What Force of Nature Fascinates You?

[MsDazzler]

Okay, friends and I just watched DEEP IMPACT and DAY AFTER TOMORROW... and I just have to admit... I am a TSUNAMI FREAK! I love those raging huge wall of waters.... seeing cities oblierated by tons and tons and tons of water... for some reason, I dont find hurricances or tornadoes fascinating..

[syntax]

A womans scorn...

does twice the damage of any tsunami.

Especially if you don't tape the O.C :?

[Juliana_Dominguez]

earthquakes!

[syntax]

earthquakes!

you guys had one today! or so i'm told

[Texxx]

i have been in earthquakes, hurricanes, typhoons, tornados, and flash floods.
out of those the flash flood was the scariest.
that being said- the two "forces of nature" that intirgues me the most are tsunamis and volcano eruptions.

but definitely NOT the sandra bullock ben affleck movie.
:)

[Jordan]

Tornadoes are some scary things, been through 2 of them in the last few months! Nov and feb

[Alkemist]

Tornados, and earthquakes.

[MsDazzler]

Really? I find earthquakes to be unsightly... everything falling down and shaking

[Alkemist]

Really? I find earthquakes to be unsightly... everything falling down and shaking

That's why. It must be fucking scary to witness that. Seeing the buildings surrounding you reduced to rubble. Deep caverns opening up in the ground. :shock: Of course all this being in the worst cases.

Glad i'm on the East Coast!

[Ecstatic]

We have earthquakes on the east coast, too. There's a major faultline running through upstate NY and into NE. It's just usually very quiet. One morning a year or so ago I was sitting on the hopper when I suddenly felt the house move, slightly but very perceptively, like it was riding a wave. Nothing fell over, but I rode up and down like I was on a boat. It was a strange feeling. I then turned on the news, and sure enough there had been a quake near Albany, registering something like 3 or 4 on the Richter scale.

[Alkemist]

We have earthquakes on the east coast, too. There's a major faultline running through upstate NY and into NE. It's just usually very quiet. One morning a year or so ago I was sitting on the hopper when I suddenly felt the house move, slightly but very perceptively, like it was riding a wave. Nothing fell over, but I rode up and down like I was on a boat. It was a strange feeling. I then turned on the news, and sure enough there had been a quake near Albany, registering something like 3 or 4 on the Richter scale.

Oh yes. I remember that. Always exceptions i suppose.

[AugenGn.]

being trained as a geologist, its the incremental creep of the planets plates of protracted periods of time. the volcanoes, the tsunamis, the earthquakes, the nuee ardente are simply spasmodic expressions of this motion. its awe inspiring. of course that comes from some jealous of the vulcanolist who died at Mt. Saint Helen's. :shock:

other than that, meteorological phenomena have always fascinated me. i'm riveted by the satellite photos of hurricanes bearing down on a location. tornadoes and all that get me going. but most of all, its lightning. i can stand and watch it for hours...

and i apologize for using nuee ardente. old habits die hard.
not being technically proficient enough to insert an image, i'll point you toward a picture of one. its another name for a pyroclastic flow.

http://volcanology.geol.ucsb.edu/augstine.gif

[somatek]

Hurricanes...

It's not the winds or the rain that will cause the most destruction, but the storm surge. Also, the satellite photos are awesome.

[Osiris]

Hurricanes for me also. I grew up in Florida until 1992 and lived there again in 2004, and I love them! I'd wake up when the storm made landfall and go to the beach to check out the waves and the wind. Awesome stuff!

[Ecstatic]

I guess I'd have to go with supernova. Yeah, that's pretty much the ultimate. And if you wait around for a few billion years after a supernova, you'll find all sorts of heavy elements from which planets and eventually life can form. 8)

[MsDazzler]

being trained as a geologist, its the incremental creep of the planets plates of protracted periods of time. the volcanoes, the tsunamis, the earthquakes, the nuee ardente are simply spasmodic expressions of this motion. its awe inspiring. of course that comes from some jealous of the vulcanolist who died at Mt. Saint Helen's. :shock:

other than that, meteorological phenomena have always fascinated me. i'm riveted by the satellite photos of hurricanes bearing down on a location. tornadoes and all that get me going. but most of all, its lightning. i can stand and watch it for hours...

and i apologize for using nuee ardente. old habits die hard.
not being technically proficient enough to insert an image, i'll point you toward a picture of one. its another name for a pyroclastic flow.

http://volcanology.geol.ucsb.edu/augstine.gif

have you ever watched Deep Impact? Do you think an asteroid impact is capable of causing that HUGE tsunmani screaming towards America?

[WillowQueen]

I dunno. Until actually being in one, I can't say which I find more fascinating. It's all fun and games until is happens to you.
The most we ever get here in Vegas is lightning storms and the occasional flood. I like lightning though.

[AugenGn.]

have you ever watched Deep Impact? Do you think an asteroid impact is capable of causing that HUGE tsunmani screaming towards America?

whether it screams toward America or not, would depend on the point of impact. & impacts aren't "if's." they're "when's." remember, its pretty much a consensus (within the scientific community at least that there was a significant asteroid impact just off of what is now the Yucatan Penninsula at the end of the Cretatceous. which likely contributed to, if it didn't cause the mass extinction that gave mammals a chance to be more than little shrew-like critters scuttering along the forest floor.

no doubt the impact at the end of the Cretaceous generated a tsunami that dwarfed what's depicted in the movie. but as destructive as that tsunami may have been, the real damage was done by what was ejected into the air on impact....massive amounts of vaporized water, dust and molten globules of glass from the heat of the impact. there was enough material spewed into the atmosphere to severely curtail sunlight on a global scale for decades at a minimum. even with that we were lucky. if that impact had been on land.....well, the extinctions would have been even more complete.

there have been other smaller impacts as well, with dramatic localized effects. there was a meteor impact near Hampton Roads, Virginia just about 10-12 million years ago, which is responsible for the orientation of the Chesapeake Bay. prior to that impact, there was a smaller but still broad estuary that had its mouth in the vicinity of northern Delaware, passed SE through central Virginia and probably had a series of source tributaries, including the Potomac River, that originated in the Piedmont or Appalachians.

[flombago]

Gravity is the most fascinating force because it's something everyone is familiar with, hence very basic, yet historically it has turned out to be very subtle, and the full nature of it apparently remains a riddle. In the fire of my youth I spent years in earnest study, yearning to understand it. And it might sound like a joke but it's the sad truth. Nowadays I just wait and hope somebody else figures it out before I die, so that I may bask, however briefly, in the brilliance of human achievement.

[AugenGn.]

Nowadays I just wait and hope somebody else figures it out before I die, so that I may bask, however briefly, in the brilliance of human achievement.

i worked with a driller once summed it up perfectly when his helper backed up, tripped and fell over some drill steel.

"Gravity is a m*therf*cker!"

[MsDazzler]

Gravity is the most fascinating force because it's something everyone is familiar with, hence very basic, yet historically it has turned out to be very subtle, and the full nature of it apparently remains a riddle. In the fire of my youth I spent years in earnest study, yearning to understand it. And it might sound like a joke but it's the sad truth. Nowadays I just wait and hope somebody else figures it out before I die, so that I may bask, however briefly, in the brilliance of human achievement.

what s the riddle with gravity?

[Ecstatic]

Bob Dylan once said "gravity is the only enemy." Gravity is the weakest yet most pervasive of the four fundamental forces in the universe (though string theory holds that there are additional forces which exist outside our four dimensional space-time but within the 11 dimensions that make up reality). It's a mystery because its effect is universal: although by far the weakest force (which you can demonstrate with a simple refrigerator magnet: hold the magnet over a paper clip on the floor and it will pick the clip up, overcoming the gravitational force of the entire planet), the attraction occurs between all masses regardless of distance and is responsible for the structure of solar systems and galaxies (that is, the way planets orbit suns, etc.).

[flombago]

Wow, Esctatic, you are so well educated ! And, Ms. Dazzler, what's the riddle with gravity ? I believe the issue is that there is, at present, no consistency between General Relativity (the theory of gravity) and quantum field theory (within which there is a viable model of the other 3 forces of nature that Ecstatic alluded to). The situation is very nicely explained in the book "The Elegant Universe" by Brian Greene, a theoretical physicicst at Columbia University. Although a first-class scientist, Greene is quite accessible to the intelligent layperson, and I highly recommend his book. It has one of the best non-mathematical explanations of Gen. Rel., as well as quantum field theory, for the layperson I've seen, and it introduces modern String Theory.

Twenty five years ago, as a precocious youth totally unafraid to dive into the abyss, I tried to work on these problems, but in the meantime have found there are MANY much more talented than me who have tried and reached their limits. But I have no regrets. I have made, and continue to make, my modest contribution to the progress of mankind. And I monitor the situation with gravity, and will rejoice if a breakthrough comes. Note, it is far easier to understand what others do than to blaze the trail.

And what does this have to do with TGirls ? I have always felt different -- really not superior, just different, because of my passion for learning and my relentless desire to climb to the summit of knowledge. Being different and misunderstood -- is it familiar here ?

[MsDazzler]

For the very same reason, there is so little known about tsunamis. I watched this documentary on tsunamis and they speculated whether there was gonna be one hitting America in the near future. Since the deep sea is still a vast and unexplored area, it is difficult to analyze tsunamis because they start from the shifting of tectonic plates way deep on the ocean floor.

And in relation to gravity, it is amazing how force can scoop up and make water rise to great heights, overcoming the pull of gravity until there is no more water to add to its height. Then it finally hits the shores and gravity pulls the water back to ground when there is no more force.

[Ecstatic]

Thanks, flombago. It helps that my niece is a physicist, though I've been fascinated by quantum and relativistic physics since I was in high school. I just never had the patience for the math! Get into the equations, and you lose me quickly, but the concepts are intriguing. I have Greene's book and agree that it is one of the best. I also highly recommend John Gribbin's In Search of Schrodinger's Cat and Schrodinger's Kittens and the Search for Reality. two excellent books.

Yes, I was alluding to the fact that gravity, as well as being the weakest force, doesn't mesh with the other three neatly in a unified field theory. Some have suggested that what we experience as gravity is but an echo of sorts of a higher force which only partially enters into these four dimensions; I think Greene gets into this in his book or at least his excellent PBS show which grew out of the book.

[dc]

I would've said heavy, intense rain any other time,
til I witnessed Hurricane Katrina

[AugenGn.]

And in relation to gravity, it is amazing how force can scoop up and make water rise to great heights, overcoming the pull of gravity until there is no more water to add to its height. Then it finally hits the shores and gravity pulls the water back to ground when there is no more force.

Dazzler, don't think of it so much as scooping up water as pushing it along. the energy from a deep oceanic crustal event is transferred directly to the water in all directions. that energy is translated from water molecule to water molecule as the force travels through it. in the depths of the ocean, a tsunami would barely register as much of a swell, since like an ice berg so much of the wave would be subsurface.

as the tsunami reaches the continental shelf the force starts piling water higher in proportion to the magnitude of the force applied and inversely to the available depth. at the same time, the shelf itself provides friction that slows the basal part of the tsunami & the upper part gets out ahead of the base, creating the "breaker" effect as it moves near- or on-shore.

if the shoreline is a young one of "emergence (think Pacific Northwest's rocky coast)," there will be little shelf for the water to pile up over and it will reflect off the coastline with minimal damage....much like starting a wave with your hand in the bathtube and watching it bounce of the side of the tub.

if its a shoreline of "submergence," like most of the eastern seaboard of the U.S. or most of coastal India, the tsunami will have a chance to break. India and its neighbors had the worst of all possible worlds, in that they have a relatively narrow continental margin, so the tsunami stacks up quickly very close to shore. along the east coast of the U.S. there's a fairly extensive continental shelf system, so a tsunami would start building (and slowing) further out. the exception to this would be where there are "irregularities" in the shelf, like the Baltimore Canyon, that would focus the energy and permit a closer approach before the surge built up.

<hoping i'm helping, lol>

[MsDazzler]

Just being a little ironic and funny here.... Isn't a cumshot a fascinating force of nature especially when it gushes like a hot, thick volcano? After I've watched tons of money shots in porn, I never cease to be fascinated at how the whole act of shooting works, from its conception in the testicles to the final spurt.

[River]

The force of nature that fascinates me is my 86 yr old Grandma, she is less then 5 feet tall lil Italian woman, but she commands more fear and respect from all the males in my family. We really do not want Grandmothers disdain upon us.

That and Black Holes.

[christoronto]

thunder storms!!! they way the the lightning arcs across the sky... wild

[WillowQueen]

Whatever the plural of aura borealis is.

[AugenGn.]

Whatever the plural of aura borealis is.

that would be "Northern Lights" right?

[Ecstatic]

Whatever the plural of aura borealis is.
That would be either auroras borealis or aurorae borealis (both are correct; you pluralize the root noun, aurora, whereas borealis is the descriptive which qualifies the root noun to distinguish it from aurora australis or "southern lights"). Aurora is the Roman goddess of the dawn.

[WillowQueen]

Yes Norther lights. See, I wouldn't have known how to pluralize it, it's better I didn't attempt it.

[Ecstatic]

Usually it's not pluralized; you would say "I saw the aurora borealis on several occasions." However, if it were pluralized, it's aurora which would take the plural form.

And I agree, the aurora borealis is an amazing sight, which I have seen in Canada, Michigan, and Maine to great intensity and less so further south. One night on the shore of Lake Superior, it was an incredible flaming, undulating wall of light like an sf movie special effect, all greens and yellows and shimmering hues filling the sky.

[AugenGn.]

Yes Norther lights. See, I wouldn't have known how to pluralize it, it's better I didn't attempt it.

i figured i'd show you the path of least resistence, knowing Ecstatic would step up to show off :wink:

[Ecstatic]

Yah, I'm such a showoff!

[BigTex]

Tornados scare the poo outta me. I have recurring nightmares about them and I have never even been in one. I once saw a funnel cloud in Arlington, TX but never an actual Tornado.

BUT, for some reason I am fascinted with them. I will watch those weather channel Tornado shows everytime they come on. I think they are beautiful and amazing on TV. Kind of like Sharks. Sharks are the coolest looking creature when on TV but I won't go more than calf deep in the ocean.

[WillowQueen]

An intresting occurance is a grown man using the word "poo".

[BigTex]

Grown man??? I'm only 32. :wink:

[MsDazzler]

2012 is out! Has anybody seen it? Thoughts on it?

[orion]

whats scares me is the thing no one thinks about and is the most commen.
sunspot and emi/rfi.
in the 1800,s there was a sun storm that attacked the telegraph lines and set fires everywhere.
in the 70s it knocked out the power grid.
today we have no idea how computers would fare built on 130-90nm process.
eveything today is conected by a computer somewhere.
i do know that it not only wipe out the hard drives but it fry the gates in most every transistor if it was the likes of that 1800 one for sure.
what even worse was i was told that even dvd can be effected.
that i did not know but not only would you have to keep a computer in a faraday cage like a safe but every disk as well.
seems the master file table can become courpt.
i dont see how but that what i was told.
what if we lost everthat means transistor that mean no pc,not iphone no car made after 1972,no phone,tv,internet,radio,shortwave infact think of what it be like going back to 1800 with no surport in place that they had.
how would food and fuel move?
most food is not local infact i think that one of the two doomsday i can think the other would be crop failure in the usa.
you dont need a pig flu or falling rocks or yellowstone blowing apart for it to be a really bad day on mother earth.
most of them 2012 things are far off the curve.
they happen in one in a 100,000 years or a 100 million years.
i know what i said dont seem like it make a good movie but trust me that be as bad as yellowstone volcano.

[Trogdor]

Hyperdimensional physics. That energy is flowing from other dimensions and universes into ours, and if harnessed, will mean free energy for everyone.

Some awesome examples are the 'great spots' on the gas giants (major things like volcanoes and such on rocky worlds), not to mention the hexagon-shaped storms at the north poles of the gas giants that travel opposite of their rotations.

2012 is out! Has anybody seen it? Thoughts on it?
CGI drivel....the whole, "The world is gonna end!" come 2012 is a westernized, fast-food take on it, like how Taco Bell is a westernized, fast-food take on so-called Mexican food.

To me, 2012 won't be an end, but more of a beginning....like the Death card in tarrot, it does not mean the end(those that do watch waaaaay too much television :p),it often means new beginnings.