The WOW Science Thread

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sandman67
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The WOW Science Thread

Post by sandman67 »

WOW as in world of wonder

Science gets a lot more media coverage now, and almost every month there is something new to be amazed at, so I thought Id start a thread where we can post links and vids.

Here are a couple I came across this week

First up some pretty amazing video care of NASA's Heliophysics unit of a Coronal Mass Ejection event in June - thats when a sunspot, which is actually a massive hole in the Sun's visible crust surface, erupts like a volcano. The one shown here is amazing in that the erupted stream of material can be seen being sucked back by the Sun's uneven gravitational field and hitting the surface again, and also in that the eruption would have easily swallowed up the whole Earth. Nice music too.



heree are some more amazing images from the NASA SDO (Solar Dynamics Observatory)





Next up a nice little article from the Guardian about the other little blue planet - Neptune. It is the first time since we first detected it that it has made a full orbit...Neptune takes 165 years to orbit the Sun.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/ ... -astronomy

Finally, if you do have Google Earth I strongly recc you spend some time playing with its two add on modules Google Moon and Google Mars....fascinating stuff especially the high resolution imaging of Mars and its amazing topography like Olympus Mons and the valleys that make the Grand Canyon look like a waggon rut. You can also take a close look at the "face" formation and "smiley" crater.

:cheers: :cheers: :cheers:
"Science flew men to the moon. Religion flew men into buildings."

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Re: The WOW Science Thread

Post by sandman67 »

here are a couple of photos of the NASA shuttle launch seen from a commerical flight nearby

Jeepers - that would have put the willies up me

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/0 ... html?ir=UK

Sad to think that NASA are having to scale back these launches thanks to funding cuts. :banghead: The cuts have also all but shut down SETI and other space research and development I would say is essential.

Seems corporate jets are more important than space research.

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Re: The WOW Science Thread

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Heavy armour would have exhausted the French at Agincourt, say scientists
Would the battle of Agincourt have turned out differently if the French had worn lighter armour? Perhaps, say researchers who have discovered that the heavy steel-plate armour worn by the French would have exhausted them before the fight with the English had even started.

No self-respecting medieval knight went into battle without a suit of shining steel armour. A typical suit would have comprised steel plates covering the chest and back, plus leg and arm components, all weighing at least 30kg. Compared with wearing no armour, the steel plates would have doubled the effort required to move around and fight, according to Graham Askew, a lecturer in biomechanics at Leeds University, who led the research.

He asked staff at the Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds to walk and run on a treadmill while wearing different types of armour. All were exact replicas of armour made in the 15th century and included English, Milanese and German designs.

"While they were doing that, we were collecting the air they breathed out," said Askew. "We were able to measure how much oxygen they were using and that tells us how much energy they're using as they're moving at each of those speeds."

The results, published on Wednesday in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, showed that people wearing armour expended up to 2.3 times as much energy while walking and 1.9 times as much energy while running compared with wearing no armour.

The doubling effect was greater than could be accounted for by the extra weight of the armour alone. The researchers worked out that if the knights had carried the total weight of the armour in a backpack, they would have experienced just 1.7 times their unloaded energy expenditure.

"Carrying a load of about 30kg spread around the body requires more energy than carrying the same load in a backpack," said Askew. "This is because, in a suit of armour, the limbs are loaded with weight which means it takes more effort to swing them with each stride. If you're wearing a backpack, the weight is all in one place and swinging the limbs is easier."

In addition, the armour constricts breathing. "Being wrapped up in a tight shell of thick steel makes one feel invincible, but also unable to take a deep breath," said Federico Formenti of the University of Auckland, who was a co-author of the research. "You feel breathless as soon as you move around in medieval armour, and this would likely limit soldiers."

He speculated on how the burden of all the armour might have affected the course of the battle of Agincourt in 1415, in which Henry V's lightly armoured soldiers defeated the French army. A key feature of the battle was that the French knights had to advance across a very muddy field towards English archers.

Formenti said there would have been a very high cost associated with moving through mud in heavy armour, suggesting that the French knights were exhausted by the time they reached the English. "[This] contributed to the killing of a lot of the French knights, despite the fact that there were many more French than there were English soldiers."
Interesting study, but I am tempted to say "No sh*t sherlock". I can also see one or two potential weaknesses with the methodology:

1) As mentioned in the article the battlefield was calf deep mud - walking across a ploghed field after a rainstorm would be similar....see how that feels even without the plate mail and arming jackets. A treadmill is not an accurate simulation.

2) The study also ignores the disorientation effect of constantly being barraged by longbow arrows raining down on your helmet, forcing you to look down at your feet. The wieght of the battle helm, which is heavy and designed to be worn with a straight back, then unbalances the man at arms, and makes walking in armour much much harder. These are the arrows that dont find a chink in your armour and cripple or kill you. Imagine sticking your head in a steel bucket and getting someone to rapid fire ball bearings at it...the equation is pretty simple - around 5000 to 9000 arrows falling every 10 seconds.....now lean forward so you are looking just in front of your feet through a narrow slit, and try walking.

3) Whilst they did use a battle re-enactor from the Royal Armouries Museum he is in no way anything like a fully trained knight of the period, who would have worn armour almost every day and trained in it constantly. He wont have the same familiarity, he wont have the same musculature. Forensic evidence from skeletal remains of men at arms shows they were extremely powerfully built from constant practice and battle. A modern re-enactor is not an adequate substitute. Ancient weapons experts like Mike Loades repeat that in documentaries again and again....we are not the same as men back then, who were shorter but built like brick outhouses.....we get tired a lot quicker than they would. Maybe if they had used a marine or commando it would have been a better comparison.

4) It was raining earlier on the day, so the thick padded arming jackets worn under the mail, and the heavy cotton tabards worn over the plate with the knights insignia on it would have got wet. They should have chucked a few buckets of water on the guy on the treadmill, who also from the vid wasnt wearing the tabard overjacket part, or carrying a broadsword/hammer/pick/axe.

5) Most of the French at Agincourt were not wearing full plate mail...just the posh gits in the vanguard would have been able to afford such luxury. Most would have been wearing mail hauberks and arming jackets underneath with odd bits of plate on their legs and arms. The lower down the social ladder you were the less armour you wore.

It was the mud that killed the French, and their arrogance and stupidity. They forgot the lessons that Edward III and his men taught their ancestors at Crecy and again at Poitiers - that the English Longbow used en masse is deadly at 350 yards, and that charging a position of entrenched bowmen behind stake walls across 400 yards of wet and muddy field, whether on horse or foot, is pure suicide. Even if they had, as they were expecting to, used their horses at Agincourt the result would have been the same...as was proved at Crecy.

still...an interesting study all the same.

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Re: The WOW Science Thread

Post by dtaai-maai »

It would probably have turned out differently if they'd had machine guns too!
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Re: The WOW Science Thread

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funnily enough mate thats a valid comparison.... look at WW1 where the Allies tried to slow march across a muddy wasteland into the face of weapons that fired hundreds of rounds a minute....same result.

There was a famous incident in WW1 where a unit of Canadians thought "Sod this slow walk nonsense" and charged up the hill at full tilt...and took the hill while the Germans were still loading the machine guns.

Lessons learned see....like the old saying goes men who forget history fail to learn its lessons.

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Re: The WOW Science Thread

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3) Whilst they did use a battle re-enactor from the Royal Armouries Museum he is in no way anything like a fully trained knight of the period, who would have worn armour almost every day and trained in it constantly. He wont have the same familiarity, he wont have the same musculature. Forensic evidence from skeletal remains of men at arms shows they were extremely powerfully built from constant practice and battle. A modern re-enactor is not an adequate substitute.
It's a good point SM. I went to the Museum some years ago and these guys, who are basically actors, do demonstrate fighting in armour several times a day for the public and I suppose they're as familiar with the weapons as anyone else you could find in the world today.
Actually it's one of the finest museums I've visited anywhere.
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Re: The WOW Science Thread

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Steve

Ive spent a couple of very happy days up there myself...as you say its an outstanding museum. I like the way on a slower day when there are no school trips there you can have a chat with the demonstrators and chat about the weapons and armour.

What I found out is that they are "actors" and are trained mainly by a guy called Mike Loades, who you see sometimes on Discovery Channel. Hes a weapons master for film and stage, and runs a school of arms in London. Me and a mate learned rapier and main gauche fencing there, and the majority of the class were actors learning fighting skills to boost their CVs.

One of the main points Mike drills into students though is that they are only learning a simulated skill as a hobby. He cant teach the daily familiarity with the weapons and armour that a real user would have had through neccessity and daily practice, and also cant replace the fact that skill with the weapons was essential for survival so that would have added some impetus to both learining and how they were used. As he says, even a blade master like himself would be a moderately skilled user compared to the real thing as he has never had to use the weapon to defend himself in a kill or be killed fight. That is an edge it is impossible to simulate.

To accurately simulate a medieval knight they should have used a marine or commando at the peak of his fitness and training rather than an actor, and put him through a week or more of armour training at a school of arms so he was familiar with how to move in a full suit of plate mail. Then while he was on the treadmill attached a couple of 1kg weights to his feet, chucked a bucket of water over him, made him walk with his head tilted forward so he was looking at the ground in front of his feet, and fired ball bearings at his helmet...that would have been more accurate a simulation.

I also disagree with the article saying it is easier to carry a 30kg backpack than wear 30kg of armour - that seems like nonsense to me. A suit of armour distributes the weight of the upper body protection across both shoulders, and the torso and lower body armour across the waist. The only bits that arent connected to those points are the shin greaves and gauntlets. My old rucksack was a lot easier to carry when I had the waist belt done up as well as the shoulder straps.

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Re: The WOW Science Thread

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Well, shes back home, and after a successful mission The Atlantis' return to earth marks the end of an era.

Its a pretty sad thing I think. I remember as a kid at school watching the first shuttle launch, and seeing the one that ended in tragedy on the news....I used to have one of the king size Tamaya models of it hanging off my bedroom ceiling.

Just seems to an optimist like me that pissing money up the wall on stupid unwinnable wars and "police actions" is pointless, and this is where the money should be being spent instead. This is what makes America, and through them mankind, truly great...and now its over.

And while the Becks, Savages, Limbaughs and GOP in the USA rail on and on about how the rotten commies and Russkies are a threat to all things American, from now on the brave men and women of NASA's flight crews will be buying their tickets from Uncle Ivan.

ah the irony.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/ ... -canaveral

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/galle ... y-pictures (photo gallery)

:(
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Re: The WOW Science Thread

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To accurately simulate a medieval knight they should have used a marine or commando at the peak of his fitness and training rather than an actor...
Surely to simulate the French an actor would suffice!:

" And when this was done the French sat down by companies around their banners, waiting the approach of the English, and making their peace with one another; and then were laid aside many old aversions conceived long ago; some kissed and embraced each other, which it was affecting to witness; so that all quarrels and discords which they had had in time past were changed to great and perfect love."

From the account of Jehan de Wavrin who observed the battle from the french lines.
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Re: The WOW Science Thread

Post by sandman67 »

Steve

there is a great Warren Ellis graphic novel called CRECY you might like - here is a review:

http://rhbfictions.blogspot.com/2007/10 ... arren.html

you can download the CBR file here:

http://www.4shared.com/file/uA6SyYoK/Wa ... _Crcy.html

a freeware CBR reader is easy to find online

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Re: The WOW Science Thread

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Thanks for the thought SM, but I've given up downloading things off the net as they're always cocking up my computer and generally annoying me. If it's available directly on a website somewhere, I'll have a read.
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Re: The WOW Science Thread

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thats a Spanish version anyway bro

give me a day or so and Ill convert mine to PDF and post it to 4shared for you.

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Re: The WOW Science Thread

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First up definitive proof of Sapien/Neanderthal interbreeding....seems if you are not black African then you are part Neanderthal...truly a kick in the teeth for the white supremacist racial purity types.

http://news.discovery.com/human/genetic ... 10718.html

Neanderthals are a great example fo just how fast science evolves our understanding. When I was a nipper Neanderthals were considered as sort of barely evolved apes. Now we know they had complex language, music, abstrct coceptual thinking and art, etc. More like us than we thought. I remember my geology master at school telling us about how when he was young they had only just discovered the Mid Atlantic Ridge and its role in establishing plate tectonics as fact rather than theory. Imagine that...plate tectonics as a matter of debate rather than fact.

I fell in love with science tho the day at school I got to look down a microscope at slides of moon rock samples care of the NASA learning program loaning system.

That is why I love science...always something new to learn.

Anyways, also in the news, The BBC get hammered for airing and giving too much coverage to the lunatic fringe especially climate change doubters....

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/ ... e-coverage

I will leave it to Steve to potentially inject this into the climate change thread as Ive given up trying to inject any sense of reason in there. Seems from teh content of the thread that facts are an ignored country when it comes to climate change.

:cheers: :cheers: :cheers:
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When I was working in Dusseldorf some years ago, I was surprised to find that Neanderthals come from just down the road as the term actually refers to the river Neander valley where early specimens were found in the 19th century.
If you've ever been out on a saturday night in Dusseldorf, you might have seen a few descendants!
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Re: The WOW Science Thread

Post by GLCQuantum »

Very interesting stuff. Good Job Sandman and STEVEG. :cheers:

Being a bit of a science geek myself I will try to add a little to this thread later. There are so many areas to the subject that it becomes a good neverending read.
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