That was not an earthquake...

[dr_tectonic]

Strange-quark nuggets impacting the earth!

Just to show that reality is, in fact, deeply weird on a regular basis.

Comments

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

Indeed. I want to get the movie rights to "Strange Impact".

One thing worries me though, in all seriousness:

He added, however, that finding more would be difficult, as seismic databases now automatically remove all signals not linked to earthquakes. He said: "To find more events we need to get at the data before that happens."

This was one of the ways scientists were verifying nuclear test-ban treaties- browsing the public databases for seismic data which wasn't earthquakes and therefore could be underground nuclear tests.

I'm hoping the article was slightly incorrect, that they only remove signals that look like spurious noise, not all non-earthquake signals.

[dr-tectonic.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm sure that the uncleaned data exists -- it's just a lot more inconvenient to get hold of than the nice catalogs that have been automatically cleaned and analyzed.

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

Satisfying my curiosity by looking at my old employers in Geology at Cornell, I'm amused that their Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty monitoring project on which I did summer programming work in the mid 90's, has turned out to be only a fizzled pilot project, since their data only seems to go up to the late 90's. Ah well, it's not like the US takes the CTBT seriously anyway now, either.

[dpolicar]

Wow.

I'm really appreciating the fact that we can state with some degree of confidence that a dust-mote-sized particle of something we've never seen travelling at a million mph hit antarctica ten years ago.

Then again, it would not take much to convince me that was a spoof.

KILLER PLASMA! OMG WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!

[toosuto.livejournal.com]

Except it's kind of unlikely. Yay for science!

Would you like some universe jelly with that toast?

[(Anonymous)]

Wait. I thought the unlikely one was the killer strange-quark that would eat the earth from the inside out...

Ooo, speaking of movie rights

Re: KILLER PLASMA! OMG WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!

[bryree.livejournal.com]

Stoopid sign-in.

[backrubbear.livejournal.com]

Ah, just what we needed to find out: The majority of the mass of the universe is made up of B-B's that can turn the Earth into swiss cheese.

[zalena.livejournal.com]

Yes, but can they kill dinosaurs?

[dr-tectonic.livejournal.com]

Only one at a time.

Well, two, if they get lucky enough to hit one on entry and one on exit.

Maybe a couple extras if they were all standing VERY close to one another...

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

Ooh, ooh, I bet we could get a whole bunch of dinosaurs, if they were standing on each others' shoulders.

Like dino-cheerleaders or something.

Yeah.

[dpolicar]

Or side by side, no? I mean, I would think that a surface-grazing shot would not be noticably less likely than a surface-bisecting shot.

[tdjohnsn.livejournal.com]

Science is only fun till you put someone eye out with a strange-quark nugget.

[nematsakis.livejournal.com]

Dr. Egon Spengler: Don't cross the streams.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Why?
Dr. Egon Spengler: It would be bad.
Dr. Peter Venkman: I'm fuzzy on the whole good/bad thing. What do you mean, "bad?"
Dr. Egon Spengler: Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light.
Dr Ray Stantz: Total protonic reversal.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Right. That's bad. Okay. All right. Important safety tip. Thanks, Egon.

Moral: Always worry when a scientist tells you something would be "bad".

[arcticturtle.livejournal.com]

Shouldn't the Starship Enterprise have appeared to evacuate us to another class M planet, or something?

[ocschwar.livejournal.com]

Judging by this week, we're all booked for passage on the B Ark.

[ocschwar.livejournal.com]

Geez, Beemer, your cover up squads are getting creative.