[HN Gopher] Surges of cosmic radiation from space directly linke...
___________________________________________________________________
Surges of cosmic radiation from space directly linked to
earthquakes
Author : webdoodle
Score : 249 points
Date : 2023-06-16 15:49 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.earth.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.earth.com)
| refibrillator wrote:
| Our understanding of the relationship between sun and earth has
| barely begun to sprout.
|
| Popular discourse tends to be dominated by Newtonian ideas, as if
| earth was simply a rock in empty space orbiting a massive
| fireball called the sun. We landed on the surface of the moon by
| using such approximations. But they fail to explain many
| observations that modern technology has opened our eyes to.
|
| For example, the coronal heating problem [1]. Possibly one of the
| greatest unanswered questions in astrophysics. Why does the
| temperature of the sun's atmosphere _increase_ as you get
| _further away_ from the surface? We still don't know exactly. But
| we have some hints.
|
| Voyager 1 revealed to us that the dynamics of the heliosphere are
| much more complex than we imagined [2].
|
| And we have observed that the sun emits a powerful
| electromagnetic field, which is intimately connected to a variety
| of spectacular phenomena here on earth. Like the northern lights,
| aka auroras [3]. Or massive electrical discharges in
| thunderstorms which reach into the highest layers of Earth's
| atmosphere [4].
|
| So I implore you to consider, why _wouldn't_ earthquakes be
| explained by solar dynamics? If not completely, at least
| partially.
|
| It seems we may be on the cusp of realizing that our solar system
| - and perhaps our entire galaxy - is connected through
| electromagnetism. Entirely new fields like "space weather" and
| "plasma cosmology" are rising up from the depths of ideation and
| research. What a time to be alive.
|
| [1] https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2018/nasa-s-parker-
| sola...
|
| [2]
| https://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/solarsystem/voyager-092...
|
| [3] https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/nasa-s-themis-
| sees...
|
| [4] https://umbra.nascom.nasa.gov/spd/sprites.html
| jxramos wrote:
| > Why does the temperature of the sun's atmosphere increase as
| you get further away from the surface? We still don't know
| exactly.
|
| Kind of reminds me of the inner tip of the blue cone in the
| Bunsen burner which is supposed to be the hottest point of
| combustion rather than at the bottom of the flame, and the top
| of the flame is supposedly the coolest?
| mjhay wrote:
| I think it's telling that none of the authors are geophysicists,
| and they definitely aren't statisticians either. The causality
| they're claiming just does not have any physical plausibility.
|
| > Dr. Homola states, "In the scientific world, it is accepted
| that a discovery can be said to have been made when the
| statistical confidence level of the corroborating data reaches
| five sigma, or standard deviations."
|
| > Homola continues, "For the observed correlation, we obtained
| more than six sigma, which means a chance of less than one in a
| billion that the correlation is due to chance. We therefore have
| a very good statistical basis for claiming that we have
| discovered a truly existing phenomenon. The only question is, is
| it really the one we were expecting?"
|
| This is not what p-values mean! P-values are not at all the
| chance of a result being erroneous. It's an unfortunately
| widespread misconception among people who should know better.
|
| https://www.amstat.org/asa/files/pdfs/p-valuestatement.pdf
| mjburgess wrote:
| No statistical analysis _at all_ applies if the relevant
| premises are false. People defend the statistical analysis
| using statistical metrics, rather than the premesis by which
| the stats are used (eg., the model type, the causal model,
| etc.).
|
| Eg., if there is no causal connection between X, Y then any
| analysis of association between X, Y is not a causal one.
|
| Entire fields of people have been taught that stats can justify
| science -- and hence the heaps of pseudoscience.
|
| It is science which justifies the use of stats; not vice versa.
| refibrillator wrote:
| I agree with you regarding p-values. But why are you appealing
| to credentials and dismissing the idea with your own boldly
| unsupported claim?
|
| > The causality they're claiming just does not have any
| physical plausibility.
|
| Survey the literature and you'll find plenty of evidence that
| there is some credence to the idea.
| mjhay wrote:
| Geomagnetism is easily measurable and has been monitored for
| a long time.
|
| The central claim is that changes in cosmic ray frequencies
| can predict earthquakes. The proposed causal mechanism is
| changes in the geodynamo affecting the propagation of cosmic
| rays. The effect on cosmic rays is secondary to the changes
| in geomagnetism. Despite decades of people looking for
| evidence, changes in geomagnetism are not associated with
| earthquakes[0].
|
| If this paper's hypothesis is true, geomagnetic fluctuations
| should co-occur with fluctuations of cosmic ray counts - thus
| geomagnetic fluctuations should also predict earthquakes. But
| they don't.
|
| Claims of being able to predict earthquakes have had a long
| and not great history. Earthquake prediction is the faster-
| than-light travel of geophysics. Any claims that it is
| possible should be viewed with extreme scrutiny.
|
| [0] https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/are-earthquakes-associated-
| variati...
| acidioxide wrote:
| link for polish version to those interested:
| https://press.ifj.edu.pl/news/2023/06/14/
| webdoodle wrote:
| Paper: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jastp.2023.106068
| aurelianito wrote:
| Behind paywall :'(
| burkaman wrote:
| https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2204/2204.12310.pdf
|
| https://unpaywall.org/
| sneak wrote:
| > _The main idea here is the observation that eddy currents in
| the liquid core of our planet are responsible for generating the
| Earth 's magnetic field. This field deflects the paths of charged
| particles of primary cosmic radiation. Thus, if large earthquakes
| were associated with disturbances in the flows of matter that
| drive the Earth's dynamo, these disturbances would alter the
| magnetic field, which in turn would affect the tracks of the
| particles of primary cosmic radiation in a manner that depends on
| the dynamics of the disturbances inside our planet. As a result,
| ground-based detectors should see some changes in the numbers of
| secondary cosmic ray particles detected._
| whatshisface wrote:
| There are orbiting and ground-based magnetic observatories
| whose data goes at least as far as the cosmic ray
| observatories. If their hypothesis is that the magnetic field
| is what connects cosmic ray observations to the origin of
| seismic activity, they could check those records.
| csharpminor wrote:
| It's funny, I remember talking to an engineer from JPL(?) at a
| fundraiser in Palo Alto who was convinced of this link back in
| 2011. The conversation really stuck with me because in truth, I
| wasn't sure if this was a wishful conspiracy theory or cutting-
| edge science.
|
| If my recollection serves correctly they were unable to get
| arrive at a good enough level of specificity to actually feel
| comfortable predicting an earthquake.
|
| These cosmic ray events happened with enough regularity (and
| didn't result in earthquakes) that there was a legitimate concern
| about creating paranoia.
| idlewords wrote:
| The key claim in the paper (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2204.12310.pdf)
| is that there are detectable changes in cosmic ray activity
| around 15 days before major seismic events. One posited mechanism
| is that stuff happens deep in the earth that affects the magnetic
| field first, and then kicks off some big earthquake. But they
| don't rule out loopier ideas (like sunspot activity driving
| changes in the Earth's dynamo that then kick off earthquakes).
|
| One thing that troubles me in the paper is that the researchers
| appear to have gone looking for precursor patterns in an ad hoc
| way, with no physical theory in mind, just trying different
| binning techniques and delays until they got a signal. I'd love
| to hear the opinion of someone who knows this field on the
| soundness of this research.
| hammock wrote:
| if the mechanism is true, could this information be used by
| humans to control earthquakes? There have always been a lot of
| theories around projects like HAARP that have the capability to
| send a lot of energy deep into the earth.
| athenot wrote:
| Maybe not control but the ability to have an advance warning
| would be a huge gain in terms of public safety.
| ozgung wrote:
| "There may or may not be an earthquake somewhere in the
| world, including oceans, in 15 days" is not a very useful
| warning though, if not harmful.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| If the magnitude of the quake can be estimated from it,
| it can be somewhat useful for response agencies in
| earthquake and tsunami prone areas to make sure their
| ducks are in a row. Kind of like how storm season tends
| to make people make sure their emergency supplies are in
| order, even if their area doesn't tend to get hit by big
| storms.
| jjk166 wrote:
| If the increase in cosmic ray detections is due to some
| change in Earth's magnetic field, presumably where and
| how the magnetic field changes would in some way
| correlate with the activity.
| [deleted]
| hammock wrote:
| It would be better than anything else we have at the
| moment
| gus_massa wrote:
| From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earthquakes_20
| 21%E2%80... there were 44 earthquakes with a magnitude >=
| 7.0 in the last 2.5 years. That is one every 17 days. The
| GP is almost correct: There is a high chance [1] of an
| earthquake somewhere in the world, including oceans, in
| 17 days.
|
| [1] If you want to be fancy with probabilities, 64% of at
| least one earthquake. In some 17 days periods you will
| get no earthquake and in others you will get more than
| one earthquake. In average you will get one.
| gus_massa wrote:
| Too late to edit: The correct number is 21 instead of 17.
|
| The 64% is still 64% because if N is big enough it almost
| doesn't depend if you consider something with a
| probability of 1/17 in 17 days or something with a
| probability of 1/21 in 21 days.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Personally, I prefer waiting for all of the animals to
| seek higher ground as my seismic activity indicator.
| detrites wrote:
| Seems figuring out what it is they're doing and
| duplicating it would be a straightforward thing to do.
| Surely there's a research group working on it?
| CaveTech wrote:
| It really isn't? There is no specificity, it also doesn't
| state that earthquakes _only_ happen after solar
| activity. So this is equivalent to saying "There could be
| an earthquake somewhere at any time in the future".
| detrites wrote:
| With distributed ray detectors and suitable modeling of
| inner earth processes, assuming that the premise is
| correct - seems it may have potential to work?
|
| Ie, maybe able to generate the level of specificity
| required.
|
| EDIT: Also there aren't that many places on earth at high
| risk of earthquake that also have poor construction, etc.
| Meaning any advance warning, that a significant quake may
| hit _somewhere_ , can trigger "battening down the
| hatches".
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| I think you vastly underestimate the scale and energies
| involved in geological processes.
|
| HAARP is a ~4 megawatt radio transmitter. That's it. It
| doesn't have mysterious unknown abilities to send energy deep
| underground.
| detrites wrote:
| Theorising I've seen on this - though, I don't recall where
| - suggested targeting resonances with HAARP in a similar
| way to how a human singer can shatter a wineglass, by
| projecting the crystals frequency, causing it to oscillate
| itself to pieces.
|
| That is high-watt transmission power may not be required.
| And further, it was suggested it's not done in isolation by
| HAARP but cooperatively with various transmitters also
| transmitting the same frequency at the same target - using
| standing waves.
|
| It makes sense conceptually as an idea but I'm not sure
| there if there's any evidence of it?
| idlewords wrote:
| Pumping lots of water into the ground is a pretty reliable
| way to get earthquakes. Notice that Oklahoma, which used to
| be seismically inert, is now a bright red spot on the USGS
| map of the United States. This is due almost entirely to
| petrochemical-related human activity.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| Oklahoma is not seismically inert. The region has active
| fault systems that have always generated earthquakes.
| Injecting fluids into faults can trigger earthquakes,
| essentially pulling future earthquakes forward in time.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Fishing expeditions are fine, they are not wrong by themselves,
| the just require followup.
|
| Now that somebody found a signal that seems to predict
| earthquakes, start trying to predict earthquakes. Dig into the
| signals and gather new ones to try to see if there is any more
| information available.
| delecti wrote:
| Agreed. And it seems so obvious that it makes me wonder why
| this doesn't include that. It says they started in 2016; they
| couldn't wait another year to say "we spent 7 years
| identifying this trend, and then a year predicting major
| earthquakes"?
| phoenixstrike wrote:
| This is good research.
|
| >One thing that troubles me in the paper is that the
| researchers appear to have gone looking for precursor patterns
| in an ad hoc way, with no physical theory in mind, just trying
| different binning techniques and delays until they got a
| signal.
|
| There is nothing wrong with this. In fact this is how most
| science is done. This is pure experiment - try things and see
| what comes up.
|
| You're conflating this step with step three of the general way
| things have traditionally been done in physics:
|
| 1. An experiment shows a previously unexplained phenomena.
|
| 2. A theory is made to explain the results and _predict_ the
| results of a future experiment.
|
| 3. A future experiment is undertaken with this theory in mind,
| to see if it has predictive power. If the predictions are
| correct, it is a good theory.
|
| Your comment is referring to step three. The experiment in the
| paper is step one.
| ordu wrote:
| _> This is pure experiment_
|
| Pedantically speaking, it is not an experiment, it is an
| observation. Experiment is a kind of study where you control
| independent variable. In this case no cosmic radiation nor
| seismic activity were not manipulated by scientists. It is
| the reason why they speak about correlation but not
| causation.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experiment#Observational_studi.
| ..
| DangerousPie wrote:
| It's fine if they account for the number of tests they have
| made when they calculate their significance levels. If they
| just kept on trying different options until they ended up
| with p < 0.05 it's almost guaranteed to be noise.
| ordu wrote:
| They used p<0.001. It is not social sciences, there anti-
| noise filters are stricter.
| elcritch wrote:
| Ah that's not too bad. Though to be fair you also need
| the data size. That's only what one in a 1k chance (or is
| it 10k? Too lazy to count it out). If their dataset is
| small or they automated testing cofactors there's still a
| decent chance of false probability.
| idlewords wrote:
| Randomly sifting through data in search of patterns is not an
| experiment in the usual sense. With a big enough data set,
| you're guaranteed to find one in a billion, one in a trillion
| events by random chance.
| admax88qqq wrote:
| Finding correlations is not the same as finding one in a
| trillion events.
| kbelder wrote:
| When you have a trillion possible correlations, it is.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Yes, but you can test those signals against future data and
| see if they are accurate.
| dekhn wrote:
| While I don't disagree with your description, there is an
| awful lot of scientific output which is really just fishing
| for significance (IE, runnings lots of tests without
| corrections), publication, claim credit for discovering
| something, and it never actually gets followed-up on to see
| if the claim generalizes.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_dredging
|
| I think probably the most important thing is to get
| scientists to spend more time identifying and teasing out
| correlated variables to identify plausible mechanisms.
| ordu wrote:
| This problem is mostly a problem of social sciences. In
| physics it is important to have a theoretic explanation, if
| there is no explanation then physicists become excited and
| start to dig really hard. They value theoretic explanations
| not correlations. In contrast social sciences lack a good
| theory, they substitute _quality_ of a theory with a
| _quantity_ of theories. So it is even important
| correlations often impossible to explain without resorting
| to _ad hoc_ theories.
|
| You can see in this article that authors already suggest a
| theoretic explanation, and I do not doubt that we'll see
| follow up studies trying to clarify situation.
| dekhn wrote:
| it's quite common in medical research, even highly
| quantitative work. And I've seen it in every field I've
| worked in, which spans biology, physics, chemistry,
| typically with a quantitative bent.
|
| I once had an advisor edit my draft over night and submit
| it as a paper with a bunch of juiced up numbers that
| weren't true, but made sense to the advisor even if the
| underlying scripts I ran didn't support it. I complained
| to them and the paper was withdrawn before publication,
| and immediately left their group. this was in
| quantitative biology- hard core bioinformatics with very
| sophisticated modelling.
|
| But yeah, real experimental physics is hard to fake since
| reproduction is usually more straightforward than in
| other fields.
| busyant wrote:
| > I once had an advisor edit my draft over night and
| submit it as a paper with a bunch of juiced up numbers
| that weren't true,
|
| I'm stating the obvious here, but that is not a good
| advisor in any sense. It must have been difficult to
| leave, but it would be the only reasonable response.
| dekhn wrote:
| Well, if I'd wanted a career in science and didn't have
| ethics, then they would have been a good advisor because
| they knew exactly how to ride their wave of falsehood to
| a professorship at Berkeley.
|
| It wasn't hard to leave, I just contacted another
| professor at berkeley and joined their lab the next day.
| The new advisor, while fairly dull, was methodic and
| pedantic and the idea of faking or juicing results would
| probably never have occured to him.
|
| In short, in science if you're not a super-genius, it can
| be hard to compete with the super-geniuses and the
| cheaters. I found it easier to move to computer
| engineering than stay in science.
| busyant wrote:
| So, you're basically telling me that there is (or was) a
| bioinformatics prof @ Berkeley who was fucking with the
| data.
|
| Yeeeesh.
|
| I guess my science career was relatively clean. I knew a
| few fellow students who got screwed over by their
| advisors in the sense that the advisors demanded an
| excessive amount of publishable work to graduate.
|
| And I saw plenty of personality conflicts, many of which
| could be lain squarely in the lap of the advisor.
|
| But I never saw or heard of outright fraud, which makes
| me happy.
|
| I'm not naive. I know fraud is everywhere. And I know
| there's a lot of pressure to produce interesting results.
| I probably just got lucky.
|
| edit: for anyone taking the plunge into grad school. I
| made my choice of advisor largely based on his reputation
| of looking out for his students ... and on his research
| as a secondary consideration. That may have helped me.
| dekhn wrote:
| If I would to make a comprehensive list of everything
| I've seen it would be depressing.
|
| When I first got to grad school I immediately went to a
| group that had published a paper "solving parts of
| protein folding" using a lab-written code. Some 1 year
| after the paper was written, the PI could not give me
| that code, "because it had been lost when an SGI was
| reinstalled". I don't really trust results in papers
| unless I can see and hold code and reproduce the author's
| work, or a highly competent scientist implements their
| own version (I'm no good at reading papers and writing
| code to implement it, then run through all the steps of
| reproducing the original paper.)
|
| Another enlightening moment was when a more senior grad
| student told me: make sure everything you do ties back to
| medical research, even if the relationship is extremely
| distant. You can get money from NIH from curing senator's
| family's diseases (cancer and heart disease).
|
| When I was finally starting to apply for funding on my
| own through the NIH R01 grant program, I was turned down,
| without a score (meaning it was worthless and never
| should be funded). The next year, I was on the study
| section for that grant section and saw several more
| experienced PIs submit proposals that were very similar
| to (likely copied from) mine, and they were funded. I
| later learned I needed to spend several years reviewing
| grants before I knew enough to write a successful grant
| (oh, and make friends with everybody else in the study
| section, too).
|
| On another study section dedicated to funding moving
| academic data and compute to the cloud, I turned down
| several grants because they asked for money for closet
| (on-prem) clusters. I was not asked to return, because
| the people I turned down were influential.
|
| Basically, as has been pointed out many times before, the
| incentive system in academia is perverse and does not
| help people like me who just want to do high quality
| research but take our time to get the details right, and
| not get in competitions with other, more aggressive
| scientists. Many of us self-select out of science and end
| up as computer engineers or ML engineers or whatever in
| industry.
| 01100011 wrote:
| Or there's a common trigger event, like, say, a large
| gravitational wave or a passing cloud of weakly interacting
| matter(dark matter?) which triggers both increased cosmic ray
| emissions along with earthquakes.
|
| Not that I believe any of this, but it seems we're just pulling
| stuff out of our asses so I figured I'd give it a shot.
| kanzenryu2 wrote:
| One aspect of gravity waves is that other than being
| extremely weak, they cannot perform work. So they don't cause
| mechanical forces.
| tobinfricke wrote:
| This is not true, and in fact there is a very famous
| thought experiment called the "sticky bead argument" that
| was pivotal in developing the consensus that gravitational
| waves are a real, physical effect and not just a "gauge"
| effect (an artifact of the coordinate system):
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sticky_bead_argument
|
| On the other hand, I definitely agree that gravitational
| waves are almost certainly too weak to cause any tectonic
| effects.
| hughesjj wrote:
| Wait, really? Why not? That's fascinating
|
| Edit: ah, you mean for any practical purposes. Duh.
| aftbit wrote:
| Oh really? I didn't know that. If they cannot perform work,
| how can we detect them?
| sbierwagen wrote:
| >gravity wave
|
| LIGO, the gravity wave detecting interferometer, has arms 4
| kilometers long. Along that distance, it can detect a change
| in length one ten thousandth the diameter of a proton. With
| an instrument that sensitive, it can just barely detect a
| handful of gravity waves a year, out of the thousands? that
| occur in the observable universe. Gravity waves are subtle
| things.
| Retric wrote:
| I guess the question becomes if tectonic plates be more or
| less sensitive?
|
| They are significantly impacted by tides for example.
| dmead wrote:
| we should definitely just reverse the shield polarity and be
| done by the third act. hopefully the robot can learn a lesson
| about humanity before the end credits.
| civilitty wrote:
| I'm afraid only the power of love and empathy and
| togetherness can resolve this climax
| drunkencoder wrote:
| So it will work for all historical earth quakes :) Sounds a bit
| like some climate research. Tune model parameters until it
| perfectly match historical data. This should be possible to
| debunk in shorter time though
| bryan0 wrote:
| > One thing that troubles me in the paper is that the
| researchers appear to have gone looking for precursor patterns
| in an ad hoc way, with no physical theory in mind, just trying
| different binning techniques and delays until they got a
| signal.
|
| I believe in particle physics this is known as the "look-
| elsewhere effect". Basically if look long and hard enough for a
| pattern, you will eventual find it if your parameter space is
| large enough: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Look-
| elsewhere_effect
| mnky9800n wrote:
| Most of particle physics is people searching for jobs that
| give meaning to their life. This often biases them against
| finding results against meaning.
| madrox wrote:
| When I was taught statistics, this was regularly brought up
| as a big no-no in science. However, I read a guide to
| practical statistics that had a gem about predicting the
| stock market. If we discovered surges in the market
| correlated to newspaper sales, we wouldn't discard this as
| look-elsewhere. In fact, we'd follow newspaper sales very
| closely.
|
| Predicting earthquakes has a big upside for humanity. If
| there is even a small correlation -- even if we don't yet
| understand it -- we can benefit from it.
| breck wrote:
| In GWAS studies there's a nice visualization for dealing with
| this called Manhattan Plots.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_plot
|
| Basically if you test a lot of hypotheses plot all the
| p-values and look to see if there is something that is a true
| outlier or whether it is expected given so many tests.
| GolDDranks wrote:
| The obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/882/
| jaggederest wrote:
| This is related to the fact that in a higher-dimensional
| space the hamming distance between two points is compact,
| compared to 2d/3d intuition. This problem is related to the
| way that e.g. embedding text into an AI for comparison
| purposes often produces surprisingly closely related vector
| distances for relatively unrelated strings.
| Ringz wrote:
| Can we transfer this to the financial markets?
| olivermarks wrote:
| Why is 'sunspot activity driving changes in the Earth's dynamo
| that then kick off earthquakes' a loopy idea?
|
| We are hours away from coronal mass ejection catastrophe right
| now as solar cycle 20 builds in intensity. It seems reasonable
| to me that the complex relationship between the moon's
| gravitational pull and massive sun activity could affect our
| tiny little planet
| wholinator2 wrote:
| What do you mean by, "we are hours away from coronal mass
| ejection catastrophe right now as solar cycle 20 builds in
| intensity"?
|
| Because i can't read that as anything other than, we are in
| solar cycle 20, and it's currently building such that i
| predict with hours of right now, there will be a coronal mass
| ejection that will knock out the global power grid. But I've
| googled and we appear to currently be in solar cycle 25 with
| solar cycle 20 occurring in the 60s and 70s. Do you mean that
| a coronal mass ejection event takes hours to get to earth?
| Then why the "right now"? Does the delay of such events
| change on a sufficiently short time scale to warrant "right
| now"?
|
| Nobody else seems confused so maybe I'm an idiot
| idlewords wrote:
| The idea is loopy because the energy that reaches the earth
| from even a massive solar flare is orders of magnitude less
| than the energy released by a major earthquake, and that is
| orders of magnitudes less than the energies that drive the
| dynamo in the Earth's core.
|
| It's possible for a falling leaf to hit a mountain in just
| such a way that it dislodges a boulder balanced on top, but
| you need to tell a pretty compelling story about why this
| sensitive arrangement came about. Similarly, you'd need to
| explain how gigatons of molten iron sloshing around deep
| underground might feel the kiss of the Sun in just such a way
| that it levels San Francisco (for example).
| jcims wrote:
| A 4oz pull that moves a trigger a small faction of an inch
| can release a thousand foot pounds of energy.
| heyjamesknight wrote:
| Yes, but we're talking about a system in which thousands
| of 4oz pulls are happening in different directions at any
| given moment. You model doesn't only have to explain why
| a particular pull triggered it, but also why the other
| thousand _didn 't_.
|
| Throwing a cocked handgun into the dryer is different
| than a leaf falling on it.
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| This guy put a cocked handgun into the dryer and it
| didn't go off: https://youtube.com/watch?v=7es3zYRYLTs
| mrb wrote:
| Tectonic plates are nearly _permanently_ in a "sensitive
| arrangement", as you say. Compressive, shear, and tensional
| stress is the normal. Plates accumulate more and more
| stress over time, until a small trigger causes the plates
| to slip and release all that energy at once (earthquake).
|
| In other words, tectonic plates are nearly permanently in a
| state similar to a boulder delicately balanced on top of a
| mountain.
| hughw wrote:
| Right, the potential energy due to stress in the crust
| could be released to kinetic energy by a falling feather
| or some cosmic rays, would be the idea. There doesn't
| need to be the same energy in cosmic rays as released by
| the earthquake.
| [deleted]
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| I think you can relate this to the dynamics of a Prince
| Rupert's drop.
| CodeWriter23 wrote:
| Consider how an atomic bomb requires relatively little
| energy input compared to what is released. Combined with
| how very little practical observation we have of what's
| really going on in the Earth's core. It is certainly
| possible some phenomena is in play with Earthquakes.
| jjk166 wrote:
| Atomic bombs don't simply assemble themselves naturally
| though.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Not exactly atomic bombs, but we do have evidence of
| naturally occurring, self sustaining nuclear reactors
| having operated for potentially hundreds of thousands of
| years in Earth's past (https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Natura
| l_nuclear_fission_reactor)
| CodeWriter23 wrote:
| I know. Are you suggesting we have already discovered
| everything there is to know about our planet / this
| universe?
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| when people say "orders of magnitude" do they always mean
| base 10?
|
| (i'm thinking of how decibels are a log scale sort of thing
| wrt power, where "orders of magnitude" used as a cliche
| probably does not mean what it would be read as.)
| heyjamesknight wrote:
| I usually interpret it as "scales geometrically and not
| arithmetically".
| lanstin wrote:
| That seems confusing. If I say my new service is orders
| of magnitude more efficient than previous services, I
| don't mean any thing about scaling but current
| performance, and I wouldn't say orders of magnitude if it
| was just twice as many calls/second/core, but more than
| ten, or really more than 30, halfway between ten and a
| hundred, logarithmically.
|
| Something that scales geometrically might well have some
| giant constant so it isn't useful until a specific
| performance regime.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| i think of "orders of magnitude" to mean "powers of ten",
| but I asked since i'm not sure i'm reading what folks
| think they are saying.
| ajkjk wrote:
| I interpret it as saying: exponentially different, where
| the range in my uncertainty is comparable tonthe effect
| of the choice of base.
|
| For instance if the range is '3-13' in base 2 it's
| similar to '1-4' in base 10, but either way I'm making up
| numbers so who cares what the base is.
| jjk166 wrote:
| Base 10 is certainly the default. Decibels are base 10;
| more specifically a Bel is 1 factor of 10, and a decibel
| is 1 tenth of that, ie 10^0.1.
| nick__m wrote:
| fractional exponents don't work like that, for example
| x^1/2 is the square root of x. You probably meant 10^-1 !
| MobiusHorizons wrote:
| The wikipedia article was actually pretty interesting on
| this point. They suggest that 10 is commonly used, but
| other bases may be contextually relevant.
|
| > An order of magnitude is an approximation of the
| logarithm of a value relative to some contextually
| understood reference value, usually 10
|
| I guess you could think of it like a _really_ low
| precision float or something.
|
| 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_magnitude
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| I suspect the phrase is a cliche often used to sound
| scientific and sometimes by folks unaware, like how
| description of growth as "exponential" is a cliche used
| by non-mathematical discussion.
| CleaveIt2Beaver wrote:
| I agree with this. As a layman, I've always understood
| "orders of magnitude larger" to just mean "way too big"
| and "exponential" growth to imply "out of control".
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| In fact i hypothesise they've inverted cause and effect.
|
| Tectonic movements absolutely have the energy to move the
| earths magnetic field and the magnetic field blocks cosmic
| radiation. Something that moves the magnetic field would
| allow more cosmic radiation
|
| There's only a handful of detectors outside of earths
| magnetic field. Orbiting satellites are even within its
| field of influence. Comparing this data to the measure of
| cosmic radiation from a deep space probe would be
| interesting to rule out that it's the earth movement
| increasing detected radiation and not the reverse
|
| They may have simply discovered that tectonic movement
| changes how much cosmic radiation reaches our detectors.
| idlewords wrote:
| I hypothesize you didn't read the paper, which you've
| instead derived from first principles.
| pomian wrote:
| What you wrote, is a good place to start future
| observations. There is a lot of unexplored dynamics to
| investigate, in the earth. Roiling hot fluid and gaseous
| systems in flux, which are magnetic - due to iron (and
| other minerals), is a fluid dynamics dream subject. But,
| how to finance? In today's research systems driven by
| funding to support specific answers, instead of expanding
| knowledge just to see what we learn.
|
| Ps. An attempt at modeling the inner Earth's systems and
| flows might be more useful for earthquake prediction.
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| From the article, that is in fact their explanation.
| There's just possibly some other data that could point
| the other way, but it's not heavily emphasized.
|
| There have been other studies that showed weird
| correlations to ionospheric activity and earthquakes, but
| only ever in retrospect.
| flangola7 wrote:
| Catastrophe as in many possible earthquakes, if the
| hypothesis is correct?
| olivermarks wrote:
| >Catastrophe as in many possible earthquakes, if the
| hypothesis is correct?
|
| No, wiping out the entire electrical grid and all
| electronics
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event
| dylan604 wrote:
| On certain days, I really think this would be not such a
| bad idea. I like to call those days Monday
| suction wrote:
| [dead]
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Precursor signals for earthquakes is a field that has about as
| much credibility as astrology, from the few conversations I've
| had with professional geologists and planetary scientists. I
| had a minor and short-lived role in designing a sensor network
| that might be useful for these kinds of low-signal, high-noise
| precursors, and I got nothing but strange looks from actual
| geologists.
| mnky9800n wrote:
| There are plenty of precursors for an earthquake. Or maybe
| there are none. But it doesn't much matter because timescales
| of earthquakes can be thousands or more of years. While
| timescales of data is about a hundred years.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| > One thing that troubles me in the paper is that the
| researchers appear to have gone looking for precursor patterns
| in an ad hoc way ... just trying different binning techniques
| and delays until they got a signal.
|
| That's just p-hacking.
| idlewords wrote:
| Thank you! That's the term I was looking for but couldn't
| remember.
| jl6 wrote:
| > One posited mechanism is that stuff happens deep in the earth
| that affects the magnetic field first, and then kicks off some
| big earthquake.
|
| If this was real, would it not be easier to measure the
| perturbation of the magnetic field than measure the cosmic rays
| being let in by the perturbed magnetic field?
| opello wrote:
| This was my thought as well since it seems rather obvious I
| wonder why it wasn't the approach taken.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Given the planet is one big ol' magnet, it seems at least
| plausible to see interactions?
| klipt wrote:
| It's fine to form a hypothesis from old data ... but it's not a
| theory yet until that hypothesis is challenged by (and isn't
| falsified by) future data :-)
| EA-3167 wrote:
| This is doubly true when we're talking about predicting
| earthquakes, a practice that has had no successes and a LOT
| of notable failures.
| [deleted]
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| Does old data discovered in the future count?
| ithkuil wrote:
| Yes it does. Because you didn't use it to overfit your
| model.
|
| Same goes for data that you had in the last but decided to
| ignore while building the model.
|
| In both cases there is a legitimate risk of cheating.
|
| The only data that you cannot cheat about is future data.
| zackees wrote:
| "Fringe scientists" have been saying that cosmic and solar
| particles have been causing earthquakes for a long time.
|
| It seems counter intuitive but an analogy is very simple:
|
| A 15 mph breeze will do almost nothing to push a person, but
| will exert tremendous force on a sail of sufficient size.
|
| Earth, in this analogy, is a really big sail.
| vanderZwan wrote:
| The counter-argument is equally simple: a sail is a surface.
| The earth is a sphere. A sphere made of solid rock the size
| of a sail will be even less moved by a 15 mph breeze than
| this hypothetical person.
| zackees wrote:
| We aren't talking about the earth being blown off course
| though, just that there is a large amount of energy that
| was previously unaccounted for and that this energy is
| large enough to trigger an earth quake at vulnerable parts.
| idlewords wrote:
| Do the back-of-the-envelope computation of how much
| energy reaches Earth from a coronal mass ejection and see
| how well your idea holds up. (a typical flare is 10^16
| grams of matter moving at about 450 km/sec)
| CrimsonRain wrote:
| You don't need a ton of energy to set off a possible
| chain reaction events.
| refibrillator wrote:
| CMEs reaching earth likely account for a mere fraction of
| the energy flowing through the global electric circuit at
| any moment.
|
| Moreover, your suggestion seems to indicate that you're
| only considering kinetic energy, which would be a very
| myopic and reductionist take on these matters.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Freezing water>ice shatters a cast iron pipe. It's just
| about the creation of a crack to initiate stress relief.
| mikewarot wrote:
| >The earth is a sphere. A sphere made of solid rock [...]
|
| The earth is NOT a solid rock. It's a very thin layer of
| rock, floating on top of a pool of magma, itself floating
| in space. The rock itself flows on all sorts of time scales
| as well.
|
| A sphere will be forced by the wind, almost the same amount
| as any other object, regardless of its density or weight.
| blibble wrote:
| > It's a very thin layer of rock, floating on top of a
| pool of magma
|
| it's not a pool of magma, the mantle is basically solid
|
| (except on very large timescales)
| blueprint wrote:
| you're missing the analogy. the surface area of the sail is
| the entire volume of eg piezoelectrically responsive rocks
| - so it's a gigantic sail
| Aerbil313 wrote:
| Given Earth is a highly complex system, can't a transformer AI be
| used to predict earthquakes?
| phreeza wrote:
| In other news, the number of sociology graduates strongly
| correlates with the number of non-commercial space launches in a
| given year! https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
|
| In all seriousness though, it is pretty easy to find such
| correlations and I would take them with a huge grain of salt. For
| example there was a long-running theory that sunspots had a
| causal relationship to influenza epidemics, which turns out to be
| probably purely spurious:
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28847318/
| 0xr0kk3r wrote:
| The article points out that the researchers have a premise
| grounded in science for their correlation. That's the
| difference between shouting "correlation doesn't equal
| causation" and actually understanding how correlation is
| applied.
| phreeza wrote:
| I would say the crucial thing is actually making a
| falsifiable prediction, not having a scientific grounding.
| There are also many "just so" stories that make sense at face
| value but are not really falsifiable (e.g. Evo psych is full
| of them). I think the theory here does make some falsifiable
| predictions, which is great, so guess we will see. But I'm
| not holding my breath.
| fractallyte wrote:
| "Probably"
|
| It's in that sliver of doubt that the big scientific
| discoveries lie...
| [deleted]
| amelius wrote:
| > He emphasizes that the Earth's magnetic field, a result of eddy
| currents in our planet's liquid core, alters the trajectory of
| primary cosmic radiation's charged particles.
|
| > Therefore, any substantial earthquakes linked to disturbances
| in the Earth's dynamo flows would alter the magnetic field, thus
| impacting the path of primary cosmic radiation. The fallout of
| these alterations would be apparent in the changes in the counts
| of secondary cosmic ray particles recorded by ground-based
| detectors.
|
| Wouldn't there be a more direct way of measuring changes in the
| magnetic field generated in Earth's core? Or is this method
| preferable because it's cheap and sufficiently accurate?
| pfdietz wrote:
| > Wouldn't there be a more direct way
|
| Of course. That's one reason among many of thinking this is all
| bullshit.
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| Well a confounding variable would be that we already know
| tectonic movements change the magnetic field.
|
| In fact that's the thing that triggers alarms for me here.
| Haven't they just found that we detect more cosmic rays when
| there's tectonic movement?
|
| Cosmic rays are influenced by the magnetic field and the
| magnetic field is influenced by tectonic movement. Why are they
| pushing the line that cosmic rays cause earthquakes when
| there's a reasonable and testable alternative - we detect more
| cosmic rays when there's tectonic movement.
| MeteorMarc wrote:
| Not a single diagram to show the correlation in the earth.com
| description.
| TheLoafOfBread wrote:
| So who is going to be first to launch earthquake inducing
| satellite weapon?
| TMWNN wrote:
| The US, in 1988 <https://www.americaspace.com/2012/01/30/into-
| the-black-nasas...>
| [deleted]
| matt-attack wrote:
| > We therefore have a very good statistical basis for claiming
| that we have discovered a truly existing phenomenon. The only
| question is, *is it really the one we were expecting*? [My
| Emphasis]
|
| Why on earth is that the "only question"? What does that even
| mean?
|
| I can think of many many questions and that isn't one of them:
| * What is the mechanism that associates the radiation to the
| earth movement * Are other objects on earth also affected?
| * How can we use this to predict quakes?
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| Unrolling tape produces x-rays.
|
| Is the radiation causing earthquakes or it is caused by
| earthquakes (due to some unknown phenomenon?)
| aaomidi wrote:
| Well there's a 15 day delay between them so, I think it's be
| harder to have the opposite :D
| lanstin wrote:
| The article mentions that a thing could change the core
| magnetic stuff, which deflects cosmic rays, and triggers
| other changes that in two weeks percolate up to an
| earthquake. This is a statistical finding, needs a theory to
| explain. I mean it could be some weird trajectories in a
| chaotic fluid flow of liquid iron in the core that causes
| both.
| kansface wrote:
| I suppose some earthquakes could be kicked off by changes
| in fluid flow, but also, 2 weeks of data is enough degrees
| of freedom to find any relationship you'd like.
| bckr wrote:
| One of the main hypotheses is that the earth's dynamo (molten,
| magnetically active core) is emitting/redirecting the
| radiation.
| [deleted]
| kkoncevicius wrote:
| Interesting bit: I've been watching this one conspiratorial
| YouTube channel from time to time, and there it is claimed that
| the link between sun, radioactivity, and earthquakes, is old
| news. Here is a video exactly about this, from more than 7 years
| ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEyflcAlqZc
| shusaku wrote:
| What is going on with the linked page, some kind of search engine
| optimization? The article just goes on and on with barely related
| facts...
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| Related : Earthquakes here on earth DO emit light !!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_lights
| blincoln wrote:
| At least one of the videos linked from the references in that
| article is pretty dramatic, with frequent pulses of blue light
| from different locations near the ground.[1]
|
| If there is a link between cosmic radiation and earthquakes
| (and that's a _very_ big "if"), could it be Cherenkov
| radiation caused by super-high-energy particles exceeding the
| speed of electromagnetic radiation in bedrock/soil/whatever
| (not C, obviously, but the lower speed that the radiation
| travels through that media)? Basically a colossal natural
| version of detecting neutrinos by their flashes of light in a
| tank of water?
|
| [1]
| https://twitter.com/webcamsdemexico/status/15729247312584622...
| avaldez_ wrote:
| I live in Chile, one of the most seismically active countries
| in the world, and been through several earthquakes. Those
| lights? Just transformers and power lines blowing up. In the
| 2010 earthquake [1] we had several >6 Mag. aftershocks for
| days and we didn't see more flashes after the first shaking,
| simply because there wasn't power anymore.
|
| [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Chile_earthquake
| java-man wrote:
| Direct link to the paper:
|
| https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/b8592914-c53a-4c84...
| miika wrote:
| This was discussed quite a bit after 2004 asian tsunami, which
| was triggered by an earthquake near Antarctica and there was also
| some massive gamma ray burst (or something) occurring about the
| same time.
|
| I wouldn't be surprised. It's a connected universe. No thing is
| an island.
| ithkuil wrote:
| Well, islands are islands, aren't they?
| aftbit wrote:
| That depends on the sea level, doesn't it? Even islands are
| connected to the rest of the world.
| idlewords wrote:
| Spoken like a true Scorpio
| phkahler wrote:
| Could nuclear reactions inside the earth emit radiation that is
| picked up by these detectors? I think probably not. But if so,
| imagine molten nuclear fuel coming together and creating extra
| energy that soon after produces earthquakes.
| deepserket wrote:
| What
| user6723 wrote:
| The Disaster Prediction App will show you the current state of
| the sun, it's effects on Earth's space weather, earthquake
| events, and areas of the Earth likely to have large earthquakes
| in the coming days. There is a space weather portion of the App
| and an Earthquake portion of the App.
|
| https://9rese.com/disaster-prediction-app/
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