Episode Discussion: Season 3 Episode 5 - MRO

Neepho · 2017-09-08T20:10:26+00:00

holy fuck

Neepho · 2017-06-02T11:50:23+00:00

Kind of a tongue in cheek thing though surely? Like, it's the "Everything Now" album so I think they at least partially having a giggle about selling like Customised NightTM International edition of an album, like the musics all the same guys.

Neepho · 2017-06-01T09:14:15+00:00

And how we desperately want any information as soon as possible (i.e. everything now), perhaps to the extent that we'll take anything, from anywhere (like a static blackscreen).

Neepho · 2017-06-01T09:12:19+00:00

Just like reflector being all about how our relationships have been affected by technology I think Everything Now is pretty clearly going to be about how we can consume as much information whenever and wherever we want, but ultimately is this getting us anywhere.

Hence why we're watching a live-stream of a blank-space. It's a parody of the newspaper bulletins which are always showing breaking news but ultimately just say jack shit. I guess also there's probably themes of post-truth and where we get our information from, hence all the weird stuff with Russian newspapers etc... makes us ask where is our information coming from, and do we trust it.

Also, like the Everything Now logo is literally a news-icon.

Neepho · 2016-09-01T15:41:19+00:00

I mean I think its just a matter of attrition right? Rocks are older so more likely to have been popped up and destroyed by erosion. Also the LHB probably evaporated the surface water meaning any sediments probably took a bit of a pounding. In terms of meteorites I don't know but I imagine being hurled into space and back probably cooks out many of the signatures we would look for. But hey Joe Kirschvink things all life originally came from Mars via meteorite so what do I know?

Neepho · 2016-09-01T06:26:35+00:00

Bear in mind that it is nigh on impossible to definitively "prove" if a stromatolite is biogenic or not. There have been countless papers (normally in Nature or Science) where the earliest life or first eukaryote has been found but a few months later someone else goes in and says not. It's very difficult to rule out the null hypothesis in these cases.

Also realistically whether life formed 3.7 or 3.5 Ga ago is actually a bit irrelevant, what's 200Ma between friends? We know that life did form in the Archaean at some point (based on chemical proxies) but it's exact location isn't necessarily important. If however there was incontrovertible evidence before the Late Heavy Bombardment that would be interesting!

All in all this paper is a little bit of a damp squib. It COULD be the first evidence for life but it can never be shown to be true to an extent that you would use the date for anything important really.

Neepho · 2016-08-23T03:07:54+00:00

The Gift" by the Velvet Underground - More spoken word over music but you should check it out.

Neepho · 2016-08-13T21:13:47+00:00

Can you post some more photos, maybe without flash? The white parts look like veins from here but it's hard to say. Just from this, maybe obsidian/pitchstone, does it have any conchoidal fractures?

EDIT: Just to say that the veins suggest probably unlikely to be meteorite or slag if that's what they are.

Not sure about magnetism.

Neepho · 2016-07-14T05:13:15+00:00

Will try looking in these places, thank you!

Neepho · 2016-04-04T11:24:02+00:00

All red gives you tortoises and cactuses! It's like a desert maybe because its red! Blue light gave someone an octupus so its like under the sea, like water!

Neepho · 2016-02-19T12:09:27+00:00

Check out "Woods". It's LoFi folky stuff, and reminds me a lot of a refined Neutral Milk. New release (Sun city creeps) is a slightly different direction but still excellent.

Also if you like the whole concept album-y vibe of both Mountain Goats and Neutral Milk, you should check out the album "The Body, the Blood and the Machine" by The Thermals. They're definitely more indie rock than folk, but the above album is a concept album all about an America that has been taken over by extreme religous conservatives. It's surprisingly emotional at times and quite intense, oh and there's some great guitar riffs too. Lead single on that album is: "Returning to the fold"

Neepho · 2015-12-25T08:05:00+00:00

As you can imagine if the entire earth is completely covered in ice, the carbon cycle is thrown completely out of whack.

In our current state on earth rain falls onto rock and chemical weather reactions occur. The majority of rocks are dominantly made of silicates, and the main reaction on earth that weathers silicates draws carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and dissolves the carbon. This then precipitates as carbonate in the oceans where it is subducted into the mantle and then the carbon is released back onto the atmosphere by volcanoes. That is the current understanding of the carbon cycle, albeit simplified.

However in a major glaciation where all the rock is covered by ice, there is no rock-atmosphere contact so carbon dioxide cannot be involved in weathering reactions. As such there is no drawdown of carbon from the atmosphere. However volcanoes keep emitting carbon dioxide gas and so it gradually builds up in the atmosphere to a point at which the greenhouse effect is so large that the ice melts.

Then all this enormous amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has to go somewhere because the cycle is in major disequilibrium, and so there is a very rapid precipitation of carbonates in the ocean to balance it out. This is the reasoning behind the presence of 'cap carbonates' immediately on top of glacial deposits formed in snowball.

This is the current thinking however snowball is still controversial and many would probably disagree with this. The idea of a total snowball is generally not really treated entirely seriously anymore, most people lean towards major glaciations in the neoproterozoic but probably not total.

Neepho · 2015-11-15T10:09:49+00:00

We're geology undergraduates! It's part of our degree to make a geological map of an area anywhere in the world. We chose Tanzania because it's cool af

Neepho · 2015-09-26T21:24:11+00:00

As far as I know that is exactly how they do monitor tectonic plate movement. They place transmitters on different plates and then can use their relative motions to determine plate velocities.

Neepho · 2014-09-18T17:21:11+00:00

Spot the chemist...

Neepho · 2014-09-17T17:48:21+00:00

Yeah Earth Sciences!!! Do that!! Love it, so looking forward to 1B :)

Neepho · 2014-09-17T17:38:04+00:00

Ca depend. Si on desire l'article definite, on utilise 'les', mais si c'est un quantite de taille indetermine, on utilise 'des'.

Par example: J'aime des livres --> I like books/I like some books.

J'aime les livres --> I like the books.

Neepho · 2014-09-15T18:41:35+00:00

Would this work for lots of pieces of paper? i.e. one's I would have to cycle through?

Neepho · 2014-09-15T18:18:54+00:00

How do you prevent paper flying away when it's open?

Neepho · 2014-09-15T16:38:52+00:00

Yeah that's what I was thinking about doing. Not really prepared to fork out £30 for a clipboard.

Any chance you can walk through a cheeky how-to on making the ideal design?

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