within protected sites I sympathize with. After all, once a nature reserve has an oil well developed on it, there isn't a nature reserve there any more. And yes, mechanisms must be put in place to protect against contamination of ground water. But the type of individual who is prepared to brake into private property and use bully tactics through volume of numbers to get what they want, regardless of the cause, I do not sympathize with. I'm sorry.

Might I suggest you take a holiday to Dorset and visit the coast around Wytch farm instead?

Yours,

LostTimeLady, geologist

Here is the permits that Cuadrilla has for the site at Balcombe, East Sussex:  http://www.cuadrillaresources.com/our-sites/balcombe/

The chock cycle

My high school geology/geography/RE teacher (she taught a lot of subjects over the years, it was a small school with a lot of teacher overlap) used to do fun things with us in geology class including what she liked to call edible geology. This involved taking a geological concept and explaining it with food.

This one wasn't one of her ideas per se but does slightly borrow from her idea of how Mars bars are a good analogy for folding.

Also, before continuing know that I've made this for a bit of fun and any student of geology who happens across this should know that that is the case and bare that in mind!

OK, so first of the ground rules so to speak, how rocks and chocolate are similar:

Both can melt.
Both can be fractured or mechanically weathered.
Both have variable composition.
Both can be found in different forms.
Both have variations in colour and texture.
Both have a variable viscosity as they cool and solidify.
Both can be combined with other chocolate/rocks to form new rocks of variable composition. i.e. Magma mixing or those nice sea shell chocolates with the praline in the middle.

How chocolate and rocks aren't similar:
There's only a handful of rocks on the planet that make their way into foodstuffs. The main one is salt.

OK, so this is the rock cycle:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6b/Rock_cycle.gif

So now with the ground work done let's think about the rock cycle:

Imagine your block of nice solid chocolate. What are the things you can do to it? (Apart from eat it!)

Well, you can grate it. This would be like mechanical weathering of a rock leading to particles that can be transported.

This grated material can be transported then compressed with minimum heat and temperature to form a new, if crumbly, slab or be set inside some kind of matrix, like on top of the icing on a cake. This represents a sedimentary rock.

Next you could deform the chocolate. Apply enough heat to cause folding but not for it to melt. This represents low grade metamorphism. If this happened to a rock it would still be identified as the original rock. If you really bent and squished the chocolate beyond all recognition this could be seen as higher grade metamorphism. Throw in some raisins and hazelnuts and you've got some fruit 'n' nut metamorphosed chocolate with porphyroblasts.

Finally, you can melt the chocolate. This would be your magma stage of a rock. In reality rocks don't so much melt due to a temperature rise than a fall in pressure causing melting. Think about it this way, you can boil water on top of Everest at 30 degrees because the pressure is much lower. The atmosphere is thinner. As mantle rock rises the temperature will remain within the rock because it's a poor conductor of heat but the pressure drop leads to melting.

But since this is the rock cycle there are many different ways all this can happen so I've made a handy chocolate diagram:

Now here's another thing about chocolate, it's called tempering.

Nice shiny chocolate with a crisp 'snap' is caused by the alignment of the fat molecules in the slab. If you melt the chocolate beyond a certain temperature the chocolate is no longer in 'temper' that is when it resets it will not set to a crisp shine and instead it will melt at room temperature! (Depending on your type of chocolate temper is about 40 degrees C, approximately). If you melt an igneous rock and cool it again the the same way you will get the same rock. But, if you cool it down differently you'll end up with a different grain size and rock texture. This is the reverse of the chocolate since it's the heating not the cooling that effects chocolate.

OK, so in the end not the most perfect analogy for the rock cycle but still fun to think about.

TTFN. 

Fun geology fact: A trilobite fossil is named after Harrison Ford's character from Star Wars, the fossil is called H. Solo. 

Non-Newtonian YouTube video playlist

I love Non-Newtonian fluids!
From the first time I saw the cornflour and water experiment to now, when my Masters project will focus on particle suspensions causing Non-Newtonian behavior in fluids I've been captivated.

Here's a playlist of some good videos on YouTube about it. It mainly focuses on shear-thickening behaviors but it's a good representation of how odd liquids can behave:

This is Veritasium's take on the cornflour/water mix on a speaker video and had a great analogy for shear-thickening by describing it like traffic in LA.

A three way comparison of water, silly putty and cornflour/water: http://youtu.be/bLiNHqwgWaQ 

Hank Green's Sci Show video on Non-Newtonian fluid

Some slow motion footage of impacts on cornflour/water mixtures.

Some more home economics level cornflour/water experiments.

Prof. Brain Cox talks about promoting science

A little off-topic once again but I think in keeping with the science theme of this blog.

I think it is desperately important for people of all ages to engage in science. Science isn't just that lesson you fell asleep in in High School because your teacher was a stuffy bore. It's live, relevant, exciting, constantly progressing.
When I was a small child I thought I couldn't be a scientist because everything had been discovered, gravity, electricity, wave-particle duality et cetera ... how wrong I was and woe betide any teacher who makes a child think otherwise!

Part of the reason why I chose the field of Earth Sciences as my subject (despite my love of bangs and sparks of physics and chemistry) is because at a grass roots, non-high powered electron microscope, level there are still discoveries to be made. Although I've discovered that high powered scanning electron microscopes do produce some intense images of samples. Like this:

This is a piece of volcanic ash

In recent times great advocates for science have appeared on television, the airways, the internet and in books. Chief among these is Professor Brian Cox of the University of Manchester. With his boyish good looks and a winning smile he's woo'ed the hearts of the nation and with any luck their ears too while he plainly, effectively and, most importantly, enthusiastically, shared his love of science.

I saw an article about the science shows being put on at the Edinburgh Fringe this year. One of the scientists doing a show and self-identifies as a nerd said this:

"We're trying to redefine nerd as not being someone who sits in their room and never talks to anyone.
Being a nerd is being unable to stop yourself communicating this cool stuff.
 We cannot conceive that people would not be interested in this stuff."
- Helen Arney

It's no surprise that enthusiasm for material is what gets other people engaged. It's infectious. 

I think back to the teachers I really loved in High School and I know that the reasons why I loved them and loved their subject is because they did too. They wanted to show us how cool their subject was, they bubbled with enthusiasm and where even more excited when you showed interest back. (I'm sure it must be crushing though to have people in your class who don't give a damn. I mean, I find it hard when my friends eyes glaze over when I talk about rocks).

But I promised Brian Cox so here he is giving a speech at the Institute of Physics after being presented with the President's Medal:

And if you want even more Brian Cox, here's his BBC programme 'A Night with the Stars':

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TQ28aA9gGo

Vive la Science!

References:

More info and origin of the ash picture: http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/about/pglossary/ash.php

Science at The Fringe: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-23571166

A drastically off topic post on gender-blindness and gender-shaming...

Time for a change? Always!

So the new Doctor has been chosen for Doctor Who.
For the record, I loved him in Local Hero and think he's fearsome and intense in The Thick of It but I do remember when Chis regenerated into David and... ummm, I had very little clue who he was, partly because I wasn't into Doctor Who that much at the time (having only discovered it properly watching re-runs before 'A Christmas Invasion') and I think the excessive hype over the casting of future characters may just have reached fever pitch.

Case in point, the debate over whether the Doctor should have been a woman this time round...

Ugh...

Look, for years people labelled me as a feminist and my response was always 'no, I'm an equalist' (egalitarian) but this never worked so I gave up, threw my hands in the air and embraced the label in vain hope that perhaps I could do some good with it...
What I discovered when digging into feminist theory, especially that which is pervasive on the internet, was a group of people, chewing the cud, who think that misandry is progressive, would sooner moan than actually instigate political change and over-state trivialities while failing to focus on true inequalities (whether purely a female issue or just a people issue).

A truly equal society is meritocratic. Meritocracy as a pure concept therefore should be inherently gender-blind. I won't delve into the issue of CEOs and boardrooms because my point of view on it all is too liberal (read, not angry) and I don't want to be shot through the lungs by radical feminists.

So with that groundwork down, do I think the Doctor should have been a woman this time?
My answer: No.
Tokenism is a horrible thing and the exact opposite of a meritocratic system. If a woman had been chosen it wouldn't have been because they had done open casting for men and women and chosen the best out of a mixed line up. No, they would have auditioned only females. If the former had occurred I would probably say 'well, I will take what they give us' but I don't think that would happen. The choice to make the Doctor a woman would have been a narrative one before casting even would start.

Yes, I'm that cynical.

What I object to now in the fallout is the gender-shaming of Peter (this isn't even mentioning the producers' need to justify casting a white, British man, or the tittering about him being 'too old'. Good grief!)
To paraphrase the feeling of some people (read, some feminists):
"Oh look, another man being cast in the lead of a hit TV show, this is once again a sign of the institutional sexism in this patriarchy."
Quite.

What we need is good female characters in fiction not retrofitting a current one to be a woman.
Doctor Who has always had great female characters: Romana, Sarah Jane Smith, Rose Tyler, Harriet Jones (MP for Flydale North), Susan Forman, Barbara Wright, etc etc two of the above named were characters who sat in the highest seat of power possible (Romana as Madame President of the Time Lords and Harriet as Prime Minister!)

Sci-fi in general has a good track record for strong females (more so that a lot of genres) so what we really need to ask for is more well-written females for young girls to want to grown up to be and young boys to admire, in Doctor Who and other original stories. I'm hopeful on that count.

This is what the internet calls 'Rule 63':
gender-swapping characters to see what would happen. Ok...

References:
Picture 1: http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_llvt76J6vn1qk2h0eo1_500.jpg
Picture 2: http://i3.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/374/557/005.jpg

The only legitimate reaction to academic papers you don't understand....

It's been a long day. Maybe you've been doing revision, maybe you have an essay due and what are you faced with? A long, esoteric journal article that you just know contains the perfect piece of data/info/trivia-to-woo-your-marker-into-giving-you-a-first. But there's one tiny little problem...

You don't understand a single word written on the page because it's an esoteric journal article written by super-geniuses for the reading pleasure of other super-geniuses.

After the existential crisis of realising that if you can't ever understand this paper how will you ever know enough so that you too can also be a academic super-genius you conclude you have only one option left...

No, seriously, there is only one true reaction when all other options have failed you, and it is this...

Nah, I'm only joking, I just wanted to write a bit of satire before bed.

(The head-desk is courtesy of John Green, noted American Vlogbrother, thanks goes to a person on tumblr (probably) for making the .gif).

Getting a sense of scale.

xkcd, as many will know, is a web based comic on science, satire and (sometimes) silliness. But he also does some rather excellent info graphics, like this one. Note in particular the volume of the Marianas trench verses Mauna Kea! Slightly mind blowing...
(for a full size version go to: http://xkcd.com/1040/large/)