Monday, January 12, 2009

Magnetic field and climate

Article

Who would guess from the 'hockey stick guys' that the earth's climate is extremely complex. I like any article that has some physics in it.

I remember the first cloud chamber I saw when I was a kid. You could watch the cosmic rays zap a trail of cloud. Sometimes the collisions would form twirly things, and it was all very fascinating. They had to peel me away from it!

So perhaps this happens up in the clouds above the rain forests. Who knows?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I wouldn't have thought the Geomagnetic field was strong enough to block Cosmic rays but apparently it does to some extent. I would think the solar wind interaction would have more of an effect on the atmosphere.

Science is cool.

Speaking of which I recently discovered online science lectures on a variety of topics. I wouldn't want to write any exams but the lectures are interesting. I just finished watching an aviation systems engineering course from MIT on the Space shuttle with lectures by some of the folks who designed, flew and investigated the accidents of the STS.

Harold Asmis said...

Neat. I feel too old to learn anything!