04.11.2004/V1,I6
Here we gnaw on Universe and discuss the taste.
En le Rongeant - Terrible Trio - Climate, Comets, Energy - how it might unfold.
Part 3 of 4
We start with the wildly Fantastic (part 1),then to the merely improbable (part 2), then the completely likely (part 3, the worst). In part 4 the denouement, those elements we have in place this year.
Damn Magnets! Poles Flip!
Section 2
Joanne McHenry stirred in her sleep. Her hand throbbed slightly, too low a level to wake her but enough of a dull ache to irritate her sleep. The knuckle was bruised and would show dull purple in the morning from where she had whocked it against the back of the seat as the airplane that brought her and David to Kuai had encounted strong turbulence. "Sorry folks," the pilot had apologized, "we don't usually see this sort of turbulence. here in the Islands...in fact it is much more typical of flying into Seattle, than out of it." She had nodded and smiled, though a little sickly, at David as they had met during turbulence. three years ago doing just that, flying into Seattle. The rest of the flight had been uneventful, after the shaking, and bruising her hand. She had noticed that a large number of mechanics had swarmed out to the plane on their arrival, but maybe it had just been a bit too shaken in the rough air. Kuai, though...that was another story...richly wet and lush, the place just dripped vegetation. She was in plant heaven. On vacation, and in a gardeners' paradise. The best of combinations, thought Joanne, as she proceeded to throw herself into the rest of the day's activities.
Tired, sunburned, and completely fatigued after a 22 hour day, Joanne and David crawled back to their room, opened all the windows, turned on all the fans, and flopped into bed where after a bit of a time Joanne's sleep was totally disturbed. She lay there in the very pleasant dark room, the breeze wafting in from the ocean, the smells of hundreds of fragrant plants blending into the perfume that is Hawai'i, Kuai variety, when it came to her. "The electricity is off." she said to the sleeping, snoring pile of David beside her. "Wonder when that happened?" She pondered as she just started to drift off again.
Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! The microwave in the little kitchenette went off.
"Odd, there is no power to the fans." She thought, pushing on David. "Hey wake up." She hissed at him. She needn't have bothered keeping her voice down as a huge boom rolled out of the kitchenette just as every microwave in the whole hotel started chiming. It sounded like a cannon performance receiving the applause of thousands of electronic crickets. Then, as she and the still asleep David looked on, the remnants of their microwave flew out of the kitchenette, propelled by whatever it was that blew it self up inside the formerly rectangular metal box. There were flames coming out of several parts of the kitchen when she felt David grab her arm not-so-gently and rush them out the patio doors.
They stood within the gathering groups of other guests as it seemed every microwave in the hotel suddenly went flying and flaming. It wasn't just the microwaves either. Refrigerators, telephones, all manner of electronic gadgets suddenly turned on, and went ape-crazy until they exploded in a sudden fury of flames and flying plastic.
Joanne surveyed the surreal scene of guests in what little they could throw on huddled about as their hotel burned to the ground with appliances going off like ammunition in an oven. All up and down the beach a similar scene was repeating itself at every hotel. But there were no street lights, only the building fires blazing up to light the parking lots. "No firemen", Joanne noticed. At none of the hotels, could she see anybody other than staff working at the fires. All the street lights were out, but from over where the airport was, she could see a display of lightning as she had never before seen it. Like one of those sea anemones she had seen snorkeling, all wavy arms only bolts streaking up into the clear night sky seemingly from the same place repeatedly.
"This doesn't look good. " she thought, turning to locate David in the now brightening glow of their hotel ablaze.
That was when she started noticing the ever-present-much-ballyhooed Kuai-nightly-rain was coming down as snow.
***
"IN 5.4.3...." the floor director waved a single finger at Ricardo.
"In case you just joined us during the break, we have just had word that Hawaii' has been cut off from communications. This is early reports yet, but it seems no phone calls or radio or satellite communications can be received from there." Ricardo said in his best 'concerned anchor man' voice.
"The government would like you to please refrain from trying to call into Hawaii, as this is just jamming up the telephone lines. But any ham or short wave radio operator who has been in communications with anyone in Hawaii today is urged to contact the Homeland Security Department at the number appearing on the screen. What's that? No number? ...oh, there it is now. That is the toll free line to Homeland Security Department for those radio operators that might be able to help the government. We do not know what the cause of this communications blackout is, but there are no signs of trouble other than not being able to reach anyone there. There have been no reports of volcanic activity or earthquakes or tsunamis so there is no reason to worry. There has just been no communications with the islands for, oh, lets' see, about one and a half hours now. "
"And no. There is no reason to suppose that Hawaii has been hit by a meteor. In fact,Dr. David Price, the White House science advisor. That man on the go, the man that knows, Dr. Price. Right here at DFX Cable News....will discuss all of these fascinating events with us. He has assured us that we would know if Hawaii had been hit by a meteor...."
Cut To: Clip of Dr. Price in earlier taped interview with Ricardo:
"Now Dr. Price, how can you be so sure that Hawaii has not been hit by a meteor?" Ricardo's voice over the smiling Dr. Price with a San Francisco backdrop from their affiliate station.
"Well, Ric, I am in San Francisco, but even in New York, you would know if a meteor had taken out Hawaii just from the earthquake alone. A object big enough to take out the whole island chain would be felt around the globe." Dr. Price replied, looking smug.
Cut To: Ricardo at the DFX Cable News set:
"This just in, the White House has announced
that the Navy has sent off some planes to land at Pearl Harbor Naval Air Station
and report back on the situation. They should be there within minutes, and we
will let you know what we discover as soon as we here at DefectsNews receive
word."
"And now, stay with us as after the break we will bring you Up2Date! on the latest in the Silence from Hawaii."
"And off. Camera clear. Back in 4... people." The floor producer said as the cut to commercial and Ricardo reached under his desk for the coffee mug. " I still say it is the meteors." he mumbled under his breath as he slurped.
***
"What does he mean, 'the core is re-aligning'?". Greg asked the translator. He hated to do off-shore work, but with the downturn at home, any work was money in the bank, a mortgage payment or two, and perhaps something for the passel of greedy bastards he was raising. He smiled slightly at the thought of his four children back home at the 'ranch' in Texas. It was only 20 acres, but they all loved it. Greg turned back when the young reactor control technician finished speaking, and just as the diminutive translator began the tedious process of converting Japanese technical speak to American technical speak. The tedium arose from the translator being a last minute replacement and her usual work being legal contracts, not nuclear reactor science.
"He says," she said," that it appears, that all the podes within the magnetic field are in the process of re-aligning themselves with other direction."
"Did he say 'podes' or 'nodes'?" Greg asked, wearily beginning yet another trip down the rabbit hole of intercultural communications.
Dafne, as he thought of her name, spoke several hundred words in rapid fire succession to the technician and received back several hundred in reply. She turned to Greg, "Rods. He says the 'rods are turning to the east'". She then poked one thin arm to the south and up a bit. Following it, Greg realized Dafne was pointing at the television monitor that pointed toward the east gate of the reactor and power plant complex.
"He says wha..." said Greg, and then thought better of it. He looked out the control room monitor at the eastern gate. He could see that faint glow off the horizon that indicated marine twilight was just starting. "Great. Yet another day beginning." Greg thought as he shifted gears back to the 'conversation' with the two-headed beast of Dafne and the technician.
"Ask him why he believes the rods are re-orienting themselves within the magnetic containment field." he said to Dafne.
Again, many words passed between the technician and Dafne before she returned her attention to Greg.
"He says, no." She again pointed up to the monitor, as did the technician this time. "He says to look, it is not the rods, it is the magnetic field it self which is re-aligning. And taking the rods with it."
This time Greg got it. He looked up at the monitor, and then to the screen to its left, where a small arrow of red and white indicating the alignment of the primary field of the magnetic containment vessel which housed the rods just as did the containment pool. The red part of the arrow no longer pointed up toward the top of the screen as it always should with the reactor in 'hot' mode, rather, it pointed to the right. Even its change was odd. It was not directly right, as in a display error, but rather, seemed to point off toward the upper right corner of the screen. Then, as they all had their eyes glued to the screen, the arrow moved. Again. Then moved some more to the right, until it was pointing more or less to the 5 o'clock position. Then is sort of shimmied, stabilized, and Gregory and Dafne and the technician all looked at each other.
"Is it supposed to do that?" Dafne asked Greg?
"Uhhh, no. Not so far as I know, and I helped design this system. That arrow should never move. "
It was at that point that all the alarms in every panel started going off. Just the symptom that had led the Japanese firm running the power plant to contact Greg in the first place. Just the symptom that he had insisted could not occur and was over on-site conducting an in depth investigation to prove had NOT occurred, when it did occur. They hurriedly went into 'scramble' mode and ramped down all the knobs and switches all the while shouting in Japanese and American toward the recorders automatically whirring away hidden deep in the walls of the control room.
It took about an hour, perhaps more, to discover that this incident, like the previous two reported ones, left nothing apparently malf unctioning, just all the alarms going off simultaneously. And the red arrow indicating magnetic alignment being totally wrong. The magnetic containment field should not, COULD not vary. It had to point north. And yet here the software was telling them that indeed it had moved, and now, for what ever reason, the primary containment field, thought that Hawaii was the north pole.
"It's going to be a long day." thought Greg, looking around for some coffee, "not even morning yet, and it's a long day, and hot everywhere." Greg watched the heat reading monitor, noting that all the buildings were approaching tolerance temperatures. Nothing to be done about it, merely summer. But still, in France in '03 they had had to shut down several reactors just due to latent heat build up. All the temperature readings were displayed in orange, except for a few that flickered in and out of red. "Not a good sign. " Greg thought.
***
Peter Walker rose up from the dry sands of the high beach near Esperance, on the westerly edge of the Great Australian Bight.
As far to the south as he could get in the time allowed, Peter had come by train from Perth for the express purpose of watching the comets. He had carried a Celstronix990, computer guided 10 inch reflector scope, and several battery packs. The whole mess was heavy and had required repeated trips from the meager road down the steep hillside to the beach. And it had been a total bust-up.
It was too hot. At first Peter thought it merely odd that the usual battery indicated such a low charge level. But then, each of the batteries in turn showed barely enough juice to turn the bloody thing four notches on the rotational axis, to say nothing of focusing the mirror for the photo's he'd intended to take.
Then he noticed that the temp indicators on the batteries all showed very high, at the maximum edge of the effective use zone. "Not damn good." he had said, to the boobies and other sea birds watching his fumbling in the sand the way patrons at a floor show stare, entranced as it all goes wrong.
Then he saw, through the sweat pouring off his hat lining, that even the machined aluminum track of the scope mount itself was warping from the heat. So back it all went, many trips up the damn hill, back the trail, then over to the car, and fumble with the keys, plop it in the boot, and back down the bloody trail, and down the damn hill, and trudge through the hot sand burning at the feet even through the hiking boots, grab some more equipment and pack it all over again.
Eventually, the car loaded with the gear, Peter decided it was time anyway, so with the remaining beer, a couple of digital cameras, and his old Lica, he trudged back down the beach for whatever photo's could be gotten without the scope. Hoping to maybe salvage the trip.
Peter was lucky. He was flat on his back, more drunk than not, camera resting on his eye, when the first of the meteors had headed over from the south pole. He just lay there filling up disk after disk of photo's, and then eventually, using up every one of the 10 rolls of 35mm he had on him. This was what made him lucky. When the last of the night's un-announced meteor show had passed on its way north by west, toward India, Peter had started to rise when he was suddenly overcome by a wave of vertigo. It propelled him to his knees, thudding into the sand hard enough to find a rock with a knee cap, and then flat over on his back as he started to retch.
After vomiting, Peter rolled his head back, and purposefully, slowly, opened his eyes. He had had vertigo years ago, right out of his teens, but not since. And now, he was not so sure, what ever he had was not vertigo. The stars weren't whipping around in great circles. They just stayed there, as did the two comets, and the red stripe in the far distant sky over Antarctica. So it wasn't vertigo. Probably heat stroke, he decided, and lay there for a while in the coolish winds off the surf, until he felt he could try to stand.
Peter Walker rose up gingerly from the dry sands of the high beach near Esperance, on the westerly edge of the Great Australian Bight. He made his way carefully back to the car in the gathering twilight, careful to move slowly in case the vertigo should return. He made it back to the car without incident, packed away the cameras, and started up the engine. The lights in the cab made him feel a bit more human, less vulnerable, though things were still a bit off.
He realized, after pulling the car out of its place in the trees, and getting back on the road, just what was off. It was the compass. The white end of the needle floating under the curved glass in the gimbaled mount hanging off the dash now pointed in the direction he was heading, back toward Freemantle, well, really, south of Freemantle, more toward...South Africa?
It was Peter's boss who discovered how lucky he had been. When they went to view the pictures, all of the disks were bad. Mostly blank, but with some corruption. Only the 35 mm pictures turned out. They were spectacular.
***
Sindera was finally sleeping, deep, almost drugged by the heat of he roof of their small, mud brick house just north of Sonari, India, when a stirring began in her. A fear she felt even deep in the sleep, it rolled up through her toes, and bit by bit through her whole body. Though it only took but a moment to travel to her brain, and the retching start, and even though asleep, she felt every finger of the wave that rippled its way through her.
She awoke to the sound of her own retching and the screaming of her daughters and the howling of the local dogs. She rinsed her mouth with water from a near by jug, and rising to go to her children starting to also recover on their section of the roof, she was startled to see the jug leave her hand for the table only to have the table bounce away in the twilight, dancing off like a monkey retreating from her hand.
It had been a gravity wave. Sindera had read of such things her whole life in the Mahabrata, and in turn had read them to her daughters. She went to comfort them, "its gone now dears. Just a gravity wave. Nothing to be alarmed about." Sindera lied easily the lie of a mother calming her children, but indeed she was concerned. While her cosmologic view point readily accepted the idea of roaming gravity waves, they, like comets, were not cosidered to be good. In fact, in her father's yogic lodge, they had a verbal tradition going back over 13 thousand years in which specific references to gravity waves as early measures of planet changing events.
Sindera wrapped her arms around her still sobbing daughters and tried to hug them all calm at once. She took a deep breath, encouraging the children to do the same. It was then that she had heard the rumbling...or rather, felt it, or rather smelt it, dry, dark, dangerous and foreboding, the smell of it rushed deep into the pit of her stomach and over the cries of her daughters. It came from the direction of the mountains, and in the retreating shadows of the blue hills in the distance she could see a long, angry, giant brown snake of mud running down the length of the river. One of the ice dams high in the mountains of Nepal had shifted as the gravity wave went through, pulling all the waters rushing from the glacial lake toward the walking dam of ice that started slipping down the high mountain slopes, scrubbing all the land clean clean to rock before it.
***
"More pizza?" Lance asked Gopi, slice in hand.
"No, man. Stuffed." Gopi pushed himself away from their table. Lance had heated up the pizza in the crude but effective sun-oven hanging out the south facing dorm window. Gopi looked up, briefly, very briefly, at the sun, glancing away from the harsh, white light.
"My dad tells me that in my youth, our sun was yellow. Not white." Gopi said, hunting for toothpicks in the chaos of their 'kitchen'.
"True, man. Look at superman. He reacted to the 'yellow' sunlight that reached earth." Lance offered.
"Yes. Well, he wouldn't be superman no more. That sun is white. And way too hot." Gopi said, pulling the blinds down to the top of the sun-oven.
"So what do we do? Load up and hike out?" asked Gopi to Lance's back as he worked patiently at the desk, the guts of one of the computers strewn about like feathers at a chicken plucking contest.
"Well, hike it will be. Including down the stairs." said Lance, looking up, miniature screw-driver in hand. " I checked the elevator and it, along with most induction motors, all electronics I can find, are ka-put. Gone. Ain't never gonna work no more no more. All she wrote. "
"I get the idea. What ever the hell happened, when the magnets went, happened to all the circuits." Gopi replied, somewhat testily.
"Yeah, man. Only that ain't the half of it. Here look at this." Lance shoved the opened casing of a high-density disk drive into Gopi's face. "See, even these niobium, permanent, you get it, permanent magnets...wiped clean of magnetic response." Lance proceed to touch the tiny, shiny part indicated with the tip of the screw-driver as though this was to be illuminating to Gopi. " Get it man, this is a steel screw-driver, it should have that little arm there dancing like a puppy for a treat."
"So the magnets are gone? In all the machines?" Gopi asked? "This caused by the meteors?"
"Who's to say", replied Lance. "Pretty much any body in space has got to have magnetic properties. But to push our whole planet's field around....well, I don't know.The magnetic field is connected to a whole lotta stuff. And it would be like moving the whole atmosphere. Still though, something poured through here like grease through a goose. And we had every box in the room trying to let out its smoke. And there is not a machine in the whole top 3 floors that will work. And no power to work them. Meteors? Well, maybe. But maybe also those two comets have something to do with this. Heard on Art's show the other night how some pie-sickic thought that she heard god telling her that the comets were here to ...."
"But the machines...will they be back?" Gopi interrupted Lance's mono-argument. These could go on for days if unchecked.
"I don't know. You mean the magnets, right? Well, presumably not all magnets got zapped, so you probably could replace them and bang, off you go. But of course, that presumes that it don't happen again. I mean the magnetic wave thing. If it was a one time deal, well, ok, but what if it comes back? You'd spend all your time re-magnetizing things. Nothing would work. Just like now." Lance set the disk drive down, picked up the telephone receiver and held it out to Gopi. "Check it out. No dial tone. And bet your cell is down too.".
"So it is the end of the world then." Gopi stated, more declaration, than question.
"Betch'a ass dude."
"And if we can't grow food cause the soil is too hot around here. Then the only place to be is going to be at the north pole." Gopi considered.
Lance rummaged for another slice of previous night's pizza. "Yeah,man. Where ever that might be and for however long it may stay there." He found a piece, placed it in the rapidly warming sun-oven as the too white sun rose slightly too high too fast in the sky. "You know, we have to leave soon as there will be no water pressure up this high. Plus we got to figure on traveling at night. IF that was a magnetic wave that swept through here, then there may well be no protection whatsoever being provided by the atmosphere."
"What are you saying?" Gopi asked.
"You know. Like in the vampire movies. Get the sun on you and meltdown. Only probably not quite as fast as in the pictures. UV. Ultra violet.Ultra Violet can get you seriously screwed up if the magnetic shields are down. Aye captain. IF the shields go down...."
"I get it." Gopi said. "At night, huh?"
"Yep." Lance said, retrieving his pizza. "looks like it is a whole new world, man. Let's go down to Texas and visit your old man. He does still have that mini-ranch? Right. We can ride it out there for a while..."
"Ride it out?" asked Gopi.
"Yeah. Old Art had this other dude who said that once things like planetary magnetic fields go walkies on you, they might be a bit unstable and such. And they can cause things like funny weather. Strange heating, odd electrical phenomena. That sort of thing."
"Unstable. For how long." Gopi was so sure he didn't want to know.
"Well, this dude was less than specific. But maybe as long as a few thousand years. With lots of little walk-abouts of the poles for a few hundred years and then they settle back down again."
"A few thousand years? Oh shit!"
"Exactly dude. Exactly. Now about papa's Texas ranch...."
***
"IN 5.4.3...." the floor director waved a single finger at Ricardo.
"In case you just joined us during the break, we have just had word that South Africa has gone black, er, uh, I mean, that is, there is no more communications, there is a communications black-out with South Africa." Ricardo stammered out. He shuffled the papers of meaningless doodles he always had and started to respond to the producer's instructions in his headset.
"Yes, that is correct. After reports over
the last several hours of all sorts of odd electrical and fire problems occurring
in a wide swath between Natal and Capetown, all communications to South Africa
have gone down. This even includes telephone, as we were on a satellite phone
hook-up with,...oh, yes, I mean to say that satellites are not responding to
South African telephones. No.? I don't mean to say that? What? What do you mean
the console is on fire? What? What?" Ricardo leans forward toward the camera,
"Is anyone out there?" Ricardo tapped uselessly at his now silent
headset. "What's that smoke coming out of the camera? Am I still on?"
***
c'est fini.
***
The issue of pole flips requires that one examine what happened to the sun's magnetic field when it went flipping around in 2000. The rapidity with which its field can change does not demand that earth's also act that rapidly, but does point to observable evidence that the whole process can take as little as 4 months with a sun. There is no reason to suppose that the magnetic field of the earth would take thousands of years to respond to flipping pressures when the hugely larger, much more powerful, field of the sun took mere months.
The argument that the earth's magnetic field is generated by spinning molten metal is spurious as molten metals in no quantity can support a magnetic field. Further molten metals in no industrial shop on earth cause magnetic fields to exist when they come in contact with other metals while they are mot len. Also, even if magnetic properties could be held by molten metals, in order to generate a field the size that earth has now, it would require a molten core several times larger than the total earth in diameter.
A plasma core, on the other hand, being basically a spinning ball of magnetically focused energy, can generate vast magnetic fields all out of proportion to their observable mass. If earth were to have a plasma core, then the fields generated could and would be likely to manifest the variances that we see in both strength and direction. Further, plasma, being energy, is electrically sensitive and would be expected to react to electrically generated disturbances to the general health of the 'force' fields in play/place within the solar system.
As the sun is impacted by incoming comets, and its energy levels go up, the increased electric output that is generated and received by the earth, causes changes within the earth's magnetic/electric balance. These changes can manifest as things such as ground heating in large areas which humans find as evidence of global warming. While not directly caused by the extra light and heat hitting the earth, these areas of globe warming are nonetheless indicative of increase solar activity, caused in part at least, by the comets that it eats.
Already there is permafrost melting. A side effect of which is the releasing of vast acreage of previously frozen methane and CO2 forming gases.
Sweden undergoes dramatic increase in methane due to permafrost melting
Note the date on the article above, and then look to predictions/publication dates in these articles below.
ENV- Arctic Permafrost melting and UN political issues
Permafrost melting threatens the Alps
Here is an article which states that a 5 degree temperature difference could trigger run-away methane pollution through permafrost warming. This is a non-stoppable process. Once the methane hydrates start to break up, that is it.
Buried in this article is this little nugget....CS Monitor Article on permafrost melting
One of these patterns is known as the polar vortex, a river of high-altitude winds that circle the globe at high latitudes. James Morison, a polar scientist at the University of Washington, notes that the polar vortex "spun up" during much of the 1990s, although it eased up after 1997.
"This represents the kind of thing we might expect" from global warming, he says.
What is not noted in any of these articles is that they all have this one assumption of 'geologic' time frames, or even those with an accelerated view, a decadal frame of reference. That is due to many of their assumptions not including increased radiation in all forms from the sun. Plus, any amplifying impact of cometary masses on electrical components of the earths structure. They assume that climate must take a long time to change. This is in spite of evidence that the last major climate change caught ruminating herbivores (bison, mammoths, deer, elk, musk ox, et al) totally unaware, and in mid-chew of the cud. There are not many ways that this can happen, but one thing to note is that none take eons, decades, years, months, or even days. They can happen very rapidly.
One form of rapidity that is currently scaring some reputable scientists who happen to be British, is that an unstoppable methane 'melt-out' will begin. This will force humans and all life for that matter that can travel south, to do so. The ultimate expression of this fear is the idea that there will be so much CO2 released as to force what life can make it, to the far reaches of the Antarctic region as this, and the very high mountain tops, will be the only places with breathable oxygen ratios. The mountains due to the relative heaviness of CO2, and the Antarctic due to the winds which whip unobstructed-by-land around the globe in those latitudes.
We are as they note in some of the articles, able to observe phenomena on earth now, that has been predictively associated with pole shifts. One of these phenomenon is the odd electrical fires springing up spontaneously as is being seen in both Sicily, now with regularity, and in South Africa. One can postulate that the presence of several south poles in the South Africa area cause these fires, but Sicily? Well, when the sun flipped its poles, it at one point had two north pole virtually side by side.
Then we are also seeing the rapid melting of the permafrost in the high altitudes as well as changes, distinct changes at that, in the north polar vortex. These changes we put down to the variability of the form, intensity and depth of the north polar field. As this field expands and contracts, the upper-atmosphere well of very cold air is altered, thus altering the freezing patterns below. Has this pattern of increased land based permafrost melting become irreversible? Too early to tell, but the odds do not favor a resumption of the conditions which created the permafrost in the first place.
Does the pattern of land based permafrost melting imply similar activity for the much larger, and more dangerous, ocean based methane hydrate beds? Probably, due to the same causal agent being involved in both. There are signs of some serious ocean disturbances developing that do not bode well for the future.
Part 4: A survey of what's up now, here on earth. And a bit out into space.
Brightening sun is warming earth
Japan to harvest methane deposits
US Navy report of methane explorations.